How the veteran-led Team Rubicon volunteers helped in the Texas flood aftermath : NPR
More than 60 volunteers at Team Rubicon, an organization of response to non -profit disasters led by veterans, were among the first on the ground in Texas, helping to clean the debris and plug houses damaged by the floods.
Ari Shapiro, host:
After the sudden floods of July 4 in center of Texas, there were so many volunteers who converged in the region that those responsible should tell civilians to stay away. But one of the groups welcomed in Kerr County was the Rubicon team. The non -profit organization of response to the lancers led by the veterans has set up its command center in local primary school. They brought their own food, water and tents so that they do not compete for accommodation or essential items. Aden Max Juarez, from Texas Public Radio, met several volunteers in Ingram.
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Aden Max Juarez, Suchelle: using a circular saw, hammers, bars of PRY and other equipment, the Rubicon team volunteers aim for a mixed building not far from the Guadalupe river. Furniture damaged by floods, floor boards, divers and personal artefacts are removed from the building by volunteers, in sorting in heaps. They work with military precision.
Bob Bledsoe: Erase the houses, each is obviously a little different.
Juarez: Bob Bledsoe is the commander of the Rubicon incident for Kerr County and served in the Air Force for 20 years. He is in the non -profit organization almost since his foundation in 2010.
Bledsoe: We take – each house, the head of the strike team and its crew will enter and decide and decide if they – what they are going to do. They then informed each other and enter. So, in this case, they did – it seemed to have about a line of two -foot water.
Juarez: The majority of the 200,000 volunteers from the Rubicon team are veterans or soldiers in active service. Bledsoe says that team volunteers teams, which they call greeyhs, are sent to eliminate buildings. There is an emergency, he says, to eliminate everything that is damaged by floods in order to prevent mold from growing in the heat and extreme humidity.
Bledsoe: And if you can get it – you know, before continuing to climb all the walls, you can remove the walls less and, you know, do less reconstruction.
Juarez: Katherine Nicasio, Civil, is a commercial analyst who led from San Antonio to help. This is its first deployment with the non -profit organization.
Katherine Nicasio: I learned a lot in the two days that I was here on the power of nature, on the power of people and what group like that and the organization that surrounds it can do.
Juarez: Nicasio removes the old walls which could not be saved and removing the insulation dipped by flood waters, filling plastic baths than another volunteer lying outside.
Nicasio: Today we have cleaned a floor. It started by cleaning the carpet and the lining below and a wooden floor. We started to make the walls, and we took out the dry partition, the plate, the insulation, the nails, all that, then bring it out on the sidewalk.
Juarez: By leading to the country of the hills after the floods, Nicasio says that it was overwhelmed by the quantity of debris dispersed along the river. Seeing the damage for the first time, she understood the huge toll he suffered on the community. Thanks to the heat and humidity of implacable Texas, Nicasio says knowing that her efforts help people motivate her while she works.
Nicasio: Just very trying physically – but it is almost, like, a distraction of the emotional piece, where it is as if you are working and that you do something to help, as, as, you feel better to do something.
Juarez: Bob Bedsoe says that the central flood of Texas is only one of the disasters to which the Rubicon team is currently responding.
Bledsoe: We are in locations in a tornado response to Missouri. We have floodable answers in North Carolina, in New Mexico, two here in Texas – the state of Texas. And we have a California forest fire that we also work.
Juarez: Bledsoe says it is not uncommon for the Rubicon team to meet several crises at the same time, because they are trying to help affected communities. This Sunday, they will finish their operations in Kerr County and will go to the next disaster.
For NPR news, I am Aden Max Juarez in Kerr County, Texas.
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