Veterans join forces to repair Harvey-damaged Houston home
HOUSTON — The house is painted pale purple. Near the front door, a wooden sign adorned with flowers reads, “Live life in full bloom.”
The Houston Chronicle reports for more than 40 years, Estela Beaudreault had called this modest house in east Houston — 1,200 square feet, with tall trees and a converted garage — her home. But when it took on 2 feet of water during Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas last August, she didn’t know if she could ever come back.
Beaudreault, 71, has been living in a Federal Emergency Management Agency-provided motel room since the flood that ruined her house and transformed her neighborhood. But now, thanks to volunteers who fixed up her place, Beaudreault is finally able to move back in.
Team Rubicon, a California-based nonprofit made up mostly of military veterans, spent six weeks making Beaudreault’s home livable again. It’s the first of 100 Harvey-flooded homes the national organization plans to repair with the help of skilled volunteers.
Monday afternoon, as Beaudreault took her first look at the house at a “Welcome Home” party, the tears started flowing.
“If you hadn’t come to my aid, I don’t know what I would have done,” Beaudreault told a group of Team Rubicon volunteers in her front yard. “Seriously, I was ready to give up.”
Team Rubicon got started in 2010, after an earthquake decimated Haiti. When established aid organizations were slow to get to Port-auprince, CEO Jake Wood and a fellow ex-marine gathered up supplies and volunteers and flew into the heart of the disaster just days after the earthquake.
Now, Team Rubicon has 80,000 volunteers across the country and has helped people rebuild after 250 disasters — wildfires and tornadoes, flash floods and mudslides, even epidemiological outbreaks such as cholera.
“If you’ve heard of a disaster in the past 10 years, we’ve probably done it,” Wood said.
About 70 percent of Team Rubicon volunteers are military veterans. People who have served the country in the military often have a desire to keep serving even after their military careers have ended, Wood said, and Team Rubicon can use their skills to help people recover from disasters.
Beaudreault’s house represents “the next frontier” for the nonprofit, Wood said. Typically, Team Rubicon moves in just after a disaster and stays for a week or a couple of months, he said. But the organization has plans to expand into longterm recovery projects, and Hurricane Harvey is the group’s first such long-term effort.
The group plans to repair 100 houses damaged by Harvey. Beaudreault’s is the first.
“We always say our organization is here to help people on their worst day,” Wood said. This new effort, he said, allows them to “be there not just on the worst day, but in the long run.”