Hurricane Helena exposes our soft under belly

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In the information age, we have a plethora of information, but a shortage of the truth.

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There is a lot of disinformation being circulated out there by DisInformationists.
Right now there are Republican Governments refuting publically many of the claims of incompetency. They are saying that the scope of this disaster is so large that it is larger then they can manage.

The storm is estimated to have dumped 430 Trillion Gallons of water on these areas.

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While big numbers like this make our eyes glaze over and our brains shut down.
We can't fanthom the size or impact of this much water. But there is something in the news that helps put this in perspective.

Many of these areas are mountains where the people lost their homes to flooding. Think about that for a moment; flooding on a mountain.
This gives you an idea of the scope of the size of this disaster.

These are not people who live at the base of the mountain in a flood plain or near the banks of a river, another flood plain. These are people who live so far up on the mountain that the thought of having flood insurance would be ludicrous.

Yet so much rain came down that the mountains flooded.

Epic, Huge, Much Larger then expected

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Add to this similar epic proportion destruction of heavily populated low lying areas which suffered from collossal mudslides and flooding from this catastrophic rain.

Remember the emergency resource assets are also at the mercy of this same storm. Some places actually store their assets on mountains to protect them from flooding with paved roads only leading to these assets. But epic rain, creates epic flooding and epic mudslides, which can cut you off from some of your assets and destroy others. When this happens your assets and you are fucked.

Federal, State, Local .it doesn't matter

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I am not sayng the government doesn't mess up or that there aren't any incompetent people working for FEMA or the International Red Cross for that matter.
Workers in every industry exist on a spectrum of intelligence, motivation and productivity. There are always good, bad and ugly in every service.

But there are hundreds of smart dedicated peolle working for FEMA and other local and state emergency management organizations, who have left their homes and families to care for other peoples families.

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These people are democrats, republicans, independants and libertarians on any given day. But today they are all Americans helping Americans. And they are getting lum,ped i with some mindless incompetent burecrats. And that's truly sad and at some level tragic.

Truth be told, in some ways FEMA is just a pocket book ....

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... and it is upto every state and county agency to use that pocketbook to get themselves ready for disasters.

State and Local governments have a responsibility to use their knowledge of local terrain, roadways, waterways, airports, weather and FEMA money to prepare and keep their people safe.

If you look at Florida, they state uncategorically that FEMA is a pocketbook and they used their money to prepare. Their govenor may have stepped in some piles of poop these last two years, but one thing he does well is select Emergency Management personel and get money from the Feds to prepare his state.

He is so well prepared that he is helping neighboring states.

Stupid shit does happen...

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It's easy to listen to these stories, some which may be true, because their always is an arrogant person who messes up and gives all the disaster response personel a bad name. But most of these people are hardworking locals trying to save their community.

Personal responsibility extends to disaster readiness and that starts with local governments knowing their needs and getting the money to fulfill those needs. If you don't have the know how it's easy to go somewhere they have it and they will teach you.

One thing you can count on in Emergency Medical Services is that we share what we have learned with other Emergency Medical Servbices because the more they know, the less likely we will be caled upon to help them when we are already stretched thin taking care of our primary responsibility, our our towns, cities, and states.

These areas are beautiful and pristine for a reason...

Let's move to a remote hard to get to place...

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Some of these regions are beautiful and pristine because they are remote and hard to get to when the roads are in food shape. I can vividly imagine what a bad shape they are in now. We call this off the grid and it's cool. But if you live off the Grid you need to do it responsively, which means being prepared for emergencies because you have chosen to live far from regular resources.

So you gotta have a plan to survive until the roads can be cleared or helicopters can find you and evacuate you.

Don't move to the fucking boonies with shit roads, shit communications, in a shit house and blame the government when a storm comes along and blows down your house of straw down like the big bad wolf.

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Many of these created a soup sandwich life and pretend it is a hamburger, but when the sandwich falls apart the first time you pick it up, don't blame anyone else for the sorry state of your food.

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If you move to the little house on the prairie like a early American Settler you best bring some of that early settler knowledge of survival and build your house of bricks, not straw or even wood.

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Three days of food and water.
Alternative methods of comunications
Alternative ways of generating power.
And depending on your weather heat or cooling to sustain life.

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