Milwaukee Fire Department Chief Aaron Lipski. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

“We’re gathered here today to help people,” said Aaron Lipski, chief of the Milwaukee Fire Department, during a Monday press conference with local and state elected leaders, the American Red Cross and first responders, calling for more volunteers to staff emergency shelters in Milwaukee serving people displaced by unprecedented floods.  

Lipski praised the Red Cross as “an amazing partner,” but added,  “When we see them feeling the strain, we feel like we should step up and help.” 

Following the historic Aug. 9-10 floods which overwhelmed the streets and infrastructure across Milwaukee County, the Red Cross opened two emergency shelters for people who could not return to their homes. Those two shelters were closed down and re-located to Marshall High School, with about  50 people reportedly depending on the shelters. 

During the Monday press conference, Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the flood was particularly hard on people who already depend on strained public services, particularly unhoused people in Milwaukee. 

As of Aug. 19, more than 3,400 homes were assessed as either destroyed or sustaining major damage from the flooding, which occurred as some parts of Milwaukee County received over 10 inches of torrential downpour. The estimated price tag exceeded $34 million for public property damage.

“Now, we’ve all seen the shock and the tears in the eyes of folks who’ve been affected by those floods,” said Johnson. 

“The trauma’s enormous, and the sadness is really, really deep,” he added.  “… all these folks, they need a place to go — a safe place to go.” 

At least two people drowned during the floods, the mayor said, including 49-year-old Juan Carlos Sierra Campos, whose body was discovered in Lake Michigan the morning after the floods, and 72-year-old Isaias Serna, who was found drowned four days after the floods in Port Milwaukee. “Now, both these men apparently were unhoused individuals, and that circumstance may have been part of the reason why they ended up losing their lives,” Johnson said. Both men were reportedly known to live in the same encampment under the bridge, at the intersection of South Chase Avenue and South 1st St. Two other men from the same encampment are reportedly still missing.

“I want all of our neighbors to be sheltered, and to be sheltered safely,” said Johnson. “I want everyone within the sound of my voice to think, really take in account, about how you might be able to assist.” 

Milwaukee officials are calling on local residents to pitch in however they can. Whether by opening the doors of a church or business to become a shelter, or volunteering at an existing shelter. The Milwaukee Public School district has provided emergency shelter space, Johnson said, but that will be coming to an end in just a few days when the new school year starts. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said it made him feel hopeful to see residents step up to help each other. But he also said the struggle to find shelter for flood victims shows the severity of Milwaukee’s housing shortage. “The bottom line is this,” said Crowley, “we need more safe and accessible shelter locations throughout the community so when emergencies like the floods happen, we’re prepared.”  

Catherine Rabenstine, CEO of American Red Cross of Wisconsin, said that after disasters “one of the most urgent needs is a safe place to stay,” somewhere that “people can catch their breath, gather their thoughts, and begin to recover.” Many people who were  displaced by the floods can only find shelter space far from their own neighborhoods, schools, jobs and support systems, she said. “It makes an already difficult time even harder.” 

While the Red Cross has 14 shelter partner facilities across Milwaukee County, only two are located on the North Side “where most apartment fires occur, and where flooding recently hit the hardest,” said Rabenstine. She added,  “we need to grow this network, so that no family has to wait for safety.” 

Crowley, who has worked to create more affordable housing opportunities, said the flood’s impact has rippled out to touch other areas of need in  the community. 

“This has really shown …  that we have a huge need for housing just in general,” he said.  “ …  whether we’re talking about people being displaced due to the natural disaster, or people being displaced due to evictions or not having enough money to actually make their rent,” Crowley told Wisconsin Examiner, “I think this shows that we need greater partnership between municipalities, with the state, as well as the federal government to really focus on housing issues.

Scientists have long warned that more intense rainfall and greater flood risks would be among the ways climate change would affect Wisconsin. Rep. Omokunde, who has worked on climate change legislation, told the Examiner, “We know that when you  have fossil fuels that are burning, and they’re going into the air, it causes heavier rains. And we have to cut down our carbon emission. If it’s not more evident with these kinds of floods, it needs to be more evident now.”

Omokunde said that Wisconsin should focus on ways to capture carbon and support legislation to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030 and achieve net-zero by 2050. “So let’s come to the table, and come up with a plan to say that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson said that although the Legislature is on break, conversations are happening around the flood aftermath. Officials are also waiting to see how the federal government assesses the damage in Milwaukee, and whether additional federal assistance will be approved. “It’s still a huge concern for us, even with FEMA’s involvement,” Johnson told Wisconsin Examiner. 

While touring damage with Gov. Tony Evers, Johnson said she saw houses that had been completely washed off their foundations. ‘There is no salvaging those properties for some of those homeowners, but they still have mortgages,” said Johnson. “So what happens to those dwellings? And we know that even if FEMA does step up, their job isn’t to make people 100% whole. So what does that look like for some of those homeowners and landlords, and how do they get those properties back on the market?” With affordable housing already scarce in Milwaukee and Wisconsin, Johnson wonders what will happen “with even more houses taken off the market” due to flood damage.

Green Bay Conservation Corps workers, from left, Emily Swagel, Zak King and Cailie Kafura, plant native shrubs in Fireman's Park. The work is part of installing a pollinator corridor and a larger land restoration project across Green Bay. (Photo courtesy of Green Bay Conservation Corps)

Jake White says he was lucky.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate with a global health major, White was in his second year of an AmeriCorps placement in the Sawyer County Public Health Department, where he helped out with department reports and outreach to the community. Then AmeriCorps pulled the plug at the end of April — cancelling its grants to agencies all across the country.

White was in the middle of working with a team assigned to produce a community health assessment for the county when he got the news. Sawyer County kept him on so he could stick with the project, converting his position to a  limited-term employee (LTE) through the end of June, when White starts medical school in Wausau.

The reprieve also gave him a chance to hand over a second project, on substance abuse prevention, to another community member, White said. The future of that work was one of his biggest worries about AmeriCorps’ sudden shutdown.

His AmeriCorps experience at the county “really gave me the foundation for the skills and knowledge I will carry into my role as a physician,” White told the Wisconsin Examiner.

The aftermath of the AmeriCorps shutdown didn’t go as  smoothly for Maxwell Robin. He was placed with the St. Vincent DePaul charitable pharmacy in Madison.

“I did whatever needed to be done,” Robin said — working on computer projects at the pharmacy, filling prescriptions, serving as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking patients.

When the AmeriCorps cancellation notice arrived, the projects he was working on “got thrown into chaos,” Robin said a week after the notification.

Now a federal judge has ordered AmeriCorps to restore its grants and reinstate its volunteers. But all of that remains up in the air.

“Things are just very confusing now,” Robin said Friday.

Despite that, Robin has been able to move on. He is waiting to hear back from several job applications.

And he still volunteers part-time at the pharmacy, where he developed a strong interest in working in the nonprofit sector.

“We were able to take people who, for whatever reason, had been kicked to the side,” Robin said.

But program administrators still don’t know for sure what will happen and when.

“We are still waiting for official notification from AmeriCorps,” said Jeanne Duffy, the executive director of Serve Wisconsin, in an email message Friday.

Serve Wisconsin, based in the Wisconsin Department of Administration, is the state administrator for AmeriCorps.

Wisconsin has 25 AmeriCorps programs operating in more than 300 locations across the state — volunteers who are paid a stipend and who work in health care, help with environmental projects, assist in school classrooms and carry out  other projects.

When the Trump administration canceled AmeriCorps grants April 25, the action caught participants in the program as well as officials responsible for coordinating its work by surprise.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul joined the federal lawsuit brought by 25 states to challenge the AmeriCorps shutdown.

Thursday’s order, by U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Maryland, found that the Corporation for National Community Service, the agency that operates AmeriCorps, and its administration “likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before making significant changes to service delivery, that the plaintiffs will be irreparably harmed if this injunction does not issue, and that the balance of the equities and the public interest favor an injunction.”

The cancellation affected programs all over Wisconsin that have worked with AmeriCorps, some of them for years, and the volunteers who have flocked to AmeriCorps looking for experience through community service work.

“It’s a tragedy,” said state Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee), who spent two years as an AmeriCorps participant 15 years ago. “AmeriCorps is about volunteerism. We have limited resources and we have this unlimited need.”

In Green Bay, AmeriCorps helped staff the Green Bay Conservation Corps. Founded in 2022, the Conservation Corps has fielded teams of AmeriCorps members each year on projects that have included establishing a pollinator corridor through the city, removing invasive plants, maintaining walking trails and restoring area streams.

“Altogether we’ve seen over 70 AmeriCorps members come through our doors,” said Maria Otto, the Green Bay Conservation Corps coordinator. “They’re the ones getting the work done.”

The Green Bay city council passed a measure covering the rest of the 2025 service year from city funds.

“After two weeks of uncertainty, our entire crew was able to work for the Conservation Corps again” thanks to the funds, said Cailie Kafura, one of the AmeriCorps volunteers. The money will allow the program’s work to keep going through August.

“We were doing a lot of work that people maybe don’t even know is being done,” said Kafura. “I know that the work I’m doing, I want to be doing that kind of work in the future. I want to be using my body and my mind for good out in the world.”

Lynn Walter operates a nonprofit, New Leaf Foods, that promotes access to healthy food and education in the greater Green Bay area. Founded 15 years ago, New Leaf began working with AmeriCorps five years ago through a partnership with Marshfield Clinic. The clinic deploys AmeriCorps participants on health-related projects around the state.

Walter said Friday after the cancellation she was able to retain one of her three AmeriCorps participants this year on a contract basis. A second AmeriCorps member chose to stay on as a volunteer to complete a project she had been working on, while the third needed more paid hours and went to another job.

Even with the court ruling, Walter said, she’s been told that what happens next remains uncertain. And she fears there’s been longer-term damage regardless of what happens in the court case.

“Even if the program starts up again, there won’t be the momentum that there has been in the past,” Walter said. She expects prospective participants to be wary of signing up in the future: “What would you tell a young person?”

In his early 30s, Omokunde joined Public Allies, a leadership development nonprofit, in 2010 and 2011 as an AmeriCorps participant. He called the experience “a tipping point” for him personally and professionally.

“One of the core values is collaboration,” Omokunde said. “It taught me that collaboration is one of the most difficult things to do — but it’s one of the most necessary things to do.”

Omokunde is blunt in his assessment of why AmeriCorps was targeted in President Donald Trump’s second term.

“I think it follows a long tradition of people not valuing the work that is done in certain communities,” Omokunde said. “Donald Trump is a bully. He doesn’t want anything in opposition to him and his agenda.”

Omokunde ticked off a list of colleagues in politics who came up through AmeriCorps and Public Allies: State Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, former state Rep. David Bowen, and the late Milwaukee alder Jonathan Brostoff, also a former Assembly member.

“When he sees this cadre of individuals who are rooted in community and learning about asset-based community development, diversity and being committed to anti-oppression as well, people who represent all people, he doesn’t want that kind of opposition,” Omokunde said. “He just wants people to go along and do his bidding.”