Ghost of a flea

There is a lot of bitching in places like boingboing.net already. But those people do not understand how the situation is materially constrained by the facilities.

The seaport is smashed, buildings and collapsed structures (like loading cranes) have to be cleared from the mooring points so that deep-draught vessels can dock. How long will it take a salvage crew to disassemble a crane leaning precariously beside a pier? If you just brute-force knock it down, how deep is the draught there, will the sunken crane leave enough room for ships to pass overhead without wrecking their hulls? There's some kind of petro spill leaking from a tank farm on the coast, too, plus sewage effluents from the city, which complicates a vessel's arrival into the harbour.

The main airport (MTPP) desperately needs a new taxiway system, at minimum.

Right now it's a single runway with one fixed-wing (med/heavy) apron and one rotary-wing apron, and a single taxiway leading from each to the runway.

In a well-developed airport the taxiway system helps aircraft flow on and off the runway smoothly. Aircraft waiting to take off hold short of the departure end of the runway on one taxiway, aircraft landing taxi off the runway on another taxiway further down. When the arriving aircraft clears the rwy, the departing craft is cleared on to it. At a busy airport these movements are very closely sequenced.

In MTPP with a single taxiway, the departing craft has to sit on the ramp itself. It can't position at the departure end because the turnaround bays at either end are too small for the wingspan of a med/heavy aircraft. Likewise it can't position on the single taxiway because the arriving aircraft needs to use that taxiway to exit the runway.

And because the taxiway is in the middle, arrivals need to backtrack the runway in order to reach the taxiway. Similarly, departures also need to backtrack the runway in order to position at the departure end.

The med/heavy ramp has spaces for 12 aircraft, at most. Airfield facilities include two fuel trucks and two pushback mules.

You would be lucky to get one aircraft movement every ten minutes under such a system, or 144 movements per day. Assuming the movements occur like clockwork, nobody has to remain on the ramp for any longer than it takes to unload, and everybody tankers their own return fuel aboard and does not require refueling from one of the airfield's two trucks.

Pearson airport, in contrast, handles about 1200 movements a day, and it slows down considerably after midnight due to aircraft class noise restrictions. Haiti will never handle 1200 movements a day, not even if every single airport in the nation were pressed into service. There are six of them, and all have single-runway, single-taxiway designs. Only two have runways long enough to cope with international transoceanic flights.

Now compound that with tons of aid arriving, and literally about a hundred thousand foreign nationals requiring evacuation (that alone would be about 300 flights) and you're looking at a recipe for unimaginable delays for a very long time.

Also not really well understood is the US's funding of ships which are able to self unload as well as unload OTHER non Self unloading ships at an un-improved, damaged or otherwise non-existant port. The combination of:

1. Amphibious Assault ships which have their own landing craft, cranes, well decks and helicopter pads/hangers, hospitals and Communications facilities
2. Maritime Preposition/Fast Amphibious Transport Ships which have their own landing craft, sometimes have well decks, helicopter pads, cranes and fresh water distillation facilities on board.
3. Amphibious Support ships which have the ability to bring small tugs, barges, lighters, pilot vessels and small security craft to an unimproved port to handle all of the tasks necessary to support putting men and materials across a shore to support the above.

All of those relate to invading OR to supporting humanitarian aid.

Not to mention the TWO fully staffed Hospital ships which have the ability to leave port on a 5 day notice. The USNS Comfort, left 3 days after being activated.

See the old but still sufficiently expansive explanation of ships at at Haze Gray.org both US Navy Sealift Ships and .