A ten man TR disaster response team has been activated to respond to areas affected by the flooding in Vermont. The team of military veterans will rally with Norwich University cadets tomorrow afternoon, plug themselves into the local EOC, and determine a response. The team is being led by former US Army Warrant Officer JC McGreehan, a veteran of TR’s mission to Tuscaloosa, AL after the devastating tornadoes. More to follow.
UPDATE: Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley paid a visit to the residents of Whiskey Creek Road this morning to survey the damage. According to TheBaynet.com a coordinated cleanup effort is in the works in addition to funds from the county’s reserve to aid in the costs.
Well, eighteen months ago, I left southern Maryland after an earthquake and linked up with Team Rubicon for disaster relief. Today, I’ve come back to southern Maryland after an earthquake and linked up with Team Rubicon for disaster relief again. The wheel has apparently come full circle…
To be completely accurate, Team Rubicon wasn’t doing earthquake relief this time. And, while Hurricane Irene got all the press coverage, Team Rubicon was responding to a disaster that had slipped past the headlines. Apparently, along with flooding, high winds, and so forth, hurricanes can also spawn tornadoes, one of which touched down in a southern Maryland neighborhood early this morning. While I was getting to work in the local emergency department this morning, TR was assembling a rapid-response team to conduct tornado relief efforts only twenty minutes from my ambulance bay. And by the time I got done with my shift, TR volunteers and local citizens had already cleared the roadway so emergency vehicles could get through, checked the neighborhood for any additional casualties, and begun assisting individual residents with recovery and cleanup efforts. I showed up with only a few hours of daylight left, and set to work chainsawing through two-foot-thick trees alongside TR volunteers from as close as next door and as far away as Los Angeles. They were there because they wanted to help, they had contacted TR to make it known that they were available to help, and TR had guided them to a place where their help was absolutely needed. People talk about flat organizational structures and applied social networking and multiplatform digital communications. The bottom line is that TR continues to “bridge the gap” by leading the right people to the right places with the right equipment — as in this case, getting the job done and moving on to the next mission before any of the more traditional disaster response organizations even knew that a response was required.
A couple of other things caught my attention while I was playing lumberjack this evening. For starters, it turns out that tornadoes don’t just knock trees over. Apparently a passing tornado can TWIST trees until they break like shredded Twizzlers, and then drop the broken pieces on nearby cars or houses. That’s a sobering realization, and it made me extraordinarily glad that the extent of my personal storm damage was a lot of leaves on my deck and some fallen cantaloupes in my garden. More to the point, as far as I know, other than the people who had been affected by this tornado, nobody even knew about this tornado as late as 8 o’clock this morning. But by 10AM, TR had volunteers and equipment moving towards the site, and by 10PM, the most critical recovery operations were already completed. Honestly, it was sort of like a flash mob, only with chainsaws. And doing something useful. That is a really interesting idea in crisis response management.
Most importantly, from my perspective, TR was “coming home” with today’s mission. I live in Virginia, but I’ve been a part of this community in southern Maryland for two and a half years. Saint Mary’s Hospital, the local facility where I work, donated lifesaving supplies for TR’s Haitian earthquake response. MEP, the local company I work for, paid my bills while I was deployed with TR on that very first relief mission. Local residents followed TR’s rescue efforts via emails and Facebook posts before there was even a TR website, supported the team with cash and media and prayers, and have been a quiet foundation of support for TR in general, and for me as a TR volunteer in particular, for as long as TR has been in existence. So I was profoundly grateful that I was able to take part (even in a very small way) as TR “bridged the gap” here in southern Maryland today. A lot of different faith traditions talk about giving and receiving as a cyclical process. In the first verse of the eleventh chapter from the book of Ecclesiastes this Sunday, I read a familiar scripture: “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days.” I like to think that TR’s work here today was in some ways a returning of the continuing generosity of spirit that has been shown by this community here in southern Maryland. I hope that emergency response on a larger scale is never needed here — but after today, I am confident that if it is needed, TR is just as ready and able to help here as anywhere else in the world where they are needed.
Mark Hayward, US Army Veteran
TR's DC team helps clear a home from downed trees in Hollywood, MD. Left to right: Ben, John (homeowner), Team Leader Nicole Green, Liz, Dave, and Thomas Hudson
Thankfully, for the most part, emergency services were not overwhelmed due to Hurricane Irene. The TR Washington DC team did respond to a tornado that swept through Hollywood, MD. Reflection and photo to follow. TR remains on standby and is monitoring flooding in Vermont, assessing the need for a response after the waters recede.
Hurricane Irene is continuing to move towards NC. Should it make landfall, Team Rubicon’s East Coast team is on standby to respond as needed and assist local authorities. Additional teams are on standby in DC, New York City, and in New England.
KU student featured in Time magazine cover story
By George Diepenbrock, Lawrence Journal World
August 24, 2011
When Howard “Ford” Sypher, left the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment after five combined deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq, he knew he was in for an adjustment.
He returned to life as a Kansas University student and joined the ranks of a new generation of veterans leaving their military lives from the often stressful and dangerous periods of two difficult wars.
“When you’re out, you’re out. No one is there to say here’s your next step,” said Sypher, 25, who returned as a KU junior in global studies. “It’s just you, and you’ve left this overarching organization that’s fed, clothed, paid you and given you a mission your country dictated. You’ve kind of lost that self worth. To that extent, it’s almost like losing a family.”
But now Sypher, who attended Raintree Montessori School and Southwest Junior High before moving with his family, says he and other combat veterans have found a way to help fill that void by working with Team Rubicon, a nongovernmental organization disaster relief program co-founded by another KU graduate, William McNulty, a Marine.
Sypher, Team Rubicon and other veterans and similar organizations are featured in the current issue of Time magazine’s cover story by Joe Klein, “The New Greatest Generation,” about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans using their leadership lessons at home.
Sypher has found his skills to be useful in assisting with disaster relief for the spring tornadoes in Alabama and he helped orchestrate Team Rubicon’s response to the Joplin, Mo., tornado.
“We kind of feel like that’s our niche,” said Sypher who says combat veterans generally can thrive in the chaotic situations in the aftermath of a disaster.
Rich Young, a firefighter with Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical and former U.S. Navy petty officer 3rd class, assisted Team Rubicon in Joplin and is pictured in a photo with Sypher in the Time story.
Sypher is also preparing to direct the foundation for Team Rubicon in the Kansas City area. He hopes to pursue a career either in public service or the medical field and said he was proud to be associated with Klein’s article, but he said the story was also a reminder about work ahead.
“People are coming back with skills that they would have never had otherwise,” he said. “We have a very large trained group of men and women, and we need to get them back in the work force to some degree. They’re coming back with skills no one has.”
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The Next Greatest Generation
By Joe Klein, TIME Magazine
Thursday, August 18, 2011
In a way, I’ve been working on this week’s cover story–which sadly resides behind the Time paywall–for the past five years, as I’ve embedded with our troops downrange. Watching them in the field, I’ve noticed that they’ve had to learn some new and unusual skills–skills that are extremely well-suited for public service.
We hear a lot about the troops who come home suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder; we hear about the suicides and domestic violence. We hear about the unemployment and homelessness. All of which is sad and true But there’s another side to the story…
(PHOTOS: Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan Bring Their Leadership Skills Home)
Take John Gallina and Dale Beatty, for example. They were best friends in the the North Carolina national guard–and they nearly died together when their humvee was blown up by an anti-tank mine. Dale lost both his legs; John suffered a traumatic brain injury. When the local homebuilders association offered to build Dale a home, both John and Dale helped out–and found real satisfaction in the work. They decided to start building homes for other handicapped veterans–and Purple Heart Homes was born.
I spent the past few months traveling around the country, finding veterans who are using the skills they learned in Iraq and Afghanistan for the betterment of their communities. Any given rifle company Captain had to be, in effect, the mayor of a town in Iraq or Afghanistan–and had to develop political skills like the ability to deal with local shuras [councils of elders], the ability to find out from the local population what sort of construction projects they favored, the ability to put people to work on those projects with a minimum of fuss…as well as the ability to make important decisions under incredible pressure.
Some of them are Rhodes Scholars and graduates of elite universities. Former Army Captain Wes Moore, a phi beta kappa graduate of Johns Hopkins went back to his home town of Baltimore, and there started a mentoring program for first-time offenders between the ages of 8 and 12 in Baltimore. Some, like Marine Sergeants Jake Wood and William McNulty, have taken their ability to keep a cool head in chaotic circumstances and used it to create Team Rubicon, which provides medical logistics in the midst of disasters like the Haiti earthquake and the Joplin, Mo., tornado. Former Marine Captain Brian Stann–an ultimate fighting middleweight contender–runs an employment agency for veterans called Hire Heroes. The Center for New American Security, one of the most creative national security think tanks in Washington, is mostly staffed by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Some are running for office; others eventually will–and they will bring to public life the pragmatism, intellectual rigor and decision-making ability they learned overseas. They represent a minority of the veterans coming home, but they are already a significant force–General David Petraeus believes they’ll become the “the next great generation of American leaders.”
They certainly bring home a history of service and sacrifice that most Baby Boomers have not had, and a sense of pride and accomplishment that our Vietnam veterans never experienced. No matter what you think about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, their service and the leadership qualities they bring home may be the best news to come out of the past 10 years of conflict. They are some of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met.
StayClassy, a leader in social fundraising for nonprofits, announced Team Rubicon as one of the 3rd Annual CLASSY Awards Top 25 Finalists for two categories: Charity of the Year and Best New Charity. StayClassy and their sponsors are offering more than $150,000 to CLASSY Award Winners.
Voting takes just one minute, but your vote will go a long way in helping us fulfill our mission to aid disaster victims while engaging veterans. From now until August 26, Team Rubicon supporters can visit www.classyawards.org and vote for TR to be named a CLASSY award winner for both Charity of the Year and Best New Charity.
The CLASSY Awards are the largest philanthropic awards ceremony in the country, recognizing the most outstanding philanthropic achievements by charities, businesses and individuals nationwide. More than 2,000 nominations were submitted to StayClassy for consideration. After a vetting process, StayClassy posted each nomination as an article on the CLASSY Awards Achievements Blog (www.stayclassy.org/stories) to put a national spotlight on amazing philanthropic stories. TR Nation rallied to generate over 200 Facebook ‘Likes’ on our nomination to qualify us for the judging round. Out of thousands of nominations, the judges narrowed the list down to the Top 25 most inspiring and impactful in each category.
The Top 10 Finalists will be determined by public vote and announced on August 30th. The winners will be recognized live on-stage at the Oscars-style CLASSY Awards ceremony in San Diego on September 17th. Team Rubicon co-founders, Jake Wood and William McNulty are featured speakers at the event.
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