Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Tad Skylar Agoglia?
Tad Skylar Agoglia is the founder of the First Response Team of America. He was born in Long Island, NY where he was raised by a father whose life exemplified self-fulfillment found in service to others. His father's death in 2003 reminded Tad that life's enduring joys are not accumulated but created through giving. Directing his personal and professional resources to providing help and hope through The First Response Team is his effort to create enduring joy in this life.
Is Agoglia Independently Wealthy?
No. Tad's first paycheck was earned pumping gas at the age of 12. That check, along with many others, was deposited into savings by his father, Joseph, for whom the value of financial responsibility was of instrumental importance. Since his boyhood Tad maintained multiple jobs and owned many successful businesses including Disaster Recovery Solutions, a disaster clean-up contracting company. Everything he saved until may 2007 has been reinvested into developing the First Response Team of America, a non-profit company that will continue to provide free and immediate expert emergency disaster aid for as long, and to as many Americans, as possible.
What is Disaster Recovery Solutions?
Until May 2007, Disaster Recovery Solutions was a for-profit, disaster clean up contracting company owned and operated by Tad Agoglia. In his more than four years of work in the recovery aftermath of large scale storms such as Hurricane Katrina, Agoglia began to determine the need for much more expedited efforts than those provided by companies like his own—who typically bid on clean up jobs anywhere from a month or two after a storm strike. He determined to test his theory by responding with equipment in the immediate wake of an F5 tornado strike in Greensburg, Kansas and found the service so needed that he was compelled to strike out again, and then again, and again.
Why Form The First Response Team as a Non-Profit?
By the record breaking 2008 storm season, the demand for free expedited emergency response resources had become so great that Agoglia often found his team torn between communities in need. He determined then that the ongoing non-profit humanitarian work he had been delivering for a year, using the resources of his for-profit company Disaster Recovery Solutions, demanded formalization as a 501c3 charitable non-profit. The new non-profit, the First Response Team of America, allows for securing charitable funding necessary for team expansion into multiple regional service locations able to provide aid simultaneously to impacted communities throughout the United States.
What is The First Response Team?
The First Response Team is the 501c3 charitable non-profit that sprung from the identification of unanswered disaster site needs witnessed in the course of years of for-profit contractual work by Tad Agoglia's company, Disaster Recovery Solutions. It utilizes over 1 million dollars in mobile specialized equipment and skilled labor designed and assembled for immediate response to the varying demands of American disaster sites. Two 75ft trucks, customized with debris handling cranes, haul a multi-terrain hovercraft, skid steers, dirt bikes, a commercial generator, water pump and satellite communication with GPS technology. The Team remains pre-positioned for immediate response along storm prone regions, filling in the gap that often exists between a storm strike and humanitarian aid response.
How Long Can The First Response Team Last?
As long as we want it to. With enough support, The First Response Team will not only continue with its current commitment and support, but will expand to include more teams at more pre-positioned locations, eventually covering the breadth of the United States without compromising one town's needs for another's.
Who Does The First Response Team Help?
Anyone in need, according to need, is someone the Team is here to help. Because many of America’s existing aid resources are allocated according to population, The First Response Team tends to respond to small towns, where the need is greater, before larger. Upon arrival at a town in need, the Team works first with local first responders and other aid organizations before turning attention next to residents with the fewest financial resources, including insurance, to recover.
Why do it?
Working in disaster recovery since 2003, Tad came to recognize the desperate need, as well as his ability to fulfill it. He feels Americans deserve the response he is able to provide and has been providing it since May 2007.