The Disaster Relief Network's Airport Emergency Team working at Sri Lanka's Bandaranaike International Airport is avoiding the logjams that have blocked relief distribution efforts after other disasters in the past. Once invited in by the United Nations and the Sri Lankan government, one of the DRN's first moves was to meet with a contractor already on the ground working on the second phase of a development project at the airport. It was looking for ways to ramp-up cargo handling operations.
Stewart Richie, a member of consulting engineers team on the airport project, a joint venture of Japan Airport Consultants Inc., and Nippon Koei, in an e-mail exchange, explains the airport's problem with handling mass amounts of aircraft and cargo. "There is a lack of apron space, therefore a serious need to unload aircraft quickly and clear the apron for more incoming flights," he says. The time required to directly transfer cargo to trucks, which were already in short supply, would compound the problem. "My immediate thoughts were to use the nearly completed cargo building as a holding center," Richie says. "We had a nearly complete cargo building capable of 100,000 tonnes per annum, sitting almost ready for use. "