Tore Knos (rotarytore@gmail.com), of the Playa Venice Sunrise Rotary Club, is a board member of Disaster Aid USA, a Rotary project. He is a Past President of the North Atlanta Rotary Club. He has a PhD in Public Administration from the University of Georgia, and is also a certified master plumber (practical hands-on experience). He has traveled in Asia, Panama, Mexico, Sweden and Costa Rica, and speaks English, Swedish and Spanish. In 2013 he hiked the 2178 mile Appalachian Trail through 14 states over 5½ months as a Rotary fundraiser.
Disaster Aid USA is a non-profit corporation established in 2010 in Washington, DC, by the former Central Maryland/Washington DC ShelterBox USA team. Its Board of Directors are all active Rotarians representing every Rotarian Zone in the US, 1/3 of them standing for reelection each year. Tore Knos represents Rotary Zone 26, as well as being a Disaster Aid Response Team member.
Tore presented photos from his personal experience as a member of the Response Team in disaster aid work in South Sudan (refugees from ethnic cleansing warfare), Philippines (typhoon), and Malaysia (catastrophic flooding), illustrating the disaster conditions there and the Rotarian response delivering aid to these affected people. They provided Rotarian-designed disaster tents large enough for 10 people, plus water filtration and other emergency equipment and supplies to prevent infectious diseases and starvation where local infrastructure had been destroyed.
Tore showed “Sawyer Point One” water filter bucket-adapter kit, packaged in a plastic envelope. These kits allow converting a bucket (not included) into a water filter with a 0.1 µm hollow-fiber membrane that can remove infectious viruses, bacteria and parasites (although not chemicals). The kit includes a drill to make a hole near the bottom of the bucket (allowing space beneath for sedimentation), and a water-tight adapter to fit a small hose from this opening to the filter. The filter is turned on by holding it below the bucket so that filtered water pours out, and turned off by hanging it onto the upper edge of the bucket. This bucket filter can be set up in minutes and can supply a household with safe clean drinking water, which is in scarce supply after a disaster.