‘IN A DISASTER, EVERY PENNY COUNTS’ – THE WELSH FIRM SAVING RELIEF EFFORTS CASH

“WE need another 1,000 beds, a forklift truck and a car crusher”. That was the sort of unusual request one Welshman found himself handling in the middle of one of the worst hurricane seasons to hit the Caribbean and the US in decades.

Andrew Thomas is a procurement manager for 2buy2, a Bridgendbased procurement company that helps organisations secure better value for money. But as procurement experts, its staff are also often called into action in the aftermath of natural disasters around the world.

When this happens, they work alongside the Department for International Development’s UK Emergency Response Team to source and arrange delivery of essential goods required in the aftermath of such events.

They spend millions in a short space of time – and they are tasked with making every penny count in such a situation.

That means that the staff also go to the heart of disaster zones to operate.

When Mr Thomas was asked to find the car crusher, he was based in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island that had been hit hard by Hurricane Irma in September last year. With damage to the island’s infrastructure and telecommunications systems, there certainly wasn’t an available car crusher on the island.

By definition, such call-ups happen at short notice. Mr Thomas was off work sick with a virus when his boss called him just days after the hurricane struck.

“I wanted to help. Within two days, I had received injections and malaria tablets and I was landing there ready to help,” said Mr Thomas.

“I knew a rough ride was possible because of the first aid kit I was given. This was no normal first aid kit – when you are given a ‘trauma’ kit for treating serious wounds which includes morphine, you know you could be taken outside your comfort zone.”

While the Dominican Republic suffered serious damage, there was much worse damage done to other islands in the Caribbean, which were dependents of the British Isles. These included British dependencies Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos islands.

Working as a team in co-ordination with other 2buy2 staff based in Miami – who sourced and shipped anything from 4x4 pick-up trucks to generators and debris-clearance equipment from Miami to the Islands – and in London, Andrew helped co-ordinate relief efforts for the affected islands.

His main task was helping fill a large chartered barge with relief equipment to travel to the islands.

The barge had to be loaded with a huge amount of equipment, including clearance equipment such as chainsaws, temporary shelters, water drums and emergency lighting kits.

The car crusher was eventually sourced by his colleagues in Miami and shipped in. “I am not sure where they got it in the end. It sounds like a bizarre request, but when you have hundreds of cars that have been wrecked and lying around the island it becomes pretty key to the clean-up process,” Mr Thomas said.

All this equipment had to be sourced, paid for, logged, negotiated through customs and loaded onto the barge.

“It was certainly an experience. I don’t speak Spanish so I was relying on colleagues and the British Embassy for translation. Some things we did over the phone but on other occasions we would drive to suppliers where armed guards kept a close watch on everything and everyone. I would not do that on my own but I had local guides and I felt I had to get on with it.

“And all this time I was working 12-16 hour days to get everything loaded. It was organised chaos at times. The port was a fascinating place. Gangs of men would turn up at the gates every day and a number would be employed just for that day. The logistics were a nightmare but we had to get it done.”

The whole operation was almost scuppered by another hurricane. The whole team was keeping a close eye on the path of Hurricane Maria, which for several days prior to the barge leaving was meandering through the Caribbean.

In the end, Andrew was evacuated back to the UK, just hours before it