FIELD NOTES

Footprint Project's Rae Goldman, Associate Director of Operations, and Gabriel Pacheco, Caribbean Program Manager, arrived in Venezuela in early July to lead the response on the ground, focused on getting reliable power to families and institutions — including the churches and community foundations described below — that the broader response hasn't yet reached. Since activating on June 25, our Footprint Project staff, and a growing group of local volunteers, have logged more than 919 combined hours assessing sites, delivering equipment, and building the community partnerships needed to get reliable power where it's needed most.

As multiple wildfires burned across Los Angeles County in early 2025, We partnered with the local film industry and the National Forest Service to replace 4 large diesel generators with solar and battery energy storage systems. 

A team led by Footprint Project and Overdrive Energy Solutions worked with the U.S. Forest Service to replace diesel generators with Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) at the Eaton Fire Incident Command (IC) Post at the Rose Bowl Stadium. The Rose Bowl Stadium and surrounding parking lots had been turned into a massive incident command post. Agencies involved included LA Fire, LA County Fire, CAL Fire, LAPD, and the U.S. Forest Service. Because the Eaton Fire was burning on federal forest service land, the U.S. Forest Service was leading the operation. During this crisis, the stadium turned into a staging ground for over 4,000 firefighters, national guard troops, and first responders from city, state, county, and federal agencies. 

On July 30-31, 2025, we gathered 200 folks from 120 organizations within our community of responders in Black Mountain, NC, for the inaugural Resilience Fest. Not quite a conference and more than just a festival, this event brought together individuals and organizations with firsthand experience in sustainable, community-based disaster response and recovery. We met, laughed, cried, learned, danced, trained, shared, and prepared. 

Hurricane Melissa closed out 2025 as a late-season hurricane -- the strongest storm to ever strike the island nation of Jamaica. This was our first in-person international response where we sent staff, volunteers, and renewable response technologies to respond to the devastating Category 5 storm. We worked with several local community partners and international humanitarian relief organizations to provide lifesaving communication hubs and mobile solar microgrid power for health clinics.

Before, powering Broad River Fire Department's Shumont Substation during outages meant relying on loud, polluting gas generators that needed constant refueling. Now, a solar microgrid powers the station and has created a resilience hub that's no longer reliant on the main electrical grid or gas generators. Community members can rest assured that they have a reliable place to go for clean water, emergency communications, and refuge when facing a natural disaster. Solar power serves as an integral tool to keep the fire department up and running.

Headquartered in Metairie, Louisiana, Footprint Project deeply engages with the vibrant communities of the Greater New Orleans area. From this base, we also serve the entire Gulf Coast region and support our team and partners throughout the U.S. and Caribbean. In 2025, we strengthened and expanded our partnerships, focusing on:

• Beehive Microgrids™ and Transfer Switches

• STEM Education + Community Engagement

• Serving as Footprint Project’s headquarters to support all of our other regions and programs

After Hurricane Helene in 2024, our rapid response program (and the partnerships we built within it) inspired the state of North Carolina to deeply invest in our unique model of resilience. In early 2025, we hired 5, new full-time staff and moved into our brand-new Appalachia Regional Hub in Mars Hill, NC. Now, our local team is simultaneously doing the very hard work of long-term recovery with individuals still struggling from Helene and driving forward innovation through the development of Beehive Microgrids. We have been transitioning sites from temporary, emergency power in the immediate Helene aftermath to permanent systems they’ll have ahead of the next storm. This full-circle climate resilience is something we’ve been working towards since the beginning.

For those of you following our work in community resilience, you may have wondered what we’ve been up to. At Footprint Project, our work extends to many community projects outside of our Western North Carolina Solar Free Store. If you’ve been waiting for our WNC Solar Free Store to open again, we appreciate your patience! Here is just a small fraction of what our tight-knit team has been working on.

As we continue to grapple with the long-term impact of Hurricane Helene in Western North Carolina, we take time to reflect on what community resilience looks like and how we can best serve them.

After months of designing and building, we recently met up with worker-owned cooperative Chispas at their headquarters in Asheville, NC to deliver a new solar trailer. While sharing some amazing food, our team trained Chispas members to use the trailer to power essentials under blue or grey skies.

As the first major storm of 2026, Winter Storm Fern has kept us busy here at Footprint Project! We hope that everyone who has been impacted by the ice, snow and cold temperatures stays safe and has received help as soon as possible.

On September 22, 2024, Hurricane Helene emerged in the Caribbean Sea, rapidly intensifying into a devastating Category 4 storm aimed at Florida and later impacting six states, particularly wreaking havoc in North Carolina. Our team mobilized quickly, deploying renewable energy solutions and establishing essential support hubs to aid communities in desperate need.

On September 22, 2024, Hurricane Helene emerged in the Caribbean Sea, rapidly intensifying into a devastating Category 4 storm aimed at Florida and later impacting six states, particularly wreaking havoc in North Carolina. Our team mobilized quickly, deploying renewable energy solutions and establishing essential support hubs to aid communities in desperate need.

Footprint Project is pleased to announce our Request For Proposals (RFP) for Solar and Atmospheric Water Generators!

When was the last time your power went out? I don’t mean those split second events, almost imperceptible but for your blinking microwave clock. I’m talking about a day or a week or a month or more without electricity. Whatever’s in your refrigerator is going bad.

Disasters exacerbate disparities. From Hurricane Katrina to the pandemic to Hurricane Ida, food insecurity is perpetuated by New Orleans’ high rates of poverty and vulnerability to extreme weather events.

We sat down with PV Magazine to discuss the Maui wildfires, decarbonizing disaster response, and duck curve financing.

Early this spring, a series of tornadoes devastated several communities in rural Mississippi. We joined forces with local partners requesting emergency power: Delta Health Center in Rolling Fork, the Fannie Lou Hamer Center for Change in Eupora, and the Zion Baptist Association in Winona. These hubs would go on to serve as foundations of recovery and resilience in their communities.

Tucked away in the hills of the Russian River Valley near Cloverdale, CA, the Northern Sonoma County Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) is a shining example of effective use of cleaner energy in disaster response. The team of industrious firefighters stores, maintains, and frequently deploys one of Footprint Project’s solar trailers to emergency sites and shelters.

A few months ago, long before a tropical depression that would become Hurricane Ian formed in the Caribbean, the United Methodist Committee on Relief decided to invest in resilient power solutions for their disaster response teams.

At Footprint Project, we focus on deploying solar generators to disasters in the domestic U.S. and Puerto Rico. Logistics, program sustainability, cultural competency, and overall need have always pointed us in the direction of our own backyard when it comes to building back greener - until Russia invaded Ukraine in February.

Less than 24 hours after a rare, EF3 tornado hit New Orleans, Footprint Project was on the ground to provide emergency clean power for neighbors in the hardest hit area of Arabi.

While many families were preparing to wind down for the holidays (including the Footprint Project team), tornado sirens rang out in states across the southeastern United States. With at least 88 fatalities, the “Quad-State Super Cell” became the deadliest December tornado event on record in the United States.

Footprint Project has been on the ground in Louisiana since September 3 deploying solar + batteries to communities affected by Hurricane Ida.

In February of 2021, the state of Texas began facing an ongoing crisis of water shortages, power outages, and extreme freezing weather conditions. Two storms- Uri and Shirley, caused record low temperatures reaching -2 degrees F, the coldest Northern Texas has been in 72 years. In response to requests from local responders, Footprint Project activated our Solar Energy Rapid Response Team (SERRT) to support Texas’s recovery. Beginning on February 21st, Footprint Project deployed solar equipment to power mobile communication and remote charging needs for the Information Technology Disaster Resource Center (ITDRC) and Fayette County Emergency Management (FCEM).

Currently, our Solar Emergency Response Team (SERT) is in California to provide support by deploying clean energy to communities in need. So far, we have focused our limited clean energy resources on multiple partnerships that focus on different aspects of the preparedness and recovery of disaster relief.

As summer comes to a close, a new door opens. The largest mobile solar generator microgrid Footprint Project has ever built is bringing mobile, sustainable power to communities in Puerto Rico.

The completion of this microgrid is crucial for the island’s disaster relief recovery. As back-up diesel generators continue to fail when communities deprived of power need it most, a solar generator microgrid will provide reliable, sustainable energy to people who no longer have to depend on a failing central power source.

As citizens regained power in the following week, the Solar Energy Rapid Response team (SERRT) returned their solar trailer to Minneapolis and donated two electric chainsaws to assist NECHAMA Jewish Response to Disaster as they stayed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Electric chainsaws are proving to be essential for disaster recovery and volunteer training because they are quiet, light, and do not require gas.

These chainsaws were used for debris removal--the most powerful electric chainsaws can cut through diameters of two feet or more. According to city workers in Cedar Rapids, it will take at least a month to remove all the debris to open up essential streets.

On Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service declared a one out of five “marginal risk” warning. They did not predict that a 100 mile per hour wind derecho would leave over 200,000 citizens in Iowa bereft of power. A derecho is a spanish term meaning “straight ahead,” and is defined as a line of intense fast-moving, damaging windstorms occasionally accompanied by thunderstorms. This type of environmental disaster is notoriously rare and difficult to predict. Although the average wind speed in these straight line storms is 50 to 70 mph, this derecho was particularly fierce, with a record 110 mph, resulting in hurricane force winds in Iowa.