28 October 2011

SUMMARY

Team Rubicon sent a small scout team to recon the earthquake disaster zones near Van Lake in eastern Turkey.  Transportation to these areas took almost 72 hours by air due to their relative isolation and austerity. By then most of the “emergency” had given way to a controlled government response.  There were gaps in certain areas of the response, but some were either too specific to address (toilets,OB/GYN) and others were endemic (faulty construction, lack of organization).  While on the ground it was the scout team’s mission to provide an honest assessment of the situation, and call for mobilization of a full team should it be deemed necessary.  While the scout team saw no such need, they worked to fill the gaps in response that they could address.  They helped set up tents for the injured, searched the local villages for lapses in medical attention, conducted assessments of general camp conditions, and identified potential refugee camp disease processes.  All of these actions were conducted with heavy hearts as the true toll of the disaster unfolded. 

Team Rubicon maintains the highest state of alert for disasters such as these around the world, and continues to monitor developing crisis in an effort to Bridge the Gap should one be discovered.  As the scout team leader, it is my duty to deploy to such locations and it is with the greatest sorrow that I witness such human sufffering.  We at Team Rubicon, as well as Nathan and myself, will support the efforts of the Turkish government as they continue to rebuild and recover from the earthquake that destroyed so many lives.

ANALYSIS

The plane from Van to Ankara, Turkey was filled with so many people in orange and red jackets that for a moment I thought I was at a Texas v. A&M game (that’s a pretty obscure college football reference). The dog handlers, medical rescue, search-and-rescue, and paramedics were all headed back to their respective countries or regions of Turkey. Since “emergency services” were largely unnecessary, many of the most experienced personnel could now return home and rest. The SAR teams that remained in Ercis consisted of a large organization from Turkey called J.A.K mixed with locals who had shovels and wanted to help find the bodies of their friends or family and maybe recover some personal belongings among the rubble.

Any analysis of the Turkish earthquake response would need to address the key factors that played into the government’s initial announcement that they were denying international aid, and then subsequent announcement that they would accept foreign aid. These key components of the Turkish response were: Medical response, Search-and-Rescue (SAR) efforts, shelter/warmth, food/water.

Medical response

In the initial aftermath of the earthquake the hospital in Ercis was abandoned. The medical staff worked outside or in the local gymnasium, since it showed no signs of falling down and was 2 miles away from the downtown “epicenter”, whereas the hospital was directly in the epicenter. The Turkish government scrambled their helicopter assets to Ercis, and those badly injured were flown to the cities of Van or Erzezum. The Ercis city medical staff dealt with the first wave of injured, followed by the large E.M.U.T Organization staff that numbered close to a thousand. E.M.K.U took over the gymnasium and complimented those at the local hospital, which opened again 2 days after the quake. Anyone injured was stabilized in Ercis, and then driven or flown to Van depending on the severity of their injury. Follow-on medical staff, who could not speak turkish, lent a hand where they could. The medical need shifted late Wednesday night to Primary Care and “Camp-Care” (sanitation, toilet facilities maintenance). Team Rubicon’s scout team witnessed the non-turkish NGO community do the following: augmented the “camp clinic” during the nighttime hours, assisted in OB/GYN cases which required specialized care, flew in medical supplies from their host country, and conducting primary care.

Search-and-Rescue efforts

The pictures that everybody saw from the news on Sunday night consisted of local townspeople climbing through rubble to pull people out of their collapsed homes. That happened immediately after the 7.2 earthquake, and continued until the EMS system at Van could get to the scene. After conducting a damage assessment, Turkish EMS Coordinators sent the entire group to Ercis. In Ercis, the SAR teams took over and within 24 hours were conducting technical rescue. Within 48 hours the large A.K.U.T teams were in Ercis working frantically to discover anyone alive in the damaged buildings, and still pulling out living people. At the 48-hour mark the first non-turkish NGO’s from Europe arrived (Humedica) and they were augmenting the E.M.K.U medical staff in the camp clinics. At the 96-hour mark the Asian and American NGO’s arrived. This was due to their relative distances away from Turkey, as both teams had deployed Sunday when the earthquake first occurred. They flew in on the same flight, the first available from Istanbul, but soon realized that 96-hours into the recovery is simply too late to expect survivability. Although the occasional survivor was recovered at 72 hours, by 96 hours that expectation had dropped to nearly zero. By Wednesday night a person was miraculously pulled out of a collapse alive, but died while in the hospital. In regards to SAR, Team Rubicon’s scout team witnessed the non-turkish NGO community do the following: combine efforts to do a search of the local villages to identify any medical need that was overshadowed by the catastrophe in Ercis, conduct search through downtown looking for signs of imminent collapse caused by inclement weather.

Shelter/Warmth

After the earthquake everyone near the epicenter in downtown Ercis immediately left their homes. It was late October, a storm was on the horizon, and temperatures were dropping to freezing at night. The Turkish government mobilized the Red Crescent to send blankets, tents, and clothing to the affected earthquake areas. Those supplies were being handed out in a 500 person long line when the American and Japanese NGO’s first arrived. The people had, up until then, been camped out under tarps and plastic bags for the 72 hours following the initial earthquake. Hundreds of aftershocks had rumbled through the area and the Turks were in no rush to return to their homes. Tent cities had been built in the local soccer fields and were housing the majority of the cities inhabitants. From those tents, people could get updates, medical attention if necessary, and food. Team Rubicon conducted medical assessments in the two largest tent cities, looking to identify any untreated illness or injuries. The team was specifically looking for cold-weather injuries and bacterial/viral illness caused by the worsening weather and cramped conditions. After many hours in the camps Team Rubicon’s scout team identified the condition of camp patrons to be generally in good health. Team Rubicon members then assisted in the construction of the medical tents in the makeshift hospital.

Food/Water

Food and water were provided by the Red Crescent. They were distributed in the city center, tent camps, and at the hospitals. Red Crescent teams cooked large vats of hot soup and made bread for the city patrons and responders to eat. Much of the downtown of Ercis had been the shopping/dining district. With it destroyed, and with homes too dangerous to live in, all food and water needed to be brought in. There was ample supply, but while in the tent cities, we conducted cursory assessments of women and children looking for signs of malnutrition or dehydration. We saw no sign of either, but It appeared that the one glaring deficiency from the Red Crescent was the lack of toilet facilities. They had brought almost none, and now that people weren’t living in their houses, they couldn’t access their toilets. The camps stank as a result, and inquiries into the problem led nowhere. The European, American, and Japanese NGO’s quickly noticed this oversight, but could do nothing to solve the problem. This could become a problem in the coming weeks as disease could breed within the camps as a result of this oversight.

Josh Webster, Scout Team Leader

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Filed under: News, Turkey by William on October 30, 2011
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Scout Team leader Josh Webster has reported back to Team Rubicon HQ that further TR medical teams are unnecessary. After spending three days surveying Search and Rescue efforts and conducting medical reconnaissance in rural villages around Ercis and Van, Webster has also called a halt to further operations by the Scout Team and will be heading back the United States soon. We believe the outcome of this mission reflects the tremendous value that rapidly deployable scout teams bring to TR; they both negate the need to mobilize costly full teams when need is uncertain and act as medical reconnaissance when need is certain. While other organizations deployed full SAR and medical teams immediately, Team Rubicon was able to make a cost-effective assessment while still providing value in parts of the response.

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Filed under: Turkey by William on October 28, 2011
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27 October 2011

Team Rubicon’s scout team departed the city of Ercis in the morning. The local gymnasium had been converted into a makeshift hospital, and we had spent some time helping the Turkish EMS workers construct the tents that served as the individual “wards”. Inside these wards patients sat in beds with any range of illness or injury. A baby had a swollen wrist, and when she was X-ray’d I inspected the film with the radiologist. It appeared to be a minor bruise, nothing serious…she wasn’t even crying when we manipulated her hand. Another woman had a broken bone in her wrist, and we had called it from 50 feet away. My brother had just broken his wrist skateboarding and I had seen this 4 weeks earlier. The Turkish patient was walked back to the clinical ward, surrounded by a mob of nurses. All the while the domineering eyes of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stared down from the gigantic banners of him on either side of the gymnasium.

As we left Ercis we weighed the possible outcomes of what staying meant. We could have stayed, and like the other non-Turks tried desperately to find a gap to fill. We could have driven around to more of the countryside looking for patients, but with a working roadway and an abundance of vehicles, the chances that anyone hadn’t been driven into Ercis hospital by now was almost zero. We could have tried to get into a SAR site and been part of a group that dug out one of the collapsed buildings, but with the rotations continuing between Turkish SAR teams, and the timeframe, we would have been essentially condemning ourselves to “body recovery detail”. The J.A.K SAR teams had taken over from A.K.U.T and mostly were digging with shovels and pickaxes anyways. They slowly worked over buildings, mostly pulling out mementos and family heirlooms from where they used to live.

Back in Van we showered and decide to remain in place for another day. The storm in Ercis had not broken yet, and the rain would surely be weakening the walls of the structures that remained standing. Some were badly damaged, and leaning over to one side, making them look like a person standing on both feet with a hip “kicked out” to one side. Nathan and I knew that the storm could “soften” the cement, thus causing one to collapse. We arranged a flight home, but wanted to make sure that we weren’t leaving too soon either. While in Van we did a city search to find the rest of the destroyed buildings there but found only a few. It seemed that Ercis, while originally not reported as the main disaster site, had taken the brunt of the earthquake. Van was practically running at full capacity, while Ercis was completely shut down, and reliant on the Red Crescent for water and food. Nobody cooked in Ercis, except at makeshift fires outside their tents. In Ercis, they slept in tents just outside their homes, and they showed no signs of moving back in anytime soon.

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Filed under: Turkey by William on October 28, 2011
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26 October 2011

Snow covered the local mountain ranges, and sprinkled all the way down to the 7000 ft mark. Ercis sat just above 5000 ft, so we were spared from the snow for the time being. The rain came though, it swarmed through the refugee camps and became torrents that ran between every tent and food station. The morning trash dogs prowled through the debris from the previous 72 hours, searching for any food to eat, and early in the morning another baby was born in the makeshift clinic set up inside the local gymnasium.

The German medical team Humedica and Team Rubicon’s scout team (consisting of us two paramedics) decided to travel into the nearby Kurdish villages to follow up on reports that they had received no direct medical treatment yet. The older German surgeon warned me that communication was particularly bad in regards to intermingling the Turkish and non-Turkish medical staffs, but that it must be our duty, and these were his words, to “find a gap”. Those three words, so similar to the anthem of Team Rubicon, resonated in us as we headed out into the villages to make our medical assessment.

Red Crescent “camps” dotted the sides of the road near the larger villages where the villagers were too scared to sleep in their own houses, for fear of more aftershocks. Their fears were confirmed the night prior when a 15-second aftershock awoke everyone from their slumber. As we traveled through the small villages near Ercis it also became obvious how localized the earthquake actually was. Only the 10-city blocks in downtown Ercis seemed ruined. Everything else was either lightly damaged or not damaged at all. The small Kurdish village dwellings, built from mud and brick, stood resolute and firm against the dingy afternoon sky. The towns-folk pushed us further and further into the countryside looking for injured personnel. After a few hours we headed back to Ercis, confident that we had done a full sweep and encountered no acute injuries. We even helped a guy jump start his car, and I pushed another out the mud. All in a days work I guess.

At one of these makeshift “camps” we encountered – built on a football pitch – a mobile medical bus had arrived and was waiting for doctors to staff it. The medical bus coordinator assured us that we might be needed to treat patients, but the organizers at the larger camp earlier had told us the opposite. This was similar to what we had been told thus far by Turkish coordination officials. The medical coordinators told us to talk to the government officials, and the government officials told us to talk to the medical coordinators. Meanwhile the temperature outside was still dropping, and around noon it was a brisk 40 degrees. This particular camp seemed absolutely capable of running without us. The camp had tents for everyone, pallets of water bottles everywhere, food, bags of clothing, and security. The women of the camp were busying themselves with motherly duties, and even the kids were happy and warm. It seemed the Turkish had this area well under control as well.

Back at the larger Red Crescent camp we made our final 48-hour assessment. German Humedica, Japanese Tokushukai, and American Team Rubicon had run into the same road blocks when trying to help in Ercis.

• As far as Search-and-Rescue, the Turk’s had multiple teams ready to pick apart the buildings that lay in piles of rubble four days after the initial quake had knocked them down. The SAR manpower was overwhelming, with Turkish SAR teams leapfrogging work shifts in order to stay busy. Nobody was being pulled from the wreckage alive any longer, and the pace of work had slowed to a methodical recovery approach.
• Medically, there were mobile clinical buses sent from Istanbul that would practice Primary Care medicine in the aftermath of the earthquake. The injuries treated consisted of: aches and pains, general illness, childbirth issues, and accidents. None of these disease processes were earthquake related. There was no need for Emergency Medical Personnel any longer, those needs had been met in the first 48 hours after the earthquake. Now the city needed Turkish doctors and nurses who spoke the language and practiced by the customs that their medical system abided by.
• Logistically, it was difficult for anybody to “gain entry” into the Turkish EMS system. The government officials seemed willing to handle us like diplomats, which was a problem because everyone who came to help was a working medic. The medical and SAR teams preferred to work with their own people for multiple reasons and referred us all back to the local politicians. This lack of meaningful partnership was because: we weren’t paid workers rather volunteers, the initial government decision to forgo international aid was still resonating, we had never worked together before, and we didn’t speak Turkish. With as many Turks as they needed, foreigners were an afterthought.

So despite our efforts very few of the foreigners got any real chance to work. A German nurse saw a few patients but he said he could have easily not been there and any multitude of Turkish nurses standing by could have done the same job. The Japanese team began trash collecting in an attempt to be useful, and Nathan and I pushed a car out of the mud and jump-started another. The Humedica team and TR also had done a thorough localized sweep for injured villagers and found everyone healthy. The localization of the quake mitigated any external medical crisis.

We broke from camp and headed back into town to watch the SAR teams digging with shovels on top of destroyed buildings. Some were using cutting tools to get through the thick rebar and cement, others merely used their hands to sift through the broken cement. The town has still not returned to life, but people crowded the streets watching the workers, snapping pictures of their once beautiful downtown, and wondering when life would get back to normal.

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Filed under: Personal Reflections, Turkey by William on October 28, 2011
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25 October 2011

We awoke at 4:30 am and headed for the airport. Istanbul International Airport was a beehive of activity that early, and we talked strategy as we checked our bags and headed to our gate. While waiting for out plane we ran into a medical relief team from Japan. Their organization was called Tokushukai and they hailed from many different cities across their country. They consisted of a few doctors, a few nurses, and a pharmacist. We spoke about where the camp was in Van, and what arrangements anyone had set up. It was a relief to learn that they, like us, had very little intelligence and very little plan. We exchanged information and promised to meet up if we could. They also politely informed us that the backs of our uniform shirts had Japanese writing on them. The words that were written translated as “Military Medic”. I don’t think that was intention when these shirts were printed.

Other rescue teams crowded the terminal headed for Van. A Chilean search-dog team of two men entered, pushing the crates that held their dogs. They were volunteer firefighters from northern Chile, and they had left for Turkey as soon as the Organizacion Non-Governmental (O.N.G) had alerted them minutes after the earthquake. I thought we had come a long way to Turkey from Los Angeles, they had traveled an additional 2000 miles. Morning prayer began in the terminal and the men were approached by Turks ready to perform their morning prayer or salat. Apparently dogs were considered trashy animals in Turkey and were not welcome so close to where the ablutions were going to be performed. The two Chilean search-dog handlers just laughed it off. They were not concerned with the mission of these Turks to remove the dogs from the airport, they had come on a mission of their own.

Van, Turkey was full of soldiers and medical rescue teams when we landed. We met with a contact from the Turkish Search-and-Rescue Organization (called A.K.U.T for short). They told us that most of the teams had already moved to Ercis, Turkey. Ercis was also badly damaged and had many killed and injured people. A.K.U.T had been there for 2 days and was heading back to Van. They told us that teams from Van would be doing another search of the damaged sites, and possibly sending small teams into the surrounding towns to inspect them and check for damage. We caught a ride with the Japanese medical team and arrived at a Turkish government relief office with a Turkish engineering team that was inspecting buildings for damage. We all sat in a small room with cracks in the walls and ceiling, discussing (across 4 languages) the laborious governmental bureaucracy that had us sipping tea and waiting for a government official to come talk to us. Their sentiments were the same as ours.

After a introduction to the mayor of Van, and a tour of the damaged areas we decided to head to Ercis (pronounced air-chis) instead. We rented a car and headed out around Lake Van further north. Ercis, nestled alongside Van lake, turned out to be directly north of Van, and along the same tectonic plate that had shifted, causing the earthquake. As we entered the city we saw hundreds of people lined up to receive tents, food, and water from the Red Crescent. The government of Turkey arranged for all these supplies to be brought into Ercis, and for good reason. The downtown area of Ercis appeared to be the epicenter of the quake. Hundreds of small buildings and dozens of large ones sat collapsed under the weight of their own cement. Many had pancaked together, leaving very little hope that any empty space existed that could house human life. An A.K.U.T team leader simply said to us as we approached one of the wreckage sites “Welcome to a nightmare”.

The downtown of Ercis, an area roughly 10 square blocks, lay in ruins. Power had been shut off because of the thousands of downed power lines. All businesses were closed, nobody was selling food, and armed soldiers guarded entrances to the most dangerous areas. The Turkish Medical Rescue (E.M.U.K) personnel smoked cigarettes with dust masks hanging under their chins. A team actively pulled apart rebar on a mountain of crumbled cement while a large crane dug out a collapsed building looking for pockets of dead space where they might find living persons. Women cried, children stared at us, men waited in line for food from the relief agencies. Nightmare indeed.

Ercis had the personnel they needed for a job nobody ever wanted to do. Their Emergency Management System was in place, and their A.K.U.T and E.M.U.K personnel seemed to have the job well under control. Ambulances still brought people into the makeshift hospital located in the local gymnasium, but the people they were finding were few and far between. A day earlier a 15-week old baby had been pulled from the wreckage alive, but after 72 hours, no such event was expected to happen again. Nathan and I made the call to do all we could to help in the search, but decided we could be better used in the outlying towns and villages.

The Japanese medical team we had met earlier informed us that they were headed to outlying villages the next day to look for injured personnel. We told them we would accompany them, and bring our rescue gear in case there was any need for it. We arranged to meet the Japanese medical team the following day (Thursday) and introduced ourselves to a 6-person German medical team called Humedica. They gave us some of their tent-space to sleep in, and we set off to gather our gear, patiently awaiting what lay ahead. In both cities, Van and Ercis, we were the only Americans to be seen. Besides us, six Germans, two Chileans and eight Japanese medics, everyone else was from Turkey.

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Filed under: Personal Reflections, Photos, Turkey by William on October 27, 2011
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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Filed under: In The Media, Video by William on October 27, 2011
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GQ Names Former Marine Winner in 2011 Better Men Better World Search

NEW YORK, Oct. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — GQ’s The Gentlemen’s Fund, in partnership with Movado, is proud to announce Jake Wood, president of Team Rubicon, as winner of the 4th annual Better Men Better World Search. Each year, GQ accepts hundreds of nominations from across the country in its search for men who dedicate their time and energy for the betterment of society.

Wood, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, served four years in the United States Marine Corps, deploying to Iraq in 2007 and then to Afghanistan in 2008. He graduated at the top of his class from the Scout-Sniper Basic Course and was the recipient of the Jim Gulardi Award. Also, in 2007, he was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with “V” for valor in the face of the enemy. After his tenure with the Marines came to an end, he quickly sprang into action following the devastation of the earthquake in Haiti. Within hours of posting a message on his Facebook page—”I’m going to Haiti. Who’s in?”—Team Rubicon’s first unit was formed with volunteer first responders, doctors, nurses, and combat vets. Thanks to social networking, the group accumulated $250,000 in medical supplies and donations. Wood’s military model has created a new set of standards for disaster relief, deploying rapidly to destinations in need of help. In fact, Team Rubicon most recently deployed a team to the areas devastated by the earthquake in Turkey, working with the Turkish Emergency Management System to provide their technical rescue skills.

In addition to Wood, four finalists were named in the Better Men Better World Search. Their charitable work, volunteerism, and community involvement embody what it truly means to be a gentleman:

Eric Greitens – Eric Greitens is the founder and CEO of The Mission Continues, a nonprofit organization that empowers wounded and disabled veterans to begin new lives as citizen leaders here at home. Greitens, a Navy Seal, donated his combat pay to found this organization after returning home from a deployment to Iraq in 2007. As CEO, he works to ensure that every returning veteran lives a life of purpose, regardless of what injuries they may have sustained during their time in the military.

Tim King – While attending law school at Georgetown University, Tim King taught at an inner-city school and, upon completing his degree, decided to pursue teaching as a full-time career. In 2006, he founded the nonprofit organization Urban Prep Academies, which operates a network of all-boys public high schools whose goal is to reverse the abysmal graduation and college-completion rates among boys in urban centers.

Deogratias “Deo” Niyizonkiza – This Burundian-American has spent the past several years working to improve the lives of local communities in his native Burundi, a nation recovering from a civil war. In 2007, “Deo” founded the Village Health Works community health center in Kigutu, near the borders of Congo and Tanzania—an area hit especially hard by HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria—to provide high-quality health care, most of it at no cost, to thousands of patients since its doors opened.

Laren Poole – Back in 2003, Laren Poole traveled to Uganda for a filmmaking adventure, only to return with the ambition to expose the crisis at hand and help find a peaceful resolution to the decades-long war. Poole then co-founded the advocacy group Invisible Children, which, through documentary films and other media, seeks to transform apathy into activism by helping to tell the stories of East African children affected by Africa’s longest-running war—a war it is working to end.

Mr. Wood was chosen by popular vote and a panel of GQ judges and was officially announced as the winner by Willie Geist, host of MSNBC’s Way Too Early and co-host of Morning Joe, at the GQ Gentlemen’s Ball tonight in New York City. As winner of the 2011 Better Men Better World Search, Mr. Wood will be featured in GQ, receive a $2,000 cash prize, a Movado SE® Extreme watch, and $15,000 donated by Movado to his charity of choice

The remaining finalists also attended The Gentlemen’s Ball, as guests of Movado, and received a Movado BOLD™ watch and $3,750 donated to the charities of their choice.

To meet these inspirational men and learn about their causes, go to www.TheGentlemensFund.com and visit our Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/isvug1

THE GENTLEMEN’S FUND:

GQ’s The Gentlemen’s Fund initiative raises awareness for issues that are essential to modern men. Founded in 2007, The Gentlemen’s Fund encourages men to become agents of change by supporting charities that champion these causes. Recent Gentlemen’s Fund ambassadors have included David Arquette, Adrian Grenier, Josh Duhamel, Jimmy Fallon, Ashton Kutcher, John Legend, Steve Nash, Mark Wahlberg, Forest Whitaker, and Timbaland.

GQ:

GQ is the leading men’s general-interest magazine, with a monthly readership of 6.6 million readers. It is available in print, online at GQ.com, and as an app at iTunes.com and is available for purchase at BarnesandNoble.com and on Amazon’s Kindle Fire. The magazine is published by Conde Nast, a division of Advance Publications. Conde Nast operates in twenty-five countries and is the world leader in exceptional content creation.

SOURCE GQ

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Filed under: In The Media, Press Release by William on October 26, 2011
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Team Rubicon reached the city of Ercis yesterday afternoon. Pararescueman Josh Webster, reporting from satellite phone, spoke of major earthquake damage in the city and shortages of food and shelter. The team is spending the evening in a car and will move out at first light with a Japanese Search and Rescue team. More information will be posted shortly when the team has time to make a full report.

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Filed under: Turkey by William on October 26, 2011
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Due to the rapid growth of our volunteer base, and our desire to engage that base more regularly here at home, Team Rubicon is restructuring the organization to allow for more effective response to both large and small domestic disasters. It feels good to grow!

For the last year and a half, Team Rubicon has operated out of three domestic regions (West, Midwest, and East); but as more veterans become aware of TR, and as more domestic opportunities arise, it’s obvious that it’s time to decentralize further. As 2011 comes to an end, Team Rubicon will begin operating out of 10 geographic regions, each carved out according to FEMA’s regional model. This effort is the final iteration of TR-Transition, a project that was put into the planning phase earlier this year and focused on initiatives to help TR’s veterans transition from the military into civilian life. TR-Transition has now become TR-Domestic; a veteran-focused effort by Team Rubicon to engage large groups of veterans here at home for continued service in local disasters. The goal is one day TR Veteran Emergency Response Teams (VERTs) will be the go-to standard for disaster response by our states and municipalities; there’s really no reason why not.

The first region to pilot this model will be Region VII (Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska) and will be under the direction of TR’s Ford Sypher, an Army Ranger veteran and TR Team Leader in Tuscaloosa and Joplin. Ford and Co. are hanging their sign up in Kansas City (FEMA Regional Headquarters…how nice), and would love it if TR-Nation supporters would swing by with some home-made brownies—actually Ford will pass on the brownies, he hasn’t eaten a carb since 2004. TR-VII is currently developing a volunteer recruitment model that will engage local veterans and begin developing them into a community of first-responders. TR-VII is also focused on executing a fundraising campaign to build long-term, community-driven first responder networks and public service programs.

Team Rubicon Domestic Goals:

• Provide top-tier disaster response capabilities that augment Federal and Local authorities in the preparation for, and aftermath of, natural disasters.
• Engage more TR volunteers in disaster response activities in their local communities.
• Develop a community of recent OIF/OEF veterans with the common goal of continued service.
• Develop meaningful service projects that promote TR awareness, team building, and provide a legitimate service for a veteran or community need.
• Develop and implement a training pipeline that will provide valuable skills to veterans looking to transition into emergency services, police and fire.
• In the spirit of TR, continue to be totally self-sufficient.

Our hope for you, TR-Nation, is that by moving to this model you can feel an even closer connection to TR. We will no longer be that totally awesome organization headquartered a thousand miles away in Los Angeles, now we’ll be that totally awesome organization that has a team right in your back yard (literally, if you were just the victim of a tornado). Want to be a part of building VERT’s in your community? Join us across the country when we RUN AS ONE on March 31, 2012.

Jake Wood and William McNulty
Co-Founders, Team Rubicon

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Filed under: Missouri, News, Region 7 by William on October 26, 2011
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24 October 2011

Nathan and I shouldered our backpacks for the last time until we would (hopefully) see them in Turkey. Dressed in khaki, with similar builds, similar haircuts, and similarly unshaved we must have looked like brothers to anybody else. We wore our Team Rubicon pullovers, awaiting the frigid autumn nights in the Eastern Turkey city of Van. Breakfast was still in our bellies, probably the last American meal for a week and a half.

A few people stopped up and asked where we were going. I don’t think they had any misconception that we were a team, a team of what I don’t think they had the faintest idea, but a team nonetheless. We were essentially wearing matching outfits, complete with coyote tan military-issued backpacks. We both wore mountain boots, and in Los Angeles they looked silly considering the fall weather was holding steady at a brisk 70 degrees. Our shirts said “medic” in 6 languages on the back, but we are much more than that. Nathan and I had just finished a technical rescue course for snow/glacial conditions and the city of Van, the earthquake epicenter, was expecting snow. High up in the mountains in eastern Turkey, Van was looking forward to terrible weather, and we were just the guys who you want to go in there. We’ve been trained in Structural Collapse, Confined Space, Rope Rescue, and we’re both Paramedics.

When we told people about the earthquake in Turkey most seemed to know. They had heard about it on the news and expressed sympathy. A gentlemen who worked for a consulting organization that hires military personnel approached us with his business card and offered to help us find work. He didn’t exactly say what job or with whom, purposefully intending on remaining vague and mysterious. We exchanged cards and I told him about our mission to Turkey. He seemed impressed, pocketed my card, shook our hands and departed. The funny thing was we had sat next to him 2 hours earlier at a breakfast cafe 5 miles away. Now we were across town, standing coincidentally in the same line for flights to Turkey. I had hoped that actress Ali Larter, who we also sat next to at breakfast, would have followed us to the airport to drop her card. Alas, Scott was charming but not my type(@Ali_Larter_…I was the tall blonde).

We slept most of the flight and awoke in Istanbul, preparing for our 17-hour layover before heading into Van, and then on to Ercis, the smaller town near Van that got hit pretty hard as well with a series of earthquakes. Every person we spoke to on the plane and in the airport knew what we were going to do. Most gave us a hearty “good luck”. A few gripped my arm and stared into my eyes pretty hard. They were usually older, more serious, and probably headed to Istanbul for vacation. They knew we weren’t on any sort of vacation.

Tonight we prepare contacts and connect with Turkish Emergency Management Systems (EMS). Part of our mission is to find out the extent of the damage, and to make a judgement call on whether to call for a larger element of Team Rubicon to deploy out here. After that we will integrate with the EMS and provide any technical rescue skills we have. We brought a rope rescue kit, medical kit, and skeleton media kit. With any luck we will find some friends who know where guys like us are needed here. Temperatures are expected to slip below freezing tonight, again. And winter is coming. (@GameOfThrones)

Joshua Maverick Webster
Director of Personnel and Readiness, Team Rubicon
Air Force Pararescueman “PJ”

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Filed under: Personal Reflections, Turkey by William on October 25, 2011
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