Chaos a Constant for Haitian Relief Effort

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- With yellow lights flashing atop his small pickup truck, Air Force Master Sgt. Bill Van Newkirk crept along the airport taxiway with practiced precision. It was close on to midnight. Immediately behind him, a newly landed C-17 cargo plane was following, relying on Newkirk to find and insert the plane (wingspan: 178 feet) safely into a parking space among the jumble of cargo and passenger planes jammed along the single runway of Haiti's largest airport.

Suddenly from the gloom a line of headlights appeared: A convoy of U.S. Army trucks, cutting Van Newkirk's path. "Whoa! Whoa! What the --?" Newkirk cried out, slamming on the brakes and hoping the plane on his bumper, carrying 80 tons of cargo, was hitting the brakes too. He mashed the horn and rolled down his window and shouted into the scream of the jet's engines: "Idiots!''

Twelve days into the Haiti rescue and relief effort, the U.S. military, which runs the airport here, has imposed a smoothly efficient operation, safely landing hundreds of military and civilian aircraft of all types, getting their cargo and passengers unloaded and moved away, and the aircraft airborne again. Often that happens within an hour, a standard hard to beat at any American airport.

The flow of earthquake relief supplies shows no sign of letting up, "Disease and starvation set in pretty quick and don't ease up," said Maj. Matt Jones, an air operations officer here. But chaos presses in at every side, and senior officers say it will be years before the military can turn airport operations over entirely to the Haitians and go home. Although the seaport in this capital city has begun very limited operations and other smaller airfields are open, the Toussaint L'Overture International Airport here is still the major hub for incoming relief supplies, about two million pounds a day.

A single accident here, officers say, could close down the only runway and with it, virtually the entire relief effort on which thousands of Haitians depend for food and water. "We are one incident away from shutting down the entire international response to this disaster," Jones told me.

In the past several days, Haiti police have begun patrolling outside the airport and Haitian security officials have set up a checkpoint to screen evacuees. But there is no power here other than military generators, and no Haitians working on the flight line or handling cargo. The airport tower is inoperative.

"But it's still their airfield,'' said Col. Patrick "Hoot'' Hollrah, commander of Joint Task Force Port Opening, which flew in shortly after the January 12 quake to set up and run airport operations. There are crowds of Haitians outside the airport eager for jobs, but the trained workforce has largely disappeared.

"The U.S. military will have some presence here for one to two years," Hollrah estimates. For now, operations are being run by the Air Force's 621st Contingency Response Group (CRG), which arrived with 120 personnel and set up airport operations within 36 hours after the quake, on its first real-world deployment. The unit, which operates out of McGuire Air Force Base, N.J., will be replaced by more routine Air Force units within a few weeks.

Fortunately, the Response Group had trained for this precise kind of emergency, in an exercise last summer with the same Army cargo-handling unit they are working with in Haiti. That kind of first-name familiarity paid off as the teams swiftly set up tents, organized the air flow and began to create order from the chaos that enveloped the airport within hours of the earthquake. But incipient chaos is obvious along the bustling concrete parking apron where aircraft pull up in front of the dark and empty terminal building, which sustained only minor damage in the earthquake that leveled much of the surrounding city.

I flew in on an Air Force C-17, piloted by an all-volunteer crew of reservists and loaded with three five-ton cargo trucks chained to the floor. As we flew into turbulence, they bucked and heaved against the heavy chains. Arriving over the city, we joined six aircraft stacked up waiting for space to land. It took 90 minutes for a slot to be cleared.

Small wonder, for the airport is packed to capacity. An Air Force C-17 backs out of a slot between a Peruvian air force C-130 freightliner and an unmarked white 747 that flew in relief equipment from a United Nations humanitarian supply depot in the Middle East. Forklift trucks dart across the apron with crated cargo unloaded from a stubby C-2 cargo plane flying in from the USS Carl Vinson, the aircraft carrier on station just offshore.

Another C-17 has just landed with the last of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade combat Team, and the paratroopers are filing off with heavy packs, Newkirk is guiding in a small Gulfstream jet, looking for parking space, and three C-17s are stacked up waiting to land. The unending stream of incoming and departing air traffic is controlled by Air Force special operations air controllers camped out in the grass along the runway. On Friday, an emergency response team from the Federal Aviation Administration arrived to set up a temporary air traffic control center alongside the runway to assume that responsibility.

"The problem is those guys can't see the end of the runway," said Paul Barko, an FAA official, gesturing toward the special operations air controllers. "The other day we had a couple of trucks drive right out onto the runway – if there'd been an aircraft landing or taking off, we'd have had a disaster. Anything like that could just close the runway, and it happens all the time.''

Much of the cargo that arrives here – mostly from the U.N., USAID and other big international agencies, but also including crates of food from as far away as Iran – are scheduled, expertly packed on pallets and labeled so they can be quickly unloaded and distributed. But some of it arrives simply piled into cargo planes, like the Russian Antanov that landed full of loose goods that had to be unloaded by hand.

There are also aid organizations that arrive here without supplies, and they end up picking through the cargo that piles up at one end of the airport. "I had a doctor in here asking if we had any IV bags," said Army Maj. Victoria Snow, who oversees the cargo distribution. "I told him, yeah we do, but they belong to USAID. How do these people get here without their own supplies?''

Cargo is unloaded from aircraft and put beside the runway, and Army forklifts come in to move the pallets a mile away to the far end of the airport where aid groups can pick up their boxes. The process seems to work smoothly, preventing the buildup of mountains of cargo at the center of the airport that would attract swarms of trucks in the direction of taxiing aircraft. But aid workers sometimes rifle through the piles of boxes looking for particular supplies, and often leave empty boxes to blow out onto the runway, where they could get sucked up into a jet engine. "I have to have my guys out picking up garbage all the time,'' said Snow. "We're going as fast as we can – but we're going safely.''

Stowaways are also a problem, as Haitians seek to escape the city. One C-17 was manifested to take on 194 passengers; 200 people managed to get on, causing a long delay while the passengers got sorted out. "Happens all the time,'' said an Air Force officer.

Sgt. Van Newkirk, meanwhile, is still laboring to guide aircraft in from the runway to a parking place. He's 41 years old and grew up in Cypress, Tex., and has the lazy drawl to prove it. But being the ramp controller here is no lazy job: he spots his next incoming aircraft a few miles out, a bright pinpoint of light in the night sky. "I got a few seconds for a break,'' he announces, hopping out of the truck and firing up a cigarette.

"Give me the status of 09,'' a voice crackles on the radio. "Still loading orphans,'' comes the reply. "Rampco,'' says traffic control, meaning ramp controller Van Newkirk, "there's a slot open next to that C-17 I think you can get your next one into.''

A minute later we're off again, this time leading a sleek white Lear jet off the runway toward the parking ramp. But here comes another Army convoy, barging its way along among the backing aircraft, the forklifts and other traffic. Van Newkirk slams on the brakes and yells, "Hello -- see the airplane? Come on!''