Free Republic

Mayor Bloomberg’s Response to Sandy Leaves Many New Yorkers Out in the Cold The mayor has brilliantly stage-managed his handling of the storm, but outside the city’s affluent precincts numerous angry residents feel abandoned by his administration as days have passed and help has remained distant, writes Harry Siegel. “Are you from OEM? Or FEMA?” “No, we’re from Brooklyn.” That was the exchange when, after nearly six hours, the volunteer group I spent Sunday with finally managed to deliver supplies— flashlights, blankets, winter jackets, baby supplies, and pet food—to Staten Islanders who’d been rocked by Hurricane Sandy. On television, New...

President Obama who has through out his presidency “misspoken”, failed to live up to most campaign promises and has on numerous occasions spoken apparent untruths, is now being criticized for what most say cannot be described any other way than outright lying.

Storm-ravaged and weary Rockaways residents cornered Mayor Bloomberg yesterday to angrily demand more aid for their devastated neighborhood. “When are we gonna get some help?” blasted one desperate woman, who had to be held back by the mayor’s security detail as Bloomberg stood by with a deer-in-the-headlights look. “When are we gonna get some bleeping help?” she demanded. “There’s old ladies in my building that don’t got nothing,” lashed out a man on video caught by a NY1 reporting crew. Bloomberg’s trip to the Rockaways wasn’t announced and wouldn’t have been caught on cameras if the news crew hadn’t happened...

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George Bush as Commander in Chief supplied fuel to the troops fighting in Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, in spite of the complete absence or breakdown of all infrastructure, including electricity. George Bush flew emergency food supplies to many places around the world, including air dropping military Meals Ready to Eat (MRE's) into Iraq and Afghanistan and other countries. After a much milder Hurricane Sandy, Barack Obama cannot supply fuel or supplies to New Jersey, a few miles from some of the busiest ports in the world, where railroad tracks converge from around the country. Unlike Katrina in New...

LIsten to KFI AM 640 The Lisa Ann Walker Show. She has family on Staten Island. KFI will offer the pdcast after the show airs. She reports lots of bodeis still being found. The news is not being reported becuase of the election and the possibiklty of another storm.

More New Yorkers got power Saturday for the first time since Superstorm Sandy struck the region, but frustrations mounted over gasoline shortages as refueling sites turned into traffic jams of horn-honking confusion. -snip- "It's chaos, pandemonium out here," said Chris Damon, whose family was displaced from his home in the Queens neighborhood of Far Rockaway and are staying with relatives in Brooklyn. He circled the block for 3½ hours at the Brooklyn Armory, where the National Guard was directing traffic. "It's ridiculous. No one knows what's going on," he said.

<p>FEMA's vaunted "lean forward" strategy that called for advanced staging of supplies for emergency distribution failed to live up to its billing in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.</p> <p>In fact, the agency appears to have been completely unprepared to distribute bottled water to Hurricane Sandy victims when the storm hit this Monday. In contrast to its stated policy, FEMA failed to have any meaningful supplies of bottled water -- or any other supplies, for that matter -- stored in nearby facilities as it had proclaimed it would on its website. This was the case despite several days advance warning of the impending storm.</p>

US Government Invited Brazilian Psychic to Avert Sandy By Julio Severo After Superstorm Sandy, everybody knows what happened: tragedy. What many ignore is what happened before: spiritual tragedy. According to Istoé, a major Brazilian magazine, Brazilian psychic Adelaide Scritori had travelled in a hurry to the Caribbean Islands by invitation from the US government and an insurance company in New York. Her purposed mission was to weaken Superstorm Sandy. Adelaide Scritori Her husband, who is also the spokesman for Coral Snake Chief Foundation in Brazil, said that her mission was a success, because without her intervention the superstorm would...

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it seems to be pretty clear that residents of New York City and the surrounding areas could use all the help they can get. However, a Davisburg man said some people in the area are more interested in “protecting their turf” than in distributing those supplies to the masses. Mike James, an independent trucker, said he and three other truckers were told to haul a load of transformers to the city to replace equipment anticipated to be lost in the storm. James, two men from Holly and a Flint man arrived in the city...

Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc across the Eastern Seaboard, from North Carolina to New England, knocking down power lines, and flooding coastal communities. Hardest hit were New York and New Jersey, leaving more than a million residents without power and many without homes.   IBEW members from throughout the country are pitching in to restore power and fix damaged infrastructure. “Devastating,” Wall, N.J., Local 1289 Business Manager Edward Stroup, III, says about Sandy. Stroup represents workers at Jersey Central Power and Light – a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp. – which provides power to more than 1 million central New Jersey residents....

But the key question is does it have enough for flood damage? Sandy has flooded thousands of homes in its devastating path, and estimates are that damages will in the billions of dollars. FEMA, which runs the federal flood insurance program, has to pick up the tab. But FEMA already owes $18 billion to the Treasury Department, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. Currently, insurance experts say FEMA's flood insurance program has access to funds totaling $3.8 billion, much of it in loans. If flood claims exhaust the fund, Congress may have to step in with additional taxpayer money. That will add...

Obama at FEMA: "We still have a long way to go"By Lucy Madison/ CBS News/ November 3, 2012, 12:42 PM President Obama on Saturday acknowledged the nation has "a long way to go" in the aftermath following Superstorm Sandy, but pledged the administration will be putting in a "120 percent effort" to ensure the impacted regions get the assistance they need. Mr. Obama, speaking after a briefing about ongoing recovery efforts at the FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., emphasized his commitment to restoring power, pumping flooded areas, removing debris, and attending to the needs of those impacted by the storm,...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. marshaled its massive distribution network to have its shelves stocked and its store inventories bolstered, prepared for tremendous demand for supplies needed before and after Hurricane Katrina struck. The world's largest retailer has struggled on numerous public relations front in a prolonged battle with critics who say the company represents the worst of low-cost retailing. But Wal-Mart's response to the catastrophe - seen as far more effective than government efforts - has drawn praise from nearly all quarters.

FEMA's vaunted "lean forward" strategy that called for advanced staging of supplies for emergency distribution failed to live up to its billing in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In fact, the agency appears to have been completely unprepared to distribute bottled water to Hurricane Sandy victims when the storm hit this Monday. In contrast to its stated policy, FEMA failed to have any meaningful supplies of bottled water -- or any other supplies, for that matter -- stored in nearby facilities as it had proclaimed it would on its website. This was the case despite several days advance warning...

Union halting power repair crews is top Democratic donorPaul Bedard - Washington Secrets November 2, 2012 | 12:36 pm The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, cited in news reports for halting nonunion repair crews from helping to restore power in superstorm Sandy's New Jersey-New York path, is one of nation's top union donors to Democrats, a group President Obama last year praised in a visit to an IBEW training Center. The Center for Responsive Politics, a public political spending watchdog, said IBEW has the nation's fifth highest spending political action committee, doling out nearly $2.3 million, 97 percent of which...

I've seen an estimate that there is/was up to 300 million gallons of water in NY subway system. Katrina? "The unwatering team successfully removed 250 billion gallons of water from Orleans, St. Bernard and Jefferson parishes after Katrina " http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2012/10/new_orleans_corps_employees_jo.html Sandy, though wide, was not Katrina... FEMA ain't close to handling a large storm.

The federal agency has received praise from politicians and storm survivors alike for being prepared before the storm and responsive immediately afterwards - two things the agency was not when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast in 2005. ......."FEMA is a very different organization than it was during Katrina," says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman chairs the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which helped spur post-Katrina reforms at the agency. Those changes, Lieberman says, have proved themselves during Sandy. "[FEMA] was proactive, and it didn't used to be. It doesn't wait for the storm to hit, it...

Staten Island residents angered by slow Sandy response | Video ... 1 hour ago – Residents of Staten Island, New York, express anger at the slow pace of emergency response efforts to their community after superstorm Sandy ...

Rena McCarter of Kenner, La., pleaded guilty Friday, Oct. 26, to wrongly taking $8,600 in disaster relief funds from the federal government after Hurricane Katrina. She was residing in Minnesota when the storm hit. McCarter, 62, admitted in her plea deal that in 2005, she told the Federal Emergency Management Agency that her apartment and personal property had been damaged by the disaster in Louisiana, and that she needed emergency help for housing, food and clothing. In fact, McCarter was living in housing subsidized by the Metropolitan Council from October 2004 through September 2009, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office...