By Stas Margaronis, AJOT In September a Chilean school that was devastated  by the February earthquake celebrated the arrival of a containerized housing unit  from the United States that might not have arrived without the help of shipping executives from the Chilean ocean carrier CSAV and  a team of Chilean and  U.S. Rotarians. Back in April, Ricardo Waidele, senior commercial advisor for Compania SudAmericana de Vapores (CSAV) based in Santiago, Chile received a call from logistics executive Pedro Costas, a member of the La Reina Alta Rotary Club, also in Santiago, asking CSAV to help transport the donated container unit from the Port of Oakland to Chile. In Penngrove, California, north of San Francisco,  Dan Snitchler, a Poulsbo, Washington-based Rotarian was supervising the construction of  a 310 square foot housing unit inside a standard forty-foot sea-going container being built to help Chilean earthquake victims. The  Penngrove construction site belongs to Dolan Trucking where the president of the company, Tom Barndal, was also the president of the nearby Petaluma Rotary Club. Lowes, the building supply chain, was providing materials at a discount for the Chilean project from its Cotati, California facility. The problem was that the container donor group had been told by a Northern California freight forwarder  that no carrier would ship the container on its ship because the unit lacked a standardized classification. The unit contained a kitchen, bathroom, storage space, and  two rooms that were unacceptable for loading, the forwarder said.  Officials at the U.S. Embassy at Santiago  said they were  unable to assist because of jurisdictional and regulatory reasons. The U.S. group reached out to a Chilean Rotary Club where they made contact with  Vladimir Salvo, an accountant and member of the La Reina Alta Club in Santiago. Salvo, president Manuel Perez, John Bolton Rotary’s Lieutenant Governor  and club members  agreed to  receive the container and deploy it as part of the group’s effort  to assist in the reconstruction of a school  at the village of Barba Rubia, south of Santiago. Most of the Barba Rubia school had been severely damaged by the earthquake and so  the school children had been moved to a temporary structure behind the damaged buildings. When Salvo learned about the shipping problem, he asked Pedro Costas to contact CSAV so as to help the North Americans  find a freight forwarder,  meet the shipping requirements  and expedite loading the container on the next available CSAV ship leaving Oakland  bound for Chile. So when CSAV’s Ricardo Waidale received the call for help, he in return  contacted Pedro Silva, a U.S. based CSAV executive who is  assistant vice president for trade. Silva was asked him to take responsibility for finding a freight forwarder in the Port of Oakland. Silva contacted CSAV’s Los Angeles office and asked  Paul Chen to take charge of the logistics effort and Chen, in turn contacted Sea Shipping Line in Oakland, a freight forwarder, which agreed to handle the paper work and deliver the container to the port of Oakland. At Sea Shipping Line, Hernanado Narvaez  was given the responsibility to work with the Penngrove group to get the exact description, items, values and weight of the container unit properly accounted for in the bill of lading.  Meanwhile, Paul Chen arranged for a space onboard a CSAV vessel that was departing Oakland in May, 2010. At the same time, the Chileans worked with their government officials to ensure that the container would enter Chile as a donation and not be subject to customs duties. On May 11, 2010, the Chilean consul in San Francisco, Alex Geiger, drove up to Dolan Trucking in Penngrove where he officiated at a ceremony expressing Chile’s appreciation for the U.S. efforts building and donating the container unit for earthquake relief. The next day the unit was trucked off to the Port of Oakland and arrived in Chile in June. The Chileans also benefited from a donation of $1,000 from the Pet