When the heavy rainfall hit Texas in July 2025, it turned the Guadalupe River into a monster. Within hours, streets were rivers, homes were islands and ordinary Texans found themselves in the middle of a disaster zone. The catastrophic flash flooding left people clinging to rooftops, families stranded in rising water and responders stretched to their limits.

What saved countless lives that week was not only official response teams but the bond between professional rescuers and civilian volunteers. ZAKA Search & Rescue, an Israeli humanitarian team known for operating in war zones, flew in a high-level flood mapping unit to support Texas A&M Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue. Using real-time satellite data, they helped direct teams through the chaos, pinpointing debris fields and, heartbreakingly, where bodies were most likely to be found.

It was a vivid example of a new global truth: when crisis strikes, civilians are no longer bystanders. They are the front line.

In today’s world, threats do not come only from distant battlefields or geopolitical fault lines. They arrive in the form of flash floods, terror attacks, collapsing buildings and missile and drone strikes that hit city centers. The first people to respond are often not soldiers, firefighters or medics in uniform. They are neighbors, volunteers, local security teams and ordinary citizens doing the extraordinary because no one else is there yet.

This was seen most brutally on Oct. 7, 2023, when

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