The Marines have Landed!

I revisited Haiti today, and found that the area around Port au Prince, Carrefour, Leogane, and Jacmel has been updated with imagery from January 25, 2010. One of the first things I noted was that the Marines had landed! There are also quite a few other changes, mostly for the better.



This image is an overview of the harbor and downtown area of Port au Prince. You can't tell much from this image, but as we zoom in, things begin to come into focus. As with all the other images I've captured of Haiti, click on the image to see the full-size version. All these images have come from Google Earth.



There are many changes to this area. At the bottom of the image, you can see that one of the damaged buildings has been fenced off, and clean-up work has begun. At the far left, about halfway down the left-hand side, there's a compound and a building that is an arc with two posts, one at each end. You can see a number of tents in what is probably an embassy compound. Immediately above that area, there's what was once a parking lot that's been turned into a tent city. At least one part of the area is being used as a tent hospital, with several military ambulance vehicles parked nearby. The clean-up work on the buildings to the top of the image has begun, but the rubble of only one building seems to have been removed. Don't be fooled by the limited amount of traffic - other areas show heavy traffic coming into the city, and moderate traffic leaving it. The building in the lower right corner of the image shows that the clean-up of some buildings and areas has just begun.



The Marines have come to Port au Prince. Here is one of the encampments where they stay when they're not working 16-18 hours a day.



With much of the harbor area still damaged, the only sure way to get supplies to shore is by using landing craft (inset). There aren't many places where these craft can land inside the city of Port au Prince. This image shows one such area, just above the main pier.

Compare the following images with the ones from the 21st, posted here.



The warehouse area in this photo, and the streets surrounding them, are jammed with people. Most of these people are those that have lost their homes entirely, or whose homes are so damaged it's not safe for them to return.



This soccer field has been turned into a squatter's camp, filled with refugees from destroyed or damaged homes.



The soccer field in the center-left portion of this image hosts a modular, deployable, inflatable European field hospital. You can see several tent cities in other parts of the image. This scene, mostly without the hospital, can be seen in many parts of the city.



This is the US Embassy in Port au Prince (not in the overview photo). Note the number of tents inside the compound. I don't know if these are living quarters for Embassy staff that lost their homes, staff being recalled and housed in tents to be available whenever they're needed, or tents for visitors. The area to the left of the image shows a crowd of people, and the street in front of the embassy is crowded with vehicles.



The National Palace (Haitian National Government) area is still surrounded by tent camps of earthquake victims, and little has been done in the four days since the previous imagery to clean up the debris in the area. Estimates of five to ten years for Port au Prince to fully recover are probably conservative.



Port au Prince isn't the only area where the Marines are landing. This minor port facility provides room for another landing craft to bring desperately needed supplies to people in Carrefour.



This image shows a tanker offloading petroleum products (gas, oil, diesel, etc.) to an area that also serves one of Haiti's oil-powered electric generating plants. Restoring electricity to Port au Prince will help restore a sense of recovery to the city.



Those of us in the United States have every right to be proud of our nation's military and their response to the Haiti earthquake disaster. Here is the USNS Comfort, one of two hospital ships in the US Navy.



The USNS Comfort isn't the only ship providing assistance to Port au Prince. This photo, centered on the USNS Comfort, also shows two US Navy LSDs (Landing Ship, Dock - where those landing craft come from), and a US Frigate. There are several ships from other navies, as well that are helping out. The sole ship providing assistance (as of Jan 25) to Jacmel, to the south, is a Canadian Destroyer.


As always, I'm not the only person reporting on this. There are dozens of others. One of them, my good friend Chuck Simmins has several posts on Haiti at his North Shore Journal weblog. If you want to know what our military leadership is saying about Haiti, visit the US Southern Command weblog. The US Southern Command has responsibility for all US military forces and operations in Central and South America.

Port au Prince, Haiti

I'm a former Air Force imagery analyst. I've been looking at the ground from 50 to 250,000 feet (or higher) since I was 19 (I'm currently 63). I've been trying to find an "official" group I could work with in support of Haiti relief efforts, because I have a strong urge to help, and identifying and reporting on the damage there, based on aerial imagery, is about the only thing this disabled veteran can do. I haven't been able to find much information about the absolutely unbelievable destruction on the ground there, so I thought I'd begin writing about it here. I'll try to write at least once a day about what I see. The imagery I'm using comes from Google Earth, and anyone interested in more detail need only email me at mike.weatherford@gmail.com.

First of all, earthquakes are funny things. Two buildings, side by side, exactly alike, can suffer unbelievably different damage from an earthquake. Secondly, much of the damage that exists may not show in aerial imagery, and will have to be determined by a ground survey. Thirdly, the imagery I'm using is anywhere from three days to three weeks out of date. I try to use the latest, but sometimes it's just not available.

There are several things that make delivering aid to Haiti difficult. The container port is badly damaged and basically unusable. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of containers scattered in lots around the container port. In most of those walled lots, at least some containers have been toppled from their normally neat stacks. There are a few trucks working as of the 21st to move containers, but only a few have actually gone anywhere.

Behind the container port are a half-dozen compounds containing red-roofed warehouse buildings. Most of these buildings appear to be unaffected by the earthquake. Almost all of the yards and the streets around them are filled with refugees - some in makeshift tents, some living out of their vehicles, others just walking the streets. Except for the main thoroughfares through and around the area, most of the the streets are impassible due to people and vehicles filling the streets from side to side, or debris from collapsed buildings.

Outside the warehouse area, the destruction begins. An area ten to twelve blocks wide and as many as 40 blocks long contains an immense number of damaged or destroyed buildings, with an occasional building apparently unscathed in their midst. This is the heart of the downtown area of Port au Prince. Debris from collapsed buildings fill many streets. Relief efforts are on-going, but the biggest job in the near future will be removing the rubble and cleaning up the debris from collapsed and damaged buildings.

Much of the damage is to large, multi-story buildings, but there is equal damage to single-story buildings and shanty-town homes. There is a large park near the harbor - the JJ Desalines statue is prominent there. There is a huge building nearly totally destroyed at the top of the park. Two or three large buildings around the area are also damaged or destroyed. Across the major highway are several embassies, most of which have suffered little or no damage.

Almost every open space is filled with tents of people who either have no home to go back to, or who are afraid of being inside ANY building. In the Morne a Tuff area, the number of damaged or destroyed buildings is higher than in many other parts of the city. Food aid has been brought to this area through one cleared (or partially cleared) street. At least a thousand people are camping on a soccer field at Croix a Bosalles. Nearby, several large commercial buildings are damaged, some severely.

Just north of the Port area are a series of three-story apartments, built on a square design. None of those apartments appear to have suffered damage, but to the south and east are building that have suffered fairly severe damage. Another park to the northeast is crowded with people living in makeshift tents.

The Chancerelles area (about halfway between the port and the airfield) of the city contains many buildings that appear to be undamaged, but many of the large warehouse-type building show roof damage. That means there is damage to the support architecture within the building itself, and it's unsafe to move around in.

The petroleum storage area and the adjacent diesel power plant north of the La Saline area appear to be undamaged, and the pier where petroleum products are offloaded appears to be serviceable. This will greatly help the city recover.

The airfield and the areas around it appear mostly undamaged. One of the major impediments to the speedy deployment of sufficient aid material was that the airfield only had one runway, and no place to build a second, temporary one.

Most of the damage occurred to the south and east of the area from the airport to the La Saline area of the city, but no part was completely spared. The damage is greater in some areas than others. Near the Hotel Montana, several hillside villages have been more or less totally wiped out. Damage is especially severe between Petion-Ville and Juvenaut, and between Nerette and Gros Morne. An area between Juvenaut and Bois Palate looks especially heavily damaged. The Fort National area has areas of heavy damage, and other areas that appear from imagery to be undamaged.

The main Government Office building is heavily damaged to the north, but only minor damage exists to the back half of the building. Several other multi-story buildings in the area are totally destroyed.

There is plenty of traffic, both into and out of Port au Prince. Even more surprising are the number of people walking everywhere. The entire downtown area is filled with people. Many are undoubtedly trying to find missing relatives, in need of medical attention, or looking for food or water. Many others are just walking around. More than a dozen field hospitals have been set up, mostly near the airport and into the downtown area. The real medical problem is going to be long-term problems with PTSD in its various forms.

Port au Prince wasn't the only area devastated by the earthquake. The string of small villages between Port au Prince, through Leogane and to the west were also badly hit. Leogane, Gressier, and Carrefour suffered major damage. The petroleum pier in Carrefour was damaged, and an oil spill has blackened beaches for five to ten miles in both directions. The spill has been stopped, but there is still oil in the waters around the area. The power plant in the area appears to have suffered only minor damage, but only an on-the-ground survey can tell for certain. Venturing to the south, about one in every ten buildings appear to be damaged, with some areas suffering five to seven times that much damage. To the west of Carrefore, there was a drainage canal being built under the major east-west highway. The area was apparently unfinished, and the runoff from the mountains to the south is beginning to pour across the street.

The damage in some smaller villages may appear moderate, but that could be deceptive. There is damage to the west and south of Leogane, but the imagery from about Leogane west is too old to show it. Google hasn't updated the imagery west of Leogane or south of Port au Prince to Jacmel, and all that's available is imagery from before the earthquake.

The easiest way to determine if there is damage in any of the small towns, or in Port au Prince itself, is to look for blue material being used as a makeshift tent. They're everywhere in the Port au Prince area, to Carrefour, to Leogane, to points south.

I'll try to go into some more in-depth reporting in another post.