On Sunday, September 19, Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico, dumping more than 15 inches of rain on the island. The storm has caused widespread devastation—power is out for many families, thousands of people are without clean drinking water, and more than a thousand residents are in emergency shelters.
Amazon has activated the company's Disaster Relief Hub in Atlanta, a special warehouse where the company prepositions over one million relief items that we know are the most needed when a disaster strikes. Amazon associates are already packing hundreds of thousands of supplies for Puerto Rican residents, including water filters, tarps, medical supplies, hygiene kits, and food items.
Amazon is employing its Amazon Air 767 to ship these much-needed items to Puerto Rico. Once there, the dozens of pallets of Amazon-donated products will be distributed by partners like the International Medical Corps, SBPUSA and Feeding America to ensure that supplies make it to the people who need them most as soon as possible.
"As a Puerto Rican I know very well the difference that having the right items immediately after a hurricane makes. I'm proud that we can employ Amazon's vast selection and logistics network for this disaster," said Abe Diaz, head of Amazon Disaster Relief. "The Amazon Air 767 will contain tarps, filters, shelf-stable food, towels, toiletries, hygiene kits and cleanup materials. We have been working for months in advance of hurricane season to preposition these and other items in our warehouses so we can ship them where they need to go as soon as possible."
Since its creation in 2017, Amazon Disaster Relief has donated more than 20 million items in response to 95 disasters and humanitarian crises.
