danalwyn

Some good news from the morning round-up. Several web sites, including BBC, are reporting that, damage to the port aside, a freighter ship has finally managed to dock at Port-au-Prince. It's unclear how fast they can unload her cargo of bananas, but if they can get her up to the dock they can find enough hands to unload her one container at a time if necessary.

So far the relief effort has been going almost entirely through the airport, which has been so busy that they've had to put a stop order on it for non-registered flights. For reference, the largest US transport planes in common usage, the C-17s, with no passenger cargo, can carry 77.5 metric tonnes. A heavy Panamax freighter can carry up to 50,000 tonnes, and the largest freighters carry over 100,000. This could make up the difference between the 180 tons that the BBC is reporting having landed so far, and the 5-10,000 tons per day that Haiti probably needs. Every jetty they open will be more lives saved in the coming weeks, and if they've already managed to tie one ship to the docks, they're way ahead of where the pessimists thought we would be.

We'll know more about getting supplies to land once the amphibious ships are in place. They have the well decks, the helicopters, the landing craft, and the vehicles to get supplies ashore, so we're basically waiting for them and hoping.