Air Station Clearwater H-60 on soccer field at Killick Coast Guard Base, Haiti
Originally uploaded by uscgpress
On Monday we visited Port Au Prince. We flew by helo from Santo Domingo to avoid using a landing slot at the airport which remains busy with relief operations. Overflying Port Au Prince at low altitude the extensive damage was apparent as were the numerous tent villages that have built to accommodate the displaced population.
We landed at the Haitian Coast Guard Base at Killick. This picture shows our helo in the background on the soccer field. in the foreground is the former Haitian Coast Guard Mess Hall which collapses in the quake. The base was hit hard but our Haitian partners were resilient and assisted our crews that came ashore from cutters in treating local citizens injured the quake. The boat maintenance facility was damaged but remained in tact and is being used by the United Nations as a warehouse for relief supplies from Colombia.
From Killick we moved by small boat to the port in Port Au Prince where I met with RDML Sam Perez (USN). RDML Perez is an old friend and Deputy Director of JIATF-South. He was deployed by SOUTHCOM to supervise the port opening and repair. We will provide pictures of the port damage in a subsequent post.
Finally, I met with the last contingent of Port Security Unit 307 who were making preparations to redeploy after providing security for the port reopening. We had lunch together, dining on MRE's.
We returned to the Killick Base and then helo'd over the North Claw of Haiti to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands where our OPBAT helos have operated since our hangar at Great Inagua was destroyed by a hurricane last year. From there we proceeded to Nassau for the meetings I discussed in an earlier post.
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