Menlo builds disaster stockpile for New York City to warehouse emergency supplies

Sean A. Murphy, Supply Chain Management Review -- Logistics Management, 10/18/2007

SAN MATEO, Calif. and NEW YORK—Two warehouses containing emergency supplies intended to help victims of a hurricane in the five boroughs began operation yesterday, the culmination of a five-month project by a global logistics and supply chain services company.

The company, Menlo Worldwide LLC, the global logistics subsidiary of Con-Way Inc., will manage the facilities, one in the Bronx and the other just outside the city in New Jersey, according to Joe Dagnese, vice president of Menlo’s consumer and industrial group.

Dagnese declined to discuss the specific volume of supplies, or the dollar value of the project, but said both warehouses, which have a combined size of 50,000 square feet, will contain essential emergency supplies such as Meals Ready-to-Eat(MREs), bottled water, cots, and diapers.

“It’s really first-wave personal supply items that would be delivered to high-impact areas,” he said.

Those “high-impact” areas are defined as areas that are most likely to be hit hardest by a hurricane, such as the ocean side of Long Island, according to Jayme Kunz, a spokeswoman for Con-Way/Menlo Worldwide.

The facilities were built to specifications Menlo received from New York’s Office of Emergency Management. The facility is designed for general disaster relief, but the city first came to Menlo in May while preparing for a possible Katrina-esque hurricane making landfall in the Big Apple, according to a Menlo spokesman. A spokesman for the emergency management office was not available.

Menlo has worked on many corporate disaster response plans in the past, Dagnese said, and while this New York project is designed to bring food and water to disaster victims, not products to a store shelf, the principle remains: keep essential materials moving, no matter what.

“The applications are the same,” he said.

In the event of an emergency, Dagnese said Con-Way and Menlo would work to deliver the supplies to a series of “drop zones” located throughout the city, in loads of 4-20 pallets of supplies each.

Dagnese said in some ways this project will be easier. New York City does not move, nor do basic human needs change drastically overnight. A corporation’s priorities, on the other hand, can change on an hourly basis, he said.

In fact, Dagnese said the only day-to-day maintenance required for the New York is swapping out of perishable items, such as bottled water and MREs, which have a shelf life and need to be continually replaced.

The plan for disaster is, of course, much more complex, he said, but “Hopefully nothing ever happens that we would have to draw down on this (supply).”