Ship-to-Shore Delivery of Haiti Aid Successful

Crowley Maritime will start delivering relief supplies directly to earthquake-crippled Port-au-Prince next week after successfully completing an experimental ship-to-shore transfer of ocean containers at the Haitian capital’s port.

A Crowley vessel on Friday loaded 12 20-foot containers onto a smaller vessel in the Port-au-Prince harbor and the shallow-draft vessel ferried the boxes directly to a beach, opening an important new route for the high-volume delivery of aid to survivors of the devastating earthquake that hit the island.

Port facilities, including cranes, are too badly damaged to allow docking and container transfers, leaving the overcrowded airport and uncertain roads from the Dominican Republic as the only routes for aid into the country.

The operation Friday “was an important milestone in reestablishing direct container shipments into the heavily damaged port," said John Hourihan, senior vice president and general manager of Latin America services at Crowley, which is managing the operation under a contract with the U.S. Transportation Command, or US Transcom.

"USTRANSCOM values the innovative solutions that our contractors are implementing to rapidly facilitate humanitarian assistance in support of the Haitian people," Army Brig. Gen. Michael Lally, director of operations for the command, said in a statement.

Crowley said its container ship the Marcajama is returning to Port Everglades to load more containers and will return to Port-au-Prince during the coming week to deliver the aid through ship-to-shore operation called lightering.

Crowley also will bring in two 400-foot-long, 100-foot-wide flat deck barges, along with two Manitowoc 230-ton crawler cranes in the coming weeks to help speed the transfer of containers by creating makeshift piers at the port.