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.

Days of Infamy

    11 September 2001                           07 December 1941

                 I cannot forget              I will not forgive


But the earth endures and mankind persists and civilization survives

Rosewood and Music

Last week the Gibson Guitar Company was raided by the Feds, records were confiscated and equipment and product were confiscated. What was their crime? They were in violation of an Indian law and political idealists.

There are American laws on the books that honor foreign environmental laws and it seems Gibson was using Rosewood imported from India without the proper export license being obtained by the Indian export company. So the U.S. authorities seized the illegal wood and in effect have almost shut down the company.

The interesting point in all this is not that the U.S. is supporting foreign laws (which is usually a good thing to do) but that the importer who brought the wood into the country also sold much of the same Rosewood to other instrument and specialty companies. The importer and the other companies have not been targeted and have not had any of their stocks confiscated.

The article I read about this event indicated that one of the reasons for the Gibson raid is that the owner of the company is a strong contributor to conservative party causes, while the importer and other users of the wood seem to be neutral in their political beliefs or supporters of more liberal philosophies.

My only comment is that the law needs to be applied evenly or not at all.

Darth Vador Buses

The President just returned from a three state bus tour that looks a lot like an election campaign tour because he wanted to “connect with the people”. One of the features of this tour was the unveiling of a special built bus that is equipped with state of the art communications and security systems. In reality, there are two identical busses that were bought and paid for by the taxpaying public both, for some reason painted a glossy black. According to news reports each bus also cost in the neighborhood of 1.1 million dollars, and were built, not in the U.S., but in Canada.

Although each bus was tricked out by the Hemphill Brothers Coach Co, of Tennessee the basic buses were built by the Prevost Co. of Quebec and are listed as products of Canada in the legal documents. While I don’t deny that the Hemphill Brothers build a fine vehicle I can’t help wondering why importing the President’s ride from Canada can in any way create the jobs the President is talking about and do anything about reducing unemployment at home rather than over the border.

I wonder what the unions, whose support the President depends on think of this?

Statistics for Politicians

One of the many things government is good at is collecting demographic information and statistical data. And I’ve found that if you dig through the mountains of data that is available on line you can learn some interesting things. For instance, while spending a hot afternoon digging through some Bureau of Labor Statistics data I ran across a table titled Employment / Population Ratio, and the June 2011 figure was 58.5%.

In effect there were slightly less than 6 adults out of 10 who worked at a job during the month of June. That is the lowest employment percentage seen since 1981, when we were coming out of the Carter presidency.

Yet we are told that the unemployment rate is 9%.

Our Constitution

Last week a women in Florida was found not guilty of murdering her daughter, and today a  baseball player had his trial dismissed because the prosecution showed the jury a film clip the judge had earlier ruled to be inadmissible. In both cases I’ve heard people complain that the individual was “obviously guilty” and they are upset at what they see as a miscarriage of justice.

I disagree.

The laws of our country say that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and that in the absence of proof the accused must go free. In the Florida case it appears that the prosecution had little more than circumstantial evidence to present, in fact they could not even specify the cause of death. While I personally feel the mother is an individual I could nether trust or like the fact remains that the state was unable to prove to 12 jurors that she had done the crime she was charged with.

In the case of the ball player that was charged with lying to Congress the judge had specifically said that a particular film clip could not be introduced as evidence yet the prosecution showed it to the jury anyway. The judge could easily have dismissed the case with prejudice but instead chose to stop the trial and order a future rehearing.

In both cases the decision was based on the Constitution that provides each of us a fair hearing if we are accused of a crime. And I would much rather have an occasional miscreant walk free than further weaken the very document that describes and enforces the rule of law we live under.

I'm Back

I stopped blogging the past few days for a very good reason. My Lady was able to come home for 5 days and I wanted and needed to focus on her and make her visit as enjoyable as possible. I leave it to her to tell you if I was successful, but I know that the time went by all too fast and the parting when she went back to the North West was bitter sweet.

I learned (as I had anticipated) that my cleaning standards are not up to her standards and that I have to do a better job of finding dust bunnies and related items of wifely concerns. Being a well trained husband I used the wise man’s response of “Yes Dear” and promised to do better in the future. But there were lots of moments of just holding hands, offering my troth and reveling in her being home.

Time went by much too rapidly and the house is a lot more lonely, even the pets realize she is away and they are trying to adjust to her absence by reminding me that I need to give them big meals and lots of treats. As a Gaffer however I have a reputation to uphold and I remind them in turn that I’ve got opposable thumbs and know how to use the can opener.