CASE Construction Equipment, and heavy equipment dealers Titan Machinery and Sonsray Machinery, donated the use of skid steers, a compact track loader and an excavator to veteran-led disaster response organization Team Rubicon for Operation Big Iron — a disaster cleanup operation in response to the “Tinder Fire”, which swept across more than 500 acres in Coconino County, Arizona.

Team Rubicon volunteers provided heavy equipment operations, debris removal and sawyer services to affected communities. The organization deployed 40 members who logged a total of 2,592 hours on the operation. Team Rubicon’s heavy equipment operators used the equipment to help move more than 54,130 cubic feet of debris. Volunteers saved the community an estimated total of $74,784.38 in cleanup, materials and labor.

Veteran-led disaster relief organization Team Rubicon deployed its heavy equipment operators to Hattiesburg, Mississippi February 2-10, 2017 to assist in demolishing damaged houses and clearing debris caused by the EF3 tornado that hit the city on January 21, 2017. CASE dealer JWH Equipment (Jackson, Mississippi) supplied an excavator and compact track loader for Team Rubicon’s Operation Iron Bird, which demolished 17 houses and cleared an additional 13 properties of tornado debris for free.

“Our goal while we’re out here as volunteers is to help as many people as we can, to get them to the point where they can rebuild their properties,” says Victor Civitillo, a certified heavy equipment instructor and operator with Team Rubicon who managed the heavy equipment deployment. “Having the CASE heavy equipment here means we can accomplish in two hours what would normally take a full day for a crew working with hand tools. So together we can help families get back on their feet faster, and then the whole community and the local economy recover faster.”