About forty big guys – these are guy’s guys, plus a couple girls, are working on this lot in Moore, where a house once stood intact. Now, they’re taking it apart bit by bit – picking through to find any keepsakes, knocking down walls, and getting everything to the curb. As co-founder of Team Rubicon, William McNulty says it was a logical fit.

“It’s just taking the skills and the structure that we learned in the military and now applying that, repurposing that for disaster response.”

McNulty served in Iraq, both as a member of the Marine Corps and a private contractor. Soon after leaving the adrenaline packed war zone, he felt like something was missing.

“The military is, it’s a weird animal that civilians really might not understand, but there’s a job in the military for everyone. Think of a military base as a small city.”

The military culture is maintained, through and through. Team Rubicon is spending nights at a high school gym in Minco – what do they call it? The barracks. Their headquarters is not a command center – it’s a forward operating base, or FOB. Here’s Sean Gliniwiecz, who is on his first “deployment”…

“Sleeping on a cot with a rent a room with a hundred other people, it’s just like deploying. Except there’s no incoming rounds, you’re not hearing the whistles.”

They technology pops up in the field, though. Colin Wyman is helping run the communications equipment. These aren’t your standard 2 way radios…teams have GPS units that take pictures of damage, beam them back to the FOB, and get plotted on maps. The same company – Palintir – that makes the gear for use in Iraq and Afghanistan supplies them for Team Rubicon.

“It’s pretty critical because you don’t want teams running all over the place, looking for work. Here’s an area that needs a lot of work and it’s going to take you two or three days to do.”

Highlighter yellow, pink, purple and more cover the maps hanging in the communications tent. There’s a running tally of the number of sites surveyed – more than 2-thousand, and works orders completed. The technical details might take the volunteers back to the war zone, but it’s more about the teamwork.

After 22 years in the Air Force, Sean started a six figure job in Colorado Springs. He didn’t hold back on how that went.

“I walked into the corporate world, and it sucks. You’re around a whole bunch of guys who don’t know their a– from a hole in the ground. Most of them never deployed, most of them have never been in the military.”

So he walked away. He had the savings, and wanted some sense of purpose. Wanted to be around guys who get it, get him, and want to get things done.

“You really don’t have that once you leave the military and you really miss it. I know what most of these guys have been through. I’m one of two Air Force guys out here, I was embedded with the Army for nine months.”

As he picked up the pieces of a home, there was a sense of accomplishment.

“I would probably say about 80/20. I do a lot of this for myself. And this is a good opportunity to get out and give back to the community.”

There’s a lot more who want to sweat outside, go back to a cramped high school gym, and spend some time with their brothers. That raises a whole new dilemma for Team Rubicon co-founder William McNulty.

“Too many are raising their hands for us to manage for one response. We need to responsibly grow this organization so that we can engage more guys because the need is definitely there.”

McNulty says their primary goal is to start the healing process for veterans. It’s isn’t called therapy, but they all acknowledge the power of Team Rubicon.

“Because no one’s trying to kill you, it becomes a very cathartic experience because  you’re just out here to help people.”

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Team Rubicon says they already have more than 10-thousand volunteers ready to respond to disasters, and are growing every day. Much of their funding and support comes from corporations like Palintir – that’s the group that donated the communications equipment – and Home Depot – who gives them space to set up their forward operating base and the tools they need. They hope to stay in Moore as late as mid July.

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Jerry Fent.

It’s not exactly a household name in Oklahoma, but it’s one every legislator knows.

He’s the self-appointed defender of the Constitution in Oklahoma and frequently takes the legislature to task.

But why does he do it?

Workers at the front desk of the Governor’s office look up as a 78-year-old man serves them with papers challenging yet another bill the legislature has passed into law.

With his suspenders and checked shirt, Jerry Fent is not exactly the picture of a high-powered attorney.

Fent retired from the city of Oklahoma City about 13 years ago, but he’s making a second career out of calling out state leaders.

“I believe in the constitution of Oklahoma and I think somebody should enforce it whenever it appears that it’s been violated by the legislature.”

He’s challenged dozens of bills, and he’s become such a name at the capitol that it even comes up during debate.

Representatives Mike Reynolds and Joe Dorman mentioned Fent while debating House Bill 2032, the bill Fent now challenges.

“This was in Jerry Fent vs. the Office of State Finance. Too bad he can’t sue the legislature he has to sue the Office of State Finance”

“I do have a little bit of hope I have in a guy by the name of Jerry Fent”

“We’ve bookmarked it for Mr. Fent”

Reynolds, an Oklahoma City Republican, met Fent about eight years ago and says unfortunately Oklahoma needs a person like Jerry Fent.

“It’s a real shame that legislators can’t read the rulings made by the court or can’t read the constitution clearly enough for themselves to avoid passing these kinds of ridiculous unconstitutional measures.”

There’s the case for noble defender of the constitution and even checks and balances, but what happens when the legislature has worked hard to pass a bill or even when the bill does something good?

Fent makes enemies.

Recently he successfully challenged a bill which took money from court costs and put it into the Department of Human Services for adoption fees and the Attorney General’s Victims Service Unit.

Fent says he’s sure the money was going to a noble cause, but it ran afoul of the constitution.

“I’m trying to enforce the constitution. If we don’t enforce that and you sit back and do nothing what other violation will they have on the constitution, due process, right to a bail?”

Journal Record reporter Scott Carter covers many of the cases Fent has taken to the highest court.

“He presents himself as the normal guy, the common guy and he’s really good at that and he talks to the justices. He tries to get them engaged in a conversation. He can be animated and there are times the courts push back when they disagree.”

But, Carter adds with Fent only doing this for the past 14 years there hasn’t always been a defender of the constitution.

“I remember times several years ago that a bill would come out and people, the talk on the streets would be I can’t believe how that made it through it’s obviously unconstitutional but no one challenged it.”

At least for now, Fent holds the lawmakers accountable on a pro bono basis, and the time it takes away from Ann, his wife of 50 years, doesn’t seem to affect his marriage.

“She’s encouraging. She says it’s better than me playing golf. If I played golf for a hobby that’s pretty expensive.”

A cancer survivor, Fent walks to the state treasurer’s office on two artificial knees and says he hopes to keep it up as long as possible.

He would also like to see others pick up the baton as champion of the state constitution.

“I hope somebody or numerous attorneys get involved in this and they can do it pro bono. You’re encouraged to do pro bono work along with your fee work.”

Fent believes every year 10% to 15% of the bills which make it through the legislature are unconstitutional, but he says he’s only one man and can’t get all of them.

I first asked the Congressman how much confidence he had that despite cuts to food stamps, everyone who needed help would get it.

“Well first of all, look at what we proposed in the way of our reforms: we end categorical eligibility. Under present federal law, virtually all states are using the flexibility of the 1996 welfare reform act to say that if you qualify for any federal welfare benefit, you automatically get food stamps.

“What we simply say in the bill is everyone needs to demonstrate their asset and income levels to meet the requirements of the basic food stamp provisions. If you do, you get help.

“I’m confident that most of the folks who have been covered under automatically eligibility who qualify will be helped.”

But an administrator in Oklahoma’s food stamps program says they deny 27 people a month among 30,000 applications. Is that enough for 20.5 billion in cuts in 10 years?

“Those are the numbers provided to me by the Congressional Budget Office, CBO, that scores these things. They say 20.5 billion, and it’s not just categorical eligibility, that’s about 12 billion. There’s about 8 billion that come from the LIHEAP program, some people call it heat and eat, where a dozen states or so use the flexibility of the 1996 law to say that if we help you heat your home to the tune of a dollar a month, then you automatically qualify for a full month’s worth of food stamps.

“We say in that situation, states you can still do that, but you’ve got to put 20 dollars per person to help heat their homes and then you qualify for food stamps, that’s 8 billion.

“While I can’t say with certainty on how CBO scores their stuff, I would agree with you. A number of folks who are eligible under categorical eligibility now or even under LIHEAP will still get assistance. It just means they’re going to have to prove on an individual basis they qualify, and in that other case, the states are going to have to spend a little more money before they get all that money from the federal government.”

What about the administrative burden? Do you think doing all that paperwork is worth denying 27 people a month?

“I think if you’re going to have standards for a program, you need to enforce those standards. If the goal of food stamps is to buy everybody’s meal on every occasion in the country, then repeal the income and asset requirement. But if your goal is to help those who need help and you’re wanting and willing to define who they are, then you need to follow the definitions you’ve established.

But that’s less than one tenth of one percent, do you think it will be worth it?

“Let’s just put it this way, if that is indeed the case. Then the advocacy groups up here, the lobbying groups who say we’ll throw millions off the food stamp rolls are wrong, aren’t they? They’re howling about something that won’t occur, if that’s indeed the case. I don’t know, all I can do is take CBO at their word. Try to establish policy that follows federal law, implement it, and then we’ll see what the results are.”

Direct payments to farmers will get cut, but most accept that. Will farmers feel pain equivalent to those who receive food stamps?

“Farm bills are not to make the good times better, farm bills are about, making sure in tough times, when farmers can’t control the circumstances, world trade issues, the weather, pests, a lot of those kinda things, that the farm bill is there to provide a safety net. If the weather cooperates, there will be very little paid out. And yes, farmers will continue to pay in their insurance premiums to be a part of crop insurance every year, it’s only in bad times.

“But then isn’t that what insurance is for, whether it’s life insurance, property insurance, all these other forms of insurance ? It’s not for the good times, it’s when bad things happen when you have no control over circumstances.”

Pays out when bad times come, but supply and demand?

“All I can say is you take out a product that is designed to provide certain benefits and if you play by the rules, so be it. But the same argument could be, every time you have a hurricane on the coasts, it wipes out all the houses. Insurance comes in and pays for the houses , they build new houses. The value of real estate on the coasts goes even higher. It’s not just federal crop insurance that has these kind of unique circumstances, it’s federal flood insurance, it’s hurricane stuff, the insurance programs we provide on the federal level, the backstop to big insurance companies to address terrorism attacks, all those things.

“If you’re going to look at the apples, you’ve got to look at all the oranges and peaches too.”

We’ll talk about it at the next On Tap, Wednesday, June 26.  It starts at 6 p.m. at Picasso Café at 3009 Paseo St  Oklahoma City, OK 73103.  Picasso’s provides the appetizers, you buy the drinks, and we’ll host the conversation.

Photo by Joe Wertz, StateImpact Oklahoma

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OSU students recently designed an unmanned aircraft that could potentially fly inside a tornadic storm and send information back to its pilots. They believe the vehicle could, increase warning times and help predict where a tornado will touch down if it does at all. But, KOSU’s Quinton Chandler reports the drone will have to jump some hurdles before it can fly in tornado alley.

“We still lack a really detailed understanding of when a storm system is going to form a tornado and more importantly where and how strong that tornado is going to be?”

“At the very least we want to improve warning times by 5 to 10 minutes and hopefully in the future improve warning time by hours.”

After May 20^th and every other tornado the question gets asked: What if? What if Moore had gotten an even better tornado warning?

“One of the things we’d like to be able to do is get better data to help meteorologists improve their forecasts and predictive capabilities. Things like temperature, pressure, humidity…”

OSU Professor Jamey Jacob and his mechanical aerospace engineering students design could be a huge breakthrough for storm warnings. If their UAV is built, pilots will remotely fly a small fleet of the aircraft into storm systems to collect the data meteorologists can’t get from radar. There are no guarantees here. They are just hoping it leads to better predictions.

“There are regions of the storm being fed with just dry air so the radar has a difficult if not impossible time detecting it. So it remains kind of a black box.”

Professor Chilson says being able to fly a UAV into that black box would be an invaluable asset to meteorologists. He teaches meteorology for OU and his department will help fill in a few gaps for Jacob’s students.

“We do have the weather expertise and OSU has a very strong aeronautic program. And they’re very capable of building an aircraft that could penetrate these storms. I have zero doubt that it can be built and it can work.”

I decided to check out the program and see for myself what Jacob’s students were capable of building. Let’s start off with Ben Lo’s Death Star.

“It’s basically a flying sphere that can hover like a helicopter and then fly like a plane. The best thing is that it can roll on the ground. And then it has the ability to come back up right.

Ben says his death star could be used for search and rescue because it can go where other vehicles can’t. This and the dozens of other aircraft displayed on the department’s walls make a pretty convincing case for these future engineers ability to make a storm chaser. But, Professors Chilson and Jacob say building it was never the problem.

“Right now the FAA’s mandate is to protect the airspace. So they’re training cautiously on how to integrate the unmanned vehicles with the piloted aircraft.”

“You have to go through a certification process with the FAA and actually have some sort of idea beforehand where and when you want to fly.”

That warning may have to come one to two days in advance.

“And that’s a big issue right now. That makes it very problematic to be able to fly one of these things into a developing thunderstorm in the near future.”

Jacob thinks the rules will relax a bit once the FAA has found a way to safely integrate UAV’s and manned aircraft. But that will take a couple of years at least.

Les Dorr, an FAA spokesman, says the clincher is the technology and infrastructure to integrate UAV’s isn’t there and no one really knows what safe integration looks like. A law signed by President Obama last year gives them until September 2015 to figure it out. In the meantime Jacob and his students will keep working.

“Long term goal is obviously to be able to build these systems and put them in the air. Short term we hope to have a platform that we can use in the next year or so.”

They had heard the warnings – conditions were ripe for tornadoes Friday. And the absolute best place to be is underground. Like most, Samuel Cifuentes didn’t have a basement in his Oklahoma City home, though. So when a tornado was initially on track to hit their neighborhood, he scurried with his wife Larinda, her cousin Yolanda Santos and four children into a nearby canal, hiding in a storm drain, with the road above their heads. But the tornado never came. Instead, water rushed down, and swept them away.

“He helped everyone…everyone. No matter who you are. If he had to help you, he would help. With anything, like he would go and pick up my kids from school when I couldn’t.”

Oquischie Oquendo knew Sam since he first arrived in the United States almost fifteen years ago. She never liked soccer, but Sam did – so much so he organized a bunch of teams, for both adults and kids.

“Sundays you can find him at Soccer City at 122^nd playing soccer, he would play 2 or 3 games. He was dedicated to his family, he loved his wife and his son.”

Oquishchie says Sam was like a brother to her – she could share all her secrets and know that they wouldn’t go anywhere. And he only wanted the best for his family.

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In northwest Oklahoma City, relatives greet a steady stream of friends and neighbors on a recent evening, as they come by to pay their respects, and reminisce about the good times they had with the seven who died. All came here illegally, and all shared the same hopes for America. Octavio Aguilar crossed the Mexican border with Sam nearly 15 years ago.

“We saw people building houses, big houses, tremendously. You can see like, our dream was to send money to Guatemala and build a house.”

Sam’s wife Larinda would often have dinner ready when he got home from his job in the kitchen at the local Charleston’s restaurant. Traditional Guatemalan food – like pollo encebollado – chicken simmered in onions. And Alex was in pre-K at Buchanan Elementary School – a blue ribbon recognizing him as Student of the Month lay across his picture. As Oquiche Oquendo points to the street corner, she shakes her head.

“If you ask any of the neighbors, you could always find him there, playing with his son. If he had to help you and he could help you, you bet he was going to help you.”

Ruben Aragon, President of the local Latino Community Development Agency, says that’s no surprise. He says the community is especially close here, where the economy relies on their help.

“Do a lot more socializing and relating before you get to the business part. It’s just close knit with respect and helping others is a huge part of the culture.”

Octavio also played soccer with Sam every Sunday night, and spent three days looking for the bodies along the banks of the canal. He says he can only move forward, remembering Sam and the six others killed…

“We going to try. We going to try to do that.”

“It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be so hard.”

Yolanda Santos’s family was still saving up for their house, but in the past couple months, Sam’s had finished the one they dreamed of in Guatemala. A house they’ll never get to enjoy.

Movie lovers will enjoy nearly 120 films in and around downtown Oklahoma City over the next five days.

One film from an Oklahoman takes viewers into an actual war zone.

What you’re hearing isn’t the next action-adventure blockbuster.

This is real life.

The documentary film, The Hornet’s Nest, features 33-year war correspondent Mike Boettcher of ABC News and his son, Carlos, in Afghanistan following the 2010 Surge.

Boettcher says it tells the soldiers’ stories in the style of arguably the greatest war correspondent ever, Ernie Pyle in World War Two.

“He put himself on the front lines with the soldiers and marines and told their story. The Joe in the muck and what these soldiers were going through in our name, and I wanted to do that for Afghanistan.”

Mike usually travels alone so he’s not responsible for anyone else, but in 2010 his grown up son wanted to join him.

Bringing Carlos along was a tough decision, but the right thing to do.

“He indicated an interest in this and I thought that he was a better writer than me and that he would make a great correspondent, but I had to make sure in those early days that I kept him alive.”

The Hornets’ Nest tells the stories of the soldiers, but the film makers also wanted to focus on the father-son aspect.

That went against everything Mike had learned as a young journalist in the Sooner State.

“The story is the story. Audio tells the story or the video tells the story. You’re not the center of it and that was something I’ve carried through more than three decades in the lessons I’ve learned in Oklahoma City.”

With 119 films at the Dead Center Film Festival there’s something for everyone.

“The Cherokee Word for Water” tells a story from the perspective of Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller.

“Worm” a 90-minute feature shot in Guthrie from one angle focused on one character.

And, several documentaries and short films of nearly every genre.

The DeadCenter Film Festival includes outdoor events on the Grand Lawn at the Myriad Gardens every night through Sunday, but this year organizers wanted to do something different.

Festival Director Kim Haywood says they’re raising funds for groups helping with recent storm recovery.

“It’s a way for us to give back; again it’s something we’re already doing. We love Oklahoma. We do this and we’re here because we want to bring them something amazing. We want to do amazing things for them. They’ve been incredibly supportive of us and it’s just our way of giving back.”

Six-year Volunteer Alyx Picard calls DeadCenter the most accessible film festival around, but mostly it’s about appreciating the art of film making.

“I think that our festival is one that celebrates the film maker most of all. We do love the films. We love our audiences that come in, but we are celebrating the fact that against all odds a film maker has made a film and so it’s kind of one giant party.”

The Hornets’ Nest screening runs Friday night in the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.

Boettcher says he’s anxious and excited to show it in his home city, but he also says it’s a story which needs to be told.

“With an all volunteer army it’s easy for us to send these men and women in uniform off to some foreign land in our name and then forget about it until they come back and only feel better by saying thank you. We don’t feel that’s enough.”

Mike plans to return to Afghanistan later this summer and says he’ll keep going back until the last soldier leaves.

The Hornets Nest officially premiers on November 11^th, veterans’ Day later this year.

You can find out more about the DeadCenter Film Festival on the web at DeadCenterFilm.org.

Walking into El Reno’s Canadian Valley Technology Center requires navigating doors knocked off their tracks by the tornado, glass scattered across the floor, and whatever danger you can’t see. It’s a mess. It’s hard to imagine how less than 48 hours ago, students opened the black framed doors to take on another day of classes.

“It’s a very surreal, almost nightmarish type of deal, but the problem is it’s not a nightmare. You’re really living this, and you’re having to react to it.”

As Superintendent of the Technology Center system in the county, Greg Winters has been around for more than 30 years. He knows some of the board members who approved the designs for the building in the mid 60’s. And that makes the destruction personal.

“When I drove in the other night and saw the initial destruction, it was pretty emotional to be real honest about it. This building has been here since 1968.”

The deadly storm didn’t take any lives at the technology center, and Winters thanks quick thinking for that. Instead of sheltering in a hallway, the dozen or so students tried to get underground, and they ended up in a stairway just past the main entrance.

“We got the students, they were in another classroom down the hallway, all adult students, Friday evening, got them herded in here. They rode the storm out, got real black, big boom. 15 minutes they walk out, not a scratch on them.”

The cinder block hallway they usually would crowd into was wiped out by the 150 mile per hour winds.

At least 8 of those killed by the storms were in their cars when they hit. That includes 3 storm chasers, who dedicated themselves to trying to understand the meteorological conditions that lead to tornadoes. Already, there’s been discussion of why so many were on the roads, and why one TV meteorologist pleaded with viewers to try to outrun the storm if they couldn’t get underground. Here’s Governor Fallin:

“It was a very challenging time, especially having I-40 just a short distance from us, and having so much traffic on a major interstate during a critical time of the day, when these storms crept up so very quickly and built so very quickly.”

Albert Ashwood, Director of the state’s Emergency Management Department, says police are limited in what they can do once people actually get on the road.

“It’s not as simple as saying well we’ll exit everyone at this exit until the storm passes, we might be putting them in harm’s way. It’s a fluid situation.”

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Despite the confusion and finger pointing, the focus was on the cleanup. Back at Canadian Valley Technology Center in El Reno, the birds chirp, the sun shines, and Superintendent Greg Winters turns to Governor Fallin at the podium:

“My promise to you, Governor and the citizens of our district, we’re going to have school in August. It’s going to be a little different, it’s going to be a little cramped, but we’re going to have school.”

Governor Fallin says she will ask FEMA to approve 8 additional counties as federal disasters because of tornado damage and flooding. Inspection teams will be out in multiple areas of the state, as they work to document the damage.