Dive Brief:
- Amazon has opened a temporary pickup location in the parking lot of a Wilmington, North Carolina, Whole Foods Market to help residents displaced or still flooded by Hurricane Florence and relief organizations to receive packages at no additional cost, reported DC Velocity.
- The site consists of an Amazon Prime delivery van, a tent and some staff. It will operate until October 14.
- The firm CoreLogic has priced the total damage caused by Florence across South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia at $28.5 billion, according to CNN, estimating North Carolina has taken $22 billion of those losses.
Dive Insight:
Hurricane Florence disrupted parcel deliveries nationwide, but it is the areas directly affected by the storm that are still not back to normal as flood waters have not completely receded in some places.
"We are now down to 83 road closures from #FlorenceNC after more than 1,600 during the height of the storm," the North Carolina Department of Transportation tweeted Monday morning.
Wilmington has an Amazon Locker pickup location, but the company informed potential customers on its website that these locations are often full, and the storm has left many homes unreachable by parcel carriers.
In addition to the pop-up, Amazon told DC Velocity that it had also sent in 30 trucks with more than 600,000 disaster relief items donated by the company.
Amazon is far from the only company to step up in response to Florence. The American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN) has been matching donated warehouse, transportation and other supply chain services with companies in need for weeks. UPS and Norfolk Southern have both made sizable donations to support hurricane recovery.
And just as the storm was hitting, Elisabeth Barna, chief operating officer and executive vice president of industry affairs at the American Trucking Associations, told Supply Chain Dive that her office had been flooded with calls from truck drivers wanting to volunteer to help with storm response and recovery.
