Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

Floppy, Hoppy Bunnies

McCarthy.vg Log In

Log in

[ Create a new account ]

The Ready, Willing and Able Act

posted by Jamie on Monday September 05, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the individualism dept.

Like many people, I've been stunned by the stories from Louisiana this past week. The worst stories of all have been those about private groups of citizens (including corporations) trying to help, and being turned away by government agencies that consider disaster assistance their exclusive territory.

Aaron Broussard's testimony of FEMA turning away tanker trucks full of water and boats loaded with diesel broke my heart. Cached stockpiles of firefighting gear went unused, and the feds stopped Chicago from helping and stopped the Red Cross from helping. A thousand volunteers from Lafayette put together a flotilla of five hundred boats, sailed toward New Orleans, and were turned around by FEMA which would not allow them to help.

One happy story of citizen action is that of Jabbor Gibson, an 18-year-old who packed evacuees into an abandoned bus and drove it into Houston, permits be damned. Well done. It's a simple matter to drive a bus, but sometimes the important things are simple. I just wish New Orleans had a thousand more Jabbor Gibsons.

I've spent a lot of the last week feeling helpless. But there is something you and I can do to help prevent colossal bureaucratic screwups like this from happening again.

We can encourage communities to draw up their own rescue and survival plans. We can get each city's residents involved -- people who know the area and who have a keen interest in both preventing disasters and recovering from them. And we can get the government agencies that will be moving into disaster areas to work with local volunteers instead of against them.

In July, a bill was introduced to do exactly this: the Ready, Willing and Able Act (H.R.3565). Its goal is to "incorporate volunteers from the general public to assume a direct and influential role in community-based disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation."

FEMA's part of the Dept. of Homeland Security, and I'm not very happy with either of them right now. But if this bill passes, the DHS will have to start working "to help State and local officials provide the necessary means and infrastructure for the American public to volunteer to assume a direct and influential role" both before and after disasters. We'll even have the DHS talking ahead of time with the Red Cross about what they need, so we don't see the Red Cross, unbelievably, turned away.

In retrospect, after the last week, it seems so obvious that the federal government should be talking with localities ahead of time, and working with them after the fact. The people of New Orleans are supposed to be its strongest resource in times like these, not liabilities to be locked up in the Superdome because nobody knows what to do with them. The Superdome shouldn't have been a holding pen -- it should have been an assembly point for volunteers to regroup so they could get to work saving their city.

Now's the time to prepare for the next disaster. Well, not now -- obviously there are other priorities today. But in a week, I'm writing a letter to my Congressman, who's on a Subcommittee currently looking over the Ready, Willing and Able Act. I'm going to ask him to read it over and think about how the aftermath of Katrina could have played out better. If your Representative is on the Health Subcommittee, the Transportation Committee, or the Homeland Security Committee, please, after a decent interval, write them about this. This isn't a liberal or a conservative bill. Getting the federal government to work hand-in-hand with local volunteers, both before and after disasters, is just common sense.

Display Options Threshold:
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • Helping

    (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05, @09:26PM (#166)
    I am very skeptical of many of the stories of people being turned away. There's a lot of confusion and misinformation. For example, Senator Landrieu was on This Week, in a helicopter flyby, noting an in-progress repair job of a levee. She said, "Is that the most pitiful sight you have ever seen in your life? One little crane," and tried to make it sound like it was because of a lack of federal money.

    The problem is, it was obvious from the two angles the helicopter camera showed that there was no room for another crane. The other side of the bank could not support a crane, let alone the trucks to supply it, and the side the crane was on was just large enough to handle the crane that was there. Further, from all I and she could tell, the job might be done with only one crane before they would be able to fix up the area to handle more equipment ... equipment that is likely needed more, elsewhere.

    In other words, perceptions sometimes don't square with the facts.

    Anyway, that said, yes, we are all responsible for ourselves and out communities. We can't rely on the governments to do it for us. This weekend I stopped putting off finishing up my family's own "readiness kit" and I got most of the rest of the supplied I needed. In another week or two I should have it all completed.

    I am not in favor of the bill you're talking about though, as the federal government has no business enacting such legislation. The states are perfectly capable of doing it on their own, if they choose to. But the idea behind it is a good one.

    And not to jump on the anti-DHS, anti-FEMA bandwagon, but do you really want them to be the ones in charge of this? Any lack of action by the federal government here -- especially insofar as it was contrary to the continued pleas of the state officials -- is a clear argument for not having the federal government in charge at all. They should function as a support role for the states, not vice versa. The states should do all the management, all the administration, and call on the federal government to fill in the funding, equipment, and manpower shortages (as well as in coordinating aid from other states), simply because the states know best what needs to get done, and are therefore most capable of getting it done.
    • Re:Helping by Jamie (Score:1) Wednesday September 07, @12:00PM
  • by Jamie (2) on Thursday September 08, @06:27PM (#169)
    A must-read:

    I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp [abovetopsecret.com]

    We then started lugging in our food products. The foods I had purchased were mainly snacks, but my mother - God bless her soul - had gone all out with fresh vegetables, fruits, canned goods, breakfast cereals, rice, and pancake fixings. That's when we got the next message: They will not be able to use the kitchen.

    Excuse me? I asked incredulously.

    FEMA will not allow any of the kitchen facilities in any of the cabins to be used by the occupants due to fire hazards. FEMA will deliver meals to the cabins. The refugees will be given two meals per day by FEMA. They will not be able to cook.