Now floods and hurricanes are one thing. They hit a big enough area that the local people can’t deal with the needs. But Tornadoes???? Sure there is a small area frequently more devastated than any other type of natural disaster. But it is surrounded by unaffected areas, and a whole state which generally can’t even tell that the event happened. Why do we need federal aid for tornadoes? Local communities and states could deal with these with no real problems if they wanted to. Heck in most cases other than to provide some security government would not even really be needed. That security would not need to even come from a state level. If just a small portion of the towns and cities which have police forces of more than 10 officers sent one officer, and then those with active sheriff’s posses sent 10-20% of the posse even a pretty large tornado path could be secured.

This could be done reasonably and without the big brother thing.

Those communities more likely to have to regularly call upon federal level aid like say Florida or California, should also be required to provide federal level services in disasters elsewhere. There should be government dispatched and supported cleanup teams from Florida helping with the flooding in the midwest right now. And the federal government should not be funding this. Instead the state and local governments should be funding this as their payment for the services that have and will undoubtedly be needed in their areas. When Florida gets hit with the next big hurricane people from the recovered flooded areas and other parts of those states should be on the road to Florida at local government expense to help.

The federal government should be the help of last resort not first resort.