meeting the emergency


Lanka’s single international airport, the AET worked to keep the gateway open. Since the tsunami, the AET has extended its logistics


expertise to support other humanitarian efforts in Pakistan. Following the massive earthquake that hit the country in 2009, the UN Joint Logistics Centre and the government of Pakistan asked the AET unit to manage relief cargo at Islamabad airport and within days of the disaster, four AET directors from Dnata, Emirates, Aramex and DHL were in Islamabad to determine the extent of logistical support required.


affected area of the country as quickly as was possible.” And it is that last comment that points to a major area of


concern for the logistics supply chain during the early days of any large-scale response operation – that of congestion at airports previously unused to handling high-speed logistics and high-volume operations – and that problem is usually accompanied by a lack of on-the-ground supply chain expertise in the effective distribution of arriving aid shipments to the areas where they are most needed. After the Bam earthquake in December 2003, relief aid


started to pour into the devastated Iranian city. Nearly 2,000 flights with supplies, search and rescue teams, medicine and reporters descended in a matter of a few days on a small regional airport previously used to handling only five to six flights a day.


PROVIDING EXPERTISE Many of these aircraft arrived unannounced and, desperate for a quick turnaround, they unloaded their cargo relief supplies directly onto the airport’s single runway, very quickly making it difficult for arriving aircraft to be safely or efficiently handled. The airport became a ‘choke point’ in the supply chain and after four days it had to be closed, lacking sufficient on-the-ground resources to clear the freight. As a result, the Dubai-based Airport Emergency Team


(AET) was set up. The AET initially comprised volunteers from seven organisations – DHL, Emirates, Dnata, TNT, Aramex, Chapman Freeborn and Dubai Aid City – all of which provided dispensation for senior logistics experts on their staff to leave their everyday duties when called to respond. That expertise was soon to be required in the most


dramatic and testing of ways. Almost one year to the day from the Bam earthquake, a massive tsunami hit a number of countries in and around the Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004, causing widespread destruction and the loss of over a quarter of a million lives. As cargo flights carrying relief supplies rushed into Sri


AIR LOGISTICSCHINA 43


DHL DISASTER RESPONSE TEAM Useful lessons have been learned all around the world from the way disaster response is handled. In an early reaction to the Pakistan flood emergency, express logistics provider DHL deployed an initial presence of four logistics specialists from one of its Disaster Response Team (DRT) sites to Islamabad to help in the huge humanitarian effort under way in the country. A strategic partnership between DHL and its parent


company Deutsche Post World Net, as well the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the express delivery and logistics service giant’s global DRT network now consists of three teams, each assigned to a specific geographic region. One is stationed in Singapore for operations in Asia Pacific; a second is in southern Florida, providing its services to the Latin and Caribbean regions; while the third is based in Dubai covering the Middle East and Africa. These teams are in place to provide a rapid response to


the ‘on-the-ground’ need that quickly builds up in disaster areas when aid begins to flood in, bottlenecks appear, and vital and perishable shipments sit on the ground for hours or even days before local transportation and distribution can be organised. Immediately on arriving in Pakistan, the DRT unit set


up a provisional warehouse where it began assisting with the logistical handling of relief goods taking place in the military section of Islamabad airport.


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