Commentaries

America’s Response To The Tsunami: A Visit To The USS Lincoln

January 24, 2005

Today, Sunday January 24 marks four weeks since the Tsunami struck. I managed to get to Aceh yesterday to take a look for myself. The U.S. military operations for Tsunami relief are being directed by a Combined Task Force run by a Marine 3-star operating from Utapao, Thailand, and under that the Sumatra operations are being directed by a Navy 2-star, Doug Crowder, who is the commander of the Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group. (Until recently these were called Carrier Battle Groups.) The Lincoln serves as his flagship and is stationed about 10 miles offshore the northern tip of Sumatra, near the largest affected town, Banda Aceh.

Fortunately, the Lincoln runs a shuttle flight to Singapore, with its C-2s, or "CODs," the large (for a carrier), lumbering, improbably aerodynamic twin prop planes that are used essentially as the carrier's pick-up truck, shuttling people, cargo, non-emergency medical evacuation, spare parts, late Christmas presents, general mail, etc.

The Task Force gives me permission to go and I am accompanied by my Defense Attache, Capt. Cleveland, also a Naval aviator. Our Ambassador in Indonesia asks only that I not land at Banda Aceh because the one-strip airport there is congested. I get to the Singapore military air base a few minutes before take-off for the safety brief. We get our helmets and life vests and lumber down the runway.

It's about a 2.5 hour flight, and for most of our journey we just follow the Malaccan Strait between Indonesia and Malaysia. For the final 30 minutes we cut across Sumatra, a few miles south of Banda Aceh. We were at 20,000 feet to get over the mountain range that runs the spine of Sumatra, but once over it we get down to 16,000 feet. It's good visibility and it is easy to see the devastation, like a bath tub ring all along the coastline. Most of the coastal area has only a narrow beach front, say one mile wide, which ends at a steep mountain range. In those cases almost everything built there and everything living there has been destroyed. But there are a few places, such as Banda Aceh, where topography allowed for the town to grow back from the beach. If you were more than two miles inland, you had a good chance of surviving.

We have a smooth arrival. Remember, on a carrier it is not a landing, but a "trap" -- arresting cables, tail-hook, full-rev, violent stop -- but it works out fine and we go below deck to get a brief from Admiral Crowder and a quick lunch. He invites the Commander of his Helicopter Detachment, Commander Horan, to join us.

Crowder gives us a time-line: the Lincoln was in Hong Kong when the Tsunami hit on Sunday, wrapped up its replenishment on Monday, and pulled out on Tuesday morning to steam directly to the Indian Ocean. His original plan was to head north to Thailand once through the Strait, but it quickly became clear that the devastation in Indonesia was far worse. Indeed, the death figures are something like 5,000+ in Thailand and 150,000+ in Sumatra.

Interestingly, it was not until around the Wednesday after the Tsunami that the Indonesians fully grasped the magnitude of the disaster and asked for international assistance. Among other complications, the local leadership was hosting a "Sports Day" that Sunday which involved several thousand participants, including the military and municipal leadership, all gathered on the low-lying fields. All were killed instantly. So there was no one in the government to report on the problem.

The Lincoln got on station on Saturday, held its first meetings with TNI (the Indonesian Military), and started flying relief missions that day. The Strike Group has 17 helicopters and they have all been in constant operation during daylight hours, typically flying multiple missions. We deliver about 50,000 pounds of food and water a day.

Singapore is there as well, and they were the first foreign military to arrive, getting to Banda Aceh a day or two before we did.

The Aussies are there and they are folded into our operations. France has a helicopter detachment on a frigate. There are oodles of medical detachments there, German, Russian, Japanese, Chinese.

We are taken back for an intel/ops briefing. The main intel job is simply tracking the rapid pace of activity, to log all sightings and follow up, and to try to apply some overall management discipline to what initially was simply a crisis response set of activities. So they track where individuals have been sighted, what medevacs have taken place, how frequently villages have been visited, etc. They also have supplied aerial reconnaissance to the TNI. The total damaged coastline is about 170 miles long, and we have logged 56 destroyed bridges on that stretch of the coastal road -- the only road.

The ops center gets a daily assignment list from the TNI as to who needs what on the ground, but then they augment that with what they know from their own trips.

I take a look at the list labeled "22 Jan 05 - HA/DR Priorities" referring to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief:

1. Food and water to villages along the Woyla River from Kualabhee (N 04 23 E 096 03) to Aleu Seralen (N 04 27 E 096 06)
   
2. Children's clothing to mosque IVO Kuede Teunom (N 04 25 43 E 095 49 01)
   
3. Investigate Medevac of pregnant woman from sailing yacht Sean Paquitto IVO N 05 17 E 095 13. Woman may have been moved ashore.

...and on the list goes. Eight tasks in all for the day, most requiring multiple sorties. In addition, the helo crews are directed to adapt to local situations. If they see someone who needs emergency treatment or if they see an as-yet-unreported group of survivors, they are authorized to land, administer aid, provide assistance, etc.

I ask Horan at what multiple of normal operational tempo are his helos currently operating. "We burned through our first quarter budget in two weeks," he tells me, implying an op tempo 6-7 times normal rate of activity. I follow up, "We know during emergencies people can sustain that type of work, but after 7-10 days fatigue sets in. How are your people doing?" "We have a flight surgeon who spends a lot of time with the crews, and whenever people hit the100th monthly flight hour mark we have them go for a check up. But morale is high, performance is high. Our systems work." We had one helo crash on approach to the Banda Aceh airport, but no fatalities fortunately.

The briefing dissolves into a general discussion...

Is the TNI supportive of what we are doing? Absolutely. Day-to-day operations with the TNI is positive. We take direction from them and provide feedback. They are happy to have us here. The biggest issue was the bottleneck at the airport, with limited control tower capabilities, and that caused frustration early on. But all appears to be moving.

What's next? We are slowly shifting away from helo-borne re-supply. The limited roads are open, though it is still a 17 hour journey from Medan. The Sing's combat engineers have cleared the beach at Meulobah, the second largest city on the coast, and they can take LSTs. We have our LCACs (Landing Craft Air Cushion) operating off the Bon Homme Richard/ESSEX further down the coast. So the helo part of the operation is in its final weeks. Also, the crisis is past. People are getting food, water, and medical attention. The focus is now shifting to longer-term reconstruction. From a relief point of view, it makes sense to congregate people in IDP (internally displaced person) camps where they can receive social services and protection. Naturally, people are adverse to leaving their traditional villages, so there will be some local issues to work out.

How bad is it? How good is it? Well, people are getting food and water and medical attention. But even today, teams find stragglers and isolated individuals. So the good news is that if you are alive you are going to stay alive. The bad news is reconstruction -- it will take quite a while, and the remote towns didn't have a lot going for them to begin with. It could take one, two, three years to reengineer a new coastal road built a bit inland. Surprisingly, the Admiral tells me the numbers of displaced people is much smaller than the numbers we are seeing in the media. His count is about 80,000. The reason is that the Tsunami was so sudden and so ferocious that if it destroyed your home, the odds are that is also killed you.

Finally, a briefing with the medical team. I'm talking with two Navy MD's, both LCDRs. They assist with the UN health survey teams. UN is coordinating the NGO efforts, trying to establish base line data on public health, epidemiology, sanitation, etc. along the shoreline. So they helo in teams from various organizations for a few hours of survey work. The good news is that there does not appear to be much in the way of a public health problem -- so far. The tsunami left only a few people in need of medical treatment. You were either killed or spared. There are more than adequate facilities to treat the injured.

More of a challenge is likely to be on-going public health issues, particularly related to clean water, sanitation, poorly prepared food, crowded conditions, etc - and all this will feed into planning for the IDP camps.

The US military is already starting to think about the transition to civilian disaster relief. There's no need for a long-term presence. "You want to leave while there is still applause." says Crowder.

I comment there are bound to be all sorts of local tensions when the government starts to relocate people into camps, and they refuse to leave their villages...and there will be a tendency to draw the U.S. into that dispute. Crowder quickly agrees. They tell us now where to drop food, and we comply, but we’ll also drop it wherever there’s a need.

All these briefings and lunch last just about an hour and it’s time to board the helo. We have an SH-60 Seahawk, the naval variant of the famous Blackhawk:

http://www.Sikorsky.com/details/0,3036,CLI1_DIV69_ETI1933,00.html

Better photos, and photos of the Lincoln at…

http://www.cvn72.navy.mil/

We have a 3 person crew consisting of the pilot, co-pilot, crew chief, then Capt. Cleveland and I as passengers. We had 1,000 pounds of food and water. Food was 50 pound bags of rice and dried foods; water was in 5 gallon plastic jerry cans.

We stay low over the water -- a few hundred feet up -- with the large loading door open the entire trip, I suppose for safety reasons. I remember the one helo escape lecture I had in the reserves - after a helo crashes, you are supposed to let it rotate in the water until the heavy engine turns the helo upside down, then you release your seat harness and exit the craft. This all while sea water is flooding the compartment and you are sinking at 20 ft a second or some such. But stay calm. Oh, and don't kick as you swim out because you might kick a fellow crew member.

But the flight is smooth, pretty impressive actually. We head for the coast and go south to our designated LZ. Cleveland and I are strapped in, but the crew chief is tethered to a safety harness so he can move around the cabin. I'm just listening through the headset as they work through their plans. We spot the LZ and make a wide circle around it, then we slowly approach it and begin our descent. All the while the chatter is on the system. "Easy down. easy. easy. 100 feet. easy. easy. pedal right. pedal. slow pedal. OK. 50 ft. hold it. Hold it. easy down. easy down. 30 ft. 20 ft. 10 ft." It is not entirely clear who is talking to whom or whether the aviator is simply stating his own actions for the benefit of his team. But the voices are calm and professional, and setting down a dangerous and expensive piece of equipment in a rice paddy with people running around has all sorts of complications. The crew chief has half his body out the bird looking for smaller objects or problems and particularly seeing if any civilians wander too near, particularly looking at the tail rotor. "Easy down. easy. 5 ft. 3 ft. We're there."

The blades slow down, but we don’t stop rotating. The crew chief signals for me to hop down. All the while, there is a group of several dozen local onlookers, but at this point they have all seen helos before and they know what to expect. About 10 men move toward us, but they don’t swarm us -- they form a line, and we have a bucket brigade going within seconds. Crew chief to me, me to the first person, and so on. All of the goods are neatly stacked some 20 yards past the propellers. There are two fellows in some sort of uniform, not TNI, but perhaps some sort of local police. But from their looks and behavior, they seem more the equivalent of a night watchman. But the locals are organized and the food moves quickly and orderly.

Then comes the fun part. The crew chief tosses me a bag of candy. He has one also. And the swarm begins. About 20 kids come out from hiding -- screaming, laughing, grabbing. I attempt to hand out one piece per kid in an orderly fashion, and this lasts about a second and a half. Quickly, all of the candy is gone. The grown-ups are all laughing and we're laughing too. Mission accomplished. We shake a few hands and the Indonesians use gestures and handshakes to give thanks and we respond in kind.

Back aboard the chopper. Final waves. The chatter is back on the system. "Easy up. easy. right pedal. easy. back. clear. we're clear."

We go north along the coast to Banda Aceh and witness the miles of destruction. Virtually 100% of the coastal towns are destroyed. We can see the concrete foundation of structures in the ground, but the structures themselves are gone. Boats up on land. Your first thought is they only appear to be 50 yards inland, maybe 100 yards. Then you realize that the entire shoreline is underwater. These boats might be a half mile inland; it's just that the water has not yet receded to display the original coast. There's a cement plant south of Banda Aceh, and a freighter at pier is capsized, probably over 10,000 tons. There is a coal barge, with some coal still in it, askew on a ridge. As we get closer to Banda Aceh we see signs of life.

The airport is full of cargo planes and helicopters. There is an extensive tent city around it where the NGO and other militaries are operating. A good part of the city is still operating with electricity and traffic on roads. But as we get back to the coast, it’s the same gruesome sight. Probably a two-mile wide swath of destruction.

In ten minutes we are back on the carrier. On the flight deck I bump into Dina Rudick, Irv Rudick's granddaughter who is a photographer with the Boston Globe. Ambient noise makes it difficult to have much of a conversation but I ask her to give me a ring when she gets to
Singapore.

We have a quick debrief with the CO and the Admiral, then we re-board the Greyhound. Catapult launch. Nice weather. Good visibility. And in a little over two hours we are back on the ground in Singapore.

Frank Lavin
U.S. Ambassador

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