FEMA hits a new bottom, continues digging, smells Chinese food...
This is sick. From
Babalu Blog we have the link to this story:
Bureaucratic Myopia vs. Common Sense
Humberto Fontova
Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2005
A friend of mine in the swamp tour business offered his employees and his fleet of airboats to government officials to help evacuate flooded New Orleanians. His ten boats were lined up and ready to launch, along with dozens of other volunteer craft.
These boats spent six exasperating hours lined up as FEMA officials inspected them thoroughly.
In the meantime, floodwaters rose to rooftops all through New Orleans. The FEMA inspection was for the same horrible hazards – insufficient life preservers, fire extinguishers, etc. - as the Coast Guard and Game & Fish Commission inspect for when they interrupt our fishing and hunting trips.
Finally a FEMA official proclaimed: "NO!" Many of the boats were deemed unfit to be used. They could not help rescue desperate people. These boats may have been perfectly seaworthy and may have able-bodied owners anxious to donate their efforts to the rescue. What they lacked were the required number of life preservers (!!) - one per potential rescuee presumably, as required by the Coast Guard.
Even ghastlier, the FEMA folks explained, some rescuees may have been forced to sit on the floors of some boats, which were also deficient in the number of seats - one per rescuee, presumably.
So instead, let's allow people to drown, hunh, Mr. FEMA person?
Then the few volunteer boats that passed the inspection were only allowed to rescue people until nightfall. The swamp tour owner defied the order and brought out 100 (very grateful) people that night on his own.
Another acquaintance owns a food wholesale business. He offered the $2.5 million worth of food in his warehouse to feed desperate hurricane victims. Four Army helicopters started revving their rotors, prepared to fly in and start hauling out the food.
Then an FAA official stepped in and nixed the mission. The food warehouse, you see, was located within a mile of a NASA facility. Some regulation would have been violated.
I heard about many, many more such bureaucratic idiocies that I'll report in due course. I'm still digging out myself.
My sister-in-law was in a New Orleans Hospital when savages broke in and started looting and raping. She was helicoptered out in the nick of time. She might have been a U.S. embassy worker in Saigon circa May 1975, or even a Rolling Stone at the Altamont Speedway in December 1969. Some hideous stuff went on down here.
As for us, the Louisiana Fontovas (17 of us) evacuated to my brother's (very large, thank God) home in Houston for the storm. We're back now, but we found our house demolished.
My parents' house is closer to New Orleans; it flooded, but not to the roof - only a few inches, just enough to ruin carpets, some furniture, sheetrock, etc. We're all camping out at my sister's house three blocks away from mine that somehow escaped major damage. So some Fontovas are refugees again?
Big deal! We did it before, with a major difference: you can buy insurance against Katrina. None was offered against Castro. So this is a breeze. No power down here yet. But we're eating well, using a propane burner and a makeshift bar-b-cue pit on much of the fish and game we pulled from the freezer, which was still cold. Heck, outside cookery of fish and game was pretty much how we always ate.
Alas, those vicious, hateful rednecks came through again. A huge crew of them with chain saws, bobcats, tarps and brawn descended on my property and cleared a path for us to enter the house, then cleared out much of the downed timber and hauled off part of my detached roof. They brought food, water - most importantly, hope and good cheer. They descended from Nashville and Tulsa and belong to a first Baptist Congregation which has a church in our neighborhood - to which we do NOT belong.
No matter. They were helping EVERYBODY and ANYBODY in trouble. Unreal. Much more to come, amigos, when I get better situated and get some electricity.
Stories like this are all over the place - I
wrote earlier about how FEMA was preventing cellular companies to come in with temporary COW and COLT installations to provide cell service for people who still had working phones.
Just like the swamp tour owner who defied the FEMA order and the "vicious, hateful rednecks" who descended with help, the effective rescues are a local effort.
If there is one lesson that people should take from this, it is that Personal Responsibility is a
Very Important Thing and if you don't have any of it, you need to get some soon...
It is very easy to snipe at someone's recommendation for Duct Tape but in the event of a biological or dirty-nuke attack, that silver roll could be what saves your life (along with the spare ammo, the gallons of water and the canned food).
Posted by DaveH at September 15, 2005 11:29 PM