My FEMA Experience
I’ve written an external page to give you a feeling for my experience in dealing with FEMA over the course of 10 years.
This page will open in a new window. I’ve read the glowing reports about the response to Florida’s storms last year. I wish that people could listen to the local Emergency Operations Center briefings up here on the Panhandle. Many of our local officials are not quite as thrilled with the response as some national media outlets.
Update 1: This is from the archives of the Pensacola News Journal [no link because they charge for archived articles] an editorial from March 22, 2005:
Will FEMA deliver before the next storm? It’s getting to be an old, old story. But that makes it even harder to understand. So just what is the Federal Emergency Management Agency waiting for before it reimburses area governments for Hurricane Ivan cleanup — another hurricane season? A few months ago, that might have been the tag line for a bad joke. Now it looks like a serious possibility. We could go through another hurricane before FEMA finishes reimbursing expenses from the last…
Update 2 [Ivan response]: The “Blue Roof” program is only for owner-occupied homes. If you rent, you can drown while your landlord tries to find a roofer or a tarp.
FEMA distribution points are only for vehicles: people don’t count. You can only get food and water if you drive through, and every vehicle gets the same ration. If a group of people pool their gas to get one vehicle to the distribution point, they are only going to get one ration.
