May 24, 2011 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Team Rubicon Deploys Team to Tornado Devastation in Joplin, Mo. LOS ANGELES – Team Rubicon has activated its Midwest Team to respond to tornado stricken Joplin, Mo. Advance team members arrived on the ground Monday morning to survey the damage and the entire team of volunteers will arrive in Joplin today. Their focus will be on debris clearing and clean-up operations. The team of veterans is staging out of Springfield, Mo., and have set-up an operations center in Joplin on the grounds of Missouri Southern State University. This effort is part of a broader Team Rubicon initiative, called Team Rubicon Transition, that will engage returning veterans in disaster relief projects such as this. Different from its previous international missions, responding to domestic natural disaster crises in the United States allows for a larger number of interested volunteers, specifically veterans, to continue their call to service. On the streets of Port-au-Prince, TR’s military veterans had an epiphany: natural disasters present the same problems that face troops in Iraq and Afghanistan: unstable populations, limited resources, and horrific sights, sounds and smells. The skills cultivated on those same battlefields–emergency medicine, risk assessment and management, teamwork and decisive leadership–are invaluable in disaster zones. ### About Team Rubicon Team Rubicon bridges the critical time gap between large natural disasters and conventional aid response. They provide vanguard medical care by fielding small, self-sustaining, mobile teams of skilled first-responders, including combat veterans, firefighter/paramedics, and medical personnel. To deploy rapidly, they rely heavily on horizontal command structure, social networking technology, and the employment of local nationals. For more about Team Rubicon, visit www.teamrubiconusa.org Editor’s Note Jake Wood, Team Rubicon President and Co-founder, will be traveling with the team to Joplin, Mo., and is available for interview. Media Contact Kristin Robinson (913) 568-8043 robinson@teamrubiconusa.org