Navy’s Haiti duties winding down - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Navy’s Haiti duties winding down

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Even though the Navy and the Marine Corps were all but finished with their missions here in early March, local officials said the real work in Haiti is only just beginning.

The Military Sealift Command hospital ship Comfort had discharged its last patient. The Seabees, Navy divers and Army engineers charged with reopening the wrecked port were making their final repairs. While the dock landing ship Carter Hall was ordered home to Norfolk, Va., on March 1, the other ships of the Bataan Amphibious Ready Group and the troops of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, which spent a month delivering food and supplies, were on station awaiting orders back to the U.S.

Still, as Navy Secretary Ray Mabus used a visit March 1 to praise sailors and Marines for what he called an “astounding” performance, commanders and nongovernmental organizations agreed there was much more to be done.

“NGOs have to have a buy-in to stay here not for weeks or months, but years,” said Col. Gareth Brandl, commander of 22nd MEU, stationed in the district of Carrefour, south of the capital.

For example, Wally Amudson, director of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, said aid groups somehow would have to help relocate about 70,000 displaced Haitians now living in temporary tent cities. One problem is that 80 percent of Haitians in Port-au-Prince were renters, officials said, so they have little power to clear away wreckage and rebuild their former homes.

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