Tropical Cyclone Yasa – Alpinter Shelters Deployed to Fiji
Multi-Agency Response Provides Rapid Relief in the South PacificTropical Cyclone Yasa was the strongest cyclone to hit the South Pacific since 2016, devastating significant areas of Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga as it made landfall on the 17th December 2020. More than $250 million US Dollars of property and infrastructure damage was caused across the three countries, however the immediate concern was to provide the populations with urgently required life-sustaining water, food, sanitation and shelter.
Alpinter shelters were rapidly deployed by several agencies. Australian Aid, the humanitarian arm of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, mobilised $4.5 million dollars of humanitarian relief supplies such as building materials, medical supplies, solar lighting and hygiene kits – as well as several hundred Alpinter Family Tents to shelter vulnerable families from the elements. The relief items touched down in Nadi abord an Australian Defence Force C-17A Globemaster on the 20th December.
The ADF also provided logistical assistance to major UN agencies, who supplied Alpinter HUB Multipurpose Tents for use as schools while permanent education facilities were being repaired, as well as for temporary health care spaces with a particular focus on reproductive care and women’s health.
A
ssistance wasn’t limited to regional relief organisations. Our partner Centre de Crise et de Soutien (a division of the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs) also rapidly mobilised to provide desperately needed shelter, and before long Alpinter RED Tents were also providing families with relief from the tropical sun and rain.
The multinational and multi-agency response to Tropical Cyclone Yasa is a typical example of the collaborative approach to disaster relief to which Alpinter is proud to play a key role. We supply all of the major UN and Red Cross agencies with shelter and relief items for their prepositioned stocks, in addition to national humanitarian agencies across the globe. These stockpiles are supplemented by Alpinter’s own global warehouse network, with tents and core relief items strategically prepositioned in Belgium, UAE, Uganda, Pakistan and China to provide life saving emergency relief when disaster strikes. Our worldwide presence means we can dispatch emergency relief items to practically anywhere in the world, to be delivered within 48 hours.
