Industrial Object's Amphibious Emergency Vehicle (AEV) In 2005, Katrina, a category 3 hurricane, hit an "evacuated" gulf coast and took the lives of 1835* innocent people, 100 or more are still missing. This was the worst flooding disaster to hit the US in 100 years. Unfortunately, flooding is both the most common natural disaster and the primary killer during hurricanes. *The total may never be known due to the displacement of 2 million people after the storm. 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 Introducing the Amphibious Rescue vehicle and barge system.   We challenged ourselves to provide an amphibious vehicle and payload system for municipalities and first responders who are immobilized during storms and floods with existing emergency vehicles. Industrial Object's Amphibious Emergency Vehicle (AEV) is a "Land or Water EMS Transport System" providing total EMS access and support during storm or flood events. Unlike converted cars made to float, we have assembled a purpose built, life saving amphibian including a payload barge system.   We will initially make this available to the municipal EMS, police and fire fighters since they are helpless, but responsible for delivering their life saving services to storm ravaged, flood stranded citizens. Industrial Object's AEV provides a solution by applying our unique expertise in high performance marine design. It is a national disgrace when our world class system of emergency responders is made immobile during the most common disasters of floods and storms. The past decade of relatively quiet hurricane seasons have allowed an unprecedented population shift toward the vulnerable eastern and gulf coast. A storm striking anywhere along the Continental US coast will impact millions of people where just a few years ago there was hardly anyone living there.   Our first responders are just that, first "in" after a disaster to save lives. However, without the vehicles and tools to allow them mobility in a flooded region, the loss of life as shown in the tragedy of Katrina will be repeated, again and again.       'Disaster' professor adds Katrina to list When Professor Emil Pocock handed out the syllabus on the first day of class in History 327 last week, it wasn't yet clear whether it would need revision Pocock, who grew up outside of Catonsville and graduated from the University of Maryland, has been a professor of American Studies at the college in Willimantic for 18 years, and started the class on American disasters four years ago "How will Hurricane Katrina rank among the deadliest natural disasters in America? You're not going to get a definitive count, or anything close to it, probably for a few weeks. Bodies will continue to be discovered all over the place - down the river, washing up on shore, under debris. And then, there will be the additional number of people who die of diseases directly associated with the storm, like typhus or typhoid, and their deaths may not be recorded as such for some time. There may not ever be a definitive tally. Will it go down as worse than the Galveston hurricane? The hurricane in Galveston in 1900 is not a bad one to compare to this one, though Galveston was a much smaller city. It probably suffered more damage than New Orleans. There, the storm surge just raged right across Galveston, which sat on an island. Houses weren't flooded, they were swept away and Galveston ended up as a huge pile of lumber at the far end of the island. In New Orleans, this was the original fear - that it would be completely overwhelmed by storm surge. That didn't happen. ... The problems began when the levees breached. Can the argument be made then that most natural disasters aren't totally natural? That is an important distinction. The hurricane or the earthquake or the flood is a natural event that's going to come in any case, but ... what makes it a disaster is that human beings have gotten in the way of nature. New Orleans was founded in 1718, because it was strategically located at the mouth of a river. It was on low ground - below sea level - and subject to periodic flooding, but people understood that flooding was a nearly annual event and they prepared for it. The problem is when you start building levees, and keeping the water back, and you become dependent on huge pumps to keep the city dry, when a breach comes or the pumps break down, the city is going to be flooded. Most "natural disasters" are not entirely natural. In some cases, in every case, really, there is a portion of human responsibility. So if people weren't living there, it wouldn't be a disaster? If there were no New Orleans there, we wouldn't have had a disaster there. It may not be reasonable to use that as a criticism and say, "Oh, you stupid people," but that is the reason why there's a disaster. ... People build in places they know are vulnerable. People who build their houses on barrier islands, for instance, they're just asking for it. Within their lifetime, a hurricane is going to come and it is going to wipe out their house. Yet they build, and rebuild, anyway. Should New Orleans be rebuilt? We can say the city was in the wrong place, but we can't move it. It's a port city, a city of commerce, a historical city. I have no doubt they're going to rebuild it and the Army Corps of Engineers will say the way to fix it is to build the levees higher, meaning the next time it happens, it will only be worse.

For more information about Industrial Object or the projects shown, call 985-893-2432 or E-mail me at: dccd@industrialobject.com All designs are copyright Industrial Object, LLC. 2008.