PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Rebuilding the piers, cranes, warehouses and other facilities at Port-au-Prince — the seaport that the Haitian capital is named for — will be a key factor in the reconstruction of this earthquake-shattered nation, according to U.S. military personnel working there.
When U.S. Army and Navy personnel began operations at the port on January 20, they found a facility in ruins.
During the massive earthquake that struck earlier that month, cranes toppled, warehouses collapsed, containers slid into the water, giant cracks appeared along the shoreline and the port’s North Pier was completely destroyed. A third of the South Pier also collapsed and the rest is too damaged to support more than a single cargo truck at a time.
Military operations at the port have been overseen by Lt. Col. Ralph Riddle, 45, of Luray, Va., commander of the 832nd Transportation Battalion. Riddle is a member of Joint Task Force Port Opening, which activated as soon as the earthquake struck and arrived in Haiti on two LCUs (landing craft utility ships) a week later.
It’s a little-known fact that the Army runs seaport operations worldwide, mostly using commercial contracts, on behalf of the Department of Defense, he said Thursday.
“We put together a team to come into this port that included commercial stevedores and all their equipment — stackers, forklifts, fuel — 16 of my own people and a lot of our own equipment,” Riddle said.
When the team arrived, there were no landing points among the ruins so the task force discharged equipment onto a nearby beach using the LCUs. The shallow-drafted vessels shuttle out to cargo ships, then pull up to dirt ramps bulldozed out into the surf so that the cargo can roll off, he said.
“We had more lighters (LCUs) show up,” Riddle said. “These vessels were constantly moving cargo from the cargo ships to shore. That was the way we were able to start bringing the port back to life.”
In the weeks since the disaster, the port has been a point of entry for humanitarian aid, food, water, rice, beans, oil, MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat), USAID food packages, construction materials and tents, he said.
Six weeks after the disaster, the captain of the USAV Hobkirk, the first LCU to hit the beach was still at the port moving cargo.
“When we came in there were sunken vehicles and broken cranes in the water and everything was marked off by red soda bottles,” said the captain, Warrant Officer Allen Willis, 28, of Gainesville, Ga.
With both piers out of action, the military’s next move was to hire two flat-top barges — the San Francisco and the Aksa. The barges are each 100 feet by 400 feet and, moored close to the beach, they serve as temporary piers.
“I would argue that right now they are even better than piers because they are earthquake-proof,” Riddle said, noting recent aftershocks on the shoreline.
Workers have cut up and removed one submerged crane but the focus of port reconstruction efforts is firmly on repairing what’s left of the South Pier, Riddle said.
“It is quite a task,” he said. “It is severely damaged.”
Each day at the South Pier, divers from Army 544th Engineer Dive Team and the Navy’s Underwater Construction Team 1 dive under the pier to pour concrete.
First Lt. Timothy O’Hara, 26, of Washingtonville, N.Y., said the earthquake separated many of the piles supporting the pier from the “pile cap” — a series of cross beams that support the deck where goods are loaded and unloaded.
To repair the damage divers are pouring concrete slabs into the gaps — a process that requires three to five divers working underwater for each pile or pair of piles, he said.
“We’ve done about 20 so far and we are looking at 234 piles to finish here,” said Washington, the 544th’s executive officer. “If the materials get here and we have no more hitches, it will take about a month to fix. The goal is to get the pier open by April 1.”
The port still employs its original Haitian workforce driving stackers, forklifts and loaders and the military is working with commercial terminal operators who continue to do business there, Riddle said.
Haitian port worker Ricot Cantave, 31, kept the job he’s had since 2004, although these days he works out of a temporary office, talking to cargo ships over a radio alongside the Americans.
“We would like to rebuild the port,” Cantave said. “It is very important for the country.”
And the most important part of the port, aside from his radio, is the South Pier, he said.
“Without the pier we can’t take vessels alongside,” he said.
Long term, there are plans by private industry to replace the North Pier, Riddle said.
U.S. Navy Commander Matt Hahne, 42, of New Orleans, who is part of the military team getting the port back on its feet, said efforts so far have seen business bounce back strongly.
“We have done more commercial cargo than humanitarian aid in the last two weeks,” he said. “About 80 percent of it has been commercial.”
Most of the traffic has been imports although there have also been exports leaving the country, which is a big producer of mangos for overseas markets. For example, the port received a shipment of lumber and the cargo ship Tharinee Naree out of Bangkok was in port on Thursday, delivering an entire power plant that will run on heavy oil or coal and power an industrial park in Port-au-Prince. The car transporter Viking Princess was to arrive Saturday carrying 240 vehicles, Hahne said.
“We are over 7,000 containers since we started working with them in late January,” he said. “We are doing 200 [standard-sized shipping container equivalents] each day and up to 500 on high days.”
The amount of goods shipped through the port before the earthquake is likely to be dwarfed by what comes through over the next few years, Hahne said.
“It will be more now because they need to rebuild,” he said. “Once the South Pier is fixed, they should be able to do 1,200 containers per day. We need to give our absolute best to Port-au-Prince so they can bring in everything they need to.”
