Relief teams pull out of Western Alaska as storm response shifts to recovery

Bethel, Alaska (KTUU) – The State of Alaska announced Friday that its West Coast Storm Operations will now transition from response to recovery efforts.

Several organizations, including Team Rubicon, will begin winding down their efforts.

Team Rubicon’s remaining volunteers will leave on Sunday after the organization spent four weeks in the region.

The veteran-led volunteer group spent several weeks coordinating donations and working on infrastructure repair and cleanup.

“There’s obviously a huge need left, and so there’s a lot of local contractors and groups that are going to be able to continue work throughout. Unfortunately Team Rubicon just is not able to do that. And so what our goal is, was two parts. One, do as much good work as we could during the four weeks that we were here. And the second part is, make sure we’re establishing a really good network,” said Jason Taylor, Team Rubicon Incident Commander.

He said he hopes the their group is invited to come back to Western Alaska in the spring to continue doing recovery work.

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