Disaster Volunteering Without Becoming Part of the Problem

Why this matters

After a hurricane, a flood or a tornado, trades people want to help, and the trades have exactly the skills a damaged town needs. They also have trucks, and a hundred trucks arriving on their own, with no assignment, no lodging and no fuel plan, are a second disaster for the people running the response. They clog the roads emergency crews need, use the water and gas the residents need, get turned around at checkpoints, and are hard to tell apart from the storm chasers who arrive at the same time to sell roofs. A shop that wants to help gets more done by plugging into the organized response than by driving in.

This card covers volunteering. Taking paid storm work, pricing it, and deciding how much to chase belong to the operations side; Storm and Disaster Demand: How Much to Chase, and see related: Building a Disaster Response Plan Before the Season Starts.

Safety comes before help

Disaster areas carry hazards a normal service call does not, and the first hour of any volunteer assignment is the safety briefing from the organization that assigned you. Four apply to every trade:

• Downed and backfed lines. Treat every wire as energized. Do not enter a flooded building until the power has been confirmed off at the meter or by the utility; a portable generator connected without a transfer switch can energize a "dead" house's wiring from inside.
• Gas. If you smell gas, everyone leaves the building, nobody operates switches or uses a phone inside, and the call goes to the gas utility from outside. Relighting appliances is the utility's or a licensed tech's job after the system is cleared, not a volunteer's.
• Carbon monoxide. Generators and pressure washers never run indoors, in a garage, or near an open window. CO poisoning is one of the most common causes of injury after storms.
• Floodwater and its residue. It carries sewage and chemicals: waterproof gloves and boots, no eating with unwashed hands, and a respirator under a written program (29 CFR 1910.134) for mold-heavy demolition, not a paper dust mask.

The four conditions that separate help from hindrance

A volunteer trip helps when all four hold:

1. You are affiliated. An organization that is part of the response has given you an assignment. In most states, the coordinating body for nonprofit response is a coalition of voluntary organizations active in disaster, usually called a VOAD, whose member organizations (relief agencies, faith-based groups, trade-based responder networks) take tasks from the emergency management office and hand them to volunteers. A community emergency response team (CERT), trained through the local emergency management office under the federal CERT program, is another route for people who want to help in their own town.
2. The area has asked for what you bring. Response organizations publish what they need and when. Skilled trades are usually most useful in the recovery phase, days to weeks after the event, not in the first 48 hours, which belong to rescue and life safety.
3. You are self-sufficient. You bring your own food, water, fuel, lodging plan, tools, first aid and a way home, for a stated period. A common starting point is 72 hours with nothing drawn from local supplies; your assigning organization may ask for more.
4. Licensed work stays licensed. Work that needs a license at home still needs one there. Some governors' emergency declarations temporarily recognize out-of-state licenses for named trades, or let local authorities do so; many do not, and some states go the other way: Florida, for one, treats unlicensed contracting during a declared state of emergency as a felony. Permits are still required in most places, though building departments often expedite them. Check the declaration and the state licensing board before you plan any regulated work.

If any of the four is missing, the trip is likely to cost the response more than it gives.

Volunteering and soliciting are different activities

The line between them is the point at which you are asking for paid work. Volunteering under an organization's banner while handing out business cards, quoting repairs, or telling homeowners "we can come back and do it right" turns a volunteer visit into solicitation, and several things change at once:

• Many cities and counties require registration or a permit for door-to-door solicitation, and some tighten those rules after a disaster.
• Price gouging laws in most states switch on with an emergency declaration, and they reach the price you charge for the repair you just quoted. See related: Emergency Pricing and State Price Gouging Laws.
• The organization that assigned you will usually stop assigning you. Response groups protect their credibility with residents, who are being approached by contractors all day.

The clean practice: while volunteering, do not sell. If a homeowner asks for paid work, give them the referral path the organization uses (many keep a list of vetted local contractors) or say your office will take calls after the volunteer deployment ends. A homeowner who still wants you later will find you. See related: The Reputation Risk of How You Behave During a Disaster.

If you did not register before the event

Responders have a name for the people who show up on their own: spontaneous unaffiliated volunteers. Large responses plan for them by opening a volunteer reception center, run by the local emergency management office or a partner organization, where walk-up volunteers are registered, briefed and matched to tasks. If you have not affiliated in advance, that is the door: find the center's location through the county emergency management office or the state VOAD, register there, and accept the task you are given, which may be hauling debris rather than anything that uses your license. Expect a wait of days before a trade-specific assignment appears, and plan your self-sufficiency around the wait as well as the work.

One gate, two shops

The four conditions are the gate. Two shops from the same city, about 200 miles inland, react to the same coastal hurricane.

Shop A drives in. On day 2, the owner loads two trucks with four techs, a generator and tools and heads for the coast. The trucks reach a county checkpoint where officers are admitting residents, utilities and credentialed responders; they are turned back after 3 hours in line. The crew finds a motel 60 miles out, the only rooms left, and spends day 3 driving neighborhoods offering help. They tarp two roofs and help one family drag out wet carpet. On day 4, a homeowner asks for a paid quote on a water-damaged furnace, and a tech writes one. The next day, a county inspector asks for the shop's state license and solicitation permit, which it does not have. The crew goes home on day 5. Days 2 through 5 are 4 days, so 4 techs spent 16 tech-days, and the useful work (two tarps and one carpet pull) fit inside part of day 3.

Check it against the gate: no affiliation (fails 1), arrived in the rescue phase (fails 2), drew on local lodging and fuel (fails 3), and wrote paid work without a license (fails 4). Every outcome traces to a missing condition.

Shop B affiliates. Months before the season, the owner registered the shop's techs with a faith-based response group that is a member of the state VOAD, and two techs took its volunteer safety training. After the hurricane, the shop tells the group what it can offer: two techs, five days, mechanical safety checks on flood-damaged HVAC and water heaters, with the shop's own trailer for lodging. The group calls on day 8 with an assignment: work with its muck-out teams in one neighborhood and tag flooded equipment so homeowners know what is unsafe to restart.

The two techs arrive on day 9 with food and water for the full 5-day stay, beyond the 72-hour minimum the group asked for, and a fuel stop arranged 40 miles inland. Over 4 working days they assess equipment in 31 homes. Their tag reads "flood damaged, do not operate, have a licensed contractor evaluate" on 26 furnaces and water heaters whose controls sat below the waterline, and "no flood contact observed" on 5. They do not relight anything, repair anything, or quote anything; when residents ask who can do the work, they hand over the group's vetted contractor list. They are home on day 13, after 2 techs for 5 days, 10 tech-days, of which 4 days each were useful work, 8 of the 10.

What changes the answer. If Shop B's state had an emergency declaration recognizing its techs' licenses and the group wanted repairs rather than assessments, the same affiliation would let them do licensed work, with permits, on assignment. If the disaster were in Shop A's own town, the conditions shift: affiliation still matters, but the shop's first duty is its own crew, its customers and its own building, and local knowledge makes it valuable in the first days in a way an outside crew is not. And a utility crew traveling under formal utility mutual aid, or a public employee sent under the interstate Emergency Management Assistance Compact, is in a different system entirely; a private shop is not covered by either.

Where it goes wrong even when affiliated

• Doing more than the assignment. A tech on a muck-out team who decides to relight a water heater has stepped out of the role the organization's insurance and briefing covered.
• Unpaid techs who are actually employees. A shop that sends hourly employees "as volunteers" on company trucks may owe them wages for that time. See related: Volunteering the Crew and the Pay Rule.
• No exit. A crew that stays past its self-sufficiency window starts drawing on local supplies. Leave on the date you said.

References

• FEMA, Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program
• National and state Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD) coalitions
• 29 CFR 1910.134 (respiratory protection program)
• See related: Storm and Disaster Demand: How Much to Chase
• See related: Emergency Pricing and State Price Gouging Laws