Target audience: Top brass of FEMA/Homeland Security
Sunday 8:30 a.m.
Two hour briefing by police, EMT’s, emergency line personnel, including Q&A
10:30 a.m.
1.5 hour briefing by survivors of Katrina, Rita, Ike, including Q&A
12:00 p.m.
FEMA instruction manuals are handed out for dealing with hurricane/flood “procedures”
* * * * * * *
After lunch, at 12:45 p.m. 25 of the 50 participants draw a name from a hat to find their partner.
The teams are brought to off-site locations where they have only the food and water in a hotel room (min. 10 gallons per person) in the pantry and frig and freezer. Some hurricane kit items like a flashlight but no specialty equipment or food. They are taking care of (pretend) one infirm grandmother who needs medication, two young children and a dog.
There is no electricity or running water and roads are flooded and there is no gasoline available, stores are closed and the few that are open have no bread, peanut butter, water or ice. Forget about opening a window because it’s 95 degrees outside with 100% humidity.
You have to provide for yourselves and your ersatz “family” until Wednesday afternoon, 3:00 p.m. During your time there, you’re welcome to make amendments to the multiple FEMA rules that govern who gets aid, how, when, where and why procedures are re-written for every disaster as to eligibility and means for application.
You can think about telling people not to go to the local store to buy gasoline, infant formula, water or ice. You might even peruse the thought of having power restored (only 3% have power here) to all easily “turned on” areas around the county so that gas stations and stores can open to serve their neighborhoods.
At 3:00 p.m. there will be a debriefing by panel members from Sunday’s session plus others. At 5:00, if the streets are clear, you may return to your own families.
Practice makes perfect, that’s why our armed services have boot camp and countless exercises. It doesn’t seem as though the people who make the decisions at FEMA have practiced or learned anything since Hurricane Katrina three years ago. That is devastating for the four million people without electricity and who knows how many more without running water, flooded roadways et al.
It appears that President Bush has opened the tap for a second or two to the Strategic Oil Reserves to give SE TX residents some illusory comfort that gasoline is available for our cars and generators.
We were told to stay. Now most people who stayed have no food or water, ice or power, no tap water, and highways and roads are flooded and the streets are strewn with downed trees and power lines. So those of us who stayed have no services and all the help is going to Galveston and Louisiana.
Why Galveston? No-one is supposed to be there and the Red Cross beat FEMA there by over a day. Why Louisiana? Because they had a thunderstorm?
Please don’t go where the media tells you to. All they want is human interest stories, tragedies. And paternalistic statements telling us not to do exactly what they’re now doing. Don’t stand in this water (as I am). Don’t drive on these roads (as I do).
It’s time to put the top brass to the task. They’ve been ensconced in their political jobs with nice houses and have forgotten what it was like when they were first at … ok, Yale. Bad adage. Be there. Do it, don’t just fly in and take accolades and fly out. From the Mandatory Survivors
