Haiti relief

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The Kearsarge provided a HUGE amount of assistance in Haiti, with the helicopters lifting more tons of food, water, and relief supplies than I can even imagine. We left there to go to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to get supplies and fuel (try to imagine this: we took on 750,000 gallons of fuel for the ship and another 250,000 gallons for the helicopters!). But we left 3 helicopters, work crews and some US Public Health Service (PHS) people behind to continue working while we were gone for 60 hours. The PHS folks were doing assessments in remote villages of the food, water and sanitation situation. They reported increasing malaria because of so much standing water, and while there wasn't severe malnutrition, the food shortages were becoming more urgent. I learned that one bag of rice costs the equivalent of $43 US, so a man (or woman) has to work for three days just to provide one bag of rice for the family.

I went to the airport one day as the medical support for the work crews in case someone got hurt. I got a lot of pictures of the food and supplies being loaded, and include some of the pictures here.

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Photos

Haitian worker loads oil
Moving boxes of oil to palettes

Stacking the palettes
Oil being stacked on palettes

Supplies for World Food Program
US, Canada & other donor countries

Soy-corn mixture from Canada
Stacked in the truck

Forklift moves the palettes
From the loading area to edge of runway for helicopters

Transferring bags to the helicopter 1
They have to be taken off the palette and re-stacked inside the aircraft. One palette weighs 1250 kg (25 kg bags, five bags per tier, 10 tiers per palette).

Transferring bags to the helicopter 6
One helicopter holds two palettes (2500 kg) of bags of food.

Expired meds just sitting in the warehouse
Port-au-Prince airport - who knows how long it's been there