NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The torrential rains two weeks ago damaged roads and flooded basements. 

 

While Highway Department focused on roads, the veteran-led Team Rubicon arrived to help residents deal with the damage to their homes. 

 

The "gray shirts" rolled up their sleeves and started clearing out cellars of wet and damaged items.

 

"We're helping people on the worst day of their lives. So, you know, we're giving them hope that they can recover from, from the disaster that they've just lived through," said the group's incident commander Stephen Scott. "And we're providing the first step to that recovery." 

 

He and Mayor Jennifer Macksey were coordinating on Friday with the Department of Public Works on Friday about picking up the loads of debris the volunteers had pulled out basements around the city.

 

"They've helped close to 20-25 houses within the community. Great group of veterans, just trying to help us and I don't know where we would be without them," said Macksey. 

 

The mayor said she'd contacted the volunteer organization on a reference from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. 

 

"It could have been faster if we had known about you earlier," she said to Scott. "But they've helped several of our community members with their flooded basements and getting debris out. And they've been just wonderful to work with and a big asset to us during this difficult time."

 

Scott had arrived a day later to assess the situation and the city offered up the Armory as a billeting site with access to bathrooms and showers and food. 

 

"We quickly realized that there was a need here so we changed to the planning stage of obtaining building and food services and all the stuff we need in order to keep our gray shirts wealthy and well taken care of," he said. 

 

The team was dubbed Moca Grande, a play off the name of Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and could be seen around the city in their gray Team Rubicon T-shirts with their names written on them.

 

Team Rubicon is positioned to help in disaster areas that aren't maybe getting the national press, or a big Federal Emergency Management presence, Scott said. "But you do have isolated local requirements and we're now positioned to be able to respond to that."

 

Team Rubicon more than 100,000 members respond to disasters across the nation and even international — a group recently went to Ukraine. Over the last four years, it's been building a "Resilient City" strategy organized around decision making close to the local level and using local resources. 

 

"That strategy, which has been playing out for a couple few years, is now in a state of maturity, where operations of a scope like this can be spun up and executed using local resources," said Scott. "It's a long process ... we were mature enough now that as this storm passed through the Northeast, we were able to spin up seven operations between New York, Massachusetts and Vermont."

 

There are three core components can essentially be summed up as cut it down, cover it up and muck it out.

 

That means chainsaw operations to remove trees and barriers and tarping roofs to prevent further damage. In North Adams, it was more about mucking out. 

 

"The third operation is what we call muckup and that's going into houses and getting all of the stuff that got wet from the flooding getting out of the house," said Scott.  "We're highly concerned about about mold forming in the house and spreading through the house."

 

A former Boston planner and administrator in Worcester, Scott's area of operation covers North Adams. From there, a 450-mile radius was established around the site for volunters. 

 

"We've had people that have come from close to 300 miles to be here," he said. 

 

Brian MacDougal of Wilmington, overseeing logistics for the team, said about a dozen volunteers were here on any one day. Some came for a week, others for a day or two. And a couple were local. 

 

The Navy veteran retired in 2019 and found Team Rubicon was way to fulfill his desire to help people.

 

"My civilian job didn't allow for it," he said, because of time commitments. "When I had free time, I was able to do what I always wanted to do."

 

Scott's volunteering story was similar, saying he got to retirement age but refused to retire.

 

"But I was ready to leave that career. So the way I describe it is I'm moving to a new career and disaster response, and I'm going to achieve my goals and objectives through Team Rubicon," he said. 

 

While the organization is still largely military, it began accepting what MacDougal described as "kick ass" civilians about five years, particulary first responders. Scott says it give the team more diversity but with enough military experience to "keep order and follow orders." 

 

Volunteers have to go through extensive training for their deployments, such as for chainsaw operations. No one just shows up and Scott's been building up his volunteer base. 

 

"We offer a wide range of training opportunities to our volunteers that prepare them to know what to expect when they get here and have been given the skills that they need in order to execute the work," he said. 

 

Team Rubicon was active over the weekend with the intent to cease operations on Monday. There were a few more homeowners who'd called in for some help. 

 

Scott acknowledged the help the team's gotten from the city, including working with the mayor, fire chief and highway foreman. He sad the volunteers had gotten a very positive response for the efforts and he'd had calls thanking them for the work they've done. 

 

"Our culture is a service-oriented culture. So all of our people understand that service is the fundamental motivation for what we try to do," he said. "The reward for the work we do is the response that we get from the people that we help. That it is remarkably rewarding."