Tag Team Rubicon

A Few Words On Hurricane Harvey, and How You Can Help

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager 3 Comments

Readers who have been with me for a while know that I generally refrain from providing commentary on active incidents.  There is already enough chatter out there, with a variety of experts (real and otherwise) providing their opinions.  As with any ongoing incident, there is plenty of information and assumptions, right and wrong.  This disaster is already generating a lot of discussion on the decision by Houston and other jurisdictions to not issue evacuation orders.  Once the flood waters recede and life safety matters are addressed, perhaps I’ll jump into that discussion.  For now, let’s stay focused on the lives that are at risk.

Several people have asked me how they can support the Hurricane Harvey response and relief efforts.  There are many reputable charities out there providing great assistance.  A few tips…

  • Most of these organizations want and need money, not things, so unless they are asking for donations of certain goods or commodities, don’t send them things. The management of unwanted donated goods is an absolute nightmare and a distraction when all resources need to be focused on the disaster at hand.
  • Find a charity/organization that aligns with your own interests and beliefs. If you are most concerned about animal welfare, the ASPCA is a great organization doing incredible work during this and other disasters.  The American Red Cross is a long-standing go-to humanitarian aid organization.  There are also a variety of faith-based organizations, such as the Salvation Army, Adventist Community Services, Catholic Charities, Islamic Relief, and others which are dedicated to supporting communities in need.
  • If you are sending a check (you can even drop off a check at your local offices of any of these organizations), be sure to write ‘Hurricane Harvey’ in the memo of the check. That should direct those funds to this disaster effort.
  • Keep records and request a receipt (if they don’t provide one) for tax purposes.
  • For those of you who want a specific recommendation, I suggest Team Rubicon.  Team Rubicon unites the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams that provide direct life-safety response efforts as well as short-term recovery work, such as mucking out people’s homes.  They are an outstanding organization that not only provides disaster assistance, but also directly supports our veterans.

These organizations absolutely need your support.  The costs of deploying personnel, even volunteers, are high.  Every dollar makes a difference.

-TR

EPS – Celebrating Five Years!

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

Aside from a brief mention at the end of some posts, I don’t often promote our company on this blog.  While the intent of the blog has never been to directly promote our services, we have gained and maintained a number of professional relationships through it, including those with clients.  I do want to take advantage of the platform on this occasion to express gratitude and hope that you will join us in celebrating an important benchmark.

Emergency Preparedness Solutions (EPS) is excited to be celebrating five years of helping clients to enhance capabilities and improve performance in the areas of emergency management and homeland security.  We have worked with clients across the nation on assessments, planning, training, and exercises on a variety of unique projects.  More specifically, over the past five years we have taken on projects such as exercise design, conduct, and evaluation – including staff support to a state-wide Vigilant Guard exercise, and conduct of airport exercises around the nation.  We have developed, conducted, and evaluated training programs – including those on functional needs sheltering, hazardous materials response for EMS, and continuity of operations.  We have also conducted state-wide training needs assessments, plan evaluations, and have created multi-hazard plans.

EPS New logo

To help mark our five years, we are proud to release a new logo for EPS and an updated website.  The URL is still the same, but the look is totally different.  Please visit us at WWW.EPSLLC.BIZ and take a look around.  Our look is sharper, more contemporary, and mobile friendly.  We also have pictures from a variety of our projects featured throughout the site as well as a live feed of this blog.  Many thanks to Mohawk Valley GIS for their work on the website.  MVGIS is a small business local to us that provides outstanding Geographic Information Systems services and other work locally and afar.  Please be sure to check them out.

On our new website we are also happy to announce our support of Team Rubicon.  Team Rubicon is an outstanding organization that provides hands-on disaster relief services to communities struck by disaster across the nation and around the globe.  Team Rubicon accomplishes great things through the people that make up their organization, mostly military veterans.  You can show them support by direct financial contributions as well as purchasing items through their online store.

We certainly want to acknowledge the contributions of the people who have and continue to work for us on projects.  We often leverage talented people from around the country based on the skills required to meet the needs of clients.  These include active and retired public safety professionals and military veterans.

Like most small businesses, the support of friends and family, especially in the early years, are extremely important.  There are far too many to name, and I’d be likely to forget someone, but each of you have been so important to our success!

Lastly, we wouldn’t be in business if not for our clients.  There are a number of testimonials on our website from several of our clients and we are grateful for the opportunity to work with each of them.  We continue to take on new clients as well as engaging in new contracts with previous clients.  We look forward to continuing on with current clients and working with new ones far into the future!

Thanks for your continued support of this blog and of EPS!

Be safe!

Tim Riecker, CEDP

Veterans in Disaster Response

Tim Riecker, The Contrarian Emergency Manager Leave a comment

I’m really not a TED Talk junkie.  Honest.  But today, while surfing through my usual web sites, I hit the TED blog.  I came across a great short (5 minute) presentation on Team Rubicon by their founder, Jake Wood.  The concept of Mr. Wood’s presentation is the story of why he founded Team Rubicon.  Team Rubicon is a disaster relief organization that uses veterans.  It’s not a new idea, really – Reservists, National Guard members, and retired veterans have been an important part of emergency response going back to the days of Civil Defense.  It makes perfect sense, really.  These folks are trained in essential skills and they function well in an organized structure.  They have critical thinking skills and have worked in austere environments.  In emergency management and emergency response we have learned so much from the military – our organizational structure, the Incident Command System, is based on military principles.  We work with military components on a regular basis, and many state emergency management offices are still even components of their state’s National Guard offices – another throwback to the days of Civil Defense.

Veterans have an important value to us, yet we don’t do enough for them.  They have risked their lives for our freedoms and so many return home jobless and feeling lost.  I certainly can’t imagine what it’s like to live in Iraq or Afghanistan for such a long period of time seeing horrible things and wondering if the people walking by you, those who you are trying to provide a better life for, have a bomb strapped to their bodies.  How can anyone be expected to return to a ‘normal’ life after that?  We need to do a better job of reintegration, that’s very obvious.  The sheer number of homeless veterans and veteran suicides is staggering – and it’s shameful that we allow it to happen.

Team Rubicon provides a focus, a purpose, and an environment that veterans are comfortable functioning within – and even better yet they aren’t  carry a rifle.  They are saving lives!