My deployment this past summer on Operation Beryl Roll—Team Rubicon’s response to Hurricane Beryl which came ashore south of Houston near Matagorda, TX, as a Category 1 hurricane on July 8—was my sixth deployment since joining Team Rubicon one year earlier. Each deployment has been different, and each has left me with significant impacts. On this deployment, I was awestruck by the Greyshirts who were involved with this response operation, both onsite and behind the scenes.
Each evening at debriefs, we heard stories from the strike teams about those we helped that day. We heard about the homes without electricity because of trees impeding access to their repair. Stories about people who ranked high on the Social Vulnerability Index—or SVI—who were trying to recover from the storm with the very least resources, and who needed us the very most. We heard the story of the 85-year-old widow who was living in her car because she couldn’t get into her home.
Those may be stories we hear at every op with slight variations, but each and every one is still heartfelt, inspiring, rewarding, and validates our commitment to serve on a person’s worst day.
For days on Op Beryl Roll, we worked in that Harris County heat. They were long, sweaty days with a ton of saw work needed, but we persisted, even as the heat index rose to 100-plus degrees. Then, on my last day in the field, we were hit with a deluge. Heavy rain came down like cats and dogs, but with no lightning, which meant while we’d get soaked, we were able to go to the field and continue to clean up the problems left by Beryl.
That day, we were working at a house with three saw teams to clean up an elderly gentleman’s home. There was heavy rain, the swamping required vegetative debris to be moved from the rear of the home to the curb, roughly 300 to 400 yards away. As we trekked time and time again through the yard the paths became a muddy trail. We sloshed through mud puddles and the mud making the swamping more challenging than usual. Yet no one complained, no one backed down. We just kept on going like the Energizer bunny.
On one of my trips, I was struck thinking about the make-up of our team: A retired doctor, an Army flight medic who had just finished his first year of med school, a retired school principal, a firefighter, a project engineer, a teacher, a retired COO, etc. etc. etc. My saw team from two days earlier had an average age of 71. A very diverse group of people and backgrounds who come together as a team.
As I pulled my sled I looked around, I asked myself, “what drives people to come out in the direst work conditions, give of themselves tirelessly?” Oh, at the end of the day we were tired, but still we showed up the next day to do it again. As one of our taglines says, “We are built to serve”. For all of us serving others without putting ourselves first is part of our DNA.
But what makes Team Rubicon different from other VOADS is our cultural principles. Each day our tremendous IC chose one of the principles for us to go to the field with and use as our motivator for the day. It is those principles that bring all of us, from very different backgrounds together as a team. Culture is what makes a team a team, without it, you are part of a group of people doing good but not necessarily a team.
At this point, I can’t help to recognize an integral part of each operation that without them all no operation would happen. Often working late into the evening, and early in the morning they find solutions to problems that otherwise would ground an op. They work diligently before, during, and after an op to ensure the success of the team. They fully subscribe to the principles that make Team Rubicon a GREAT TEAM. In Jim Collins’s book, “Good to Great,” he talks about getting the right people on the bus in the right seats to move an organization from good to great. They are on the bus in the right seats.
We are Team Rubicon, forged in disaster, born to serve, and born to make a difference by these simple guidelines, follow these and you will never be lost on an op. I am humbled and proud to serve with such a great team.
