Xeno is still on these boards? I thought he was ran out of here along with his magical robots and illusions of grandeur.
"My question is, why can't they air-drop crates of bottled water? It doesn't seem anyone is doing any sort of air-dropping of aid? Why not?"
Actually they did try to air drop stuff onto the ground. People rushed the copters and they were forced to turn back. As a pilot your priority is the safety of your crew and aircraft over anything else. They are the ones reporting to their superiors on the ground to the situation. If they report that air dropping is too dangerous then that will be the basis of not doing air drops. I'm more liable to believe the decisions of the people on the ground more than your assumption.
"Why is their priority to get government reinstated and not air-dropping water?"
Logistics and assessments are priority when dealing with a situation like this. You would make a very poor rescue planner if this is your opinion. You assets the situation, identify which areas need the most help, bring in the proper logistics support to get your assets where they need to be as fast as possible, deploy.
If you don't do this you get a situation to where assets are not where their supposed to be. Lets say for instance we follow your plan, and just drop food and water where ever:
People see stuff dropping.
They rush to it.
With no security there you got about a 50/50 chance of a riot starting.
People hear about aid going to X or Y place.
People begin moving around to get to those places, many times putting themselves at risk.
Roadways become clogged up because people are moving slowing down aid distribution.
Snowball effect, aid can't get through, aid gets distributed dis-proportionally, air drops can't sustain supply, riots ensue.
It's that simple really. Certainly this is a worst scenario than planning things out, getting roadways cleared and setting up staging areas to serve as many people as possible. Also keep in mind that these aid channels are going to need to be open for weeks if not months or years, not days. They need to have a system in place to not only serve the needs of the people for the immediate future but long term during the rebuilding process. You can't do this blindly else you'll simply slow down the process.
Why wasn't there a plan for this?
I'm sure the Hatian government did have a plan, but having a plan can only help so much. It's like having the perfect winning strategy to win a game of chess then your opponent goes and smashes the board to pieces.
"Their decision is rooted in prejudice against not only Haitians, but ALL of us regular, commoners, who couldn't possibly do anything properly without their precious and all-important security, infrastructure, distribution system, regulations, in other words, their control and authority."
Two things.
1. You are not a regular folk, they are smarter than you are.
2. Their getting this advise from the aid agencies and people on the ground.
They tried doing it your way, they rushed aid in without thinking. Guess what happened? They asked the US military to take control of the situation cause everything was too chaotic. Once they did that aid started rushing in all of a sudden and now people are complaining about not getting it out fast enough? We already saw what happened when you do something without planning it out. I doubt they want a repeat of that situation.
"What should happen is within 4 hours of such a disaster you'd have multinational air forces dropping hundreds of thousands of crates of bottled water over the disaster zone."
So you would put on hold all of the rescue teams and doctors and medical supplies that would save people's lives? Also where would these resources come from? It's not like there are stores of supplies locked up everywhere just in case of a once every 200 year earthquake. Next the only areas within a 4 hour radius of Haiti would be most of the Caribbean nations and the US, maybe Mexico. Knock that down to 2 hours cause it would take at least 2 hours to get the planes, crew, supplies, loaded up and fueled and ready to go. Within 2 hours of Haiti you only got 4 countries, the US, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, and the Bahamas.
Out of those 4 only the US has both the means and the way to move large amount of resources as was necessary to this crisis. Now I know your argument:
The US should have been prepared, it's the fault of the dammed rich nations......
Blah blah blah. First we won't go in there without asking first, it's called respecting sovereign rights. Second, nobody plans for a once every 200 year earthquake, and you don't keep stores of resources just sitting on airport tarmacs just in case something happens.
Within the first 37 hours of the quake there were US coast guard aircraft running from Guantanamo Bay to Haiti taking initial assessments. Resources were only just beginning to trickle into the country. We didn't have permission at that point from the Haitian government to begin large scale operations and we still were unsure as to how we were going to get those resources in. Was the airport operations? What about the navel ports?
What if the airport runway wasn't serviceable and planes just flew off to the country without figuring out if they could land to begin with? That would be pretty stupid. Some people did take off to Port-of-Prince as soon as they heard. Do you know what happened to them? Their planes are clogging up the runway cause they don't have the fuel to get back, they thought the airport was going to have fuel for them. Yeah, real smart jumping without thinking.
I could go on and on about how stupid your idea is but I really don't need to. Why? Cause we are doing things the right way and there isn't a single thing you or anyone else can do about it? Are lives going to be lost? Yes. Could things have been done better, it's too early to tell. But when it comes to a large crisis in hindsight things could always have been better in one form or another. But when you're in the NOW, you have to make your decisions based on the information you have on hand. In that regard they are doing the best they can and doing a pretty good job at it. Now STFU and goto bed, it's past your bedtime.
Fear not the Darkness, for without it there is no Light. Embrace the Light, for it brings forth Darkness. Embrace both, to embrace the gift of Life. ~Kai Master Creed Kemralight.COM Contact Me Subscribe to my RSS Feed
