I was watching tv last night and they were warning people about hiring non - licensed people to cut up their downed trees or fixing their roofs.
Now, my husband is an electrician and he is licensed in our state, if he were to go to new york to work he wouldn’t be legal and so turned away but with 25 years experience and having had his own business he could help. Plus he grew up with a chainsaw in his hands. In our state there is no such thing as being licensed to take a tree off your roof and so again he wouldn’t be “legal” to take that tree down so he wouldn’t be wecomed. according to this program anyway. what is wrong with people? guess if they are going to be that picky then good luck waiting for the new yorkers who have licenses to get that huge ass tree off your roof!
I tend to think that was more a warning about unscrupulous people posing as contractors and ripping people off. This happens in many places all the time but in a disaster they really crawl out of the woodwork. We recently had a spate of this in PA, well before Sandy BTW, mostly preying on gullible elderly folks. These people are usually from out of state, are not licensed or insured or experienced, but they pressure and convince the home owner to pay for some or all of the work upfront with no written contract (not that it would be worth the paper it’s written on if they did), and then they either don’t finish the work or do a crappy job, sometimes even causing more damage and then after getting cash or a check up front they disappear. As I understand, a lot of these folk are “Travelers”, i.e. Gypsies.
If your husband wanted to volunteer to help, it would be advisable to do so through a legitimate relief org. If he were to offer services for money, then yes, he’d probably need to be licensed in that state.
True, they are all waiting for the ‘experts’ to show up.