Are we prepared?

DHL Express has partnered with the United Nations to form a relief team for the Middle East and Africa. But can the region handle its next natural disaster?

DHL DRT Middle East/ Africa

Paul Dowling seems like the kind of man who is waiting to be a hero. In fact, following the 2005 South Asia earthquake which killed about 75,000 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless, the Customer Operations Manager for DHL Express Middle East/Africa volunteered to help his company distribute relief supplies.

Paul Dowling, Customer Operations Manager, DHL Express and Head of DHL Disaster Response Team Middle East/Africa

He and 64 other DHL employees handled 9,000 tonnes of cargo, such as tents, blankets, tarpaulins, food and medicine, from 230 aircrafts in three weeks.

“What I saw when I went to Islamabad,” he says and pauses. “Absolutely incredible what a small group of people can do and the impact they can have. You see people across the world donating supplies and you like to think you’ve got a hand in moving those donations.”

It was during this effort that the DHL team invented a relief package called the “speedball”. To prevent relief goods dropped into the disaster zone by helicopter from breaking upon impact, the volunteers began padding the inside of standard red DHL shipping bags with mattresses and clothing to protect breakable supplies such as bottles of water, cooking utensils and cans of food in the centre of the bag.

The DHL bags, according to Dowling, are water-resistant and can carry up to 25 kilograms. He says they are tough enough to drop from 40 feet. “[The bag] actually bounces,” he laughs, “hence the name ‘speedball’.”

Thirty volunteers set up a speedball packing line in a warehouse following the south Asia earthquake, according to Dowling, and DHL was able to deliver 3,000 packages to residents of Islamabad.

Paul has participated in four other relief missions with DHL and will likely show up for many more, as he has recently been named Team Leader for DHL’s Disaster Response Team (DRT) for Middle East and Africa.

Based out of the DHL Express UAE headquarters in Dubai, the team of around 40 volunteers has been formed to set up airport logistics operations in the immediate aftermath of a natural disaster in the Middle East and Africa. The team, which completed training last month, is responsible for ensuring that relief supplies are efficiently sorted, stored and distributed.

 
From left, Dave Spargo, Area Director DHL Middle East, Isabelle de Muyser-Boucher, UN OCHA, Susanne Meier, Director CSR Strategy & Policy, DPWN, Brigadier Khalid Salem Al Absi, Director General, General Dictorate of Civil Defence, Ministry of Interior Bahrain, Dr. Hubert Lang, German Ambassador to Bahrain, Sheikh Ahmed bin Ali Al Khalifa, Faisal Salehi, DHL Airside Support Manager, and Paul Dowling, Head of DHL DRT Middle East/Africa at the signing ceremony for the DHL DRT Middle East/Africa

Meredith Taghi, a DHL Training and Development Manager who has recently located to Dubai from Australia, says she joined the DRT to make a difference. “I wanted something that was more than fundraising or ad-hoc charity activities,” she explains. “I really like to be involved in things that are challenging and practical, with a real impact on the people and countries we would be supporting.”

Dowling says natural disasters rarely see a shortage of supplies – “there’s enough of that coming in from the countries and private individuals and companies” – but donated supplies often fail to get to the people who need them most.

“Those [supplies] basically sit in the airport, lock up the airport, and they’re no use to anybody,” says Dowling. “So we move those goods, we warehouse them, we break them down, we inventory them and then we help move them.”

Dowling notes that DHL is not responsible for “handling the transportation” but rather hands the materials over to “to the transport provider, whoever that is, the military, or private individuals.”

DHL, through a partnership with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), has already created two teams of employees for missions in the Asia/Pacific and America/Latin America/Caribbean regions. The company now has 200 DRT volunteers around the world.

DHL has supported relief missions that followed the earthquakes in Peru (2007) and Indonesia (2006), cyclone Gonu in Oman (2007), Hurricane Katrina in the United States (2005) and the tsunami in south-east Asia (2004).

The UN insists DHL’s work is strictly pro-bono. “It’s a gift they give to not only the UN,” says Isabelle de Muyser-Boucher, Chief of the Logistics Support Unit of the Emergency Services Branch of the OCHA, “but the affected countries and to the people in need.”

And the UN says it needs DHL. “Especially at the onset of large-scale disasters, when emergency aid arrives in quick succession from all parts of the world, it is of vital importance that all these supplies are handled in an efficient and professional way to avoid congestion and delay,” says de Muyser-Boucher. “The UN is not an expert in airport management, but DHL is.”

De Muyser-Boucher says having a private partner such as DHL can also help gain access to countries that refuse UN assistance. “We have tight hands,” she says, “as long as the country with the disaster doesn’t request our help.”

Because the government of Oman avoided requesting international assistance following cyclone Gonu, for example, the UN was unable to enter the country, but DHL could. “I coordinated supporting our local office down there which made requests for water, food and so on,” says Dowling. “There was no direct contact with the government.”

Preparing for the worst In 2006, according to de Muyser-Boucher, 143 million people around the world were affected by natural disasters, which led to US$34 billion worth of economic loss.

And she says we are only going to see more natural hazards. “The biggest single cause will be climate change, as well as the increased incidence and severity of extreme weather events associated with it,” she told the crowd at the DRT launch at the DHL hub at Bahrain International Airport. “Even if no single event can reliably be attributed to global warming, the trends are clear, and clearly accelerating, with the effects felt on every continent.”

De Muyser-Boucher says Africa, “on the forefront of disasters,” will be the continent hardest hit.

“By 2020, an estimated 250 million Africans will face increasing water shortages,” she told LOG.Middle East. “Last year, the five countries worst affected on a per capita basis by disasters were all in Africa.”

Muyser-Boucher says she is less worried about the Middle East than Africa.

A member of the DHL Middle East/Africa DRT team demonstrating a “speedball” drop

“Middle East countries have shown that, first of all, they are not as disaster- prone as other areas and, secondly, they manage because of their wealth, because of their preparedness and they cope rather well themselves.

‘The Middle East in itself may be fragile for natural disasters rising from climate change, or it may be very useful in assisting others because of its strategic position.”

The region, according to her, is “politically stable, it has all the resources, it is logistically very convenient to help these African countries.”

Dowling, on the other hand, says he sees earthquakes as the Middle East’s biggest threat. “The experience we’ve got is earthquakes,” he says, citing recent quakes in Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, as well as the quake that triggered the tsunami in southeast Asia. “So we believe that’s going to be the main source of disasters in the area.”

Knowing certain spots are more prone to earthquakes than other areas, he explains, the DRT would “establish a relationship with the authorities, for example, or try and get an MOU (memorandum of understanding) signed.”

“Maybe the UAE isn’t a primary site of danger, but around certainly is, Pakistan and Asia. We’ll try and target those areas, try to get agreements with their governments to operate in a disaster.”

In his fifteen years in the Gulf, Dowling says he has seen very few disasters in the immediate region, except for cyclone Ganoo in Oman, “But we’re pretty flexible in terms of what we can do, but obviously certain countries present more of a challenge than others, visa restrictions and so on. Obviously we wouldn’t have expected anything to happen in Oman, but something happened and we were able to assist as requested.”

And Dowling says he’s ready to assist. When asked if he’ll join his team at the next disaster, “I’d love to show up,” he says confidently. “If I get the opportunity to go down and help, I’ll certainly take it.”