Family, Faith, and Fortitude: Larry Agee's Commitment to Disaster Relief and Recovery

In this impactful episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we welcome Larry Agee, co-founder and executive director of Disaster Aid USA, a nonprofit organization that has provided an astounding $2.5 million in disaster relief over the past year. Larry, a U.S. Army veteran and seasoned financial planner, shares his journey from military service to disaster relief, driven by a passion for helping communities in crisis. With experience in over 70 disaster missions across the globe—from Ukraine to Haiti and South Sudan—Larry offers invaluable insights into the chaos of disaster response, the importance of empathy, and the role of community engagement in recovery efforts. He discusses the intricacies of mucking and gutting homes after floods, the emotional toll of witnessing devastation, and the profound moments that reaffirm the necessity of this work. Larry also highlights the significance of training local volunteers and fostering leadership within communities to amplify their impact. Tune in to learn how you can support disaster relief efforts and make a difference in the lives of those affected by calamities.
Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600
Support the show

www.disasterusa.org

Transcript

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve, Welcome, to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a, show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is Larry Ag. Larry brings financial planning, disaster relief and military service into this conversation. Larry is the co founder and executive director of Disaster Aid USA, a nonprofit organization that has provided 2.5 million disaster relief in the last year alone. Larry has either been a part of or supported 70 disaster relief missions. And these, these, range from being in the United States to places like Ukraine, Haiti, South Sudan, and the Philippines. So we're going to be talking to Larry about his work and his organization and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So, Larry, thank you for joining me.

>> Larry Ag: 1:22

Yeah, thank you for inviting me, buddy.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 1:24

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself.

>> Larry Ag: 1:29

Well, I am a veteran of desert, storm. I'm a, you know, U.S. army veteran. I was in an army tank battalion. And I'm also a financial planner. That's, that's what we call my paying job. Been a financial advisor for 30 years now, so. But probably 15 years ago, well, 20 years ago, I kind of got involved in disaster relief through Hurricane Katrina, volunteered for different organizations, and just kind of figured out I had a knack for it, a lot of it, the military training, problem solving, you know, completing mission type of stuff that the military trained you for. And after about five years being, a Marine named Bob Grill, decided to start Disaster Aid usa. So you got an army guy and a Marine guy teaming up, you know, you know, you're in trouble then, right? So we've done this for 15 years. We do international and domestic deployments. And that's, that's really my passion. You know, my financial planning clients are my passion, too. I love them, and they love following what I do on the disaster relief side and are very supportive of it. So, we started off doing international deployments from. I would go in and design and set up refugee camps in Sudan, Pakistan, been to Africa eight times, Central America. And we started doing domestic disasters to help, you know, during disasters here in the usa. And we can get into a little more of the details in a minute. But it just kind of started off, you know, I said, hey, we need to do the domestic disasters. And I threw chainsaws and equipment in the back of a truck and followed some other charities around for a couple of weeks after some tornadoes in Alabama and kind of found our niche to find or defined our niche. And now 15 years later, we have over 40 domestic response trailers is what we call them. They're loaded with chainsaw generators and we have some heavy equipment, rescue boats, and so we do, you know, deployments all over the US and we're also in Jamaica right now. But, you know, me personally, I've got, two kids and been married for 33 years. And I always say, 33 years is. They say, how do you do it? I said, it's totally my wife's patience is how has. How we do it. And they're all. The thing I love is they're all part of disaster aid USA too. They're all have a servant's heart. They deploy with me, you know, to, to disasters. My wife even, you know, drives the backhoe and, and the kids can do the chainsaws, my daughter can do chainsaw work and, and, you know, but all that's. The work is one thing. But the thing I love is watching my family, you know, really take care of the survivors after, after a flood or a hurricane, when those survivors are at their worst moment and you see your, your wife or your kids, you know, step in and just take the time to talk with that person and feel that person's, you know, pain and have empathy for them. We've been, Our house has been hit by four hurricanes itself. Hurricane Laura about took the whole house out. So we, we truly understand it. But, you know, we're a family of service and we're, we're a family that wants to help the community whether it's a disaster or not. But we find our, our, our niche is really when, you know, things are really bad, there's a disaster and people are kind of lost where we can step in and say, I got this. Sit back. And so that's just, that's something I'm, I'm proud of as a. Is hopefully a legacy I'm going to leave with them, but that we do it as a family and I'm not just out there doing it by myself. so, you know, and I'm a Christian, so part of that also goes into being his hands and feet and just kind of, kind of living that life of service. So that's, that's me in a nutshell.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 5:18

Absolutely. And thank you and your family for your service.

>> Larry Ag: 5:23

Yes, sir.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 5:24

Let's talk about the first, 24 hours of a disaster. What goes through your mind, within the first 24 hours of a disaster response?

>> Larry Ag: 5:33

Yeah, the first 24 hours is really chaotic and Honestly, I like being on that assessment team. The team that goes in first, we pre position like for hurricanes, let's say, because that's usually the worst because you have like a 50, 50 square mile grid, you know, that's out. So we try to pre position right outside the storm and then are the first in. And of course, just so you know, we always coordinate with emergency, you know, officials, the government officials, we let them know we're coming, what our capabilities are. And our assessment or strike team as we call them is self sufficient for 10 days. We can feed, water, our own housing, everything for 10 days and we go in and help clear roads. It's really trying to figure out what that community needs, you know, what, what parts of the community are cut off, the best way to help them. Is it a flood event, is it a wind event? You know, do you need to bring in, you know, crews that deal with floods or you need to bring in your heavy equipment for chainsaw? Is it a tarping event? Mainly where lots of roofs are gone and we need to tarp stuff. So it's a lot of jumping around and really kind of taking notice of, you know, what the emergency management people can do, where the holes in the community are. And we try to fill those holes, whether you know, it's low income neighborhoods, areas that typically flood or areas that have been cut off by a lot of trees and the county just didn't have enough equipment to get to it. So it's really a lot of problem solving because you're doing the work when everything is messed up, but you're also trying to solve all the problems for the next teams coming in and getting the information out to the rest of the world. We have Starlink systems and satellite phones. So it's, and I guess that that goes along with my military training and experiences. That's where I really like to be. And the first 24 hours can be pretty sketchy sometimes and you have to be patient. People have just gone through some of the craziest things in their lives and they're going to be a little on edge, they're going to be in shock. And it's not just, you know, walking through water and you know, you see these videos or you're chopping trees down and everybody's like, oh, that's cool. That's, you know, that's really not what it is. I mean that, that's, that looks good on tv, but it's finding those survivors and getting the help that they need. We've had people come walking out of dirt roads. And they walked a mile from their home that's totally destroyed. And they spent the night underneath a tin roo like, like metal on the ground. They've got no shoes. The shirts are like half torn off. They look dazed. They're literally just walking out of what like a bomb happened. And you got to know how to, how to handle those people, you know, and take the time to, to talk with them and get them to the fire station or the local hospital. And the whole time you're doing that is not to lose focus of, looking around, you know, and seeing if this area is flooded. This area is cut off with trees. This one has downed power lines. This area is un safe and get back and get that information. So the first 24 hours is extremely busy.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 8:55

Okay, the, stuff that you described is that the muck and gut team.

>> Larry Ag: 9:00

Yeah, that's the first 24 hours is still the strike team and assessment team. Now they're able to do chainsaw work and mucking and gutting. So they're kind of like a multi purpose team. They can do, you know, whatever's needed. But let's say you go in and mucking and gutting. I always say it's a small phrase for a whole lot of work. And mucking and gutting means like when a house is flooded and it's got three, four feet of water in it and the water's receded, you have to go in there and muck everything, which means get everything out of the house. Just think if you're moving, you know, to another house. You sold your house, you're moving. Take everything out, I mean everything out from underneath the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, your closets, the attic, the furniture. And then you start ripping carpet out. And then you start tearing drywall out and you rip everything down to the studs, just where the studs are visible. Then you dry the house. And then, you know, that's, you know, the gutting part is gutting all the drywall out. And then you start drying the house with fans and dehumidifiers. And then you spray it. We spray it with a thing called shockwave that kills mold and that. And we're not mold remediation experts. We're just trying to put a bandaid on it until people, until, you know, restoration experts or someone else can come in and really, you know, get mold m out of the house. But we dry it, spray it down so mold can't grow anymore and come get the family back into a stable situation. So the mucking and gut crews are, you know, it is a lot of work. I mean, chainsaw is a lot of work, heavy equipment's a lot of work. But mucking and gutting, when everything is wet and nasty and all the different things in your house are, have combined in the flood, all the different detergents and liquid and gasoline and diesel, and you know, the house can be pretty contaminated, so the, the crews really have to be careful. So, that's what a mucking gut crew is.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 11:07

Okay, let's you know, get, give listeners some best, best practice tips or, you know, talk about how to train, you know, volunteers. And you know, many of them might, might be, it might be their first time, helping out.

>> Larry Ag: 11:23

Yeah. In fact, a lot of our, our volunteers, you know, we call day volunteers that, that are in the area and show up to work that day. That's the first time they've done the work. Our team leads, you know, can walk them through it. And you know, it's really step by step. First get everything wet out of the house, you know, and then start getting the carpet out. And once you get the carpet and everything out of the house and everything out of the cabinets, then you go back and take the baseboards up and then the trim work. And then, you know, you, you know, wherever the water line is, you always cut about a foot above the water line. Say the water line's two feet up on a wall. Then technically you want to cut a foot above it because the water's gonna, is gonna suck up in the drywall and the insulation in the wall. But we had some insurance adjusters actually tell us to cut, you know, in two foot increments. It makes it easier for the construction crews to come in because sheets of drywall are like four by eight. So cutting three feet up, well, now they gotta cut the four by eight sheet of plywood by three feet and there's a lot of waste. They said just go ahead and cut it at four feet. So, you know, working with insurance companies and adjusters and asking them, you know, what's their best practice has helped us a lot. And they actually like it when we're on the scene because we try to follow their procedures. And then once everything is opened up and all the drywall is out and you know, we actually pull all the screws and nails out of the, out of the two by fours we set drying fans up and you always set them in a circular motion to where they're not fighting each other, where the fans are Creating kind of like a, a whirlwind or a tornado in the house. And that helps dry the house out quicker. You stick some dehumidifiers in there, sucks the moisture out of the air, and then we spray it down with a mold killing agent. But this is the thing. Do not bleach. The, don't use bleach to kill mold. Let me put it that way, because bleach will kill mold, but it doesn't prevent it from growing. When mold is, you know, when you kill mold, it shoots off little spores, kind of like a last ditch effort to save itself. And then the spores are going to try to find a piece of wood or something to grow on. So if bleach kills it, but you don't put a barrier down on those boards, then the mold is going to regrow. That's why people say, hey, I bleached my house. And now the mold's back six days later. So we use Shockwave and of course Home Depot. And Lowe's has some other stuff, I think it's called mold guard. So it literally kills the mold, but then it lays a barrier down on all the surfaces so the, the mold spores, when it lands on it, it can't get a hold and start growing. So that's probably honestly one of the most important things, you know, when mucking, gutting the house at the end of it, is to use the right products to kill the mold and to keep it from growing. we just started using air scrubbers too. where we. These air scrubbers are commercial air scrubbers and they're expensive. So, we don't have a whole lot of them. And you go in there and it scrubs the mold out of the air. Eventually the air conditioner and everything else will get the mold out of the air. but then, then you've got mold in the, in the ac. So these air scrubbers help take the mold out of the air, not just off of the wood and stuff. So, it's really. A lot of, it's demo work. So there's, it's different than rebuild work. Like my wife is great at rebuilding things. And this, this may sound funny, but I mean, I buy hers present presence at Home Depot and Lowe's. Right? She can build anything. She can build cabinets, you know, a house. I mean, she's great with wood and carpentry type stuff. Me, I will. If I'm trying to rebuild something. you know, I can't build a box, but, I can go in and tear up a House, I can tear everything out and get it to the street and spray it down. So it's a little more forgiving in the demo work than the people who come in and do the rebuild work. So

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 15:26

good stuff there. So talk about a disaster deployment that had a lasting impact on you. And why.

>> Larry Ag: 15:34

Oh, man, there's a lot of them, I tell you. I've done 70 domestic deployments and 14 international. And sometimes on the international. It's such a massive scale, you know, like in Pakistan, you know, there were, I think, 8 million people displaced. And just. It was a crazy amount of people suffering. I mean, suffering bad. And then in Sudan, the Jawadid had actually come into the. What's called the Aba area and murdered a bunch of people. They had actually told them they were trying to get them out of the region because a vote was coming up for that region to be to go with South Sudan, which is more of a free nation than North Sudan. And so these people were supposed to vote. Well, the Jawadid, which means devil on horseback, came in, murdered a bunch of them, and were trying to set up as the original residents of that area. And then they were going to vote to be part of North Sudan. So they came in and they. After they murdered a number of them, they. They told some of them, you, if you will, denying being a Christian and deny being African will let you live. And because when we were going through the RBA area, I kept seeing on the. On the walls, you know, we are Christian, we are African. And I was. You know, that's how I found out. I was like, so what is that? And they told me that these people would not deny their religion, being a Christian or being African American. And so they were killed. And, you know, just. And then, of course, they, you know, and this may be a little more graphic or whatever, but they raped the women and to dilute the bloodlines. And this is what the people are telling me. So this is why I'm. I'm telling you. And there was this little kid, he was probably 12 years old, in this burnout schoolhouse, and the chalkboards were still good, and he had drawn the battle. Wow. I wouldn't call it a battle, the massacre on the chalkboard, because he witnessed it. And it was, you know, the people coming in and shooting people and, you know, lining them up. And he even had, like, a. One of the Jawa d chasing this man down with a knife. And the man saying, I love you to a woman. And that was actually his uncle, how his uncle had died. And I thought at that time, I said, you know, we've got a lot of kids here in the United States playing Call of Duty and, and all these, you know, games like that, and this kid is literally living it, you know, so it was a total different scenario situation that you had to process. And I remember him saying, you know, I told him, you know, I said, look, we were up there doing the assessment. I said, I'm coming back with tents, food, water. We're going to get you all set up. And he's. And I said, I'll be back. And he said, they all say that and they never come back. And I remember thinking, I don't care what happens, you know, I'm coming back to this village, you know, this the last thing I do. I'm going to see this kid again. And we're going to, we're going to get them set up. And we did. We got to, we got to get them set up. I came back and he was so happy to see us. He really didn't think I was coming back because a lot of charities would come in or NGOs would come in, assess it, and think about what they need to do, and then it may take them a really long time to get things done or they, they go to another area. So this kid was used to being disappointed, and that was just something I wasn't going to let happen. And, here in the US I'll just tell you, there's a lot of them here in the US Also. But I'll tell you one that recently, I don't know if you remember the Kerrville floods that happened last year, where the girls from Camp Mystic, a bunch of those, were swept away in the floods and died. Yeah, so we heard of it. Yeah. So we were. There was, There was over 150 missing at one time, and I think it was like 50 of them were elementary and junior high school girls at a camp. And a lot of them died. You know, they got swept away. They were asleep in their cabins and just, you know, a huge amount of rain fell that had never fallen that, that fast, and big flood came and, and, there was a lot missing. So while we were there with our debris teams, you know, you're, you're, you're in a skid steer or a backhoe, and you're, you got your grapple bucket and you're grabbing pieces of debris and pulling them out, you know, pulling the debris apart and chainsawing it. And the, the searchers and the search dogs and stuff were going through debris, looking for the kids and other people that were missing, you know, and as you're going through the debris, you're finding, like, the clothes from Camp mystic, like little kids clothes and bathing suits. And, you know, knowing that there's people in there, these little girls in there. And it's always, it's always tougher to see the deceased children, you know, And I'm not saying that it's easy to see adults, you know, who've died in disasters, but at least, you know, they've. They've lived some part of life. And then when it's children, you know, I guess it's the innocence of children that you. And they didn't get to live a full life that really kind of hits home. And a lot of our crew had, a. Had a tough time with that, you know. and I'll tell you a quick story about one of the guys that we worked on his house, or where his house was. As I said before, what we do, we do a lot of physical labor, but it's about the survivor and this, you know, and it's to relieve stress off of them. And. And sometimes what they want you to do and what you want to do is two different things, but you do what they want to do because that's what's going to relieve the stress for them. But this guy was showing us around his. His property on, you know, the river where, you know, and, you know, he was like, this is my property line. But he was in shock because he lost everything. His house is gone. Everything was gone. But luckily they. They escaped. But a couple of his neighbors were swept away and they were found later. So a couple of his neighbors passed away, and he was in total shock because he's lost everything. And this guy's like, you know, retirement age. So it's not like he's 30 and can go out and make more money, right? And you could tell the stress on him, the tension in his face and in his shoulders. And he kept mentioning his flagpole even though his whole house is gone. He's like, I can't find my flagpole. I can't believe the flagpole's gone. And so, you know, me and my son, like I said, you know, we do it as a family. We kind of caught on to that. He mentioned his flagpole about three, four times. And we're like, we're going to find this flagpole.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 23:57

Now.

>> Larry Ag: 23:57

The chances of us finding this flagpole were one in a thousand, because things were worse ten miles down the river, right? And we ended up finding the flagpole not even bent. And so when we got it, he showed us where it was supposed to go, and we cleared the debris, you know, and put it back in the hole. It was supposed to go well. And as a veteran that does disaster relief work, I always carry an American flag in my truck and, you know, give it to somebody, you know, you know, if we're doing their house or if it, you know, if it brings their spirits up. And I happen to have one in my truck. You know, as a veteran, I was like, hey, I got a flag for you, because that's the next thing. I don't have a flag. So we've got this really neat picture of me and my son raising this flag on this flagpole with all this debris around. And, you know, everybody's like, man, this picture is so great. But the story behind it is even greater because it's just a snapshot of something we did. But what you don't see is, off camera, as we're raising the flagpole, he just totally decompresses. You can see his face turn to normal. You can see the tension in his shoulders relieve, you know, starts to get emotional. And he, you know, and at that moment, that was his first step of recovery, because up till that time, he was in total disbelief. Total. I don't know what to do next. Don't know how to move forward. And putting that flagpole in place and running the American flag up, that was step one. And from then on, his whole attitude changed, and he was, okay, now we need to do this, and now we need to do that. He just. It was a different person. And that's. That's the moment that we look for, because that's what our real job is, is. Is to take that stress and that. That shock away from someone and do what needs to be done to get them back on track. And you could just see his total demeanor change. And, you know, it was a flagpole and a flag, but that was. That was step one of his recovery.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 26:04

Well, I know Disaster Aid USA is a volunteer model, but you guys managed to do 2.5 million in services last year alone. Talk about how you make that happen.

>> Larry Ag: 26:18

It's. We like to call it being a force multiplier, and that's another military term. We actually have a lot of veterans in our organization. you don't have to be a veteran. I mean, you know, we. We have lots of people who aren't veterans. But being a force multiplier, you know what that means, is I can come in with my team leads that know how to muck and gut and chainsaw and, and equipment. And we train locals in that area and in churches and Rotary clubs and Rotary districts, we partner with a lot of Rotary districts. Rotary is a, service organization and everyone on our board is actually a Rotarian. And so we partner with those Rotary districts to create a leadership team to serve that community during a disaster. And then we make or, train more team leads. People who've never done disasters before, we train them. We don't just say, here come muck and gut this house. We look for the people who are good at it or want to do more. And then we train them how to lead the other people on how to muck and gut a house or to run a chainsaw crew or to run a point of distribution where all the donations are handed out. And so we may go in with five or six team leads and some equipment. And usually within a couple of weeks we have 10 to 15 team leads each managing 15 to 20 volunteers. So instead of just my five or six people coming in, now we're managing hundreds of people a day. And that's, that's how we get done. You know, a lot of organizations have got great teams, great volunteers, and they go in and do it as a unit. And we're real big on taking our team leads in and involving the local community, you know, to help repair their community. But we're going to train them, we're going to supervise them, we're going to manage them and we're going to be there. But it just makes us be a force multiplier for that community and get more done. And, you know, like when you muck and gut a house, it's easily 15 to$20,000 if they had to pay it on a small house, on a medium sized house, it's 35,000. If you had to pay somebody to do it. Or we would come up with our chainsaw crews and trees would be down everywhere and you know, it would be an elderly retired couple and they would say, look, we just got a quote and it's eight, $9,000. And we don't have that. Even if they have insurance, unless the tree's on their house or blocking their driveway, it's not paying for it. I mean, that's just, that's just the rules of most insurance companies. So we can go in and in that one day get all the, all the, you know, trees chopped up and put to the side of the road for FEMA to come get and, you know, and save that person eight or $9,000 or mucking gut a house and save them 20,000. so one of the things we do is we contact them, emergency command center, the eoc, and we ask them. One of the things we ask them is which first responders need help because, you know, their houses are going to be damaged, they're going to need tarps, you know, they're going to need a lot of work. And they're working 18 hours a day. So we'll assign a team to do nothing but first responder work. And that way when these people get off work, whether it's a fireman, you know, a city worker, a policeman or state trooper, they can go home and their house is taken care of. You know, the other list that we ask from them is who are your senior citizen organizations? Where are the, the neighborhoods, you know, that, that have the most vulnerable people, people who probably don't have insurance, that, you know, flood or, you know, more often than others, and then that's who we hit next. So we try to go down a list of the most vulnerable, you know, and then, and then on down the list. And that's kind of how we prioritize things. so, but that's, that's how we, that's how we do that much money, you know, that, you know, with, with just volunteers is, is getting the community involved in managing more volunteers and then us just doing our thing.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 30:31

Well, let's talk about, international disaster response. How do you, decide how and when to respond to an, international disaster?

>> Larry Ag: 30:41

You know, that's a great question because, you know, we could be deployed, you know, every month somewhere in the world. It really depends on donations. And if we have support there, you know, if there's some type of connection, whether it's a Rotary Club, a Rotary district, somebody's church has connection. There's, we know some government officials there, and I know a lot of people at different agencies. The UN and Samaritan's purse operations blessing, if there's support there. So we can either have local support or tie in with another organization, but it's also donations. There's a lot of places we'd like to go, but if we don't have the money, we don't have the donations because it cost a whole lot more money. We got to fly. It's not just driving to Florida or driving to Louisiana or Texas for a hurricane. It's. You got a plane fare into a remote place and then, you know, everything's Extremely expensive on international deployments. And then you have to ship your aid in, you know, and that usually costs a lot of money. And then there's customs. So it's really a lot of logistics. And that's one of the things that we pride ourselves on is actually we were the only NGO to, get our, you know, refugee camp in, in Sudan, in the Aba area of Sudan. We were the only ones to set it up. Water purification, food and tents, you know, in Aba. And we're a small, all volunteer group, and there were some big guys over there, and a lot of times they just concentrated somewhere else. And other times, you know, you're on the border of north and South Sudan and you have the John Wadid sitting there looking at you. And we had UN peacekeepers around us and, and they didn't want to take the risk. And, you know, we did because we saw those people's faces and we were just like, no one else is helping. We're going to do it. So to go back to your question, it's pretty selective where we go internationally. The first thing is donations and how much money we've raised for international deployments, because we let people decide if they want to give to domestic here in the US or international. So we are in Jamaica. We were in Jamaica just a few days after the storm, and we were helping with a lot of logistics for other NGOs. A lot of stuff was coming in in private planes. And so I was at the airport getting the stuff off the private planes, going through customs, making sure it got through customs. And then we put it in bands and sent straight to the mountains in Jamaica same day. And, so that was phase one, and then phase two came behind and we continued, continued doing that, but we started looking for houses to rebuild, and we were rebuilding community centers. And that's kind of one of the, when you get to an. In an international deployment is you may want to go rebuild this person's house or this person's house. But it's more effective to find out who the community centers are, who the community leaders are. It may be, it may be a church, it may be a police station. You know, something in that area is where everyone goes. And so you get that up and running first. You get them generators, you get them starlinks, you get them water purification, you put tarps on the roof. And now that church is a, is a center that can receive all of these goods coming in by airport or by sea and distribute them to their community, where if you just try to Go one house at a time, you know, you're not, once again you're not going to be a force multiplier. So you get the, the community centers up and running first, then you go out into the communities and start rebuilding individual houses. And that's kind of where we're at now in phase three in Jamaica is you know, we're rebuilding individual houses and roofs and stuff like that in the area. So it's you know, international deployments are a lot different and some are more developed because we come in afterwards and some we go in like Jamaica, like you know, a couple of days after. But a lot of it honestly has to do with funds. We got great team leads that are trained internationally and it just depends on if we get the donations. And to be honest, donations all the way around, you know, on domestic disasters and international disasters are down and you know, times are tough, people are worried about paying their bills and electricity bills and things like that. And we get that. But that's why somebody will ask us, why didn't you go here? Why didn't you go there? And it's like we just didn't have the funds to do it. So, so that's how, that's how we decide on international deployment is donations. If we got good team leads that can go in that area, of course, if it's safe enough to go in the area. But we usually err, we've got a lot of veterans so we can go in some places that other agencies may not go. But do we have support on the ground? And we may send an assessment team in first and if there's no support and we're not getting donations, then we may not do any more than assess. And then we turn those assessments over to the bigger charities that have millions of dollars sitting in the bank and they can be there for months and months whether they get any new donations or not. At least we helped in their assessment. So that was a long answer for a short question.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 36:05

Oh, absolutely. Well, for listeners who want to help out in this space, give some best practice tips on how they can prepare themselves to serve in disaster relief.

>> Larry Ag: 36:17

So the, the number one thing, there's always something to do. A lot of people think the only thing in disaster relief to do is, is being there mucking and gutting or being a chainsaw crew or working heavy equipment. But there's a lot of behind the scenes stuff. And then the thing is to find what you're good at if, you know, if you're good at you know, chainsawing or manual labor or mucket and gutting or, you know, you're physically able to do those things, then great. We, we need all those volunteers as possible. And some of it is, some people are very organized and what's called a pod, a point of distribution is you got all these donations coming in from all over the country, trucks and 18 wheelers, and you got to organize the stuff coming off, organize it into, whether it's clothes, hygiene kits, food, water, and then organize the people coming in to get it and out without a lot of confusion. You know, there's lots of computer work, data entry work, you know, that in fact there's a lot of work that you don't even have to be in the disaster zone. You know, someone can be 500 miles away and sitting in their living room on a computer, you know, and I call them and and I'm like, okay, look, we had, you know, 50 volunteers today. I'm going to send you the list, put it in the computer. 40 of them are regular volunteers. 10 chainsawers they put in the computer. and by the way, I need two new chainsaws, I need fuel, I need diesel, I need generators, and I need food for 50 people for tomorrow. And that person can handle all that and take that off the team leads and they could be 500 miles away and call the local Lowe's or Home Depot or Rotary Club and get stuff shipped in, you know, so there's lots of positions in a disaster relief organization and I'd say half of them, you know, is not even, you know, in the field getting dirty. And the, you know, the other half is either support staff or working as a point of distribution or managing volunteers intake and volunteers getting their information. And you know, I talk about that a lot, volunteer management. And I want to, I want to make sure everyone understands why. Because, you know, FEMA has, FEMA gives money to the county or parish or state according to how much money is spent in that area for a disaster. Right? But that county and state have to come up with a certain amount of money before, you know, FEMA will kick in, before the federal government will kick in. And that's called a PA number, like a public assistance number. So our volunteer hours count towards their public assist assistance number. So if they have to raise 50 million before FEMA kicks in, you know, because every disaster is local, starts local, finishes local, and it, you know, once the city can't handle it, money wise, then the county steps in. Once the county can't handle it money wise, then the state's steps in. Once the state says, hey, I'm running out of money, then the federal government steps in. So say they have to have 50 million before the federal government steps in. If I do $2 million worth of work, that's$2 million that county or state doesn't have to spend. It counts towards their 50 million. So that's one of the reasons the, the EOCs, emergency command centers, the counties and the states like working with experienced disaster aid organizations where we can, you know, account for our volunteers. Because FEMA is very particular. They want to know the name of the volunteer, you know, phone number, email address and what they did and when they checked in. And when they checked out, they checked in at 8 in the morning, they checked out at 6 o' clock at night, and then what did they do? General volunteer is this much per hour. Tobacco operator is another amount per hour. So if you do all that work but you don't keep good enough records, then the county and the state literally miss out on federal funds. We're not getting the funds as the charity, the state and the federal government is getting it back. that's money they don't have to spend and they can spend that on something else in their community. So it's not just important to do the work, it's important to track the work and turn it into the county and the state the way FEMA likes it. So the FEMA and state can, you know, can get some type of reimbursement from FEMA. That's, that's a huge deal. And there's lots of NGOs that go out there and they do it and they do it great. And then there's, you know, a lot of, a lot of people who go out and they volunteer and they do a lot of great work. And the thing, you know, the thing is, is to help the people. But if they can keep track of their hours and turn it into, to someone, even if it's another charity, to where that charity can turn it into the county. And that way their, their volunteer hours count double. You didn't just help the people, you know, get back on track, but you're helping the county and the state receive more money. So now they can spend more money on getting, on getting the community back together. So that's why we concentrate on volunteer management so much. And that's why sometimes the church will come to us and say, I've got 50 volunteers, they want to help. I don't, you know, I don't Want the liability or, we don't have. Or, you know, not one. We don't have the liability insurance to cover them. And I'm not sure what to do. Can you manage them? And then we'll manage that. Church's volunteers form and, you know, this sounds weird, like it's a little thing, but it's not. We let them wear their church T shirts, you know, like Bayside Community Church or First Methodist Church or whatever. If they want to go and volunteer and we manage them, we let them wear the shirts of their church, you know, and I say that because a number of other organizations don't. And you know, if you come to volunteer for them, you know, you're underneath their umbrella. And so everyone wears their, their T shirts and everything. And I get it. They're. They're wanting unity and that way they can keep track of their people, you know, because everyone's we the same shirts and it's easier to keep track of their team. But we want like, the local grassroots organizations, the beach cleanup, the environmental, you know, Waterway charity, the small church groups to know that they can, they can come join Disaster Aid USA and, and still be their individual charity helping out and that. And that's, and that's a big thing for.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 43:02

All Right, well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

>> Larry Ag: 43:08

So we're still in Jamaica. you know, we're still raising money for Jamaica to keep rebuilding houses. And you know, once you get up in these mountainsides and, and see the, the total destruction still three months later, you know, people are still living just without any, any type of COVID or anything. you know, it's. So we're, we're going to be there a while for that, as long as the money, you know, goes. In fact, we had a big church and in Idaho, give us a large donation, you know, and because they do a lot of mission work in the Montego Bay area, so we're concentrating in the Montego Bay area for them. but hurricane season's coming. We're really trying to get prepared for hurricane season. we're getting Rotary districts and churches trained. You know, right now be like, hey, look, who's, who's going to be your team lead? Who's going to be your logistics person? You know, who's, who's going to be cooking meals? Is this church going to be used as a, you know, as a shelter? So it's a lot of pre planning right now for hurricane season and lots of lots of training and just, and trying to get a lot of volunteers into our system. So I have a feeling it's going to be a busy year. You know, last year we had no major hurricanes hit the US Just big one hit, hit Jamaica of course. And that's very unusual. And we've had a really active tornado season so far. So you know, I'm afraid it's going to be a very active hurricane season. So we're, we're trying to upgrade like right now our command center, we're trying to add another Starlink system to it and a couple of more computer systems so we can manage more volunteers so those people at the command center can manage more volunteers. And then of course we, you know, we're going through our equipment and maintenance on the chainsaws and the equipment and having to buy new chainsaws. And once again we're, we're an all volunteer group. We're, we don't have a big budget. So you know, equipment and things like that cost money. So you know, that's, those things help us be a force multiplier for others. So right now we are deploying for, you know, some, we did deploy a little bit for the winter storms. but we, we got a little bit of tornado work going on now and really we're, we're getting prepared for hurricane season. Trying to get all of our ducks in a row. So we'll be. So we'll be there.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 45:33

Well, throw out your contact info so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

>> Larry Ag: 45:38

Yeah, so it's real easy. Our web, of course you can follow us on Facebook, you know, Disaster Aid USA on Facebook and Instagra. We're always putting videos and stuff up there of our work. but if you go to our website and it's really easy to disasteraidusa.org There's a big old get involved button and you can see pictures of different deployments we've done and, and stuff. But get involved. You go in and sign into our, our volunteer management system and you kind of tell us your, your skills, you know, whether it's, you know, computer work, points of distribution work, chainsaw, mucking, gut, whatever you want to do. It lists your skills and if you got a truck and can pull a trailer, that's a big thing. We need a lot of people with trucks to pull trailers. and they, you know, they only have to do the work. They just get out and pull the trailer. But you put those things in and it Gives us an idea of your qualifications. And let's just say I need a trailer moved. I can go in and just email, just people with trucks who can pull trailers, you know, and anytime we've got a training or anytime there's a disaster, they're going to get an email and tell them what we're doing and then they can join. So go the website disasteraidusa.org and hit get involved. And then once you're in the system, you'll start getting notices about, trainings or deployments.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 47:03

We'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or any final thoughts you have for the listeners business,

>> Larry Ag: 47:12

you know, final thoughts is, is a kind of like what I almost. What I started with is disaster work can be an adrenaline dump. And we've got a lot of, A lot of people that, you know, love this type of work. It's a lot of problem solving. But a skill that, that you really need to have is, is. Is have compassion and empathy and understand like when you go into someone's house and it's full, four feet of water have gone through there and you're there to muck and gut it and get it out, that's someone's house. That's where they've lived. And so when you're going through their bedroom and taking out a dresser drawer, just think about someone stranger walking into your bedroom and start going through your dresser drawers or underneath your sink and ripping stuff out. You got to be patient. You got to pay attention to the homeowner, to their mental state. We, and I'll give you one example, closing. When we were in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, which town got decimated by, you know, an F4 tornado. And this neighborhood, it took us two, three days just to get the debris from around the houses. And most of the houses we had to demo, but we had to get the debris out so people could go in and get their personal belongings. And after they got their personal belongings, then we started demoing the houses. And my wife, like, you know, drives one of the backhoes. And one of the ladies that we'd worked with for a couple of days, you know, she was sitting there watching us as we started to tear her house apart. And she'd gotten all of her personal belongings out, and we had helped her, and there was lots of emotional days there, but you could tell she's just standing there by herself. So my wife got off her backhoe, went there, you know, grabbed her hand and started praying with her. And she said, you know, I grew up in this house, and then my parents passed it to me, and I've raised my kids in this house. So this house is my life. This is where we had Christmas. This is where, you know, and she's going through. And this is where we ate breakfast and, you know, and so I went up to one of our skid steer guys that has the big grapple on it where you can go and just bulldoze through something and grab something real fast and take off. And I said, I want you to take this house apart like it's a piece of china. And you're taking the china plates and laying them on the side of the road. Because the last thing that lady needed was to see a skid steer just bulldoze through her life. You know, it would have been the quickest way to get the job done, and we got to move on to another house, but it would have been trauma for this lady all over. So we literally just went up and we're grabbing one wall at a time, setting it down one piece of debris at a time. And we were going slow, you know, throttle down, went slow. And just like it was a sacred place, which it was for her. And if you're going to do disaster relief work, you need to have that attitude to recognize when a survivor needs that. Otherwise you're going to do more damage than good.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 50:13

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. And no, there's, disasters going on all the time. So, you know, if you or somebody, you know, wants to get involved in helping Larry and his team out. Disasteraidusa.org follow rate review Share this episode to as many people as possible. Visit www.craveball337.com for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcasts and and also share that website to everybody you know. And, once again, Larry, thank you and your family for your service, and disaster relief and as well as military service. thank you all for listening and supporting the show and thank you for joining me, Larry.

>> Larry Ag: 51:00

Yes, sir. Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. Appreciate it, buddy.

>> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball): 51:05

For more information on the Living the Dream with curveball podcast, visit www.craveball337.com until, next time, keep Living the dream.