Jumblerant: Earthquake

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Team Rubicon are back

When Haiti got hit with the horrid earthquake all the way back in January I spoke about Team Rubicon - here and here.

Chile has been hit by an earthquake which hit 8.8 on the Richter scale. Please note that a 5.0 earthquake is 10 times stronger than a 4.0 earthquake. According to Wikipedia today's earthquake occurs anywhere on the planet only once a year, and has the equivalent of 15.8 gigatons of TNT exploding at the same time.

Haiti's earthquake was a 7.0 so therefore Chile's earthquake has many times the amount of energy that Haiti's had. There are numerous factors that effect the final effect that the release of that energy has on a country but nevertheless, Team Rubicon are ready to roll:

Ladies and Gentlemen:

As you hopefully by now know, Chile has been rocked by a magnitude 8.7 earthquake off it's coast. This earthquake is over 1000x more powerful than the one that struck Haiti over one month ago.

Initial reports from the Chilean government are casualties hovering near 200, however, communication is down with outlying villages and towns on the coast, and that toll is expected to rise sharply in the coming days.

Team Rubicon has assembled a 6 man recon element to fly into southern Chile to assess casualties near the coast, where large aid organizations will not concentrate their efforts. We expect bottlenecks to occur in Santiago, where the airport is shut down for 24 hours, and concentrated efforts to be focused on Concepcion. This leaves a critical gap in medical attention on the coastal towns.

Team Rubicon is asking you to help us offset the cost of this mission. If you can donate $10 or $15 to our website, we can ensure that thousands of Chilean citizens on the coast will receive the care they need.

http://teamrubiconusa.org/donate/

Thank you.

Jake Wood
President, Team Rubicon

kthanxbai!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Team Rubicon

We've all heard of the horrifying earthquakes in Haiti and the rather pathetic and quite unacceptable physical response from around the world.

According to most accounts I have read there is a large quantity of supplies stuck at the airport. Planes loaded with more assistance are being turned away for goodness knows what reasons.

And as a result people are dying.

What did you do about it? Probably the same as I, read some more news articles, forward some e-mails, maybe even donate $25 to a reliable charity and move on to the next article.

Not everyone is like us.

Jake Wood was a Marine Sniper in Afghanistan. He left the service and was kicking back and enjoying his life after a very stressful few years. When he heard about the earthquake he also felt bad and wanted to help. Except being a Marine and therefore medically trained to a certain level, he decided to head down there and help. But why go alone? He gathered some friends and other volunteers and traveled down there on their own di me.

Team Rubicon member Dr David Griswell, like yesterday, becomes the lead physician in the outdoor General Hospital. "It's a disaster. There is no drinking water

The team don't just serve as a first responder for injuries but they also help move power lines, inspect damaged buildings such as hospitals and gathering points and they also have to keep themselves, and others from wasting energy asking why such numb-skulls are visiting at a time when they're body weight in water or gauze pads or antibiotics would better serve the people.

With no structural engineer available, Team Rubicon Firefighters Jeff Lang and Craig Parello conduct the initial structural damage assessment on the General Hospital after the 6.1 quake this morning.