While much of the country watched Hurricane Ike last week with a mix of anxiety and terror, Joseph Molinaro watched it with business and humanitarian interests.
Molinaro, product development director for Irvine-based Relief Pod International LLC, is in the disaster relief business.
The company makes the Relief Pod, a floatable stretcher that is stocked with survival supplies. It’s designed to aid in a natural disaster, such as a hurricane or earthquake.
After years of research and development, the company is stalking its first sale.
Relief Pod hopes to sell the pods to local governments, aid agencies, such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent, and government agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We think it can be very successful,” said Paul C. Musco, president of Relief Pod.
Musco is the nephew of Sebastian “Paul” Musco, chairman of Santa Ana-based Gemini Industries Inc. and a local philanthropist.
Gemini’s Musco is backing the company.
Paul Musco declined to disclose how much his uncle has invested. He said the company should break even when it sells about 5,000 pods, which cost $2,500 apiece. The company is aiming to sell 10,000 this year.
Paul Musco said his uncle was sold on the pod’s novelty and its humanitarian niche, which is aligned with the family’s philanthropic endeavors.
The company’s principals contend that if the Relief Pod had been available to disaster responders during Hurricane Katrina, there may not have been as many people waiting for rescue on rooftops or people floating on pieces of wood in polluted water. The pods may have saved a number of people from drowning, they said.
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The nephew of Sebastian “Paul” Musco is behind a maker of disaster relief kits. |
The floating stackable pods, which weigh 70 pounds empty and 200 pounds stocked, have airtight and waterproof storage. The Relief Pod stores enough supplies to support 12 people for six days. Supplies include food, a tent, a shovel, first aid, blankets, gloves and a simple water purifying system.
The pods come with an instruction card.
“We’ve never seen anything like Relief Pod before,” said Walker Hardy, research associate for Washington D.C.-based Transportable Infrastructures for Develop-ment and Emergency Support, a think tank that seeks out the best disaster relief products and methods for aid organizations.
“We think it’s especially great because it floats and is air tight,” he said.
The pod has many potential uses: It could float electronic equipment to a destination; become a waiting area for wounded people at crowded hospitals; be strapped together to form a barge; or be used as a diving platform to perform water rescues.
Another major advantage of the pod: It has wheels and a handle that makes it roll like a wheelbarrow, which makes it easy to move.
Relief Pod contracts with South Deerfield, Mass.-based Hardigg Industries Inc., which makes protective cases for the military, to manufacture the pods.
Molinaro is in the process of patenting the Relief Pod.
The product is an idea that came out of an emerging markets class where Molinaro studied product design at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia.
Molinaro’s study group designed the pod to aid flood victims in developing countries, patterning it off needed disaster relief in the 2000 Mozambique floods.
The pod won an award in the International Design Excellence Awards competition in 2003, sponsored by BusinessWeek and the Industrial Designers Society of America.
After college, Molinaro started a product design business in Chicago and set out to revive the pod. He went shopping for investors and through mutual friends he met Musco.
Now the partners are working to get their product in front of the right people to secure contracts with government agencies.
“It takes a long time for a product to be well known enough for people to use it,” Hardy of Transportable Infrastructures said.
Hardy’s organization has been helping Relief Pod get exposure, which includes attending disaster preparedness exercises around the world.
Hardy invited Molinaro to an earthquake preparedness drill in Honduras, where the pod was well received.
The aid industry has its own trade shows, where Relief Pod sets up a booth.
Molinaro has taken the pods to storm sites to aid in relief efforts and to make the product known.
“Once it’s out there and people see it in action, it will certainly catch on,” Musco said.
