The airport at Port au Prince, now operated by the US military, has only a runway, no taxiways.

[Stinky The Clown]

I apologize for the picture age and source, but if you google map it, you will see the same thing. There is only the active runway, with no parallel taxiways as exist at most airports. Any plane that lands must, at the end of his landing, stop, turn a 180, and make his way back to the small ramp. This is not uncommon on small Caribbean islands and in poor countries. The runway is not inadequate. It is simply the way things are at low traffic facilities.

The fact that any supplies are getting in is no less than a tribute to the skilled logisticians, air traffic controllers, ramp crews, flight crews, and other professionals who are working their asses off.

Edit - I clicked "post" too soon. Adding:

Think about that. The only place to park a loaded airplane is on a concrete ramp. Judging by the picture, there might be room for 6 to 10 large airplanes, and maybe less. You can't park them on the runway without essentially closing it. So that means a high sweat factor to turn the planes **fast**

And just to keep in mind. When the damage hit and before there was any help on site, planes were landing without benefit of traffic controllers. Essentially hoping everyone heard their radio calls and keeping a sharp eye out the window, looking for any other traffic. That's hard work.

[hileeopnyn8d]

1. This says it all...

"The fact that any supplies are getting in is no less than a tribute to the skilled logisticians, air traffic controllers, ramp crews, flight crews, and other professionals who are working their asses off."

I agree with you.

[tekisui]

2. It really is amazing.

[malaise]

3. Why aren't they using Cap-Haitien airport

as well?

[Stinky The Clown]

5. I'd bet they are. But that's a long drive and who knows what road damage there might be.

They said it was taking up to 10 hours from Santo Domingo

[malaise]

6. True - Cap-Haitien airport was about to be refurbished

by the Venezuelans. The runway isn't that long anyway.

[backscatter712]

14. C-130s can use short runways.

They're designed to land on short, rough runways.

Of course, there are likely other problems - lack of infrastructure, blocked roads, etc. etc. preventing use of that airport, but some aircraft could go there assuming those problems were solved.

[malaise]

17. Well it's an international airport

but we don't know the condition of the roads etc.

[backscatter712]

20. Yep. My out-of-my-ass guess says they're blocked & it'll take days to clear them.

Can't say my back-seat driving would do more good than anyone else's here. The .mil's got the skills, and they're doing the best that anyone could do under the circumstances.

[Pavulon]

21. 4900 feet is short.

I dont know minimums on the c130 with a full load.

[backscatter712]

22. Just from googling, the C-130 can land on a 3,000 ft runway.

That's with a full load. They're designed for that sort of thing.

IIRC, the Navy once experimented with C-130 carrier landings and takeoffs. They can do them, though it's not particularly practical.

[PacerLJ35]

29. Like everything, the capabilities of a C-130 depends on a lot of factors

C-130s can probably operate with few limitations from Cap Haitien because it's runway is 4,880 feet, unless a survey reveals it has a PCN or WBC number that prevents heavy ops. But strictly from a standpoint of runway length, every variant of the C-130 (C-130E, C-130H and C-130J) could operate from that runway.

The other runways, which are as short as 3,200', depends on temperature and the specific performance data of the particular model flown. Also, it depends on whether the crews are allowed to use actual Vmeto speeds for takeoff (Vmeto is Max Effort Takeoff speed, which is less than normal takeoff speed, and usually less than Vmca - Min Control Speed in the Air). We usually correct our takeoff speed to equal Vmca, because getting airborne prior to Vmca and losing an engine could be potentially catastrophic. Increasing Vmeto to equal Vmca usually adds about 10 knots, and thus adds a corresponding increase in takeoff distance (known as MFLMETO for Min Field Length for Max Effort Takeoff).

I'd think though, for these kinds of operations, headquarters would grant a blanket waiver for crews to depart using actual Vmeto instead of a corrected distance.

Beyond that, using Vmeto for takeoff and assuming temperatures don't get too out of hand, most C-130s can takeoff from 3,000 feet or less without any problems.

[blondeatlast]

4. Yup. Haiti: little in the way of infrastructure. On Monday. BEFORE the quake hit.

And it went downhill from there.

I'm not much into hero worship, but I'll give propers to everyone who is helping, from those who've donated to thowe who sadly, must triage.

What a nightmare they face. Strength to them.

[Hannah Bell]

9. dominican republic less than 80 miles away: fully functioning infrastructure, including

9 international airports.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_the_Dominican_Republic

[vadawg]

18. the good thing is that you kinda dont get to see the big picture on the ground

so it helps you, when you run an aid station you kinda get focused on the immediate area around you and the thousands you are trying to feed and if you are lucky you block out the 100's of thousands or millions that still need help.

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. Good blog with ....

...current MTPP NOTAMS, etc.

[Hannah Bell]

8. Dominican republic has 9 international airports, 6 domestic ones, & 20

"other" & military airports.


Santo Domingo is about 150 miles from Port au Prince. Port au prince to the airport in barahona is about 80 miles.

[seabeyond]

10. do you think maybe there might be a reason, or is being done. that maybe all are not cold hearted

waiting for death before they do anything. that all the people around the world coming to help are not all inept and non caring.

do you think maybe you lack information

or must it simply be the callousness of the world that is the problem.

[Hannah Bell]

11. what are you talking about? you seem to be reading something other than what i wrote,

which is that DR has many airports.

The implication = relief efforts aren't completely dependent on the ones in haiti; there are fully functional ones on the same island, & roads between the two countries.

The media are basing themselves in DR.

[hileeopnyn8d]

19. I heard on the news last night

that some are doing just that, but it took them over eleven hours to get to Port au Prince from the Dominican Republic by land.

[Hannah Bell]

23. from santo domingo. there are airports closer than that.

[Peace Patriot]

12. I agree. An unparalleled disaster--7.0 in a major city with NO building codes,

everything fell down--ALL the hospitals, the UN building (on top of the UN mission chief and at least a hundred staff), their UN Food warehouse also damaged, every existing, on-the-ground aid organization--those who get out the first assistance and coordinate and receive in-coming aid--all with their buildings down, and many of their people dead or missing, communications all down, every road blocked (including the road to the airport), almost all the government ministry buildings down, all the churches down, at least a hundred thousand dead, rotting in the streets, many still trapped under rubble, and some 2 to 3 million people wandering the streets--dazed, homeless, searching for relatives. The in-coming aid givers had nowhere to deliver the aid to--the city is in ruins--and the logistical difficulties have been incredible. Helicopters? Where are you going to get helicopters? How are you going to fuel them? How do you get in-coming aid into the helicopters? Where do they land, or drop packages (with 2-3 million people all out in the open because most structures are down and none are safe)? (Finally, the Carl Vincent arrived with 19 helicopters. It was 2 days out when the earthquake struck.) Heavy equipment to clear the roads? Right. Where is it, not smashed to pieces? Where is the fuel? The equipment operators?

We're talking NIGHTMARE--for everybody, the millions of victims, and the rescuers. And can you just imagine the exhaustion, the desperation of the helpers on the ground--from the wonderful man who found a tiny boy buried for three days under his father's body in a collapsed apartment building and dug him out, to the UN, Red Cross, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and other existing aid workers in Haiti--all with destroyed aid capabilities-- the Cuban doctors, the Bolivian peacekeepers, the U.S. soldiers in the helicopters, the USAF people who got the airport up and running, the Mexican search and rescue teams, all working in "Dante's Inferno" conditions to do what they can, as quickly as they can, with whatever they have.

You know, I have really grave criticisms of U.S. policy in Haiti, and we all know, from Katrina, what the perils of this situation are, but right now I just want to honor the aid givers on the ground in Haiti. The magnitude of this disaster is almost beyond comprehension. They have at least a hundred thousand people to bury. They have the imminent threat of disease wiping out a good portion of the remaining population. They have tens of thousands of injured and sick. They have NO hospitals to work in. They have no place to put 2-3 million people. Let's just give them nothing but praise, support and prayers this week as they try to create the venue to deliver the aid to--a tent city for 2-3 million people!

[Stinky The Clown]

13. Well said!

[Prometheus Bound]

16. Yup.

[Grey]

24. Can I recommend what you said?

Good Post.

[BeFree]

26. To be clear

The frustration that many of us have felt with the progress on the ground there, is not directed at the boots on the ground. It is directed at the decision makers and the politics. It is widely known that the politicians for some reason always screw up everything they touch.

We have a military that we spend trillions on. It is advertised as the mightiest and the ablest ever. So when we see that other countries have landed their forces and gone to work on the streets, when we see search and rescue teams from other countries on the streets, and then we see none of our military forces on the streets, delivering aid, clearing rubble or making security, it rightly pisses us off.

Our frustration is born of recent history. And we are ashamed of that history. We don't want to be ashamed again, so we rightly call for more, faster and better action from our politicians and military brass.

Last night some here told us that air drops were not possible. Today the same people tell us that airdrops were happening yesterday. All the while, common sense tells us that within 24 hours air drops were possible.

Our frustration is that people were starving and thirsty and there was no relief in sight. That if drops were made the Haitians would riot. Today, we see helicopters making air drops, water being delivered, and no riots.

It has now been 100 hours since the quake, and just now we see our military finally delivering. 100 hours!! Somebody made this situation worse than it had to be. It wasn't the boots on the ground. Just to be clear.

[FarCenter]

28. Our military can't really go anywhere that we can't supply via ships leased from other countries

Take Kuwait and Iraq for instance. Both Gulf Wars involved very heavy sea lift of material into Persian Gulf ports.

Afghanistan is supplied via Karachi and the rail and road network of Pakistan.

Since the US no longer has any merchant shipping to speak of, it is all carried on ships leased from foreign flag carriers.

[Peace Patriot]

31. "It is widely known that the politicians...always screw up everything they touch." LOL!

True enough! And that good Katrina general, Honore, was on the State Department yesterday. He said something to the effect that "civilians" (State Department, USAID) were trying to "prioritize" and holding the military back. Having watched the State Department in Honduras, no amount of fuckup from the State Department would surprise me. So he probably was right. But I still think the logistics are so nightmarish that we should just offer morale support to the people on the ground, at this point, and save criticism for later, at least until the situation is stabilized.

It looks to me like the U.S. military has been doing great big infrastructure tasks--like getting that miserable little, broken airport back up and organized to receive aid and to distribute it (but to where?), and getting the Carl Vincent there (19 helicopters). There were no helicopters, no fuel for helicopters, no crew for helicopters and the airport, and the road from the airport to Port-au-Prince, were dysfunctional. All that got taken care of. Now masses of aid can come in, with some reasonable order and less peril to landing planes and other aircraft.

Just saw a McClatchy article, "Plane shortage keeps Fort Bragg soldiers from Haiti," posted here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7487007

So I don't know what that's all about, but the article mentions that the same thing happened during Katrina--they didn't have enough transport planes available on the spot--so the troops DROVE to Louisiana in a truck convoy. Not to defend U.S. wars of aggression around the world, but no one, including the military, had any warning of this truly humongous disaster--downtown 7.0 in a major city on an island with one air strip for an airport--so I am not ready to say that 100 hours is unnecessary delay. Also, Haiti had a 6,000 soldier UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti (not sure of that number but something like that), with the soldiers from several Latin American countries, including Brazil and Bolivia. Cuba had doctors in community health clinics in Haiti before the quake. So these sorts of things may account for why you see soldiers and aid workers from other countries and not from the U.S. They were already there. Getting more soldiers and aid workers through that airport, plus all the aid supplies--food, water, shelter, medical supplies for 2-3 million people--is not easy. And then, where do they go? Where is their temporary housing, food, water and supplies?

The Carl Vincent is now dropping potable water and can probably keep that up indefinitely. Deep infrastructure is important--not just handing out meals but being able to do so tomorrow and for the next...year? Port-au-Prince is in utter ruins. No water. No sewage system. No electricity. No hospitals. No shelter. Half the buildings collapsed. The other half damaged and unsafe. Tens of thousands of dead bodies in the rubble, in the streets. Tens of thousands of injured, sick, traumatized. No communications. No fuel. SOMEBODY has to set up an ENTIRE TEMPORARY CITY. So SOMEBODY has to think and act long term.

You're damn right that U.S. aid, the U.S. military and all of our taxpayer funded agencies--and the politicians and bureaucrats who run it all--should be held to strict account, and so should the private corporate contractors who now run so much of it for profit, and the non-profits who solicit our donations. Transparency and accountability are absolutely necessary--and we don't have a whole lot of that for sure. Also, if we find that somebody is really fucking up, in this situation, we should, of course, speak out--as Honore did--if we think pressure will do any good. (He obviously did.) All I'm saying is that we've got people--our own and people from many other countries--in "Dante's Inferno" conditions, most of them trying to do their very best, pushing themselves to the max. They need morale support.

[seabeyond]

27. I just want to honor the aid givers ... for real. and posters that dare to type from keyboards

suggesting they are so much more concerned, as they sit on their ass, then all the people there desperately helping truly saddens me. what does it say about a person that can recognize all these people converging on this area to help adn dismiss their efforts so readily adn easily, acting as if their concerns are so much more superior

[malaise]

32. Excellent post n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

33. +1 for your post. But I also must +1 BeFree. You are both right.

The people actually doing relief work are the people we must look to. Unfortunately they don't have the time or access to tell us what is needed. It could well be that most of the American relief crews are not in country yet, hence the relative silence outside of media reports.

[Peace Patriot]

35. Yes, I think that's probably true. Not a lot of U.S. personnel are there yet.

Even if you can get thousands of aid workers and soldiers through the narrow vise of that airport*, you can't just dump thousands of aid workers and soldiers anywhere. And "anywhere" doesn't exist in Port-au-Prince anyway. You have to find open fields somewhere and set things up as you go--tented hospitals, tented surgery tents, tended recovery areas, tented general medical care, tented offices, tented barracks, tented cafeterias, potable water facilities and sewage control for all your personnel--you have to keep aid workers (doctors, nurses, food distributors) on their feet--and movement, storage, inventory and distribution of food, water and other supplies for 2-3 million people! And where are they going to find shelter?

The hard truth is that there are a lot of people who cannot be saved. It is not humanly possible. We want instant this and instant that. It cannot be done. And whatever blame there may be--and there is plenty of it--for Haiti not having a decent government, for Haiti having NO building codes, and for Haiti's dire poverty and lack of resources (prevailing wage, $2/day; 99% of the land owned by 1% of the people; tens of thousands of good small farmers driven off the land into urban squalor; lack of food reserves--most Haitians lived from meal to meal, pre-earthquake)--this is not the fault of the people who are now trying to save lives in these horrendous conditions.

Given the dimensions of this horror, the extremely poor state of the infrastructure in Haiti before the quake, the massive damage and death, and also the great damage and death that existing, on the ground aid agencies suffered in the earthquake--those who were supposed to get out the first aid and guide in-coming aid to appropriate destinations--(I mean, the entire UN building collapsing on their staff! Jeez.)--I would say 3 days is NOT sufficient time to expect that 2-3 million people would get potable water and food, but it is just about now--and over the next 2 to 3 days--that we should see significant triage on drinking water and food. And that doesn't even begin to deal with the whole disaster. How do you get drinking water and food to them tomorrow?

Some people have asked, why didn't they start dropping water and food immediately? The answer is: with what? We're not talking about New Orleans here--where supplies and transport were immediately available (and the problem was Bushwhack obstruction and malfeasance). We're talking about an island country with a tiny, broken airport, and primitive, broken roads. Cuba (not far away) and the Dominican Republican (on the same island) could do something immediately, and they probably did, or tried to (--and it's not likely we will hear about it), but Cuba of course has political problems with the U.S. (Haiti is a U.S. client state) and maybe hesitated to send air drops over the country (I don't know). They did immediately respond with a "yes" to the Pentagon on using Cuba's air space for aid flights. And they had some doctors on loan in Haiti before the quake hit (who have been working round the clock, doing triage in makeshift facilities, with every hospital in Port-au-Prince a pile of rubble and dead patients, doctors and nurses). The Dominican Republic is not that much more developed than Haiti and certainly does not have the instant capability (or any capability) to mount major air drops of water and food, or even major land delivery. It is not likely that either country had major supplies on hand, or air, sea or land transport, fuel supplies and other capacity available to deal with this. And this means that instant conveyance of drinking water and food to 2-3 million people was simply not possible and is only just now getting to possible.

I have to say this again: The hard truth is that there are a lot of people who cannot be saved. This is no one's fault among the current aid providers who are on the ground in Haiti, or in the air or on the sea heading to Haiti. Maybe we will learn from this not to fuck around with other peoples' governments, as we have done in Haiti. Maybe aid agencies and Latin American countries will learn lessons about beefing up emergency supplies and aid capabilities in the region. Maybe the U.S. military will stop letting itself be used for corporate resource wars and start doing some good in the world --with all of its resources available for sudden disasters. We cannot blame the people in Haiti or heading to Haiti while they are trying to do the impossible in current, existing conditions. Plenty of blame for our politicians and corporate rulers for why this disaster is as bad as it is--gross interference, exploitation, neglect, racism. But I think we should stop blaming the people trying to deal with it, at least for a few days, until the situation has been stabilized. It's as if a nuke hit Port-au-Prince. That's how bad it is. And that is not the fault of the people doing triage.

----------------------

*(I read somewhere that Hait's main port facilities were down. If true, that means that any aid by sea has to have transport ability from off-shore. You can send in small boats, but how much aid can they carry? If the harbor in inoperable, then that is yet another thing that has to be re-created before major aid can come through it. The logistics problems of this disaster are truly nightmarish. As someone has said, it is the "perfect storm" of an earthquake disaster--with everything militating for maximum damage and carnage and now everything militating against efficiently delivered aid.)

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[SidDithers]

25. The SouthCom update said it has a capacity of 90 planes / day...nt

Sid

[Stinky The Clown]

30. That's about 7 or 8 planes an hour.

That is a VERY slow rate.

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. Pretty darn good for one runway, though. You know they could double that by landing short

Landing right at the off-ramp, I mean, and bringing one in behind them.

Maybe they already have.

Is this possible??? Should someone ask?