When a US state experienced fuel shortage along designated evacuation routes during a hurricane event, GRA Maven’s crisis management and logistic experts ran a project to identify the problems and develop strategies to mitigate to ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

Situation

One of the US states prone to hurricanes experienced a disruption of fuel supply along designated evacuation routes during such a storm. The disruption caused significant delays for evacuating ahead of the storm and potentially placed citizens within danger areas.

Action

The client needed a thorough assessment of the causes of the fuel shortage and retail stations to support the evacuation efforts. GRA Maven was brought in to charter, oversee and run a project to identify the problems and develop mitigation strategies. GRA Maven, using vast logistical emergency management planning experience, ran the full life cycle of the project to collect and analyze data in order to develop strategies and recommendations aimed at mitigating the issue during future disasters. Each critical component of the distribution process was explored in great detail. The data was refined and illustrated how each node in the process could both improve or destabilize the network.

Outcome

The client was better postured for future hurricane events based upon GRA Maven’s recommendations focused on rack to retail fuel operations, distribution velocity to retail fuel locations and an update on existing infrastructure during emergency evacuation operations. Key recommendations had significant impact at low cost. These included focusing coordination and targeting procurement efforts of key retailers along the evacuation route and continuing to expand industry and state cooperation before, during and after a hurricane event. By implementing these strategies and other recommendations, the conditions are set to enable evacuations during future hurricane events.