Fangs for FEMA
They're already yipping in Florida about emergency response to Hurricane Wilma, which hit three days ago.
Of course, the Federal Emergency Management Agency again is in the storm's eye. People want water, gas, ice, food and electricity. Who wouldn't?
Sure, FEMA has had problems. The federal government deserved everything it got and more for the pitiful lethargic response to the post-Hurricane Katrina humanitarian crisis in New Orleans, where poor local government preparedness got bushwhacked and exposed. FEMA got more than it was supposed to handle in that catastrophe. But the slow reaction still was inexcusable.
Enter Hurricane Rita.
As much as the skeptical, critical and investigative journalist in me would like to gut FEMA from belly button to eyeball with a dull deer antler, I have to admit that I think the agency did - and continues to do - a pretty good job here. Cash is flowing. Blue roof tarps are flapping in the breeze everywhere.
As their counterparts are doing in Florida, local leaders here were barking about FEMA two days after the storm. They wanted generators. They wanted food and water for their people.
In the days following a shocking catastrophe, something that most people never see in their lives, the stress machine is running all out, cranking out pain, tension, confusion and fear like a newspaper-spitting press. FEMA all the while remains calm and methodical. It has seen this all before.
As I've written before in this blog, there is a misunderstanding about how FEMA works. During the height of the criticism here, a FEMA official sat down with me and explained how his agency works. It waits until all local resources are exhausted. Yes, there are 50 idle generators just sitting out there at the federal staging area, but FEMA isn't going to react to the local panic by mindlessly sending them out to whoever cries for one. It has to prioritize. It has to ensure that the generator is the right fit for a particular building.
Three days after Hurricane Rita, I filled out the online application for FEMA aid. The next day, a FEMA inspector called me to make an appointment to see my house. The next morning, he showed up on time for the appointment. Days later, I was approved to receive $2,000.
An error I made on my FEMA application has since held up the money, but I'm confident I will get it. Sure, there was a long line at the FEMA help booth set up for problem applicants such as myself. Sure, it was impossible to get through via telephone to FEMA until last week, a month after the storm.
But those guys have a lot on their hands, and it just takes some patience, persistence and maybe a little endurance dealing with all this.
So that brings us back to Florida, where the same FEMA-related complaints are ringing loudly in the media.
However, while Wilma was stomping the Yucatan, Florida residents had plenty of time to stock up on food, water and supplies. In fact, the storm roared in two or three days later than initially projected. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush pointed out yesterday that "it isn't that hard to get 72 hours of food and water, to just do the simple things we ask people to do."
You'd think Florida residents by now would be storm savvy. Four hurricanes hammered them last year, and in Andrew in 1992 they had biggest brute of them all.
By comparison, a huge percentage of the Southeast Texas population skedaddled prior to Rita, so the post-storm need for necessities was minimized, and emergency response leaders could focus on needs such as debris removal, water and sewer, and other issues.
No matter how prepared a community is for catastrophe, there is always enough chaos and confusion to hamper emergency response and provide the general public with everything it needs, including minimal inconvenience.
Wilma victims have several things going for them. Gas stations seem to be open, albeit with long lines. Power was out for 6 million residents, but about a fifth of them have power today. (It took five days for the energy company here to get its own headquarters off generator power.) Also, the Florida weather is nice: sunny, with highs in the high 60s and lows in the high 40s. (It was hot and humid here, with highs in the high 90s.)
Even the flooding, at least in Key West, was nicer. I saw pictures yesterday of people wading through emerald green water in the streets, as opposed to the black, disease-carrying toxic soup that New Orleans residents dealt with. There was one Key West photo of a little girl on a swing set, smiling and skimming back and forth over that gorgeous green water.
I'm not trying to minimize the Wilma catastrophe. There appears to be a lot of damage there.
But I suppose it's human nature to look at one disaster and feel a sense a pride from having weathered something that perhaps was worse.
Perhaps I've become a storm snob.
Of course, the Federal Emergency Management Agency again is in the storm's eye. People want water, gas, ice, food and electricity. Who wouldn't?
Sure, FEMA has had problems. The federal government deserved everything it got and more for the pitiful lethargic response to the post-Hurricane Katrina humanitarian crisis in New Orleans, where poor local government preparedness got bushwhacked and exposed. FEMA got more than it was supposed to handle in that catastrophe. But the slow reaction still was inexcusable.
Enter Hurricane Rita.
As much as the skeptical, critical and investigative journalist in me would like to gut FEMA from belly button to eyeball with a dull deer antler, I have to admit that I think the agency did - and continues to do - a pretty good job here. Cash is flowing. Blue roof tarps are flapping in the breeze everywhere.
As their counterparts are doing in Florida, local leaders here were barking about FEMA two days after the storm. They wanted generators. They wanted food and water for their people.
In the days following a shocking catastrophe, something that most people never see in their lives, the stress machine is running all out, cranking out pain, tension, confusion and fear like a newspaper-spitting press. FEMA all the while remains calm and methodical. It has seen this all before.
As I've written before in this blog, there is a misunderstanding about how FEMA works. During the height of the criticism here, a FEMA official sat down with me and explained how his agency works. It waits until all local resources are exhausted. Yes, there are 50 idle generators just sitting out there at the federal staging area, but FEMA isn't going to react to the local panic by mindlessly sending them out to whoever cries for one. It has to prioritize. It has to ensure that the generator is the right fit for a particular building.
Three days after Hurricane Rita, I filled out the online application for FEMA aid. The next day, a FEMA inspector called me to make an appointment to see my house. The next morning, he showed up on time for the appointment. Days later, I was approved to receive $2,000.
An error I made on my FEMA application has since held up the money, but I'm confident I will get it. Sure, there was a long line at the FEMA help booth set up for problem applicants such as myself. Sure, it was impossible to get through via telephone to FEMA until last week, a month after the storm.
But those guys have a lot on their hands, and it just takes some patience, persistence and maybe a little endurance dealing with all this.
So that brings us back to Florida, where the same FEMA-related complaints are ringing loudly in the media.
However, while Wilma was stomping the Yucatan, Florida residents had plenty of time to stock up on food, water and supplies. In fact, the storm roared in two or three days later than initially projected. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush pointed out yesterday that "it isn't that hard to get 72 hours of food and water, to just do the simple things we ask people to do."
You'd think Florida residents by now would be storm savvy. Four hurricanes hammered them last year, and in Andrew in 1992 they had biggest brute of them all.
By comparison, a huge percentage of the Southeast Texas population skedaddled prior to Rita, so the post-storm need for necessities was minimized, and emergency response leaders could focus on needs such as debris removal, water and sewer, and other issues.
No matter how prepared a community is for catastrophe, there is always enough chaos and confusion to hamper emergency response and provide the general public with everything it needs, including minimal inconvenience.
Wilma victims have several things going for them. Gas stations seem to be open, albeit with long lines. Power was out for 6 million residents, but about a fifth of them have power today. (It took five days for the energy company here to get its own headquarters off generator power.) Also, the Florida weather is nice: sunny, with highs in the high 60s and lows in the high 40s. (It was hot and humid here, with highs in the high 90s.)
Even the flooding, at least in Key West, was nicer. I saw pictures yesterday of people wading through emerald green water in the streets, as opposed to the black, disease-carrying toxic soup that New Orleans residents dealt with. There was one Key West photo of a little girl on a swing set, smiling and skimming back and forth over that gorgeous green water.
I'm not trying to minimize the Wilma catastrophe. There appears to be a lot of damage there.
But I suppose it's human nature to look at one disaster and feel a sense a pride from having weathered something that perhaps was worse.
Perhaps I've become a storm snob.
posted by Brian Pearson at 10:24 AM
1 Comments:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The purpose of FEMA (begun by Presidential Order on April 1, 1979) is to coordinate the response to a disaster which has occurred in the United States and which overwhelms the resources of local and state authorities. The governor of the state in which the disaster occurred, sportsbook, must declare a state of emergency and formally request from the President that FEMA and the federal government respond to the disaster. The only exception is when an emergency or disaster occurs on federal property or to a federal asset, for example, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the 1995 bombing, or the Space Shuttle Columbia in the 2003 return-flight disaster. http://www.enterbet.com
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