Supply chains are prepped to quickly support humanitarian aid in the wake of Hurricane Idalia making landfall well north of Tampa, Florida, and barreling toward coastal Georgia after losing strength moving across Florida, the head of the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) said Wednesday.
Per-storm supply chains were healthy, and the storm threaded the needle between major supply nodes, sparing Tampa and Jacksonville, Florida, the brunt of the storm’s damage, said Kathy Fulton, ALAN’s executive director. ALAN acts as a conduit between sources of logistics assets and nonprofit relief groups working at disaster sites that need resources.
“Many of our nonprofit partners are staging outside of the area and will start to move in their resources once they know where they are needed,” she said.
Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning as a Category 3 hurricane at the Big Bend of Florida, an informally named region where the state’s Panhandle transitions to the Florida Peninsula. It was briefly upgraded to a Category 4 storm Wednesday morning before being downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane as it moved across the state and entered Georgia. As of Wednesday afternoon, Idalia was threatening Georgia and South Carolina with heavy winds and flash floods after carving a path of destruction across parts of Florida’s west coast.
“Because pre-storm supply chains were healthy, and because humanitarian supplemental resources are pre-staged, as roads can be safely cleared, those supply chains will move speedily to respond to survivor needs for nourishment, hydration, shelter, and medical care,” Fulton said in an email to FreightWaves. “Donations from far away will probably not be needed, so we want to remind everyone that financial gifts to trusted nonprofits are the best way to support” those affected by the hurricane.
The storm is causing “huge disruptions to individuals and communities, especially as there are many vulnerable individuals in these areas,” she said. “It is a matter of how quickly the areas which are isolated because of the storm” can get access to resources.
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