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Todd Albi"When the hurricane hit, I wanted to do something," says Todd Albi, proprietor of SilverFire Disaster and Recreation Stoves in Eugene. "FEMA was sending generators to Puerto Rico, but no fuel." Albi asked his wife Linda, a supervisor in the UO's Special Education Program, to contact a sister university program in Puerto Rico, then loaded a pallet with 45 SilverFire Hunter stoves. The Hunter is an efficient top lit updraft (TLUD) stove powered by twigs or any flammable biomass. When the stoves arrived in December, he flew to the island to assemble a team of stove trainers to deliver the stoves to families with disabilities. "The trainers were so dedicated," he says. "I worked with them and the families." Albi spent five years in the Navy with the SEAL Team before moving to Eugene in 1980. He was the first-ever UO graduate in fitness management, but went on to a 25-year career in pharmaceutical sales. "And I've always done metal and wood fabrication," he notes. "I built colored telephone booths all around Eugene." The Aprovecho Research Center in Cottage Grove hired him in 2007 as a consultant in their rocket stove program, aimed at bringing clean-burning stoves to third-world countries. He launched the StoveTec line of stoves and visited China to assess its market potential. "I went to Chinese factories," he says. "All their stoves had secondary combustion chambers." When Apro backed out of a deal with one of the factories, Albi started SilverFire to honor the agreement. The SilverFire store at 2472 Willamette Street now carries a full line of high-tech stainless steel stoves with secondary combustion chambers, from backpacking models to the pizza oven seen in the photo, designed to resemble a phone booth. See them online at silverfire.us.
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