The initial motivation to build this lifesaving vehicle presented itself in the most tragic way. We lost our cousin, her husband and two young children in Bay St Louis, Mississippi during Katrina. They drowned holding onto each other in the kitchen of their flooding brick home. The horrific storm surge took their lives along with 1835 other innocent people who died during Hurricane Katrina. Many of these lives could have been saved if the police, rescue workers and first responders had any safe amphibious vehicles during the evacuation and after this most common of coastal natural disasters.

Almost as a catharsis I began to interview the many officers, firemen and EMS workers made heroes in those dark days following Katrina. You could sense the frustration, I never realized the difficulty they faced in accessing flooded areas, the enormity of the crisis. With boats in New Orleans you could only go so far, as deep as the flooding was the entire area was segmented by raised land ridges and railroad tracks. Imagine trying to rescue hundreds of people by ferrying them from one high spot of ground to another. You might have to overcome or "portage" a dozen of these transfers to go across town. The first social breakdown was any semblance of civil order, the bad, and the addicted quickly realized they were not likely to be pursued or even confronted by cops too busy with saving themselves and trying to get to those less fortunate. The resulting anarchy and gunfire stopped helicopters and firefighters in their mission increasing the plight of the vulnerable and surely the number of deaths.

Since the storm I have spread the word out that there is a solution, an answer to preventing this tragedy from happening again in the form of a simple amphibious emergency vehicle. I have recently presented the 829 to the NSARC at USCG HQ in DC, it was well received and we are proceeding with offering it to the many SAR agency's. We are rapidly completing the demonstrator for launch in Summer 2008 and have been encouraged by a few local municipalities who see the importance of this development and what it will mean to the next flood refugee on a rooftop.

David Carambat