They do have a helluva setup going.
Right now there are 5000+ military and another 5000 federal civilian responders on the island. 10,000 personnel moved there with all the life support needed to sustain them from feeding to shelter to sanitation all moved and set up in under 10 days, and in under 7 since the first runway was reopened.
Many more thousands offshore on ships providing support.
And not just the quickest and easiest people to move, who would have been the Ready Brigade of the 82nd who moved first in Haiti, because a few thousand light infantry would be mostly useless there, but of all the right people. They could have just sent the 82nd like in Haiti and the numbers would be bigger but they wouldn't be very productive, just warm bodies on the ground. They have moved the engineers and medical personnel and others who are the ones suited for this.
Those 10,000 are all at work and are also being fed and supplied water and everything else while also pushing that out into a landscape that's been devastated and has virtually no functioning infrastructure left. They were not just moved but every bit of life support for them was moved in too.
People are acting like that's somehow insignificant or minuscule or not a Herculean effort- but in fact it's a huge, huge, huge accomplishment.
There are lots of mistakes made. The Comfort should have been ready to sail sooner, they should have started putting the crew together sooner instead of waiting to see if there was a need. There should have been a whole lot better preparation on the island before, especially in the form of redundant communication systems and methods, but that's mostly an issue outside the role of the Federal government. I'm sure they ended up heavy on some assets and light on others, it looks like they underestimated the need for truck drivers for example, but no operation like this ever gets it 100% right from the onset you are adapting to the situation as you go.
But the reality is, to anywho who understands and has done logistics, what has happened thus far is actually an amazing effort.
Quite honestly I don't think there would have been any difference had this happened last year versus this year. Save for a few faces at the top the same professionals are working it now that would have been then doing the exact same things. Maybe the Comfort would have sailed a bit sooner. For sure we wouldn't have a moron bashing local government officials in the midst of their disaster response. But the Soldiers and Sailors and Marines and Airmen and Coast Gaurdsmen are all execting the mission every bit as vigorously and professionally as they would have last year- in all reality who sits in the Oval Office has virtually no impact on what any of them are doing in the short term on matters like this.
Now when it moves from the immediate action response to more of a recovery role, we will see who holds the office have a much bigger role.
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