Haiti pier opens, road laid into Port-au-Prince

[Turborama]

Source: CNN International

Relief supplies were heading into Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from ships docked at a reopened pier Thursday, brought into the city on trucks traveling on a repaired gravel road leading from the port.

A Dutch Navy ship, the Pelikaan, was docked at the city's south pier Thursday, unloading 90 tons of humanitarian aid. Two other ships previously unloaded containers.

The reopened pier is older and smaller than the north pier, which was rendered unusable by the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that struck the Haitian capital January 12.

The south pier was damaged, but Haiti port authorities and the U.S. military were able to put it back in shape, although repairs continue. Workers also repaired the road leading into the city and laid gravel on it.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/21/haiti.earthquake/

---

Good report in the video at the link.

Long article well worth reading in full. Particularly the part at the bottom that discusses the confusion on the ground that has led to the bottleneck of lifesaving supplies.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. BBC reported this last night

and I am sure that this is one of the reason they are still using choppers to do helo transfers as well from ships at sea.

It will take, for comparson, the MAR Huasteco is being unloaded using helo lifts according to the Mexican Department of the Navy. It is smaller than the dutch ship, will take five days.

[bemildred]

2. Marine unit headed for Afghanistan now rerouted to Haiti

The Pentagon announced Wednesday that it would send a second Marine unit to Haiti to support what has become an expanding relief effort for the Defense Department, deepening the American military’s role there.

About 4,000 marines and sailors from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, Camp Lejeune, N.C., who were scheduled to leave for Afghanistan this week, will instead steam to Haiti to support humanitarian relief operations. The unit will still continue on to the Arabian Sea for its scheduled deployment in the coming weeks.

But the decision to re-route the Marines points up the depth of the need for humanitarian assistance in Haiti, which experienced a severe aftershock Wednesday. It also presents the Pentagon with a delicate balancing act, since the already-overstretched US military can ill afford to get mired in a security-and-stabilization mission.

The US must do as much as it can while taking care not to create a false expectation, says Tony Cordesman, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2010/0120/Marine-unit-headed-for-Afghanistan-now-rerouted-to-Haiti