Ships burning Japan Earthquake 2011
Japan 2011
The images from Japan have brushed aside most other stories of conflict, from Afghanistan to Libya off the minds of everyone outside those two cockpits of chaos. As humans populations continue to cluster in large urban environments which now line the coastlines of every nation with a sea borders, the chance that disasters like we are witnessing will continue to reap their toll. For more on the urban shift.
As has happened with a growing frequency over the past decade when natural disasters strike, the first nation to mount a humanitarian response has been the United States and in particular the United States Navy and Marine Corps. A review of the Timeline of U.S. Navy responses to earthquakes 1900-2011 is very revealing. The Navy has answered the global fire bell with a growing frequency more in the first decade of the 21st century than any decade in the previous century. All this humanitarian response has occurred during a decade that saw America respond to a deadly attack on our homeland and launch two wars, one that still reaps a toll on our finest citizens.
U.S. Navy Messina 1908
A review of the timeline shows that the Navy's response to earthquakes began with the San Francisco Earthquake and then during the 1908 Messina Earthquake when the Great White Fleet World Cruise sent ships to assist. 
And as the century turned, disasters in Indonesia in 2004 and Haiti, last year continue to remind us of the need to do more that cast bombs and build walls, that along with our mailed fist, we are at our best when we extend that same hand sheathed in a surgical glove offering help.
US Navy
I don't want to be too prideful, but no country in history has come to the aid of their fellow global citizens with such a level of response, a response offered without strings, than the United States. Thus far the commitment pledged along with help from urban search and rescue teams that are being flown by the Air Force from cities across America to lend their expertise. Many are calling for some form of global agreement that mirrors the defensive pacts to deal with these types of disasters. But as the recent calls for some kind of intervention in Libya have shown, no country wants or can mount the kind of response than the United States. Our sense of fair play, and strength forged of being a continental power has given us the strength and sense of responsibility to act.
And from Information Dissemination comes these two.
UPDATE:
Sea Base Developing Off Japan
RELATED UPDATE
US Navy Surging Vessels for Mediterranean Operations- Updated
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