In Venezuelan Rubble, America Remembered How to Show Up

Our nation’s leadership is missing at the top these days. But this week, eighty firefighters just reminded us what leading looks like.

Hey everyone, happy Sunday. Are you ready for some good news?

The world hasn’t seen strong leadership from people running our country in a while. Instead of stepping up, those people decided to run away from global problems. Aid was cut, programs packed up, and the people who speak for us abroad aren’t thrilled to remind anybody why the world once looked to us in the first place.

So this Sunday, I want to show you where our real leadership has been all along.

On June 24, two earthquakes hit the Venezuelan coast thirty-nine seconds apart. A 7.2 and a 7.5, and the strongest Venezuelans have felt in more than a hundred years. Whole neighborhoods came down at once. More than two thousand people were killed, thousands more hurt, and countless families left digging through concrete with their bare hands looking for people they loved.

Thousands of miles away, Virginia Task Force 1 got the call. These are not diplomats or dignitaries. These are firefighters and paramedics from Fairfax County, the same people who answer the 911 calls and show up to the car wrecks back home. Eighty of them, plus six dogs, loaded up seventy thousand pounds of gear and were wheels-up within a day. Within two, they were on the Venezuelan rubble.

And then, they got to work.

Days after the quakes, after most stopped believing anyone was still alive under the piles of concrete, they found a mother and her nine-month-old baby. Alive. Trapped deep in the wreckage, and somehow barely a scratch on either of them. The rescuers lifted that crying baby and her mother out into the daylight while a crowd of Venezuelans stood watching and began to cheer.

Days later, their efforts freed a father and his son who had been trapped for four days. By the time they flew home, the American teams had helped bring five people out of the rubble alive.

The task force had their own words for what they were doing out there: “This is our why. The delivery of hope.”

When the team landed back in Virginia, the people waiting for them were not only their own families. Venezuelans living here in America came out to say thank you. One woman draped in her country’s flag stepped up to speak, unprompted and full of emotion.

She could barely get the words out: “You cannot believe what you have done for us, we will never forget.”

Here is the thing about leadership. It was never the title. It was never the speech, or the podium, or the person standing behind the seal. Leadership is who moves when the ground gives way and somebody a world away needs a hand. By that measure, the strongest leaders this country sent out into the world this year were the eighty firefighters from Fairfax County who nobody elected and nobody will ever put on a stage and fawn over.

You cannot train what those heroes achieved. The nerve to crawl into a building that already fell once and dig for twelve hours on the chance someone is still breathing. The instinct to treat a stranger’s child like their own. That comes from them, and from the country that raises people like them every day.

That, my friends, is good news for your Sunday.

— Adam