Emergencies

HoverAid has operated hovercraft under the difficult conditions imposed by natural disasters, where emergency relief work is required. In both 2000 and 2001 HoverAid hovercraft were made available for work in East Africa following excessive rainfall associated with cyclones making landfall from the Indian Ocean.

Hovercraft from the US and Japanese military were used in Indonesia as landing craft following the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and HoverAid was on standby to deploy for nearly a month.

Severe flooding – either from water running off the land into the sea, or tidal waves running the other way - can remove bridges and coastal roads. Villages are often strung out along the coastal strip, or hug rivers and lagoons so in flood scenarios many jetties, and the boats using them get destroyed and communities, which had road and water transport, find themselves with none.

Hovercraft can reach 70% of the world’s coastlines so relief aid can still get through.

Floods often bring mud, which makes helicopter operations difficult, as landing can be risky. With vast quantities of debris, silt, and detritus stirred up in the water it becomes dark and warms up depriving boats with water-cooled outboard engines of adequate cooling which leads to engine failure. River channels become hidden under the floodwater and obstacles such as blown down trees and buildings become underwater hazards for boat propellers. Hovercraft remain unaffected by these problems and so have a significant advantage.

Perversely during floods it is often a lack of suitable drinking water that is the biggest problem, in combination with a lack of shelter which follows a cyclone, dehydration due to exposure can become acute. Furthermore waterborne diseases rapidly escalate amongst groups of people forced to shelter on what higher ground remains. In these circumstances simple water purification sets and basic materials for providing shelter can save lives. Madagascar is regularly hit by cyclones and HoverAid will draw on its past experience to enable relief agencies to improve their effectiveness as and when these events occur again.