EVACUATION PT 3

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	Retired General Russel Honore has joined Wyclef Jean in calling for the partial evacuation of Port au Prince and surrounding areas. Honore, who appears regularly to talk about disaster on CNN, was sent in to New Orleans to take charge after Katrina. He has been quite pointed on what he says needs to be done and is not being done in Haiti. In the main, he says we are acting correctly, but far too slowly to deal with the crisis. Below is a excerpt of comments posted at CNN.com

			We don't have enough helicopters -- between the Coast Guard and the military, there are 60 helicopters in use now. Four days after Katrina, there were 200 helicopters flying in. I don't know if the flow of supplies can keep up with demand, unless we evacuate the injured, elderly, pregnant women, babies, and the disabled. Hospitals will be overflowing with people who have injuries, there will be infections that will need treatment. It is wishful thinking to add more hospitals. We need to think how these airplanes can leave with patients to the U.S. and other countries to be distributed to hospitals to stabilize them. I am hoping that the State Department and the White House will start pushing for a U.N. resolution to start an evacuation plan for Haiti. It will need billions of dollars to sustain its people and to start its recovery.

		TerryReport comment: Gen. Honore’s assessments might have seemed alarmist to many last week in the first few days after the earthquake. He is, and was, speaking to the issue of understanding the depth and width of the problem in Haiti. While most present senior millitary and government officials have a general grasp of the disaster, it is difficult for those not on the scene, or who have not been through disasters themselves, to fully comprehend the problems and, further, the cascade of difficulties that pile up when early action is stalled. Workable assessments have to be made on general information, not careful quantitative analysis. There is no time to do a careful survey of the injured on the streets of Port au Prince, they simply need as much help as we can possibly offer with a firm intention to meet the scale of the problem. SUPPLIES IN, PEOPLE OUT could be the guide from here on out and could have been from start.

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