The Red Bulletin April 2020

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Team Rubicon Top: Operation Hard Hustle clears the debris left behind by Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017. Above: a token of gratitude for the medical emergency team saving lives and rebuilding communities. Opposite: Dr Erin Noste, Team Rubicon’s deputy medical director, treats a patient in Mozambique XX EDITOR ILLUSTRATOR 56 THE RED BULLETIN
TEAM XX RUBICON EDITOR ILLUSTRATOR even the most remote environments. With this equipment, the team is also able to consult a remote doctor who can step in and advise when medical staff on the ground are sparse. Naturally, there is a plentiful supply of medication catering to pre-hospital care including cuts, fractures and tetanus, as well as plastic containers full of medical packs with everything from tents to water purification systems. “The reality of the situation is that the majority of times we go out, we encounter people with a lack of access to healthcare,” explains Porter. “We’ve had to deal with infected lacerations. We need to be prepared to temporarily set a broken bone. There can be malnourishment or no access to clean drinking water, so we carry antibiotics, too.” The operations centre also houses an impressive gym with TRX (bodyweight resistance training) equipment, workout benches and pull-up bars; it’s essential that the team is able to hold its own in remote locations. “Physical fitness is important to us,” Porter says. “The areas we work in are typically very hot and humid. Frequently, you’ll have to hike between seven and 10 miles with one of these rucksacks. You have to be able to operate without bringing the team down.” Porter says illnesses among the teams themselves are rare – which is not to say operations are risk-free. “We went to Nepal after the 2015 earthquake,” he recalls. “We had a team of 45 on the ground when the second earthquake occurred. They removed themselves from the building, did accountability, let us know that they were safe, then pressed on. In general, we’ve either been pretty safe or pretty lucky.” A CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM When The Red Bulletin visits in early December 2019, Team Rubicon has just deployed a unit to the Marshall Islands in the central Pacific to assist with the ongoing dengue fever epidemic, and is also searching its volunteer base for medical providers who can fly out to Samoa at the behest of the WHO to help tackle a measles outbreak. The organisation has also been on the front line of the Australian wildfires, a crisis that has – at the “PEOPLE NEED SOMETHING TO RALLY AROUND WHEN THINGS GET CHAOTIC” time of this magazine going to print – seen more than 17 million hectares of bushland razed, around 6,000 buildings destroyed, and as many as 32 people (including volunteer firefighters) killed. In 2019, the Australian wildfire season began in late August/early September – a full three months earlier than usual. Since then, the fire threat has been nearconstant, with Team Rubicon Australia (TRA) first invited by the Office for Emergency Management to respond to fires in Rappville in northern New South Wales back in October. Its work is primarily focused on debris and tree removal at locations across NSW. “In the last four months, we’ve conducted more operations than in the preceding three years,” says TRA CEO Geoff Evans. The team is now awaiting the go-ahead to deploy to Victoria and southern NSW, where fires still rage. “The authorities in Victoria and New South Wales are delaying our deployment to these areas due to the ongoing risk, and, more importantly, so that they may vector us on to the hardest-hit areas, some of which may yet be to come,” says Evans. In Australia, the challenge will be maintaining on-the-ground support across three areas of operation, as well as managing the psychological toll endured by homeowners, many of whom, Evans says, have “lost all hope”. Despite this, from Australia to Dallas, the company’s ethos is one of optimism, of finding hope in the chaos. Porter recalls being dispatched to Moore, Oklahoma, in the aftermath of the 2013 tornado: “In one of the neighbourhoods, there was a tree at the end of a cul-de-sac. The tornado came through and ripped all of the leaves off, so all that was left were the trunk and the branches; everything else around it was flattened. But then somebody took an American flag and nailed it to the tree, and that became a central [focus] point. People need something to rally around when things are so chaotic.” For Porter, it’s moments like this that make Team Rubicon’s work so important. “Where there’s a need, we try to fill it. The best thing about the job for me is knowing we’re making a difference,” he says. “One hundred years from now, people will be writing books on the things we’ve done.” teamrubiconglobal.org THE RED BULLETIN 57
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Habit NEO Press play. We took our m
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Page 7 and 8: CONTENTS April 2020 28 Smoking hot:
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Page 11 and 12: SABANETA, COLOMBIA Slippery ride Sk
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Page 15 and 16: ALICIA KEYS New York skate of mind
Page 17 and 18: JOIN US ON THE INFINITE HIKE DISCOV
Page 19 and 20: Burst of colour: an installation fr
Page 21 and 22: FOR us #explorers STEREO HYBRID 140
Page 23 and 24: ”Someone suggested to me that I s
Page 25 and 26: ”Now I want to go to Australia an
Page 27 and 28: ”For the first time in my career,
Page 29 and 30: Words FLORIAN OBKIRCHER Photography
Page 31 and 32: Afrobeats “When I lived in Americ
Page 33 and 34: “I’ve never consciously tried t
Page 35 and 36: Afrobeats Brown, have experimented
Page 37 and 38: “My daughter is growing up in a w
Page 39 and 40: Afrobeats “[Drinking and smoking]
Page 41 and 42: Gattlin Griffith, 21, is keeping tr
Page 43 and 44: “Every single stride, for an inst
Page 45 and 46: Trick riders energy. As riders, we
Page 47 and 48: Trick riders father died in 1984, a
Page 49 and 50: The disaster ARTISTS TEAM RUBICON W
Page 51 and 52: Torn apart: the 2010 earthquake in
Page 53 and 54: TEAM RUBICON (3), GETTY IMAGES (1)
Page 55: Team Rubicon TEAM RUBICON “ALL TH
Page 59 and 60: SMALL STEPS, GIANT STRIDES The huma
Page 61 and 62: Wings for Life “I just want to su
Page 63 and 64: “It would be naive to think every
Page 65 and 66: ED JACKSON dislocated his C6-C7 ver
Page 67 and 68: Wings for Life “We’re just tell
Page 69 and 70: VENTURE Enhance, equip, and experie
Page 71 and 72: The 90m-high ‘Great Wall of Vietn
Page 73 and 74: This is Wales. Check in. Stwlan Dam
Page 75 and 76: VENTURE Equipment XX EDITOR ILLUSTR
Page 77 and 78: THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION Albert V
Page 79 and 80: VENTURE Equipment DRIVE Tough love
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Page 91 and 92: THE RED BULLETIN PROMOTION The mine
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Page 95 and 96: CALENDAR March/April 20 to 29 March
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