Disaster Recovery For Haiti's Cell Phone Networks

spun writes "A disaster recovery team from Trilogy International Partners, LLC was among the first responders to arrive after the quake in Haiti. After seeing to the safety of their staff, they worked quickly to bring up emergency generators and restore service to the devastated country. Winners of a State Department medal for their previous work in Haiti, the company appears to be a model not only for proper disaster recovery response, but also for ethical corporate behavior. Their quick action has no doubt saved thousands of lives, but Haiti still needs our help." Keith Calder, who used to work on Slashdot ad stuff before we had big corporate owners, is now a film producer of last summer's Battle for Terra. They are giving away signed copies of the DVD to the first 100 people who make $25+ red cross donations. It would be cool to see generous Slashdot Sci-Fi fans make a difference. If you are curious or voyeuristic about the devastation, Google Maps has satellite photos.

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Re:Many Avenues to Help

[spun]

The hospital ship Comfort is on the way and so is the supercarrier Carl Vinson, which can provide power and over 100,000 gallons of desalinated water per day. The problems facing Haiti were severe even before this disaster, but afterwords, what little government they did have has, quite literally, collapsed. In other recent disasters, there has at least been continuity of civil government and some kind of coordinated response from within the country. That is simply not possible in this case. Even the UN headquarters there has collapsed.

One of the first things our military did was to get air traffic control up and functioning. The control tower at the airport had collapsed, and there is simply no power in Port-au-Prince. The US cutter Forward was among the first on the scene, and began directing flights into the country. U.S. Southern Command dispatched a team of 30 engineers, planners and a command and control group to Haiti on a Puerto Rico Air National Guard C-130 Hercules, which arrived soon afterwords and took over this vital function.

The biggest problem is going to be getting things out of the airport and to the people that need it. Reports indicate that the harbor is badly damaged and supplies will need to be trans-shipped through the Dominican Republic and driven into Haiti. This seems to me to be a job for the Seabees. Does anyone know if the Nimitz class supercarriers like the Carl Vinson carry LCACs?