The Italian aircraft carrier Cavour en route to Haiti
(BRUSSELS2) The Italian Navy will perhaps be the last to arrive in Haiti. But with panache... and what means! This is the aircraft carrier Cavour, flagship of the Italian fleet which has been chosen to provide Italian military aid in an operation called "White Crane". Commanded by Captain Gianluigi Reversi, the Cavour is currently underway and should arrive off Haiti in the first days of February. It will make - before arriving - a technical and operational stopover in Brazil to embark medical personnel from the Brazilian armed forces. It is, in fact, a joint Italian-Brazilian operation. The onboard equipment is heavy: engineering, medical, helicopters. This responds to the request of the UN.
The Cavour took to the sea with heavy equipment on board
On board, in addition to the 550 sailors of the Cavour:
- an engineering task force, with a transmission platoon, a protection force platoon, 15 earth-moving machines (excavators...), 20 dump trucks and 5 mobile cranes...
- a hospital with 2 clinics, 2 operating rooms and 1 recovery room, 8 intensive care beds, an X-ray room, a burn room, a medical analysis laboratory, a dental unit .... It has a portable hyperbaric chamber capable of "providing the most appropriate for "crash-syndromes".
- 6 helicopters for transport and medical evacuations
- A military police unit and a medical unit of the Carabinieri ...
In the bowels of the Cavour, engineering machines, trucks and helicopters.
(photo credit: Ministero della Difensa)