Report from the field

One of my alternative lives includes periodic employment by FEMA as a mitigation specialist. After a disaster there is an immediate need to set up and staff recovery offices that are tasked with assisting those people who have been impacted by the disaster. Since the government doesn’t maintain warehouses of trained staff it has to call on a group of available and trained people who step away from their normal lives and respond to the needs of others.

So most of the people you see running around in blue shirts are not full time employees of the government, they are folks like you who came to help because they have empathy and sympathy .  And I’m one of them.

FEMA is best known as an agency that gives people money, but more of our work load comes from helping people cope with the present disaster and preparing for possible future events.  I teach them, among many other things how to remove mold after the flood, build a strong room in preparation for tornado season and how to build a survival kit ready for when you have one of those really bad days.

Right now I’m in Pennsylvania trying to help people cope with the flooding episodes of the past August; we work from early in the morning to about 7 at night. In our off time I get a chance to fix supper, do laundry and maybe get a good night’s sleep. We’re located in a local fire and police training facility which is a lot better than the school gymnasium, church lobby or even windblown tents that I’ve worked out of before. The people come in all flavors of damage, need and desire, but they all have been impacted by Mother Nature. It’s the elderly and frail that are being ignored by family and local governments that really bug me.

One lady I talked with yesterday has a small (about 2 feet wide and 6 inches deep) creek running through her property that during the flood grew to a width of several hundred feet and a depth described by her as “several stories”. Of course after the flood receded there was a veritable dam of debris blocking the creek and now the local jurisdiction tells her that the creek they claim as their own is now her responsible to clean up. The lady is a widow in her 80’s, not in good health and with limited income…and no one wants to help.

And that’s why FEMA is on the ground…our job is to make sure that resources, federal, local and volunteer are there to help. We can’t make you whole…but we will try to bring you back to the condition you were in just before the event that brought us to town.

FEMA gets bashed by many people who don’t understand (or want to understand) what our role is...We are recovery people, not rescue people and we really are here to help.