WEER’D posted a news article from BubbleheadLes a few days ago, and the comments didn’t quite sound right to me.
Here’s the part excerpted from the article:
Victims of an unforgiving one-two punch from superstorm Sandy and a nor’easter that both hit New York’s Staten Island say FEMA has forgotten them.
Already without power for more than a week in the wake of Sandy, hard-hit residents of the borough’s South Shore braved a winter storm Wednesday night, with many — perhaps hundreds — huddling in condemned homes and ignoring orders to evacuate out of fear looters would take what little Mother Nature has left them.
“FEMA packed up everything yesterday and left the area,” said MaryLou Wong, whose home in the Midland Beach neighborhood was destroyed. “They haven’t come back.”
Sounds horrible, right?
Let’s see what else the article mentions that might shed some light on this situation.
Already without power for more than a week in the wake of Sandy, hard-hit residents of the borough’s South Shore braved a winter storm Wednesday night, with many — perhaps hundreds — huddling in condemned homes and ignoring orders to evacuate out of fear looters would take what little Mother Nature has left them.
Bold emphasis mine.
So we have what is admittedly a horrible situation. Nobody will argue that. But FEMA came and saw that these structures were unsafe. What’s more, in each case the power and water cannot be restored until the power company can ensure that the wiring and plumbing is safe so in all likelihood power and water would not be restored for weeks, or even months in some cases.
So you have people in houses so badly damaged by the two storms that they’ve been condemned, with no power and water, and no way to repair the houses in a timely manner so that power and water can be restored. Home repair and construction just does not happen overnight, especially in the North East where bureaucratic red tape and strict building codes are a way of life.
In a very real sense, FEMA couldn’t stay. Imagine the outcry if one of those condemned structures burned to the ground when a fire lit to keep residents warm in the cold raged out of control while they slept, killing everyone inside. They’d be blaming FEMA for providing food and water, encouraging these people to stay in unsafe structures!
Even temporary structures aren’t a solution here. You can’t park (the new non-toxic) FEMA trailers in a neighborhood with no power and no water and sewer facilities, and the residents are refusing to take shelter elsewhere because they’re afraid that if the do that looters will take whatever they have that is left undamaged.
That’s a very real and very valid fear, but FEMA is (not yet) an armed security agency, and the local law enforcement are spread thin enough that stopping looters would be impossible. Moving trucks are in very short supply, and even if you had one where would you get the fuel for it?
There is absolutely no doubt that the entire situation is a tragedy, and there will continue to be lots of finger-pointing for years to come. In this particular situation however, you have a group (regardless of whether you think them adequately supplied and skilled or otherwise) with finite resources. They made the right decision to put their resources to use where they could do the most good and pull them from areas that needed to be evacuated.
In medical triage, some patients get immediate care. The walking wounded get to wait a while, and some unfortunate souls get black tagged: palliative care only. It sucks, but it’s the best way we have to handle disasters.
The solution? There are many ways to approach this, but it’s my opinion that the bureaucracy, the top-down central planning that is a way of life in that area plays some part in this. The other side of that coin is the dependency on that same bureaucracy, combined with the failure of those dependents to have adequate preparations of their own.