Team Rubicon's Chief Programs Officer on the Best Disaster Response

Babylon Fire. Source: U.S. Forest Service

Plus, A Category 5 Typhoon Hit U.S. Territories Again

Welcome back to This Week in Disasters! This newsletter combines expert perspectives with a weekly roundup of upcoming threats, recent natural disasters, and available survivor assistance. If you’re a Risk, Insurance, Employee Assistance, NGO or Emergency Management professional (or you’re just really curious about disasters in the United States!) you’re in the right place.

Major Disasters of the Last Week

Forecasted Risks for Next Week

Fresh burn scars from the Aspen Acres Fire face flash flood and debris flow risk as monsoon thunderstorms move over southern Colorado. The National Weather Service in Pueblo has warned that even brief downpours over the Rye, Beulah, and Colorado City burn areas can produce rapid runoff with little warning.

July 4 flooding in Minnesota. Source: NWS

Disasters in the Headlines

The Evidence Is In: Modern Building Codes Don’t Harm Housing Prices

The Road to Resilience

One year after Texas' deadliest flood in decades, survivors rebuild as families still seek answers

CBS

Trump denies disaster aid for four Democratic-led states

E&E News

PRO PERSPECTIVE

The Best Disaster Response Is the One You Never Have to Run

Jeff Byard signed for blue tarps by the truckload before he ever nailed one to a roof. He ordered them for years, first at the state of Alabama and then as FEMA's Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery during Harvey, Irma, and Maria. The first time he actually put one up was on a hot roof in Southwest Louisiana after Hurricane Laura, as a Team Rubicon volunteer. "I never put one on the house. I'd never done that in a disaster," he says. "And it really dawned on me. I am really at the tip of the spear here helping disaster survivors."

The gap between authorizing help and delivering it shaped how Byard sees disaster work. What counts is how close you get to helping the survivor, not the title you hold getting there.

His career put him on both sides of that gap. Byard joined the state of Alabama in 2002 as a mitigation planner, moved straight into the recovery and public assistance jobs, ran them at the state level, and landed at FEMA, where he served as Associate Administrator for Response and Recovery from 2017 to 2020. Now, as Chief Programs Officer at Team Rubicon, he runs disaster response, long-term recovery, and workforce development for a nonprofit built on volunteers. His job is getting the people who do the hands-on work to the right place with the right tools.

The only title that matters

That is also why the title means almost nothing to him, with one exception. "There's one title that matters in Team Rubicon, and that's gray shirt," Byard says. The force splits into two kinds: veteran gray shirts and what he calls "kick-ass civilians." Same bias for action, same tolerance for ambiguity, same habit of finishing what they start. A 22-year-old and a 70-year-old end up on a stranger's house in 100-degree heat for the same reason. "You can't manage volunteers. You inspire them," he says, and the inspiration is the difficulty itself. Treat people as professionals, hand them honest work, and they come back.

Chase the shelter shift

Byard gives the same instruction to anyone entering the field. "Don't chase a title," he says. "Chase a shelter shift, chase a chainsaw, chase an experience." Take the assignments with no glory attached. He ran government recovery programs for years and did not expect a thank-you, but those jobs teach you to handle chaos and to deliver hard answers cleanly. Clarity, he argues, is most of the job. "If it's a no, you've got to tell that mayor ‘no.’ You can't give false hope." Then, find leaders who delegate and who let you fail in the right areas, and build a team good enough that you can do the same.

He learned ownership at speed. Sworn in roughly four days into Hurricane Harvey, on the floor of FEMA's National Response Coordination Center in Washington, DC, packed with several hundred people from across the agencies, Byard watched Administrator Brock Long finish the ceremony, hand him the room, and leave for Houston. The lesson held: in a live disaster, you cannot wait for trust to be earned, so you give it immediately. A volunteer owns the nail going into the roof. Byard, as an administrator, owned the signature of a bill that sent Navy ships to sea. The title changes. Owning the call does not.

The best response is no response

Those instincts now run through how Byard builds programs. He weighs three things: speed, scale, and impact. Get there faster and recovery starts sooner. Do it at scale or it does not move the needle. Then prove it changed the outcome. The expansion he is most focused on moves past response entirely. Team Rubicon is scaling its wildfire mitigation work nationally, not just out west, with a deliberate focus on communities that cannot afford the service on their own. Alongside it, the organization is training and certifying carpenters in FORTIFIED roofing. The logic is plain: "If we can keep the roof on a house, we can keep the house."

Which brings it back to the tarp. A tarp keeps the rain out after the damage is done. A FORTIFIED roof means nobody has to climb up with a tarp at all. "The best disaster response is no response," Byard says, "because you've mitigated the hazard." He started out as a mitigation planner, and the work he cares most about now brings him back to it, this time having been up on the roof himself. The closer he got to helping survivors, the clearer it became: the surest help reaches them before the disaster arrives.

Active Federal Declared Disasters and Deadlines

There is usually a 60 day window to apply for help after a disaster is declared. The following disasters are actively taking applications from survivors for financial support. To apply, survivors can visit DisasterAssistance.gov or call the FEMA Helpline at 1-800‑621‑3362.

Sign up for This Week in Disasters here.