No doubt the response is better... but the question is "Is this an adequate response or turd polishing?" And even after all is said and done and decide that the early relief efforts were acceptable, I promise you that the FEMA bureaucracy is rubbish. I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but was utterly flummoxed when trying to get anything (info, money, whatever) out of FEMA by phone or website and I doubt anything has changed in the past 3 years. I gave up on them because I could but you should hear some of the horror stories of people that had no option besides FEMA. And while it's fine to thank the people who come in and help, the self congratulating in press conferences is irritating.
They really are making a point to stress how well the local, state and federal government are working together....whether that's actually true or not.
You don't really need ice to survive...i stocked up on nonperishable foods myself...if the stuff in the fridge goes bad so be it...but I had enough of other things to make due. Just saying...there are people without power and there are people without homes. And it makes me wonder how many of these people lining up to receive supplies from those PODs truly need it...or would have needed it had they stocked up a little better before hand.
It's just poor preparation. FEMA was talking about how some of the roads were blocked and they couldn't get stuff in to setup. Hell anyone in Houston knows what parts of the freeways get flooded when it rains a lot. They should have had trucks rolling by noon on Saturday. Instead they took 24 hours to "survey the damage", something that takes most of us 20 minutes of watching the news, and they just looked incompetent once again.
I'm not backing FEMA at all, but big rigs cannot travel trough an area with tropical storm force winds, which we still had on Saturday. They will turn over on their sides with these winds and higher gusts.
If trucks are coming from the west (San Antonio), the storm is heading north, and the worst part of the storm is the upper northeast portion then there was no danger on Saturday afternoon. Heck I saw HEB trucks rolling around that afternoon.
JYD has a point. We were tracking this storm since Sept. 2 on the bbs... and people were told to stock up, or leave for days. We live in a free society though, and I'm sure some people were hardly aware of the storm, or were unable to do much in preparation. Not everyone has the ability to "stock up." I am trying to get there as soon as I can with a mere infinitesimal drop in the bucket of help... If anyone finds a list of POD locations online somewhere, can you put it in the stickied thread? EDIT: I found it and put it in the sticky...
What's pathetic is a mother-f***ing furniture company has gotten ice and water to people even before FEMA could think about doing it.
Actually, I remember we used to have a freezer in our garage, one of those long ones about waste high. My father used to take empty gallon milk jugs, rinse them out and fill them up, put the cap back on and put them in the freezer, we had about 40 of them in there when Hurricane Alicia hit. I remember thinking...wtf is my dad doing that for? He told me that it made the freezer more efficient...... Well, when Hurricane Alicia hit, we lost power for about 10 days, and he would dig one or two of them out of the freezer, and put them in our fridge and they would keep it cold and when they melted we had drinking water. We didn't lose any food during the 10+ days of no power at all. I never questioned him about that again. DD
my parents also have a deep freeze. Do you know how much those suckers add to a electricity bill? Your whole post is meaningless anyways. 2.1 million living in a residential area have no need for a deep freeze. And if they did their electricity bills would be sky high.
If you need a new roof, you should go with solar shingles. That way you can have some electricity next time. http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/article/0,,1205726,00.html http://www.hgtvpro.com/hpro/bp_mechanical/article/0,,HPRO_20151_4243877,00.html
