Disaster Relief Disaster

[YnrChyldzWyld]

Because I feel the subject warrants a forum of its own, I've started a new email list devoted to discussing disaster relief.

It is a list where people in effected areas can post their needs, let others know what is working and what is not. It is a list to discuss what needs to be changed in the future, how to make disaster response more effective and efficient, on both a local/state level and a national level.

The list is called Disaster-Relief-Disaster, to join the list you can send an email to:

DRDisaster-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

[I am me]

I would like to ask that you make it well known to all that the national government does not have the power in the constitution to grant aid to victims of anything. Private organizations did quite a good job of helping out. Money and resources poured in from all over the USA to help. Please try to promote the private help. It is not the government's job to help in such a matter. That is not why it exists. I am glad people received help, but it needs to come from those willing. We have seen that the USA pulls together to help when help is needed.

Edited October 3, 2005 by I am me

[YnrChyldzWyld]

I would like to ask that you make it well known to all that the national government does not have the power in the constitution to grant aid to victims of anything. Private organizations did quite a good job of helping out. Money and resources poured in from all over the USA to help. Please try to promote the private help. It is not the government's job to help in such a matter. That is not why it exists. I am glad people received help, but it needs to come from those willing. We have seen that the USA pulls together to help when help is needed.

bull****.

The only Constitutional prohibition on the federal government is Posse Comitatus, prohibiting the federal government from entering a state uninvited and setting up federal troops to act as police No where in the Constitution are the feds prohibited from providing aid to individual states and communities which are devasted by natural disasters.

You are perhaps to young to remember Hurricane Camille back in 1969. That was a category 5 hurricane which wiped out much of the Mississippi coast.

Federal relief efforts were sent to the area within a day or two -- not a week or two or 4+.

It was a Republican administration -- Nixon, to be exact, hardly a warm, touchy-feely sort of guy.

We were at the height of the Vietnam War, yet there were still adequate numbers of National Guard and other federal troops available to be in the area within days.

No FEMA back in those days -- probably a good thing, seeing their woeful lack of ability to adequately handle the current situation.

The people of Mississippi and Alabama in 1969 had shelter provided to them almost immediately, plus food and water with a day or two.

To go back even farther, to a time I'm sure you aren't old enough to have experienced, let alone remember -- here in Connecticut we just marked the 50th anniversary of a devastating flood which occured in the early morning hours of August 18, 1955.

A week earlier the area had been inundated with torrential rain from a hurricane which had downgraded to a tropical storm. On the night of August 17, 1955, a second hurricane-turned-tropical-storm dumped another 19 inches overnight. The already soaked ground couldn't absorb anymore, resulting in huge runoff which swelled streams and rivers.

The Naugatuck River valley was devasted -- the river broke over its banks and rose some 20 feet. It was swift moving water which swept railroad cars off their tracks and swept huge gas tanks down river, smashing -- and destroying -- bridges and houses. Bodies were swept out of cemetaries.

The rain stopped falling by late morning, it took another day or so for the water to finally recede.

President Eisenhower -- another Republican president -- toured the area by helicopter THE VERY SAME DAY OF THE FLOOD!

This was the era before satellite communications. Before the interstate highway system was built. Before jet aircraft.

But the President of the United States not only knew of the disaster within hours of it occuring, he was able to get himself from Washington to Connecticut that very same day.

The governor begged for help, and Eisenhower authorized federal aid, which arrived within a day of him authorizing it. Yes, there were private donations and private organizations which helped, but the bulk of the aid, especially in the early days, came from the feds.

Tents, cots, blankets, water, food, medicine, all from the feds, plus National Guard and other federal troops to help with the clean up.

Over the next 25 years, the Army Corp. of Engineers worked to both dredge the river and build retaining walls, so that such a flood would never happen again. Local and state government agencies would never have been able to do that, neither would private agencies.

So you think the relief efforts in the areas devasstated by Katrina and Rita have been going well? Then why are there hundreds of thousands of people who have yet to see any relief? Why are there still tens of thousands of people who are sleeping in tents or in their cars, because their houses have been destroyed and they have nowhere to go, because no one from FEMA has shown up yet?

How come dozens of stories have come out that private relief efforts have been, and continue to be, stopped by FEMA, or the National Guard, or in some cases the American Red Cross, as if its a turf war where outsiders are not permitted ?

If, as you claim, the feds should not be involved in relief efforts, only state and local governments, then FEMA should be dismantled and the humongous amount of funds budgeted for it should instead be set aside to earn interest, and be released when necessary to state and local governments when they have need for relief aid.

Or does your prohibition on federal aid extend to monetary aid, too?

Personally, I feel that the majority of state and local politicos are NOT experts in emergency management, and would need the assistance of experts in the field of emergency management when a disaster hits their area. By its very nature such and agency would need to be federal, to be able to respond to disasters in all 50 states. Such an agency should be staffed by trained, QUALIFIED individuals from the top level down to the lowest level grunt. Instead of being a political appointee (i.e. crony), the person running the agency should be hired thru the existing Civil Service structure and be independent from any one administration that happens to be in office at the time.