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.

Here’s our latest video breaking down what Grounded Boots Relief does, how we do it, and why it matters.

Ovens stayed hot as Hurricane Harvey trapped a bakery
While much of Houston was shut down by Harvey’s flooding in 2017, one trapped bakery crew at El Bolillo Bakery kept their ovens running around the clock, producing enough bread to feed police, nursing homes, and storm survivors across the city.
Source: cbsnews.com

As I sit down to write this week’s newsletter, I find myself looking back at the last several days and asking: what mattered most?

This week was full of conversations, like with people who have spent years building careers in emergency management. They know the terrain. They’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. And they’ve been generous with their advice on how to position Grounded Boots Relief so that emergency managers see our full value: our purpose, our capabilities, and the specialized equipment we can put in the field at a moment’s notice.

But there’s more. This week, we received a $25,000 donation from an (for now) anonymous organization for building our capacity. It’s a tremendous gift, and one we’ll treat with the same discipline we bring to our field work. If someone handed us $200,000 tomorrow, we could put it to work in a couple of months. But $25,000 requires a different mindset. One that’s surgical, not sweeping. This will fund our mission-capability stage, and then we’ll layer in the polish, the efficiency, and yes, the flair that defines how we operate.

We are deeply grateful for this trust and support. And we’re just as grateful for you. Whether you’ve read these updates to track our progress, shared our content, donated supplies or funds, or joined us in the field, you have been part of this story from the start. We couldn’t have reached this point without you.

Thank you. Truly.