USS Carl Vinson headed to Haiti

WASHINGTON - The USS Carl Vinson is heading to Haiti to assist in relief efforts from the powerful earthquake that struck the Caribbean nation.

The Miami-based U.S. Southern Command said Wednesday the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is expected to arrive off the coast of Haiti on Thursday.

The Portsmouth, Va.-based Coast Guard Cutter Forward is already anchored in the harbor of Port au Prince, Haiti in support of earthquake relief operations.

According to the Department of Defense, U.S. Southern Command is coordinating with the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to assess and respond to the situation following the 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

In addition to the Carl Vinson, Southern Command officials said they will deploy a team of 30 people to Haiti Wednesday, including military engineers, operational planners, and a command and control group and communication specialists, on two C-130 Hercules aircraft. The team will work with U.S. Embassy personnel as well as Haitian, United Nations and other officials to assess the situation to provide follow on support.

Elements of the Air Force's 1st Special Operations Wing were also scheduled to arrive in Haiti Wednesday to provide air traffic control capability and airfield operations at the Port-au-Prince airport.

Gen. Douglas Fraser, head of U.S. Southern Command, said Wednesday that one of the U.S. Navy's large amphibious ships will also likely head to Haiti with a Marine expeditionary unit aboard. Fraser said other U.S. military forces are on alert, including a brigade, which includes about 3,500 troops.

In addition, an 82nd Airborne Division brigade and "various forces around the armed forces" have been put on alert, ready to deploy if needed to support the effort, the general said.

Navy P-3 Orions made initial overflight assessments of damage on the ground, President Barack Obama announced Wednesday morning, and U.S. and rescue teams arriving in Haiti will use the information to plan their response.

"The United States is going to do all we can to help, and we've worked throughout the night to figure out how we can do that and do it as rapidly as possible," Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Wednesday. "We have an awful lot of people working in that direction right now."

The Puerto Rico Army National Guard has alerted three UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the 1/111th Aviation Company along with 12 crew members, and the Puerto Rico Air Guard has called up two C-130 aircraft from the 156th Airlift Wing with 21 support personnel, said Army Capt. Paul Dahlen, the Puerto Rico Guard's public affairs officer.

He said the aircraft have anticipated deployment times, but officials are waiting for final approvals.

According to news reports, the quake was felt in the Dominican Republic as well as Guantanamo Bay.

Arkansas and Rhode Island Guardsmen currently deployed to Joint Task Force Guantanamo felt the tremors from Tuesday's earthquake in Haiti. Air Force Lt. Col. Denise Boyer, commander of the 474th Expeditionary Combat Engineering Squadron, which is made up of about 50 Air National Guard members, said she was in her tent when the earthquake hit Tuesday after duty hours.

"The tent shook, the floor shook, everything kind of rumbled around," she said. "Honestly, it felt like a big 18-wheeler rolled by outside."

Boyer had experienced seismic activity before at Guantanamo, but "this was definitely bigger than what we had in the past."

The Navy engineers at Guantanamo are dealing with some water breaks, but Boyer said her engineers are not responsible for any hard structures on the base.

"Tents fare a lot better in an earthquake," she said.

The Carl Vinson, with a crew of about 3,200, recently completed an extensive overhaul at Northrop Grumman's shipyyard in Newport News, Va.  It departed Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Va., Tuesday on transit to its new homeport in San Diego.

The military last rallied to help Haiti in September 2008 after a series of hurricanes left flooding and mudslides in their wake, Lenzini noted. The USS Kearsarge, an amphibious ship on a humanitarian mission in Colombia at the time, diverted to Haiti in response. Its crew remained in Haiti for 19 days, using helicopters and amphibious landing craft to deliver 3.3 million pounds of internationally donated aid to communities isolated by flooding, and mudslides and damaged roads.

USNS Comfort, a hospital ship home-ported in Baltimore, visited Haiti in April, the first stop during its four-month Continuing Promise 2009 humanitarian assistance mission through Latin America and the Caribbean.

Comfort's crew of medical professionals from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard and U.S. Public Health Service, as well as about a dozen nongovernmental organizations and international partners, provided a full range of medical care to Haitian citizens.

While not ruling out a deployment of the hospital ship USS Comfort in this disaster, Fraser said the amphibious ship could provide much of the same medical capability.

(Compiled from reports by American Forces Press Service and The Associated Press)