Thousands Swim Into Spain's Ceuta, Nine Bodies Pulled From the Water

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During a 4-day outage, the most interesting thing I observed wasn't the lack of power. It was the absence of leadership on my street. Nobody organized. Nobody checked on the elderly couple at the end of the block. Nobody shared information about restoration timelines. Everyone retreated to their own house and waited. When I started knocking on doors on day two, people were relieved. Not because I had answers. Because someone was doing something. That's leadership, and it doesn't require a title.

Here's what I've got this morning:

Leading When Nobody's In Charge

We've covered community building (Issue 70), conflict resolution (Issue 83), and decision-making (Issue 124). This issue ties them together: how to step into a leadership role during a disruption, even if you've never led anything before.

Crisis leadership isn't about authority. It's about initiative. The person who starts organizing, the one who knocks on doors, shares information, and coordinates resources, becomes the de facto leader by action, not appointment. Most people want someone to lead. Almost nobody volunteers. That gap is your opportunity to serve your community.

The first leadership act is information sharing. During a disruption, people are isolated and uncertain. Walking to neighbors and sharing what you know, even limited information, reduces anxiety and builds trust. "The utility website says restoration is estimated for tomorrow afternoon. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's what they're saying." Information, even uncertain information, is leadership.

The second act is welfare checks. Who on your street lives alone? Who has medical equipment that needs power? Who has mobility limitations? Checking on vulnerable neighbors is the most immediately impactful leadership action available.

The third act is resource coordination. "I have a camp stove if anyone needs to heat water. The Johnsons have a generator and are offering phone charging from 6 to 8 PM. Mrs. Chen has extra blankets." Connecting resources to needs is leadership at its most practical.

You don't need formal training for this. CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) training is free and excellent, but the instinct to check on people, share information, and coordinate resources is innate. It just needs activation.

The leadership posture: calm, helpful, honest about what you don't know, and willing to do the work that nobody else is doing. That's it. No speech. No uniform. Just showing up.

Identify the three most vulnerable households on your street.

Who lives alone? Who is elderly? Who has medical needs? If you don't know, that's information worth gathering before the next disruption. A simple introduction and exchanged phone numbers is the foundation for crisis welfare checks.

635,100 of America's Firefighters Are Volunteers, and Their Numbers Just Hit a Record Low

Of roughly 1,018,100 firefighters in the United States, 635,100 are volunteers, and 24,208 of the country's 29,452 fire departments are all or mostly volunteer, according to the National Volunteer Fire Council. The volunteer count fell to its lowest recorded level in 2023, while call volume has more than tripled over the past forty years. The donated time is worth an estimated $46.9 billion a year.

If you live outside a city, the people who answer your 911 call are probably neighbors with day jobs and pagers. That is worth knowing before you need them. A thinner roster means a longer response, and the minutes between the call and the truck are the window your street has to cover on its own. It is also the plainest argument for the kind of informal leadership this issue is about. In most of the country, the emergency response system already runs on people who simply volunteered for it.

Source: National Volunteer Fire Council, NFPA Journal

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John Hudson's career as the UK's Chief SERE Instructor was fundamentally about developing leaders who perform under extreme pressure. In How To Survive, he writes that leadership in crisis doesn't require charisma or expertise. It requires the willingness to act when others are frozen. The person who says "here's what we're going to do" in a vacuum of direction provides something more valuable than any skill: a sense of order.

Hudson teaches that the most effective crisis leaders aren't the loudest or the most experienced. They're the calmest. Calm is contagious. A person who can speak slowly, make eye contact, and take measured action in a chaotic environment becomes a gravitational center that others organize around. About $19 for the paperback.

Spain Sends Troops Into Ceuta After a Mass Crossing From Morocco, Nine Bodies Recovered

Surreal videos began circulating of thousands of illegal migrants crossed into Ceuta, Spain's enclave on the North African coast, through Wednesday night and Thursday. All of them appear to be young men. Most swam around the Tarajal breakwater from the Moroccan towns of Fnideq and Belyounech, some floating on inner tubes, while others forced a gate in the border fence and ran into the city. Nine bodies were recovered, adding to roughly 60 people who have died attempting this crossing in recent months. Ceuta's regional president, Juan Jesús Vivas, declared a humanitarian emergency and said the shelters were full: "The reception centres are saturated, there is no more room for anyone." Facilities for unaccompanied minors were running at 2,400 percent of capacity. By Friday the government had sent 200 specialised police officers and 60 troops from the mainland, along with air and naval support and diving teams, and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska traveled to the city.

Nobody has a real count. Spanish state television put the figure at 2,000 to 3,000, which Reuters could not confirm. The head of the Civil Guard officers' association in Ceuta said only that it is "not possible to give precise numbers." One government official told the New York Times the preliminary estimate ran to tens of thousands, a figure he also could not confirm, and that line is the origin of the 50,000 now circulating on social media.

The first trigger was Spain's socialist president declaring amnesty and legal rights for over a million previously illegal immigrants in the country, who will now have the right to vote and utilize Spain's social safety nets and government support. The second was a court ruling. On July 9 Spain's Supreme Court held that people intercepted at sea cannot be summarily returned under the enclave border procedure, which covers only those who climb a physical barrier. Surveillance cameras and sensors, the court said, are not the same thing as a fence. "It has been a slow trickle since the Supreme Court's ruling," a Civil Guard spokesman said. "But today has been an explosion."

Set the immigration politics aside and the operational shape is the one this issue is about. A city of about 84,000 people packed into seven square miles ran out of shelter space in a day. Reports of homeowners in Barcelona attempting to barricade their balconies to prevent people from climbing up. Shopkeepers closed early and began organizing their own watch because they did not believe police numbers would hold, and the reinforcement that arrived was only 260 people to police thousands. Whatever the event and wherever you live, if something completely unpredictable occurs, you cannot expect the police to be able to get a handle on the situation for some time.

Source: ZeroHedge, Reuters via ABC News, France 24, Al Jazeera, CNN, The New York Times, Morocco World News

Neighborhood Contact Sheet (Laminated)

After a 4-day outage we built a contact sheet for the street: name, house number, phone number, and notes (elderly, medical needs, kids, pets). We went door to door to collect it. Most people were happy to share. The sheet now lives on the fridge and in the go-bag, sealed in a Scotch self-seal laminating pouch so it survives rain and a wet pack. A 25-pack of letter-size pouches runs about $24 and needs no machine.

During the next outage, a short one of about 8 hours, we used the sheet to text five neighbors within the first 30 minutes. Two answered "thanks for checking, we're fine." One needed help starting a generator. The sheet turned a passive experience into an active community response. The sheet itself costs nothing to make.

Budget alternative: Know three neighbors by name and phone number. That's the minimum viable community leadership network.

Overrated: Waiting for official leadership during a neighborhood-level disruption. Your city, county, and utility are managing the big picture. Your street is your responsibility. Don't wait for someone with a title to organize your block.

Underrated: CERT training. It's free, typically 20 hours over 7 weeks, and teaches light search and rescue, fire suppression, medical triage, and team organization. It's the formal training that backs up the informal leadership instinct. Find classes at ready.gov/cert.

Ready.gov/CERT. Community Emergency Response Team training. Free.

Washington EMD: Neighborhood Preparedness. The state program that replaced Map Your Neighborhood, with a step by step plan for organizing a block.

FEMA: Individuals and Communities. The federal whole community approach, plus the doctrine document behind it (PDF).

Grokipedia: Leadership. Background on leadership theory and crisis leadership.

ARRL: ARES. Amateur Radio Emergency Service, the volunteer network that carries traffic when the normal channels fail.

Calorie math. How much food your household actually needs per day, per week, and per month, and why most people's estimates are wrong.

PS: The outage leadership wasn't dramatic. I knocked on maybe half a dozen doors, shared what I knew, and helped one person start a generator. Total time: about 45 minutes. But three neighbors told me later it was the moment the outage went from scary to manageable. Leadership is showing up.