Water wizards take tsunami victims filtration gear, water

By Ray Weiss
Staff Writer
Daytona Beach News Journal

Port Orange - The images of thousands of lives wiped out in an instant by a giant wall of water still shake Steve Dann. "I was overwhelmed and humbled," he said of last months tsunami that devastated coastlines of nations along the Indian Ocean. "We take for granted so much, like how precious our time here is."

On his desk at Eagle Spring Filtration on Tuesday was a three-stage water purification system designed for disaster relief that his firm developed about eight years ago. Dann, 56, was set to board an airplane Tuesday night in Jacksonville that will transport up to 1,000 of those portable purification systems, as well as medical supplies and equipment, food and clothing, to Sri Lanka, one of the nations hit hardest by the Tsunami.

America's Heart, a Christian relief group in Jacksonville, organized and sponsored the trip, and Wellsprings of Life International in Holly Hill, a charitable group, helped raise funds for some of the portable filters that cost about $50 each.

William Henry, who oversees faith-based America's Heart, said the nonprofit group bought and donated the merchandise headed to Sri Lanka, including a small coastal town where a children's home was devasted, but the boys and girls somehow survived.

Dann's filtering systems can make 5 gallons of undrinkable water drinkable in two hours. "This is the second layer after using bottled water," he said for countries in immediate need of clean drinking water. "We'll be distributing them in Colombo, the capital. I was asked to go and train people. Some of the America's Heart team will go out to the devasted areas and stay.

Dann expects to return home Friday, but trip organizers said it might be longer, depending on the availability of flights back. "We developed the purification systems for Third World countries," he said. "But they have caught on as relief items secondarily."

Dann has helped out following natural disasters in Africa, South and Central America, and the Caribbean. But nothing compares with the tsunami damage, not even the flooding in Ecuador several years ago.

"That was a regional devastation. Nothing like this," Dann said. "This is the worst disaster we've ever been involved with. It's unbelievable."

ray.weiss@news-jrnl.com
Staff Writer Michael Reed contributed to this report.