The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season has officially begun, and it is forecast to be a very busy one. Putting the active season in mind, Amazon and the Red Cross are hoping a brand new disaster relief hub and partnership will permit faster response to areas hit by hurricanes and other natural disasters.
Amazon Opens Disaster Relief Hub in Georgia
Vice president of Global Customer Fulfillment at Amazon, Alicia Boler Davis, said in a news release to CNN: "Our disaster relief and response team is collaborating with global humanitarian relief organizations to leverage the scale of Amazon to aid in improving response time to large-scale natural disasters all over the world."
Today, Amazon is announcing the launching of its Disaster Relief Hub in Georgia to rapidly help in responding to natural disasters, and its collaboration with six global humanitarian aid organizations, both the Red Cross. Senior vice president for Disaster Services with the American Red Cross, Trevor Riggen, says that this new venture merges its own disaster response background with that of Amazon's delivery expertise.
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How Demanding Goods Will be Quickly Delivered
Riggen said this most current effort in the disaster relief hub is a chance for the Red Cross to leverage Amazon's know-how in logistics and be capable of working with them to get resources early to places that are difficult to get stuff to. Places that are hard to move resources without the use of a plane, and Amazon has the capability of moving things quickly. This includes locations like the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Latin America, and even remote and rural regions of the United States.
The Amazon hub, sited in Atlanta, will stock more than half a million Amazon-donated relief supplies. There will be sufficient supplies stored up to fill an Amazon Air 767 airplane immediately to quickly deliver demanding goods to community partners when a disaster occurs.
Reasons Why the Organizations Chose the Atlanta Location
The program began because of a letter to the former CEO of Amazon. Bettina Stix, director of Disaster Relief at Amazon said: "Jeff Bezos truly received a letter from someone in Louisiana in 2016 when floods took place and said, Amazon is the best at conveying stuff into the most remote regions of the United States, how can you assist us get supplies here?"
"That was actually the vision I had. We can get to even the most rural communities, we have the means of transportation to get there."
Emergency teams assess what supplies they have after a natural disaster, obtain items they need and then consolidate, pack, and convey supplies into disaster regions. This process can take some days. To shorten the process, Amazon analyzed its disaster support data across four years and came up with a strategy.
The organizations selected the Atlanta location because of its close proximity to the regions most frequently hit by hurricanes. Atlanta, for instance, is just 300 miles away from the Gulf Coast, about 700 miles from the Bahamas, and within 1,500 miles of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands.
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