‘Hardening the community’: National nonprofit helps neighborhood south of La Pine stay wildfire-ready
Isabella Warren
Update: Adding video, comments from incident commander)
LA PINE, Ore. (KTVZ) — A small community south of La Pine is getting some help this wildfire season.
“We call it hardening the community. If we can do things before a fire that make the community more resilient to it, that’s what we’re in the name to do, ” said Bill Terrill, Incident Commander for Team Rubicon.
Team Rubicon is a veteran-led nonprofit organization that helps with emergency humanitarian efforts. Residents of Wagon Trail Ranch, south of La Pine, reached out to the team earlier this year to ask for help in hardening their neighborhood.
“It starts with a request from a group. And it can be a homeowner’s association, or it can be an emergency manager. It can be somebody who contacts us, who has a need that they can fulfill, either monetarily, or it’s just too much for them,” said Terrill.
The team of over 20 volunteers comes from all parts of the West, some coming as far as Colorado and Texas. “Our makeup is approximately 50% veterans. A lot of them have been around team rubicon since the start of 20, 2001, i think, the rest are what we call our kick butt civilians.”
Last year, nearly two million acres were burned by destructive wildfires. Before and after videos of the area being thinned show just how big a difference their help can make.
“If you look at it, every dollar spent in mitigation equates to about $6 in savings,” Terrill added.
Here’s the info the organization shared with us.
Team Rubicon’s volunteers, known as Greyshirts, have traveled from all around the country to help the community, located in northern Klamath County, be more resilient against future fires by removing trees and thinning existing woodlands to slow the advancement of wildland fire.
Nearly 40 Greyshirts are holistically altering the woodlands to create a healthier woodland buffer zone that is both resilient to fire and beneficial to wildlife and people.
Last year was one of the most destructive wildfire years in Oregon history, as 1.9 million acres burned. It changed lives. It changed communities. Some neighborhoods were tested, and many survived the test. They had created defensible space. They had prepared their homes for flames and embers. When the hot embers blew in, the homes that were prepared had the best chance of survival.
Team Rubicon dispatched volunteers from across the country to help the Wagon Trail Ranch community prepare for fire by thinning the forests to help keep the fire on the ground and prevent a crown fire where the fire travels from tree top to tree top. The Wagon Wheel Ranch, after much hard work, has already been certified as a Firewise community, but with only one road into the neighborhood, they need additional help creating an extensive fuel break along the perimeter of the community.
This year to date, Team Rubicon has already conducted 43 operations across the country and currently is deployed in:
Kern County, California (Wildfire Recovery)
Cheboygan County, Michigan (Severe Storm Recovery)
Los Angeles County, California (Wildfire Recovery)
Klamath County, Oregon (Wildfire Mitigation)
From fire mitigation to natural disasters and crisis response, Team Rubicon responded to 98 disasters across North America last year. As we enter hurricane and tornado season, Team Rubicon is ever reliant on our 200,000 volunteers to respond to where they are most desperately needed. To support our Greyshirts and Team Rubicon’s humanitarian mission, visit www.teamrubiconusa.org to donate, volunteer, and find more information.
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About Team Rubicon
Team Rubicon is a veteran-led humanitarian organization that serves global communities before, during, and after disasters and crises. Founded following the Haiti earthquake in 2010, the organization has grown to more than 200,000 volunteers across the United States and has launched over 1,200 operations domestically and internationally. To drive equity across disaster and humanitarian services, Team Rubicon focuses on three areas of impact: disaster response- from mitigation to immediate response to recovery; long term recovery & workforce development — maintaining the fabric of communities through resilient building methods; and medical services- providing emergent and surge health care, WASH, and disaster risk reduction. The organization is featured in the Emmy-nominated Roku original series titled Team Rubicon, which highlights the work of Greyshirt volunteers assisting communities across the country. Visit www.teamrubiconusa.org for more information.