Sandy’s lesson is right before your eyes just as it was with Katrina; You either prepare and stand on your own or you can depend on a bunch of self-serving politicos, third class bureaucratic and chance to provide your for your survival.
Me I don’t want to be beholden to anyone for providing what is needed for me and mine. I certainly don’t want to have to kiss some ‘gubberment’ third class bureaucratic to try and coax some help from them, I don’t want some ‘jack booted’ thug herding me in line and telling me where to stand, sit, eat or sleep. And last but not least I don’t want to be shut up in with a bunch of ‘zombies’ and have to worry about not only trying to get basic necessities but having to fight to keep what I manage to get.
Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo. Maybe while you stand there you will get a chance to a prop in some politico’s photo op and even get your picture on the national news.
For those who are just starting or are old hands at prepping you may find my Preparedness Manual helpfull. You can download it at:
http://tomeaker.com/kart/Preparedness1j.pdf
NOTE! THIS IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. I DO NOT MAKE ONE CENT OFF MY PREPAREDNESS MANUAL!
For those of you who haven’t started already it’s time to prepare almost past time maybe. You needed to be stocking up on food guns, ammo, basic household supplies like soap, papergoods, cleaning supplies, good sturdy clothes including extra socks, underwear and extra shoes and boots, gas cans, cooking stove/fuel, tools, things you buy everyday start buying two and put one up.
As the LDS say “When the emergency is upon us the time for preparedness has past.”
Or as the bible says: A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it.
NIV Proverbs 22:3
I also like to recomend FReeper’s ChocoChipCookie Blog The Survival Mom (Please Blog Police let this one slide!) Where you can get lots of useful information like:
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2011/11/20/8-morale-boosters-for-any-worst-case-scenario/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/02/02/survival-priorities-the-rule-of-three/
http://thesurvivalmom.com/2010/12/29/normalcy-bias/
And More
“There is no greater disaster than to underestimate danger.
Underestimation can be fatal.”
“Its your choice you can prep or you can stand around on a bridge waiting for FEMA to bring you a bottle of water, a MRE, a warm blanket and a kiss for your boo-boo.”
I think that people having a total misconception about what FEMA does is a big part of the problem.
FEMA is not brought into a disaster to hand out bottles of water or blankets to people. FEMA is not there to get you a generator for your house or a case of MRE’s.
FEMA is brought in to manage some disaster but primarily recovery efforts. FEMA is not a first responder organization, it is not designed to operate during the initial stages of a disaster.
FEMA is very good at certain things. Need a huge generator to power up a hospital ?? FEMA will get you that ASAP. Need a self contained mobile command center with satellite communications ?? FEMA has about 7 or 8 of them nationwide. Need massive numbers of emergency housing units ? FEMA has them or can get them, stage them, deploy them, recover them, repair them and deploy them again quickly. Need assistance with weeding through the system to find people and businesses loans etc to recover from a disaster ?? FEMA has hundreds of specialists that will deploy to a disaster area to directly work with victims so they can access help. Need top level coordination and planning between different state and Federal agencies ? FEMA brings that ability to make things happen. Need disaster preparedness help ?? FEMA is expert at putting together primary and contingency plans. They do all those things well.
What they are not good at is doing things that are better left to volunteer organizations, first responders and lower level government. There was a time when FEMA didn’t have to do those things but Katrina really changed the way the agency was viewed and politically they were forced to become all things to all people and to go where they really were not needed. They started getting sucked into disaster details for which they were not suited and becoming a piggy bank for various governors who tried to get Federal disaster declarations for every bad thing that happened in their respective states.
FEMA is a relatively small agency that relies on Disaster Assistance Employees. DAE’s are specialized part time Federal reservists who only serve when thay are called up by the President for a particular disaster operation. They do not get paid sick leave, vacation, holidays, health insurance, retirement benefits or anything else that a regular Federal employee might get. The agency is really being stretched thin by all of the operations they have been deployed to in the last 10 years and it is showing in the lackluster response that sometimes takes place.
It was a good, useful agency that is going to hell because of misuse.
Just my 2 cents.