How Team Rubicon is helping on the ground in Southern California

Volunteers with Team Rubicon are among the many responding to deadly wildfires in and around Los Angeles. Here's how they're helping.

Transcript

00:00Art De La Cruz is CEO of the team Rubicon. Art, thank you so much for joining us. I know this is a

00:07very, very busy time. Can you just tell us the latest? And your team's called Grace Search

00:14are not fighting the fires, but where are they mobilized to help and what are they seeing?

00:21Yeah, you know, our volunteers like the rest of, you know, Los Angeles are really concentrating on

00:26our efforts on ensuring the firefighters and those first responders can do the things they

00:31need to serve our communities. As they are doing that, team Rubicon and our volunteers,

00:35who we call Grace Search, are surging to meet some of these, you know, other tasks that come up.

00:41Points of distribution, it might be water, it might be food. We're doing some quick reaction

00:45forces that they're going out there to remove fuels in areas that they don't want to be

00:51impacted by the fires. And I think we're all positioning for the winds this evening and into

00:55tomorrow and the services that will be needed at that point in time. And Art, you know, we've spoken

01:01with you and our teams have interviewed you many times. I didn't realize that team Rubicon is based

01:06in Los Angeles. So how have the Grace Search been impacted themselves, even as they're helping their

01:11neighbors down the road? You know, it's really interesting. I think there's two ways to look at

01:16it. Number one is we pride ourselves on personal resilience. So we've had a lot of Grace Search

01:21that have been impacted. You know, they've stood by and executed the evacuation orders. And in some

01:26cases, you know, they've been impacted and the rest of the volunteers have come to help them.

01:30The other thing we've done is a really, really great job of, you know, integrating with the

01:35emergency management system in Los Angeles and building our volunteer density. We actually have

01:4112,000 volunteers from all walks of life that are trained and ready to go. And now it's a matter of

01:46coordinating them and surging them into these areas in the weeks and the coming months to serve

01:51these communities. Now, Art, the forecast doesn't look great here with the high winds and potentially

01:59those winds escalating this week. How does the weather change your work? Yeah, I think, you know,

02:06the winds obviously increase the danger and it increases the importance of some of the work we

02:11can do. If we're asked to remove some of the fuels and areas away from the existing fires in hopes

02:16that perhaps it breaks it, breaks the fuel chain, you know, that's incredibly, you know, important.

02:22And I think even, you know, farther into the future, we're already having conversations about

02:28how we can aid with sandbagging and preparations because we know, again, in these, you know,

02:33atypical situations, you know, in the history of atmospheric rivers and rains that will come at

02:38some point in time, that type of stabilization is going to be really critical. And that's where

02:43volunteers can come in to help in this long process of recovery. All right. Well, Art De La Cruz

02:49with Team Rubicon. You guys have fought many good fights in the past. We appreciate that you're

02:54fighting a very worthy fight right now there in Southern California. Thanks for your time as well.

02:58Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. It is our pleasure.