A Paratrooper assigned to A Company, 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division removes rubble from the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Jan. 26. 2BSTB Soldiers worked with troopers assigned to 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. and the Center of National Equipment to clear the streets, making it easier to distribute aid to locals. Photo by Pfc. Kissta Feldner

Buildings lean dangerously, looming over soldiers in the street below attempting to remove mounds of debris, the remains of structures that have already crumbled. As a tractor fills its bucket with a new load of fragmented concrete, it snags a downed power line, causing loose bricks to fall from the structure above. This scene is evidence of why the engineering mission here is so important.

When the road is cleared, it will become a safe route for international aid organizations to access areas of Port-au-Prince in need of assistance, as well as increase traffic flow, open the streets for vendors, and generally enhance functionality of the city.

Soldiers from the Italian Task Force have teamed up with Paratroopers with 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, in addition to their continued work with the Center of National Equipment, to clear the streets of the city.

The Paratroopers are using their loaders and Bobcat utility work machines to remove the massive amount of rubble left by the Jan. 12, earthquake. But, their mission would be much more time consuming if it weren’t for the addition of the Italians’ large machinery. Each day the Italians will be introducing more equipment as the mission progresses.

“[The Italians] have better assets,” said Sgt. Robert Medders, an Ackerman, Miss., native and engineer with 2BSTB, while working with the Italian soldiers, Feb. 17. “Their equipment has come in handy,” Medders said.

Additional soldiers with 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2BCT, have been securing the site, roping off streets and stopping curious locals from entering the hazardous area. In the few days they have partnered with the Italians, the troopers are impressed with their work. “They’re good at what they do,” said Sgt. 1st Class Ernest Rodriguez, a Camden, N.J., native and platoon leader of 2nd Plt., D Company, 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2BCT. “They’re pretty much doing it all on their own,” he said.

A 2nd BCT trooper stands with a group of Italian soldiers, taking a break from their work as the dust settles. They share a cigarette and swap unit patches – a custom that has become common among soldiers while working with their foreign counterparts – however, they exchange few words. This is not due to hard feelings or lack of interest in one another, but because neither speaks the others’ language.

1st Cpl. Giuseppe Colletto, an Italian army engineer, said at times it is difficult communicating with the American soldiers due to the language barrier and lack of interpreters, but they have had no problems completing their mission. Colletto said he is used to overcoming this obstacle after working with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but for some of the 2nd BCT Paratroopers this partnership is a completely new experience. “It’s cool working with another country,” said Medders. “Everyone works a bit different.”

The Paratroopers are showing the Italians how to coordinate with CNE, the United Nations and local police so they can pull their own security, without U.S. assistance. The Italians have everything they need to do this job on their own, Rodriguez said. “These guys are outstanding,” he said. “They have a good understanding of what’s going on here and they’ll get the job done.”

But as an airborne infantry unit, the capabilities of the 2BCT engineers are limited in the face of such overwhelming destruction. “Our light engineers are incredibly skilled,” said Lt. Col. Tim Kehoe, deputy commanding officer, 2BCT, “but their light equipment is not designed for this type of mission.”

The introduction of Italian soldiers and equipment has made the difference in the rubble removal and street clearing mission but there is still so much to be done. “We are filling the gap in support of CNE until the right elements arrive to complete this mission,” Kehoe said.

DVIDS
Story by Pfc. Kissta Feldner

Paratroopers with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, assemble a tent for a needy family in Port-au-Prince, Feb. 16. Soldiers with HHC distributed and assembled five tents in four different locations around the city. (Army photo)

Haitian children explore the inside of a tent, using every flap and vent as an entrance, dodging their way between the legs of U.S. Army Paratroopers. Giggling, they pull at the ropes stabilizing the structure, testing its construction. The smell of freshly unpacked tents and the sound of children’s laughter fill the air.

This scene was replayed at four different sites around Port-au-Prince as Paratroopers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team went along their mission, providing shelter for Haitians in need. Despite the long hours, in the blistering sun, the joy of a child’s smile was considered the best part of the day for several of the Paratroopers present.

“It was great to see their smiles and appreciation for our hard work,” said Sgt. Greg Meyers, a native of Springfield, Ohio and forward observer with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

More than a dozen Paratroopers assigned to HHC, 2BCT distributed and assembled five large tents, provided by the United States Agency for International Development, in four different areas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, for needy families and orphans. With the help of USAID, the Soldiers were able to locate people who were in need of shelter, which is becoming more important everyday due to the impending rainy season.

The Soldiers worked together to assemble the tents, first fitting together the frame, attaching the canvas, pounding stakes into the hard ground and finally tying the tent down. They even received help from the locals receiving the tents; stabilizing stakes while they were hammered into the ground and holding the tent steady as it was secured.

The Soldiers’ last stop for the day was the Christian Light Ministries orphanage. Starting as a school in 2002, Sherrie Fausey, a teacher from Jacksonville, Fla., began taking in orphaned children two years ago. “I came [to Port-au-Prince] on a one week visit. The Lord called me back to start a school,” Fausey said.

Fausey cared for 29 orphans prior to the earthquake; she now has 42. She has resumed classes for the children, however they are being held in the only two rooms of the building that are safe to enter as well as the courtyard. These locations also happen to be where the children sleep.

This will change, however, now that they have a shelter that can provide shade from the hot Caribbean sun during class hours and give the children a pest-free place to sleep.

Although it was a hard day’s work for the troopers, at the end of the day they still had energy to play with the children. When the Soldiers arrived, the orphans simply stood back and watched them work, but after a few minutes and receiving some well-deserved attention from the troopers, the children were giving them high-fives and hugging them around the legs.

Their appreciation for their new refuge was evident. Once the tent was erect, the orphans ran through it, surveying their new sanctuary. “It was nice to see someone get so excited about a tent,” said Clair Winstead, a native of Yanceyville, N.C., and intelligence analyst with HHC, 2BCT. “It seemed like, of all the people we could help,” Winstead said, “they were surprised we were there to help them.”

SouthCom
Story by Pfc. Kissta Feldner

As relief supplies and support continue to pour into Haiti, the Kentucky Air National Guard’s 123rd Contingency Operations Group has been one of the key elements that has helped to ensure a steady flow of supplies and equipment into the areas that need them.

Operating out of Barahona, Dominican Republic, the unit has set up an airfield to alleviate some of backed-up air traffic bound for the overwhelmed Port-au-Prince airport.

By doing that, the unit has been able to oversee the safe movement of cargo into the airfield where it is then moved by flatbed trucks across the border and into Haiti, said Air Force Lt. Col. Kirk Hilbrecht, public affairs officer for the Kentucky National Guard, who is with the unit in Barahona.

“So far we have moved approximately 575 tons of supplies, medical equipment, actual live donor organs and plasma into the Haitian area,” said Hilbrecht.

The unit has also assisted with getting supplies off of U.S. Navy vessels docked at nearby ports.

“We have helped facilitate the movement of (equipment from) some of the Navy’s roll-on roll-off equipment that has come through,” said Hilbrecht. “There has been a lot of hospital equipment that is required at some of the facilities and clinics deep into Haiti. We’re working in tandem with the port to ensure that all supplies get out as fast as they can to where they need to go.”

That means consolidating convoys from both the sea and airport.

“We’re working together to create one big convoy that our team of security forces are escorting across the border,” said Hilbrecht.

When the unit first arrived, the airfield required some setting up before planes could land.

“The airport has been closed for 12 years … we had it opened up and we are now running 24-hour operations,” said Hilbrecht, adding that even after re-opening it was initially closed to night operations because of a lack of runway lights.

Prior to the arrival of the 123rd COG, an assessment of the airfield was done by personnel from U.S. Southern Command and Air Mobility Command to ensure it was suitable for the types of aircraft that would be sent in.

“That assessment was made and that ensured that the tarmac or the runway was able to sustain the heavy aircraft as they landed, that the runway was long enough and the ramp where we are actually off-loading the equipment was wide enough to do our job,” said Hilbrecht.

Within two hours of arriving, the unit had in-bound aircraft landing at the airfield, he said.

“Once we got here, we were able to quickly off-load our generators,” he said. “We came in with three trucks and we were able to take out all the equipment we needed to and set up night time operations.

“From there, we set up communications with the tower to ensure we knew who was coming in, and then we had all our ramp operators and heavy lifters ready for the first planes that came in two hours after we arrived.”

The size and scale of the aircraft that have been landing—mainly C-17 Globemaster III and C-130 Hercules—took many who live in the area by surprise.

“At any given time, we could have two C-17 aircraft on the ramp,” said Hilbrecht. “It has definitely brought a lot of the townspeople out as they were not anticipating that large of an aircraft ever on this airfield.”

The ability to land a large aircraft in the Dominican Republic has made a difference in getting supplies to Haiti.

“I know we’re making a big difference, specifically when it comes to giving the flow and the dissemination of the much-needed material into the country,” said Hilbrecht.

The location of the airport, roughly 30 miles east of the Haitian border, has allowed cargo and relief supplies to be brought into outlying communities that have been affected by the earthquake, but may not be accessible from the Port-au-Prince side.

“The road conditions from the east to the west are not as dire as the roads going from the west to the east,” said Hilbrecht. “Coming in from the east makes a lot more sense because most of those roadways are a lot more operable and traversable. And from there we can get into the areas and clinics that happen to be farther out to the east (from Port-au-Prince) anyway.”

The airport has also had UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the Puerto Rico Army National Guard’s Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th General Support Aviation staging for medical evacuation missions.

“There are approximately 20 women and children that came from the Puerto Rico Army National Guard Black Hawks two days ago and those people are right now getting the medical care they need,” said Hilbrecht.

Hilbrecht described conditions at the airfield as austere and said that though he served with the Army in Operation Desert Storm in 1991, what prepared him most for this mission—now called Operation Unified Effort—was responding to state missions in Kentucky.

“We’ve had some natural disasters in Kentucky over the last year or so, to include an ice storm last February that pretty much took out (power to) 700,000 houses and homes,” he said. “The part of it that I was not expecting during a routine ice storm was how desperate people could get. There were some parts of Kentucky where they were really in harm’s way and trying some makeshift ways to heat themselves.”

The roughly 50-person Kentucky contingent is scheduled to remain in place for about 120 days, said Hilbrecht, who added there is nowhere else he’d rather be.

“It’s been one heck-of-a fulfilling operation here,” he said.

By Army Sgt. 1st Class Jon Soucy
National Guard Bureau

Paratroopers assigned to A Co., 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division remove rubble from the streets of Port-au-Price, Haiti on Jan 26. Photo by Pfc. Kissta Feldner

U.S. soldiers directed crowds of local citizens, blocking off a street of a particularly hard-hit section of the city, while their comrades operated heavy equipment in the streets, removing piles of rubble, rebar and garbage into trucks owned by the Center of National Equipment.

Paratroopers assigned to 2nd Brigade Special Troops Battalion and 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, both part of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, joined with the Center of National Equipment to clear the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan. 26th.

CNE, a road construction company based in Port-au-Prince, has been working to clear away the damage left by the earthquake on Jan 12, but this was the first day 2BCT soldiers coordinated with CNE to employ fourteen team to remove rubble from the streets throughout the city. Each day, 2BCT representatives meet at the CNE headquarters to plan what part of the city is a priority and where they will be working.

Clearing the streets provides the citizens with a safer living environment and makes it easier for soldiers, non-government organizations, and the government of Haiti to provide humanitarian aid.
“This is a huge mission,” said Maj. Richard Ojeda, operations officer, 2BSTB. “The streets need to be cleaned so we can get food, water and medicine to people in need.”

“I feel that we’re doing a good thing helping these people out,” said Spc. Anthony Duggan, D Co., 2/325th AIR. “I’m really glad to be here and help them out. We can see they really need it.”
The soldiers brought two Bobcats and one loader, and CNE’s employed eleven dump trucks and one loader, said Cpt. Sean Shields, commander of A Co., 2BSTB.

While it would have taken the soldiers all day to take their small loads to the dump, the mission is greatly accelerated by the use of the larger CNE dump trucks, Shields said.

Already working to speed and improve the mission the 2nd BCT plans to work with the local government to distribute radios and fliers to citizens to notify them in advance where rubble removal will be conducted and which roads will be blocked off, reducing confusion and increasing the soldiers’ ability to close the roads, he said.

Although it is only the beginning of what is sure to be a lengthy process, Ligonde Gardye, operations manager of CNE, said he is glad to have the U.S. Army here to assist.
“This is the first step,” Gardye said.

DVIDS
by Pfc. Kissta M. Feldner
2nd BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. PAO

A floating causeway delivers relief aid from the Military Sealift Command maritime prepositioning ship USNS 1st Lt. Jack Lummus while local Haitians prepare the dock for landing in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher Lussier

Conditions in earthquake-ravaged Port-au-Prince, Haiti, continue to improve day by day, but a tremendous need still exists, the commander of U.S. Southern Command said Jan. 28.

Air Force Gen. Douglas Fraser also said U.S. military personnel have opened a seaport that is bringing in about 200 containers a day, and that he expects that capacity to more than double in the weeks ahead.

Southcom is in charge of the U.S. military’s humanitarian response effort in Haiti.

The United States now has more than 20,000 service members in and around Haiti; 6,000 on the ground and the rest on vessels offshore, Fraser said.

“But those numbers only reflect those men and women who are actually in the theater,” Fraser added during a video teleconference from his headquarters in Miami. “There’s a lot of effort that’s happening within Transportation Command and across the Department of Defense to support these efforts that are external to the theater.”

Twenty-three ships, more than 60 helicopters and more than 30 fixed-wing aircraft are in the area, the general said. Meanwhile, he said, demand for ramp space at Toussaint L’Overture International Airport at Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, has started to recede.

“The demand is now down about 20 percent from what it was,” Fraser said. “So we’re supporting roughly a hundred flights a day into the airport and another 80 to 100 helicopter flights operating in and out of there as we go along.”

The seaport in Port-au-Prince sustained tremendous damage in the original Jan. 12 earthquake, and more in the aftershocks that still continue. “The port is operating and has a roughly 200-container-a-day capacity going through it,” Fraser said.

Marines assigned to 8th Engineer Support Battalion unload supplies from a floating causeway offloaded from the Military Sealift Command maritime prepositioning ship USNS 1st Lt. Jack Lummus. Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Christopher Lussier

One pier that the command was going to use sustained more damage and is now unusable, Fraser reported. “So we’re expanding into some of the other ports right there in the Port-au-Prince area to see what we can do there,” he said.

Medical treatment continues to be a U.S. priority. Medical personnel aboard the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship based in Baltimore, have seen more than 3,000 patients since it has arrived. Crews on other ships – the aircraft carrier USS Vinson, and amphibious ships USS Bataan and USS Nassau — also treat a significant number of patients.

Yet, more hospital space is needed, the general said.

“One of the things we’re working to improve is the capacity for patients to recover,” Fraser said. “We don’t have enough capacity, with the hospitals being full, and so the joint task force is actively working to establish that facility.”

That hospital facility will house between 3,000 and 5,000 patients and will be built on 40 acres of land in Port-au-Prince.

The 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team and the 22nd and 24th Marine expeditionary units continue operations in their respective areas in Haiti. American forces have distributed almost 2 million bottles of water, and about 1.5 million rations. The command also has distributed 43,000 hand-cranked radios that can charge cell phones and supply a light in addition to letting Haitians tune in their favorite stations for news.

Coordination among U.S. government agencies, the United Nations effort and nongovernmental organizations continues to improve, the general said.

“The World Food Program will start a pretty big distribution effort here, which we will help support, in the next day,” Fraser said.

Opening the seaport will be key to the relief effort. Planes are important in getting aid quickly to an affected area, but ships carry the tonnage that alleviates a disaster. The command is working with U.S. Transportation Command officials to get the seaports up and working again.

“The containers that we are bringing in right now are from an over-the-shore capability, both a military capability as well as a commercially provided capability,” Fraser said. That’s about 200 containers a day now.

“Next week, we will bring in some additional joint logistics over-the-shore capability that will increase that capacity to 500 containers a day,” he said. In the middle of next month, the command will bring in additional military capacity for joint logistics over-the-shore that will increase that to about 800 containers per day.

The command continues to repair the south pier that was damaged in the most recent aftershock. Fraser estimated the repair will take eight to 10 weeks. The joint, over-the-shore capability will bridge the gap until the repairs to the regular piers are completed, he said.

DVIDS
Story by Jim Garamone