Florence From The Driver’s Seat Do’s And Don’ts

Earlier this morning, Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina.

As you can imagine, ALAN’s phone and email have stayed busy with messages from people who have all been asking some variation of the same question:  “What can we do?”  (And thank you for all of them!)

ALAN will have some very specific answers to that question soon because as requests from relief organizations begin to arrive, we will share them via our website, micro-site and other channels.  Meanwhile, there are still many ways all of us can put our shoulders to the wheel and begin to help the good people of the Carolinas put the pieces back together – which is why we’d like to share a few practical Do’s And Don’ts.

Do go ahead and make a pre-offer.
If you’re a business or individual with warehouse space, trucks, equipment, or expertise to share, go ahead and offer it now. The more advance information we have about available resources, the more quickly and effectively we’ll be able to fulfill requests for assistance as they come in.

Don’t assume you can’t be of help just because your operations are nowhere near the disaster area.
Often the donated materials that urgently need to get to disaster sites may be located much farther away and require more logistics support than you might imagine.  As a result, the seemingly random or remote location, service or piece of equipment you’re offering may be just the ticket.

Do check ALAN’s website and hurricane micro-site often over the next few weeks.
We’ll be updating both frequently as conditions change, including posting specific relief requests and sharing any important weather and infrastructure updates.

Don’t host a collection drive for products.
Although the intention behind these drives is good, they often create more challenges than they solve – including adding more products to a supply chain that is already under tremendous strain.  At a time when transportation capacity to disaster-impacted markets is so overloaded, the last thing we need to do is choke it even more.

Do consider helping in other ways instead.
If you’re looking for a tangible way to engage your employees in hurricane relief, pick a humanitarian organization like one of the many that ALAN supports and collect money for it instead.  Such donations will be much more useful and efficient, especially right now.  And unlike many post-disaster product donations (which often end up in landfills), they will not go to waste.

Don’t keep area insights to yourself.
When it comes to transportation, we as commercial supply chain professionals understand what normal looks like in a way that most people don’t.  And our partners in emergency management have told us that having these kinds of expert, private sector insights allows them to make much better informed disaster-relief decisions.  So if you do business in the Carolinas, tell us what you know and what you’re hearing.  Survivors get what they need faster when we all work together.

On behalf of all of us at ALAN, thank you for being part of this amazing community and for helping us save lives and deliver hope through logistics.  We DO appreciate you, and we DON’T ever take your contributions for granted.