When disaster strikes, too many people look toward Washington, D.C., for the federal government to save them. But what happens when the federal government caused the disaster? Or at least made it worse than it would otherwise have been?
This we saw in New Orleans in 2005. We finally know why the federal government prevented Wal-Mart from delivering water to Hurricane Katrina victims: it was free.
Federal Emergency Management Agency head David Paulison said June 19 that the agency had negotiated a contract with Wal-Mart to deliver bottled water for the next disaster, and the company did indeed deliver 550,000 liters during this month’s Midwest flooding. And got paid for it.
It seems FEMA has finally learned they can’t do disaster response very well. (And they certainly can’t do it alone; Paulison said Wednesday that there was a “big gap” between the assistance FEMA would provide and what flood victims would actually need to recover.)
“Instead of doing everything ourselves, we develop partnerships and have these contracts in place ahead of time so we can don’t end up like Katrina, where we’re trying to negotiate contracts in the middle of a disaster,” Paulison said.
So if the government is in the middle of contract “negotiations,” then the supplier can’t just give away the product, even if people are dying in the streets and Superdomes. Never mind that Wal-Mart had that water on its way even before the hurricane made landfall. The government didn’t pay for it, so you, disaster victim, can’t have it. At any price.
Wal-Mart, for its part, is still giving away supplies to victims in flood-ravaged areas, just not water. For that, you need to call 1-800-621-FEMA and fill out some forms…
And just as it was flawed Army Corps of Engineers levees that broke and wiped New Orleans nearly off the map, so too is it flawed Army Corps of Engineers levees — and other, stranger river engineering along the Mississippi — which made the flood of 2008 a lot worse than it otherwise would have been.
As it turns out, for years the Corps of Engineers has been building wingdikes and weirs in the Mississippi River to channel the river’s flow. Three university professors last March warned that these structures have caused the river to rise even higher in floods than it otherwise would. And the only reason St. Louis isn’t underwater right now is that dozens of levees upstream broke, flooding out countless acres of Missouri and Illinois farmland and small towns.
Ironic that flawed levees would cause a city not to flood, but the water has to go somewhere.
Ironic, too, that those same small towns got new levees after the flood of 1993 and the government updated its flood maps to show these areas as low risk of flooding. So almost everyone canceled their flood insurance.
This is all so utterly predictable. We all know that government is incapable of doing anything very well, except perhaps killing people. Whatever it touches ultimately ends up going horribly wrong. It’s time to tell the government to keep their hands out of everything we don’t want turning into a disaster.
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Dale Everett
Jun 30, 2008
FEMA seems a lot like Mordoc, Preventer of Information Services, from the Dilbert comic.
Ray
Jun 30, 2008
I think part of the “problem” here is Walmart. There are a whole lot of negative things that can be said about Walmart, but in my fairly extensive experience in responding to emergencies and disasters, Walmart is a place you can really depend on.
A few years ago we needed so tools to we didn’t have to rescue some kids who had done something really dumb and were paying the price for it. We went to Walmart to get them. We were going to buy them, and get the cheap disposable kind, the manager found out and came over pulled the good ones off the shelf and said to go get the kids out and keep them for then next time they were free.
A couple years before that we had to spontaneously evacuate a grade school, and put over 200 kids out into bad winter weather. It turned out that it was possible that the buses were also a problem. (It also turned out the problem didn’t actually exist but better safe than sorry.) So we had to get the kids somewhere warm fast and the transportation was going to be the kids feet. Several places which were better equiped for children than Walmart and Walmart were within a couple of blocks. Walmart was the only one willing to take them without presigned paperwork. Not only that, but they shut the place down to keep the kids safe a secure. They fed them, broke out some videos and tvs for them to watch. We also had to wash down and basically strip and the give a blanket to eight kids as a precaution. They were eventually sent to the hospital as a just in case but that took time (More than it should have). In the mean time we had moved them to Walmart. The people there insisted on clothing them. They also insisted that all of the kids needed a stuffed animal, which they got to take home with them. We city got charged nothing for this. We left the place pretty much a mess, and they thanked us for letting them serve us.
I recently responded into one of the flood areas. The area was without water even for those who had not been evacuated. The local Walmart and Sam’s had been depleted of all bottled water. I was going by a Sam’s on the way, so was told to go by identify myself and pickup all the water I could carry. They filled me up and I had to start saying no. Now I was inside saying thanks to the manager, and he found out I had an SUV that I was responding to, but apparently had not been told that I was towing a command trailer. He told me they had some trailers ready to go and I could have one if it would help me carry more water into the area. I had to tell him I already had one I was towing.
So while the “your home for cheap plastic cr*p” comments and many more are fairly on target, Walmart and their companies are some of the best companies in responding to emergencies.
Bob
Jun 30, 2008
Now I’m thirsty.
Ray
Jun 30, 2008
Actually I think this is also the kind of thing we should be looking to instead of the Federal Government for most disaster aid. Instead the first thought when an event occurs seems to be “I hope we can make this look big enough for federal aid”.
Look at that stuff from Katerina which was not passed out. Frankly I do believe the “we told the state and locals and they said they didn’t want it thing.” First the feds are in fact in general not allowed to provide aid without approval from the state and/or local government. The locals in a lot of that area seemed to be more interested in how it would personally help them to get the aid to their people as compared to how it would help the people they were supposed to represent. If they couldn’t get more money for their next campaign or more votes then they were not interested. How there were some that didn’t work this way, but most did. But the question is why did this stuff need to come from the feds.
Why not have the stuff come directly from companies. I know all of the procedures, and know more or less why it was done this way. The current procedures for responding to a disaster insist that the stuff be filtered through a bunch of levels. But my question is why do we allow the procedures insist on this?
Vincent
Jul 07, 2008
FEMA needs to be dissolved as do the government subsidies that enable Walmart to kill it’s competitors. The people have to stand on their own, and so do these businesses. We need to shrink the government drastically. We could set aside a fund I guess but they always end up looted by the government like social security. Why can’t we just get it all back in our hands so WE the people can solve it.
Shawn-Earnest
Jul 22, 2008
Your are all correct, it was a man-made disaster and the dams where pulled -i.e. Alex Jones, or politically speaking; “The Dames Broke Under Pressure.”
Ray
Jul 27, 2008
I do find it interesting comparing notes with friends on the FEMA personnel. Everyone I have worked with seems to have stories of FEMA personnel who were even less prepared than the residents. It seemed to almost be an agency policy to send in their personnel unprepared and unable to actually get prepared.
In many cases they sent 4 our five people into an area were they were no accommodations in one sub compact car. You sure are not going to be able to carry much in the way of survival supplies with a sub compact. I am not even sure how you get 5 people into one.
I ran into a couple of FEMA workers in an area where the cell phone systems were down, and there was no intention of getting them up any time soon. They had been issued new cell phones when they left for the site, and were required to leave behind all of their other communications tools. One of them was a ham radio operator and had been specifically ordered to leave behind any of his personal radio gear.
Aug 07, 2008
For immediate distribution to all benevolent organizations « the mosquito coast
Dec 18, 2008
Securing the homeland, one liberty at a time - Homeland Stupidity