Amazon opens its 1st Disaster Relief Hub, donates 500,000 relief supplies

02 / 06 / 2021

By Marwa Nassar - -

Amazon is opening its first Disaster Relief Hub, a facility near Atlanta storing emergency supplies to help its front-line community partners quickly respond to natural disasters across the southeastern U.S., the Caribbean, and Central America.

The hub will stock over 500,000 Amazon-donated relief supplies in 10,000 cubic feet of fulfillment center space—enough to fill an Amazon Air 767 cargo plane and immediately provide critical supplies when a disaster strikes.

Atlanta is located 310 miles from the Gulf Coast, 734 miles from the Bahamas, and about 1,535 miles from Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands—areas that experience the most active hurricane season. Atlanta’s close proximity to the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean region, and Central America will help Amazon’s community partners swiftly respond to hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters.

“Our disaster relief and response team is partnering with global humanitarian relief organizations to leverage Amazon’s scale to help improve response time to large-scale natural disasters around the world,” said Alicia Boler Davis, vice president of Global Customer Fulfillment at Amazon.

“Our expertise in logistics and operations allows us to be nimble, fast, and effective. We’ve created the Disaster Relief Hub in metro Atlanta to provide rapid relief when it’s needed most by donating and delivering hundreds of thousands of emergency aid supplies, including shelter materials like tents and tarps, hygiene items, and medical equipment.”

When a natural disaster hits, emergency teams quickly assess what supplies they have, procure items they need, and then consolidate, pack, and ship supplies into disaster zones. The process can take multiple days. To quicken that crucial timeframe, Amazon analyzed its data across four years of disaster support and formed a pre-positioning strategy.

The strategy is tailored to the most common relief supplies needed by our community partners to do their lifesaving work. Those supplies include tarps, tents, water containers and filters, medical equipment, clothing items, and kitchen supplies. Once those critical relief items are on the first flight out, Amazon works with community partners to identify other needed supplies from Amazon’s vast selection of products and fills additional, unique critical needs.

“I am thankful to Amazon for using their resources and humanitarian aid network to respond to disasters in our state, nation, and world through the new Disaster Relief Hub,” said Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia. “With Amazon recently announcing the opening of a fulfillment center in South Georgia, to now announcing the opening of the Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta, it is clear Amazon sees the many benefits of establishing itself in the Peach State. I am grateful for their commitment to bettering the lives of countless Georgians.”

The Disaster Relief Hub will initially support six global humanitarian aid organizations; the American Red Cross, Direct Relief, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, International Medical Corps, Save the Children, and World Central Kitchen.