Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Ist airdrop into Haiti by USA C17



...A C-17 cargo plane left Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina shortly after noon, and three hours later dropped 40 pallets -- or "bundles" as the Air Force refers to them as -- holding bottled water and Meals, Ready-to-Eat, or MREs, on a field just north of the Port-au-Prince airport in Haiti.

It was the first airdrop of humanitarian supplies by the U.S. military into Haiti since the deadly earthquake there nearly a week ago.

"There are so many relief agencies funneling through the airport that it has kind of created a bottleneck," U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Leon Strickland told CNN en route to the drop point. "We're going to put things directly out of the air onto the ground and open up another distribution point north of the [Port-au-Prince] airfield."...