OT: 7 Months Out

Good reminder about how tragedies all over the world, though measured and fitted by their impact on the news cycle, have large scale, mostly unseen consequences for the people who live there. Meanwhile, the rest of the world moves on to the next hurricane or wildfire or earthquake.

Thanks for sharing...we forget how bad it can be. It's tragic that FEMA has been cut off at the knees. I could go on, but we have 3 1/2 more years of this disabling of any semblance of a safety net that the Federal government once resembled.

I'm sure there are PLENTY of good intended people who work there...But the truth is that FEMA has been a shit-show for decades now - just go back to Katrina.

That said, nobody has really fixed it much - at all.

purplefaithful wrote:
I'm sure there are PLENTY of good intended people who work there...But the truth is that FEMA has been a shit-show for decades now - just go back to Katrina.

That said, nobody has really fixed it much - at all.

I thought Brownie did a heckuva job.

Montana Tom wrote:
Thanks for sharing...we forget how bad it can be.  It's tragic that FEMA has been cut off at the knees.  I could go on, but we have 3 1/2 more years of this disabling of any semblance of a safety net that the Federal government once resembled.

I get daily reminders so it stays pretty fresh in my mind.

I live on the coast in NC and weathered a few hurricanes. Never thought it would be my cabin in Black Mountain that would be destroyed by a storm.

ncvike wrote:
I live on the coast in NC and weathered a few hurricanes. Never thought it would be my cabin in Black Mountain that would be destroyed by a storm.

Holy shit. Sorry man, that sucks. Hopefully insurance did right by you.

Montana Tom wrote:
Thanks for sharing...we forget how bad it can be.  It's tragic that FEMA has been cut off at the knees.  I could go on, but we have 3 1/2 more years of this disabling of any semblance of a safety net that the Federal government once resembled.

FEMA was the issue and North Carolina only got real  help since the new administration.   Bypassing helping people because they had a Certain political sign in their yard were the glory days to you.  What a bs simplification of what really went on. More funding and speedy recovery has come on as a result of money going directly to the state. It’s this kinda nonsense that has enabled the mess we got into, not the necessary change that is taking place.

Waterboy wrote:

FEMA was the issue and North Carolina only got real  help since the new administration.   Bypassing helping people because they had a Certain political sign in their yard were the glory days to you.  What a bs simplification of what really went on. More funding and speedy recovery has come on as a result of money going directly to the state. It’s this kinda nonsense that has enabled the mess we got into, not the necessary change that is taking place.

FEMA set up rescue operations a mile from our condo the next day. So, I’m pretty familiar with the rapid response to the devastation. I heard the helicopters take off and return hourly. Smaller helicopters were then used to ferry the injured and dying to local trauma centers. This went on from dawn to dusk daily. It was a pretty sobering and somber experience so it’s pretty etched in my internal hard drive.

FEMA Support Vehicles and a couple dozen FEMA trailers were staged a few miles away at I-26 rest stops for months. The Walmart parking lot, which is about 3 miles away, was staged for months by FEMA trailers with a variety of services, food and other supplies. These folks and the prior administration have my gratitude.

The current administration declined to extend matching funds and upon appeal denied further funding despite obvious ongoing and long term needs.

JustInTime wrote:

FEMA set up rescue operations a mile from our condo the next day. So, I’m pretty familiar with the rapid response to the devastation. I heard the helicopters take off and return hourly. Smaller helicopters were then used to ferry the injured and dying to local trauma centers. This went on from dawn to dusk daily. It was a pretty sobering and somber experience so it’s pretty etched in my internal hard drive.

FEMA Support Vehicles and a couple dozen FEMA trailers were staged a few miles away at I-26 rest stops for months. The Walmart parking lot, which is about 3 miles away, was staged for months by FEMA trailers with a variety of services, food and other supplies. These folks and the prior administration have my gratitude.

The current administration declined to extend matching funds and upon appeal denied further funding despite obvious ongoing and long term needs.

Umm okay, they flew helicopters during the flooding.  Wow.   They set up trailers in the area wow.  Please tell me you think their response was in any way adequate when people suffered out the winter living below wreckage from the flood and as no roads were rebuilt or other infrastructure.   The matching funds went away because money was given directly to the communities affected instead of via FEMA.  The funds were also inadequate because they were drained due to money being diverted to support the self-inflicted migrant crisis.   Nice spin on a god awful initial response from FEMA.

Waterboy wrote:

Umm okay, they flew helicopters during the flooding.  Wow.   They set up trailers in the area wow.  Please tell me you think their response was in any way adequate when people suffered out the winter living below wreckage from the flood and as no roads were rebuilt or other infrastructure.   The matching funds went away because money was given directly to the communities affected instead of via FEMA.  The funds were also inadequate because they were drained due to money being diverted to support the self-inflicted migrant crisis.   Nice spin on a god awful initial response from FEMA.

Actually just drove over a bridge rebuilt by the Army Corp of Engineers. Folks have received vouchers for housing in various hotels. Some have been put in travel trailers and campers. 

I’m not going to get into a protracted debate with someone with a painfully obvious politically driven agenda over something I experienced, see, and lived through daily. 

(I can almost hear the cheering)

JustInTime wrote:

Actually just drove over a bridge rebuilt by the Army Corp of Engineers. Folks have received vouchers for housing in various hotels. Some have been put in travel trailers and campers. 

I’m not going to get into a protracted debate with someone with a painfully obvious politically driven agenda over something I experienced, see, and lived through daily. 

(I can almost hear the cheering)

That bridge was likely built under Trump, and YOU have a clear political agenda every bit as much as I do.  I just admit it up front and openly unlike others that like to claim they're "independent", to try to convey how balanced their thinking is.  lol

https://appvoices.org/2025/01/10/efforts-to-repair-private-roads-bridges-underway/

https://t.co/41nfhcLiyL

— Just In Time (@BarrNone55) May 22, 2025

This is about 20 minutes from our condo. To give you an idea of the devastation, the course of the river was altered. 

Just heard the hurricane forecast for this season appears to be pretty active. If we get another, we’re better prepared to handle it.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/15AC4s91sN/?mibextid=wwXIfr

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1fZUVUqsFt/?mibextid=wwXIfr

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency after this year’s hurricane season, offering the clearest timeline yet for his administration’s long-term plans to dismantle the disaster relief agency and shift responsibility for response and recovery onto states.

“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump told reporters during a briefing in the Oval Office, later saying, “A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”

Trump added that the federal government will start distributing less federal aid for disaster recovery and that the funding will come directly from the president’s office. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects this year’s hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30, to be particularly intense and potentially deadly.

For months, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, have vowed to eliminate the agency, repeatedly criticizing it as ineffective and unnecessary. Noem reiterated those plans Tuesday in the Oval Office, saying FEMA “fundamentally needs to go away as it exists.”

“We all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousand if not millions of people, and President Trump does not want to see that continue into the future,” Noem said.

“While we are running this hurricane season, making sure that we have pre-staged and worked with the regions that are traditionally hit in these areas, we’re also building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding,” she said.

Noem is co-chairing a new FEMA Review Council, established under Trump, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The council is expected to submit recommendations in the coming months to drastically reduce the agency’s footprint and reform its operations and mission.

CNN

I will never understand why they didn't mobilize the Construction Battalion at Ft. Bragg immediately. Obama mobilized them in 2011 for the Haitian crisis and they were on the ground in 48 hours clearing debris, making temporary bridges and roads, repairing infrastructure at the Port and the Airport. Seems to me it would have been easy to make the 250 mile journey to help save lives. The cynical side of me says that there was an election in a month in a highly contested swing state and limiting access to the more conservative rural areas made it more difficult to even think about voting. Maybe it was just gross incompetence. I think the 10 year period with no major hurricanes caused us to get complacent in our preparedness. We didn't ramp back up quickly enough when the major hurricanes started to hit again.

purplefaithful wrote:
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency after this year’s hurricane season, offering the clearest timeline yet for his administration’s long-term plans to dismantle the disaster relief agency and shift responsibility for response and recovery onto states.

“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump told reporters during a briefing in the Oval Office, later saying, “A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”

Trump added that the federal government will start distributing less federal aid for disaster recovery and that the funding will come directly from the president’s office. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects this year’s hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30, to be particularly intense and potentially deadly.

For months, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, have vowed to eliminate the agency, repeatedly criticizing it as ineffective and unnecessary. Noem reiterated those plans Tuesday in the Oval Office, saying FEMA “fundamentally needs to go away as it exists.”

“We all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousand if not millions of people, and President Trump does not want to see that continue into the future,” Noem said.

“While we are running this hurricane season, making sure that we have pre-staged and worked with the regions that are traditionally hit in these areas, we’re also building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding,” she said.

Noem is co-chairing a new FEMA Review Council, established under Trump, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The council is expected to submit recommendations in the coming months to drastically reduce the agency’s footprint and reform its operations and mission.

CNN

I dont agree with the former governor often,  but she is right,  fema is to bloated to be effective and efficient.  I'm not sure if dismantling is the best approach,  but it certainly needs to majorly overhauled,  like most federal agencies, which i guess goes back to the premise of gutting the federal govt, cutting taxes, and letting the local and state govt fund things like this,  but I do think there could be a federal agency to provide some of the heavy lifting aspects after the initial response that they often fail at.