Posted on 09/12/2017 7:00:19 AM PDT by shove_it
MIAMI Authorities sent an aircraft carrier and other Navy ships to help with search-and-rescue operations in Florida on Monday as a flyover of the hurricane-battered Keys yielded what the governor said were scenes of devastation.
"I just hope everyone survived," Gov. Rick Scott said.
He said boats were cast ashore, water, sewers and electricity were knocked out, and "I don't think I saw one trailer park where almost everything wasn't overturned." Authorities also struggled to clear the single highway connecting the string of islands to the mainland.
...
He said the Navy dispatched the USS Iwo Jima, USS New York and the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln to help with search and rescue and other relief efforts....
(Excerpt) Read more at miamiherald.com ...
Amazing that they don't use concrete pads or pilings and tie-downs in that sort of environment. Same in tornado alley.
Looting control.....
I hope they don't crash it into a freighter!
Sadly my first thoughts were - morgue and body bags on board. Plus some sort of medical unit.
Just think if Obama was president he’d be sending a ship to Cuba first. Plus bringing back any who need medical help to the US with Obamacare and foodstamps, welfare in the package. Maybe even a voting card.
USNS COMFORT (T-AH 20) is a seagoing Medical Treatment Facility, not a shore-based MTF. It is a Level III facility capable of providing resuscitation and stabilization care; initial wound and basic surgery; and postoperative treatment.
PRIMARY MISSION: To provide rapid, flexible, and mobile acute health service support to Marine Corps, Army and Air Force units deployed ashore, and naval amphibious task and battle forces afloat.
SECONDARY MISSION: To provide mobile surgical hospital service and acute medical care in disaster or humanitarian relief.
Good question.
Get the cargo ships out of the way!
Search and rescue (choppers). Provide triage and emergency medical care for the injured in places where hospitals are down. Augment communications infrastructure. The dispatched carrier in this, being nuclear, will probably dock and tie into the local grid to provide emergency electrical services, but this wouldn't be a possibility in a de-mothballed carrier.
"But two your point, the Navy ships in question are all well over 30 years old, some are pushing 60. Navy ships are expensive to run, labor intensive, and at a point where spare parts are impossible to get."
And how much of that expense is involved with upkeep of weaponry/war-fighting equipment un-necessary for the new mission?? Also, I would expect that most of the really expensive stuff is weaponry-related. Maintaining an oil-fired steam plant probably uses a lot of off-the-shelf stuff. As to parts, there is no such thing as an "impossible to get" part.
"Keeping an old Navy ship around on the off chance you will need to use it is a pretty high-cost solution in search of a need
. Maybe, maybe not. I think the potential benefit is worth a formal cost/benefit analysis.
Hemingway’s 54 six-toed cats survive Hurricane Irma inside the museum
The Florida Keys’ most popular six-toed felines are safe, the Hemingway Home Museum reports.
Nearly 55 cats with the polydactyl (six-toed) gene have been accounted for after Hurricane Irma slammed the Keys as a Category 4 storm. Saturday, the museum posted photos of cats and dedicated staff members (10 stayed on the property) who survived the storm https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/09/12/hemingways-54-six-toed-cats-survive-hurricane-irma-inside-museum/656699001/
Regarding the USNS Comfort, I’m guessing that it will be send to where the casualties are the worst. We need to remember that Katrina hit the city of New Orleans head on where as Irma went the entire length of the state of Florida. Thus it will probably take a day or two to know where the ship and its medical teams are needed the most.
I’m basing this on my years in the military and needing to do operational planning. Of course I’m hoping that it was ready to sail as of last weekend.
I've always thought that was an absurd expectation. The average reader is looking for a compact, condensed delivery of the most salient facts of a story. Few have the patience or inclination to wade through thousands of words of extraneous fluff and filler, just to root out the essential nuggets of real news within.
A well crafted headline and a carefully selected excerpt will generally give any well read person enough information to form and voice a base opinion.
Ditto all those thoughts. The excerpt should be a summary of the most important ideas in the excerpted article, not a cut and pasted paragraph.
Ah crap. I thought they were going to bomb anything left standing.
...but I want to be first!
LOL! Terrible! ;-)
<>And just what could a carrier have done that couldn’t have been done by land? <>
Carry and deliver many thousands of tons of material that could not show up for weeks before the many keys bridges are inspected.
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