An old Travel Consultant weighs in.. How you evacuate people

[SoCalDem]

When Israel bombs the airports on DAY ONE, you know it's time to offer evacuation (It can only get worse...and harder to get people out with no airport)

You offer Cypriots $500 a day to help with evacuation. They can use personal cars to ferry people from docks to airports...or to use laptops to scan passport info into databases..

You call friendly nations that OWN their airlines and offer them MONEY to press them into service

You call upon ALL ships in the area to assist..and offer them payment


Day TWO:

you get US ships enroute to help

You set up long tables with people and their laptops..
at one end they scan passport info from disembarking passengers
at the other end, they hand out box lunches with bottled water....just beyond the tables , you have buses and locals with cars/vans/station wagons, etc, waiting to carry people to the airports where planes are waiting.

They are landed, documented and in the air headed for points beyond in a matter of a few hours..

the planes would drop off their passengers in Germany, Italy, France, Greece, etc...and head back..

Day THREE and beyond.. (see above)

paperwork is sorted LATER,.. (passport info is safely recorded)

[roguevalley]

Maybe you should be the head of FEMA.

:)

[Ecumenist]

1. Hello Again SoCALDem....just replied to

your Fresh corn query... I just wanted to say that you're speaking logically, something so foreign to these idiots in control it's unbelievable. Frankly, I think that this is being allowed to happen to try to turn in the hope that something horrible happens to some Americans trying to get out of the country so they can bolster their intention to go into Syria AND Iran.

[TomInTib]

2. I am disgusted at our lack of a plan to get people out.

Not even a Plan A, much less any contingency plan.

Hell, SoCalDem, your plan makes perfect sense and you just came up with it.

[SoCalDem]

6. For years I arranged "top end" foreign travel for wealthy people

and it just takes some thought and lots of contingency planning..

[TomInTib]

13. I used to arrange quite a bit of personal travel myself.

I serve 39 months with Extraction Teams in northernmost S Vietnam and Laos.

We had multiple contingencies for every point of every op.

My friends from back then and I have constant WTF? conversations regarding this admin's total lack of backup strategy.

What the heck did they think was going to happen when Hamas took power?
Oh, that's right, they never thought Hamas would win. So why make plans predicated on a Hamas victory?

Idiotically incompetent bastards

[SoCalDem]

14. I imagine your "plans" were hairier than mine

Mine usually involved a chartered yacht and hired-help for villas :)

[TomInTib]

15. Yeah, but 'plans' are 'plans'..

and a 'plan' without a fallback is no 'plan' at all.

It is a recipe for disaster.


You are right, our plans were slightly hairy.
The 'yachts' were dugout boats and the 'help' was 'helping' us during the day and trying to kill us at night.
'

[malaise]

21. Why did you expect a plan

Think New Orleans and that's part of the US. People are still finding their dead.

[SoCalDem]

22. Exactly.. They think if they ignore a problem

eventually it will "go away"..and then they can claim .."That's OLD news.. we've covered that.. we're looking forward"..

That's the neocon mantra....move forward.. (and the implication is that the trail of dead bodies and crushed countries is just so much "yesterday".....)

[stevedeshazer]

3. Jeez, you should be Internationable Secretary of Transportization!

Seriously, that's some good common sense.

Great idea. :)

[SoCalDem]

5. I once got a guy released from custody at the Albanian border

His visa had the wrong date, and he was being held at gunpoint.. :scared:.. he called me at home for help.. It was a comedy of errors to find someone in DC to help me,but we managed to get him released in about 6 hours..

[stevedeshazer]

7. Whoa

:scared: Thanks for the story.

You're due for some kind of promotion.

[SoCalDem]

9. It was 1972 ( and they were very unfriendly then)

but he was there on business, and through his business contacts, we were able to pull some strings...and the state department (It actually was helpful in those days)

[stevedeshazer]

12. I'm off to imagine a helpful government

We can make it happen.

In the meantime, I'll be knocking on doors and calling just to make sure. :)

[whistle]

4. Is there a large Superdome type stadium in Lebanon?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. You make it sound as if the problem is in Cyprus, not Beirut

Isn't the problem getting ships that are willing to go in (meaning they trust the Israeli navy) and getting people in Lebanon to the dockside? Or are you saying they're going slowly with the ships because of a backlog in Cyprus?

[SoCalDem]

10. From what I keep hearing, it's the logistics of "handling"

a large quantity of people on a small island in high season.. the solution.. You don't KEEP them there.. Use Cyprus as a TRANSIT point...
When you transit them, you don;t have to house and feed them and it lessens the stress on the infrastructure of Cyprus.

[Lisa]

11. Canada appeared surprised that we had so many people in Lebanon

And meanwhile, the embassy in Beirut is getting called by frightened expatriates, and nobody seems to know what's going on. If they'd done even a few of the things you suggest, SoCalDem, it would have gone a long way towards reassuring people and making the evacuation quicker and more efficient. Laptops, scanners, cell phones, and faxes can simplify so many of the problems which result when trying to handle a large number of people -- and many of these things can be rigged to function even without a steady supply of AC current. (I was around for a major evacuation in a remote northern town, and your registration process ... minus the passports ... would have worked there as well.)

I should note that the new Canadian government got rid of the cabinet post "Minister Responsible for Canadians Abroad", which doesn't make much sense -- because that person would, in theory, have been able to step in and authorize booking boats and planes, and sums of money to be used for paying local helpers the way you proposed. If there were 50,000 citizens out of the country in total (never mind in ONE place which has suffered conflict in the recent past), that's enough for the Canadian equivalent of a US congressional district!

[ComerPerro]

16. so why isn't anyone pissed at Israel for bombing the airport, anyway?

[SoCalDem]

17. Exactly.. They could NOT have just decided to do this without

SOMEONE in the (chirp-chirp-chirp) US government "knowing" about it.. Once done, it was "katie, bar the doors"..

[kestrel91316]

18. I heard on the radio this AM that Bush was informed in advance, and

said go right ahead and attack Lebanon, and he gave them two weeks to get the job done, which is why he is still sitting there doing NOTHING now.

[Lerkfish]

19. In two weeks, Lebanon could be completely flattened.

hell, just today they dropped 23 tons of bombs.

sitting around with his thumb up his posterior seems to be Bush's strategery for everything.

[SoCalDem]

20. That's probably the "plan"

When it's totally devastated, I wonder who will come in to pick up the pieces? I cannot see the US doing it.. My guess? Syria.. and we're off to the races:(

[kestrel91316]

28. Don't you get it? He WANTS Lebanon to be flattened, preferably

along with several American women and children, so he can fake some outrage and blame it all on Iran and go after them. And Syria, too. But I think Iran is the REAL target.

[SoCalDem]

29. all we need to do is look up the pre-iraq manifestos

and use some white-out.. The rhetoric is the same.. Bush only has 2 years left to complete his "mission"..He will NOT relent..

[Lerkfish]

30. oh, I get it alright

:wave:

[Solo_in_MD]

27. Its quite understandable why they did it

Though that doesn't mean I like it.

One thing I am curious about is what ordinance they used to do it. They may sound trivial, but its important. Runways are pretty hard to destroy. If its cratered with regular bombs, its not all that much work to repair. Basically fill the fairly shallow hole and move on. However if they used anti runway munitions which create large fracture patterns in addition to large holes, the repair takes much more time (weeks vs hours).

For more information on those specialty munitions check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLU-107_Durandal

[Solo_in_MD]

23. Might work for a natural disaster, but not in a combat zone

Besides from what I have read, every strip of concrete capable of handling a transport aircraft was damaged in the first day.

[SoCalDem]

24. Cyprus' airports are intact.. DAY one in Lebanon eliminated air rescue

that's precisely why the contingency plans should have gone into overdrive.. Time is of the essence in a war

[Solo_in_MD]

25. My exact point as to why that plan was unworkable, there were

other reasons as well.

People need to remember that the primary goal of the IDF was to prevent their people from being moved out of Lebanon and stop the movement of armed men and material into and around the country. That is why they laid waste to the transportation infrastructure. That is why they continue to interdict what traffic that is moving, and that is why getting people out is going to be very hard.

Another to consider is that you don't just fly airlines in and out of war zones. All parties have to agree on routes and locations. Given the IDF mission they may not agree to that or insist on incoming and out going inspections. Then you would have to get the Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to agree. Not possible given the state of things. Besides, thanks to the IDF, there is no place to land, let alone refuel.

The tinfoil hat crowd is screaming that Israel is intentionally blocking the removal of refugees and foreign nationals. I don't think so. The IDF is going after Hezbollah and looking for its people. The refuges are actually a hindrance to getting that done.

I did read an interesting comment yesterday, can't recall where...the foreign nationals should be extracted to Israel and from there flown home. It might be the one approach the IDF would support

[SoCalDem]

26. Out of lebanon by sea.. out of Cyprus by AIR

:)

[KoKo]

31. They are either incompetent or they do this willingly....it's hard to

believe that there's no one in this administration or the government who knows how to walk and chew gum at the same time.