emergency

Transportation Industry Gearing Up As Hurricane Season Nears

July 13, 2021 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Coastal states along the Atlantic have to begin preparing themselves for the hurricane season that comes with the summer months–and huge transportation companies in these locations are beginning to ready themselves for what could be potentially higher-than-average amounts of storm activity along the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Coast.

For instance, Amazon.com Inc. has opened fulfillment centers in Atlanta that are currently serving as staging facilities for hurricane relief supplies and resources.

“Instead of us having to wait for disaster and ask the organizations what they need, and then procuring and packing them and then putting them on a plane, we’re doing all of that ahead of time,” said Amazon’s Global Accessory lead, Abe Diaz.

As of now, the company’s Atlanta fulfillment center is holding enough emergency supplies to fill up a 767 cargo airplane–around 500,000 emergency supplies–that will be sent out to the surrounding area when needed for relief efforts.

“Atlanta is going to be our storage hub where we have already bought, packed, and put on pallets the items we need to put on a plane or a truck to [take to] a disaster area, most likely [in the case of] a hurricane,” Diaz continued. “It usually took us a couple of days [to complete these efforts], and now we can do it in one.”

To be able to boost with their reach, Amazon has been collaborating with organizations like Direct Relief, the American Red Cross, the International Medical Corps, World Central Kitchen, Save the Children, and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Because the city of Atlanta has two major north-south interstates running through its center and Interstate 20 and Interstate 285 running east-west (referred to as the Perimeter), Amazon chose this location for its supply center.

In addition, Atlanta is home to the always-bustling Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, as well as many other trucking companies that can help with these relief efforts. Amazon has also expressed its intention to include more American cities in its natural disaster relief plans.

“Now, we have the items ready and we can put them wherever they need to be,” noted Diaz.

For UPS Inc., also based out of Atlanta, ensuring that all of its facility locations stay open during hurricanes is key in being able to focus on tropical storm relief efforts.

“We want to keep our facilities operating as long as we can and as [safely] as we can,” said UPS’ director of building and systems engineering, Rick Garcia. “When a hurricane comes along, the first thing you lose is power. We strategically place generators near our facilities, and it’s one of the main things we do. With generators, you need fuel, and we have fuel available to keep those generators running. Wherever we need those resources, we want to shift them as needed.”

Maersk, a global shipping company, is also alerting people to start gearing up for potentially hazardous summer storms. In fact, the company said over the last several years, tropical hurricanes have begun starting up earlier in the summer and have been occurring in increased amounts.

“With the global pressure seen on today’s supply chains, it is more important this year, perhaps than any in recent history, to plan ahead with suppliers and logistics service providers to put contingency plans in place as early as possible to mitigate the effects of seasonal climate risk,” explained the head of Maersk’s Special Projects and logistics branch, Rob Townley.

Maersk also plans to collaborate with groups like the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the case of natural disasters and seasonal storms, as well as with the Caribbean Disaster and Emergency Management Agency in order to help heavily-hit areas throughout the Caribbean nations to receive logistical support in regards to hurricanes and other major storms.

Luckily, weather forecasters are often able to track huge tropical storms at least a week in advance–a resource that has been incredibly helpful for many trucking companies to be able to more easily and quickly respond to these kinds of disasters.

Trucking Suppliers Work to Provide PPE and Medical Products to Healthcare Workers

June 12, 2020 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

Some major commercial vehicle suppliers have taken on extra work in their already busier-than-normal schedules during this pandemic to help provide necessary materials and products for medical personnel across the country.

“There is no business model required for doing the right thing,” said James Sears, CEO of Sears Seating–one of the longest-operating trucking companies in the country.

The company has been making efforts towards a goal of making 3,000 medical gowns and 5,000 masks out of on-hand materials. Workers have been streamlining the production process of these items to be able to make around 200 gowns or 500 masks each day.

“Through the collaboration of Sears Seating’s engineers, expert sewers, and hospital staff, we are able to answer our community’s call for help. I could not be more proud of the team,” said Sears.

Sears Seating isn’t the only company reworking their production systems to help medical personnel. Toyota is also making various efforts to help reach “a recovery to normalcy as quickly as possible, and, in order to help that happen, [the company] is listening to the voices of many stakeholders to determine how it can contribute, with the aim to do what it can during this crisis,” the company said on its website.

Toyota has pledged to produce injection mold and 3D-printed medical face shields to help ease the current shortage. The company’s Teiho Plant in Japan said it will begin making at least 500 to 600 per week. Additionally, Toyota plans to use the Toyota Production System to help improve productivity in creating medical ventilators. The company is gathering a TPS support team that will be dispatched to companies currently struggling to increase medical equipment production.

Toyota also said it wild leverage its supply chain in an effort to produce hygienic products such as personal protective equipment, thermometers, face masks, and more, and that it would supply other equipment for the use of medical institutions, such as makeshift hospital beds, simple partition walls, and disinfectant containers.

Maumee, Ohio’s Dana Inc. is also working to use its supply chain and 3-D printers in order to create protective equipment open-source designs. Earlier in the pandemic, Dana worked with hospitals around Toledo to determine the best ways to design face shields and other protective gear.

“At Dana, we have a motto: People Finding a Better Way,” said Dana’s vice president of commercial vehicle drive and motion systems, Ryan Laskey. “But this is more than a motto–it truly illustrates our company culture. So, when our team heard of the shortage of personal protective equipment, they quickly went to work to find solutions.”

Dana is even working with local high schools, the University of Toledo, and Imagination Station to source material and efficiently produce face shields after the company prints the pieces for the shields in its Advanced Manufacturing Center 3-D Printers. Altogether, the company and its partners have been delivering at least 100 shields a day, and believes this number will increase as the designs become open-source.

This group has also created an intubation box which would create extra protection for hospital workers by partially enclosing a patient. So far, the team has delivered three dozen of these boxes to nearby hospitals. Additionally, Dana is utilizing its global supply network in further efforts to make glasses, glove, gown, shoe cover, and mask delivery a more streamlined process.

Additionally, Cummins Inc. has been donating its materials used for air, fuel, and lube filtration products made for heavy duty diesel engines to be used instead for N95 respirator masks.

The University of Minnesota created the mask prototypes with Cummins’ filtration materials, which uses DuPont’s hybrid membrane material, in a widespread effort to get more N95 masks to health care systems across Minneapolis.

“Since the arrival of the filtration media, we have been able to make rapid progress, and we now believe we have several viable mask options, including both a disposable and reusable option,” said University of Minnesota medical school dean Jakub Tolar. “These designs show real promise in keeping our health care workers safe should standard medical supplies of N95 masks no longer be available.”

How to Save a Choking Baby

February 6, 2015 by Levinson and Stefani Leave a Comment

It’s amazing the sorts of treasures one finds on the Internet. A particular favorite of ours, now making the rounds on the web and social media, might be this latest gem called “The Chokeables,” a public service-meets-Wallace and Gromit-type video fantasy into the realm of child safety. More specifically: the dangers of small, minuscule items that pose choking hazards to babies and infants.

The video, created by St. John Ambulance, one of the U.K.’s leading first aid charities that teaches proper first aid techniques to upwards of 800,000 people annually, employs the talents of none other than Sir John Hurt (better known to kids as Ollivander from the Harry Potter movies) and two additional British actors. The accomplished thespians lend their voices to the very toys and objects parents need to be aware of around the house, things like pen caps, marbles, broken crayons and nuts.

Amazingly, “The Chokeables” has racked up more than 4 million views by way of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in its first ten days since going live; the video has been shared more than 150,000 times via St. John Ambulance’s Facebook page; and St. John’s estimates that 20.9 million people have watched the video in its first week on television.

And thankfully so: the video comes at a time when new research shows that 79 percent of parents don’t know the correct technique of tending to a choking baby, despite 58 percent that say choking is major fear for them, and 40 percent that say they have witnessed it happening.

The relatively simple video (a must-see, in our opinion, for parents and adults, including daycare workers and babysitters) provides a quick snapshot of what to do in a crisis scenario, teaching parents the proper way to assist a child in the event of a choking incident. Here’s how to save a choking baby:

Lay the baby face down on your thigh, giving up to five generous back blows
Should that method fail, turn the baby over and give him/her up to five chest thrusts until the airway is clear
And if the chest thrusts don’t work, call 9-1-1

“The Chokeables”—at just a mere 40 seconds—might seem like a small tick of time to encompass the grasp of the necessary safety precautions, but the brilliance of this little clip is its simplicity, providing just enough instruction in a visually engaging way for adults who have little time to spare on a day-to-day basis.

According to British publication The Mirror, seven people have saved choking babies thanks in part to “The Chokeables.” So after you’ve watched “The Chokeables” video, share it with friends and family!