When we can team up with other organizations, everybody wins. Yesterday was a perfect example, and it involved power tools, so you know it was good.
We got the call to help
Team Rubicon’s grey shirts with a land-clearing project at St. John “A”’s graveyard. They had chainsaws. Big, loud chainsaws. We had one of our secret weapons: a log splitter. (For the uninitiated, a log splitter is basically a medieval battering ram powered by hydraulics, except it doesn’t knock down castle doors; it just turns giant logs into something you can actually carry without needing a forklift and a chiropractor.)
Within no time, we had reduced the enormous, back-breaking logs into neat stacks of firewood for people who needed heat. Someone from the site looked over and said, “That was fast. You guys were called just this morning, right?” Our reply: “That’s how we operate.”
And it’s true. This is the heartbeat of Grounded Boots Relief. We’re not just here to help; we’re here to make it easier for other people to help. We bring the right gear so others—whether they’re a nationally recognized disaster relief group or the volunteer crew from the corner hardware store, can do their thing faster, better, and without throwing out their backs.
Sometimes that means using equipment others don’t have. Sometimes it means finding the one tool that turns a job from an all-day slog into something you finish before lunch. And sometimes it means just showing up so fast that people think we’ve mastered teleportation.
In a disaster zone, speed matters. Efficiency matters. And yes, hydraulics matter. That’s why we’ll always roll in ready- not just to get the job done ourselves, but to make sure everybody else can knock it out of the park, too.