Following an earthquake, could the supplies you need be delivered by a cardboard copter?
SEABECK — A small plane slowly buzzes over an open grassy area at the Seabeck Conference Center, and out of the aircraft comes a batch of winged cardboard packages that twirl like maple seed copters as they flutter gently to the ground.
The precious cargo they contain on this day? Beans.
But at some point in the future, those beans could be pills, vital medicines desperately needed following an earthquake. They could be medical supplies, space blankets or water purification tablets.
John Irick, founder and CEO of the Seattle-based startup Five Forces, sees a future in which his company’s simple cardboard AirWing products are used to deliver critically important supplies via the skies when a natural disaster leaves roads and bridges in disrepair. Vital items like medicine, blood, surgical supplies or satellite phones could be dropped into controlled zones for distribution and other items like food, water and shelter could be dropped en masse into areas of need.
“The main thing that we’re offering is that we’re bringing supplies to people versus the people having to go to the supplies,” he said after showing off the company’s product on Friday in an early stage demonstration with Kitsap County’s Department of Emergency Management. “Often, you have folks that have small children, they’re not going to leave their kids, or are elderly, they can’t make that one-mile journey. Our vision is that you would see wings really everywhere, with a big cleanup effort afterwards as well.”
The wings are stamped out of cardboard and are simple to load up and deploy. Friday's demonstration showed off wings with small payloads, but Irick noted that the design can be scaled up for larger deliveries. He envisions blanketing an area in need out of a large C-130 aircraft.
“We’re seeing this right now in the news, people waking up every morning and saying, 'Where am I going to get some water today?'" he said. "We can provide that. It’s a little frustrating that we can’t get it out there right now, because people need it right now.”
DEM sees the products as one potential solution for supplying areas of Kitsap County that will be cut off by roads following a large earthquake. Jan Glarum, acting director of DEM, notes that there will be two ways of resupplying communities on the Kitsap Peninsula in such a situation: by water and by air. Perhaps using a product like the AirWing system to deliver the prescription drugs someone needs will keep them from becoming another patient that first responders will have to help.
“It’s not going to solve the problems, but at least I can keep you alive longer, so it gives me a few more days or weeks to figure out how am I going to take care of you in that timeframe,” Glarum said.
DEM has set to establishing small emergency supply caches in communities throughout Kitsap County, like in Seabeck, with basic items like tarps for shelter or technology for communication, and is training up volunteers to stabilize their communities following a major natural disaster. Dropping items from the sky might just be one way to resupply small community hubs that pop up.
Said Glarum: “It’s all about trying to resource people where the problem is.”
This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Seattle startup Five Forces' AirWing system offers disaster delivery
