Out of Thin Air

Zwebner continues: "Now, you're a guy, you're sitting there, God forbid you've lost your wife and kids. You're all on your own. The first thing you need is something to drink. A week goes by, you haven't had a shower, you stink, you're sticky, the temperature's a hundred degrees, you have no home, you're sleeping on the beach. You want to take a shower. How are you going to take a shower? You can't. What are you going to do, take a water bottle and go like this? Then another bottle? And one to shampoo and one more? Hygiene becomes a problem. When hygiene becomes a problem, disease sets in. And then you start getting all these itchy diseases and eventually you get desperate, you start drinking whatever you can, and then you get into typhoid and malaria and diphtheria.

Thirteen donated Air Water machines are now on the ground in Sri Lanka, he reports. That may be seven short of the twenty he announced would be shipped "immediately" in his January 3 press release, but again -- who's counting? Zwebner certainly isn't. He's too preoccupied with finding new ways to make the most of the tsunami. Four machines are in Thailand and one in India, all under "review" by government officials, he claims.

Though Air Water's chief executive may be thoroughly immersed in the South Asia disaster, his attention may soon be drawn back to domestic affairs. Last week inventor James Reidy announced that Zwebner had failed to make the $10,000 royalty payments for four consecutive months. A six-week process for terminating his contract with Zwebner ended February 1. "Whatever they say, they do not have any rights whatsoever to my patents," Reidy warns. "All I know for sure is that he cannot use or claim to be using my technology or my patents."

Even if Zwebner were to wire him $40,000 tomorrow, Reidy says he won't reconsider. "It's too late. I don't want to have anything to do with them." Already he's looking for a new group of investors and a new manufacturer to produce his miraculous machines.