Jevs, give us a break with the stone throwing, now is not the time. I've been in the area since day 1 and have nothing but admiration for everyone involved; pilots, ATC, law enforcement, politicians (to an extent), relief workers, responders, locals.....everyone!
The scale of this disaster is unimaginable. Hurricanes come and go in this part of the world and complacency is, in my opinion, mitigated and unavoidable. Pre-emptive action on the scale required is just not in the book for what Katrina did. There are many lessons to be learnt from the event and let's hope that the right organisations hoist them in.
On the ground, however, the response has been an incredible effort. For the first few days, the only means of real time comms was with satellite links, ALL comms were down. Can you imagine what a problem that causes, I didn't! No-one knew who had fuel, no-one knew what ATC agencies were available, you simply had to tune to the frequency and make the call, if there was no answer, blind calls had to do. You could not fly to minimum fuel because it was uncertain where you would get your next refuel. After two days, there was still no real ATC, a couple of towers had very poor comms with makeshift sets and could only provide an advisory service at best for the 50/60 helicopters overhead at any one time, the rest were on the ground refueling/discharging casualties/evacuees.
I don't want to hear any criticism from armchair heroes who know better, there was something to be done and every single person involved mucked in and did their bit.....end of story. I am very impressed with the whole operation and "mediocrity" is a very unfair word to use!
The single lane highway I think you refer to was a single lane because the other lane had been whacked by an oil rig for pete's sake, do you really think they would close one lane just because?
Flying past dead bodies was, at one point, essential, they were dead, and there were too many live bodies still to find.
The current situation is more organised. ATC is improving daily and the high volume military movement is over. They are still in the area but the emphasis on rescue is over, it is now on assessment/recovery, and that is much more a commercial operation.
Cut it out Jon.
Tam