The Disaster Response Program That's Building More Than Homes

Eight years after a mercaptan spill in Eight Mile, Alabama, its mostly black and working class residents still suffer from respiratory issues, rashes and headaches.

Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization of military veterans that provides disaster relief, has provided relief after flooding in Detroit, tornadoes in Oklahoma, a typhoon in the Philippines and an earthquake in Nepal, among dozens of other communities across the globe.

Citizen cartographers around the globe are tracing and checking roads, buildings, and open spaces to assist people on the ground. You can help.

Last year, Team Rubicon carried out 35 domestic operations and three international operations, with overlapping missions in Kathmandu, Nepal, and Barikiki, Kiribati, as well as an operation in Roseau, Dominica. The humanitarian organization has two goals: improving overseas disaster response and finding new ways to bring military veterans into humanitarian operations.

For one village in Nepal, there's a silver lining to the earthquake: A year later, a new and better health clinic is rising from the rubble of the old. And it includes a birthing center.

After record-breaking rainfall and flooding, the city of York was at a loss for relief and reconstruction ideas. They turned to the Dutch city of Nijmegen, which had experienced similar flooding and found a solution in building a relief channel.

In a lot of places, food is available and the market is working but people are too poor to buy it, so cash donations are more effective than food. Previously U.S. aid laws did not allow cash donations but a new proposal could change that.

In war zones, people have a difficult time finding clean water and safe areas to inhabit. Social media, smart phones, and technology applications are aiding in people’s survival. In Aleppo, Syria, the International Committee of the Red Cross posted a map on Facebook to show alternative sources of clean drinking water that reached approximately 140,000 people.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

In a country of limited resources — and perhaps for that very reason — preparing for natural disasters is top of the agenda in Bangladesh. Various grassroots, collaborative programs have been put in place over the years to help address many facets of the calamities caused by cyclones, from improved emergency shelters to long-term support for those who lose their livelihoods in the storms.