POPE AIR FORCE BASE -- The aid that the U.S. hopes to shower on quake-shaken Haiti began as a sprinkling Friday as the military struggled to launch a humanitarian airlift while many of its planes are tied up in wars on the other side of the world.
"We hope this is the start of the flow," Army Maj. Brian Fickel said Friday afternoon as a C-130 was being loaded with tons of supplies and a dozen soldiers from the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg.
About 100 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team at Bragg left for Haiti on Thursday, and 800 more were expected to leave on flights beginning Friday morning. But with many of the military's planes deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, several thousand troops from different U.S. bases being sent to Haiti, and traffic-control problems at the airport there, military planners had a complicated task deciding which planes to send where, when.
As they sorted it out, soldiers - who had packed, filled out piles of paperwork and updated immunizations for a host of tropical diseases - waited.
"When something like this happens, we need all the resources available, instantly, at one place at one time. And that's simply not reality," Fickel said. "Across the Department of Defense, there's just so many resources, and they have to be prioritized across all our missions."
A thin trickle of aid
Still, the U.S. military brought some relief to Haiti on Friday, taking control of the airport in Port-au-Prince, helping coordinate flights bringing in aid and evacuating foreigners and the injured. Medical teams, meanwhile, set up makeshift hospitals, and workers started to clear the streets of corpses. Water was being distributed in pockets of the city.
The task was enormous.
Aid workers and authorities warned that unless they can quickly get aid to the people, Port-au-Prince will degenerate into lawlessness, The Associated Press reported.
There were reports of isolated looting as young men walked through downtown with machetes, and robbers reportedly shot one man whose body was left on the street. Survivors also fought one another for food pulled from the debris.
"I'm getting the sense that if the situation doesn't get sorted [out] real soon, it will devolve into chaos," Steve Matthews, a veteran relief worker with the Christian aid organization World Vision, told AP.
An 'open window'
The Obama administration on Friday acknowledged the limits of its initial relief efforts in Haiti, while promising a quick ramp-up in delivery of water and other badly needed supplies. Dr. Rajiv Shah, the White House's designated coordinator of the U.S. relief effort in Haiti, told reporters at the State Department that the main focus of U.S. efforts is still on recovering trapped survivors.
"There is still an important open window of time today, tonight, and perhaps even parts of [Saturday], when we have the ability to save lives," said Shah, referring to Haitians, Americans and others in the country.
Shah indicated that relief supplies will begin flowing more freely in the next few days. He said he has pulled together $48 million worth of food assistance that will be sufficient to feed the affected 2 million Haitians for several months. And he said 100,000 10-liter containers of water will be provided soon.
Shah and others also said there have been severe physical and logistical limitations on delivery of aid.
"Up to now, we've been delivering assistance through a garden hose," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "But now we're expanding that as we work to create a river in terms of the flow of assistance to Haiti."
The major limitation, Crowley said, is the inability to use the main port at Port-au-Prince, due to extensive damage from the quake, and the presence of only one airport to receive shipments of food, water, medicines and other relief items.
The arrival Friday of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson was like suddenly having "a second airport," Crowley said.
At the Pentagon, the top U.S. military officer said up to 10,000 U.S. troops will be in Haiti or off its shores by Monday to help distribute aid and prevent potential rioting among desperate survivors. About 2,000 Marines from Camp Lejeune were preparing to head to Haiti today aboard three Navy ships with a contingent of helicopters.
We need choppers
The rest of the 82nd Airborne's 2nd Brigade Combat Team - about 3,500 in total - should arrive in Haiti by the end of the weekend, Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon briefing Friday.
In deciding how to deliver aid, the military briefly considered whether to airdrop supplies to Haiti using the 82nd Airborne's expertise but backed away from that idea. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that although airdrops of relief supplies might seem efficient, they could backfire.
"An airdrop is simply going to lead to riots as people try and go after that stuff," Gates said. "So without any structure for distribution or to provide security when things become available, then it seems to me that's a formula for contributing to chaos rather than preventing it."
Gates said the military's challenge now is to get food and water to the island to prevent any outbreaks in violence.
Speaking at the Pentagon, Gates also acknowledged,very briefly, that the military is facing challenges in transportation. A reporter asked him, "Do you have enough helicopters?"
"Never," Gates replied.
Fickel, the Army major at Fort Bragg, recalled similar logistical problems after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the 82nd Airborne sent a convoy of 1,000 military vehicles to Louisiana because it was faster than waiting for planes. This time, driving is not an option.
