Work

I took a load of supplies down to a distribution point Saturday and again this morning. I can’t stray too far from the computer because I’m expecting email confirmation of where to go to pick up the people who will be living with me. I have 4 pick-up point addresses, and just need to know which one I have to go to.

I passed the criminal background check – not hard, since I work where I have to have a very high clearance and a criminal free background.

I was matched up with a couple of people, but when the government finally came in and started helping Friday afternoon, they were moved and we haven’t found them yet.

So right now, all I can do is wait, and shift supplies to distribution points where others will run them down to the needed areas.

It’s possible the people I was matched to will find situations they like, so I have left my offer of a home open.

In well-orchestrated circumstances, everyone would now be in a shelter or a home. This is not and has not been well-orchestrated.

Unlike the tsunami, we had plenty of warning that Katrina would hit. A week before she touched ground, we knew she’d hit somewhere along the Gulf. Our emergency services and rescuers should have been on stand-by, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, starting August 26th. If Katrina had wound down to nothing, it would have been a good preparedness drill for everyone. And when KAtrina hit as devastatingly as she did, everyone would have already been there, ready to go even before the hurricane was completely done.

The average American citizen, not affiliated with any governmental emergency agency, was ready to go as soon as Katrina hit and we knew where to go and what to do: drop fresh water and food, haul people out of the area to safety. Afterwards, we could worry about so-called looters and protecting property.

In the May 3rd Tornadao – we didn’t worry about looters until after we made sure all the people were safe and in a shelter or a home. It was a smaller scale disaster (by magnitudes), but it was a model of how a disaster rescue should go.

That FEMA has been refusing assistance (offers of water flown in and of trains taking people away more efficiently and in greater numbers than buses), and our very own president saying (after the offers of aid poured in) that he didn’t believe any other countries would offer aid beyond condolences and maybe some cash, is appalling to me.

Bush supposedly saw the devastation first hand. And what he offered were congratulations and thanks for a job well done when the job had barely even begun! You don’t thank people for having done a good job until after it’s over.

Yes, I am very angry that our president is treating a part of our country as if it were an unreachable Third World Country, and not an integral part of the United States. Those people, however poor they were, were and are tax-payers. That means they are the employers of all the elected employees who let them down. When it comes time to vote, I hope each and every American remembers how incompetently these elected employees acted during one of the crises for which they were hired – and fire them at the voting booths.

It won’t in any way improve what happened this past week, but maybe, just maybe, it will prevent another such tragedy occuring after another major natural disaster.

And lest anyone think they are safe from natural disasters, let me tell you that so long as you live on this earth, you will always be subjected to the potential of a natural disaster: earthquake, blizzard, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcano, drought, forest fire, tsunami – and that doesn’t even cover the man-made disasters awaiting us: factory explosions, bombs, chemical spills, plane crashes, building collapses, and more. There is nowhere totally safe to live anywhere in the world. We can take reasonable precautions, we can hold ourselves prepared, we can train and acquire survival skills, but we can’t prevent disaster from striking.

One thing that has struck me the most about the rescue efforts of Katrina is the arrogance of FEMA and other government rescue agencies. They refuse aid because “we’re in charge” and “we are trained, you’re not, so go home”.

This is a trend I’ve been incredulously watching for years – as police tell us “If you are attacked or robbed, call the police, let the trained police handle it”. The police are not johnny-on-the-spot. Their job is not to prevent crime any more, it’s to apprehend the criminal after they’ve committed their act of crime. There are not enough police to protect everyone from crime. Their presence may be a small deterrent, but for many criminals, it’s actually a challenge – how they can get away with the crime while the police are elsewhere. Our protection from criminals resides in the judicial system, where the captured person’s innocence or culpability in the crime is determined, and then they are punished if they are found guilty. But too often, our judicial system fails us, and the victim of the crime is punished instead of the criminal.

But back to the arrogance of the emergency response agencies, because that’s a whole different rant.

The strength of America lies in the average American.

I want you to really think about that.

It doesn’t lie in our government. It doesn’t lie in our police agencies. It doesn’t lie in our emergency response teams. It doesn’t even lie in our supposed wealth.

It resides in each individual person. Our strength is the pioneer strength of self-reliance and of reaching out to help our neighbors. If there is any single defining characteristic of America and the average American citizen, it is our immediate willingness to get personally involved and get our hands dirty and our backs sore helping someone in need. Whether it’s spontaneously rowing our boats in to a flooded area to rescue people from trees and rooftops to grabbing buckets to fill with water to douse a fire, we are ready to offer help to our neighbors – the very same neighbors we wouldn’t give the time of day to in the street under calmer circumstances. When disaster hits, we forget previous enmities and social distinctions. All that matters to us is the safety of the other person.

Instead of our government agencies telling us to back the hell off when a disaster strikes, they should welcome our assistance. We’re not stupid. Those who jump in to help often are trained. They can help, quicker and sometimes more efficiently than a more ponderous agency that holds back to wait for “orders to act”. These average citizens have served in the military before, or are retired emergency workers, nurses, doctors, EMTS, people who have gotten CPR certification, or like such sports as rappelling or mountain climbing. They are fit, they understand the dangers, and they are willing to use their training and to take the risk to help someone in need.

You know why the people trapped in the debris of Katrina looted and murdered, and yes, regrettably even raped one another? It’s because we, the average American, were prevented from massing to help by the very people they (and we) expected to rescue them – and the people they (and we) expected to rescue them refused because it was “too dangerous”. The victims of Katrina waited patiently for the promised help – the help they had every right to expect as citizens of this country – and when it didn’t arrive, they helped themselves and one another, and when they reached the end of those resources, some of them snapped and went berserk. The man who shot at rescuers demanding they take his family will no doubt, in the weeks to come, smack himself in the head and exclaim “What was I thinking?” because in a saner world, he would know shooting his rescuers is not the way to get them to help. And if that help had been there 2 or 3 days earlier, he might never have reached the desperation point of shooting at anyone. And those who were drug addicts – imagine how horrible their world was to be suddenly deprived of access to the drugs they’d come to depend upon – they were in agonizing drug withdrawal and would do anything to get relief. They may even have believed that stealing that TV would buy them a fresh dose of whatever. The delay in rescue is directly to blame for the lawlessness and violence that broke out.

Our government is not American. I say this with sadness. The people we voted in to manage our country have distanced themselves from what it means to be American, distanced themselves so far from it that they actually believe the real Americans are a different race than they themeslves are.

I seriously doubt any of our elected employees know what it is to reach the last week of the month and have to sell their plasma and collect cans and bottles to get enough cash together to buy milk for their children and gasoline for the car so they can get to work and not be fired. I seriously doubt any of our elected employees know what it’s like to involuntarily go hungry, or to hope they can find a safe place to sleep that night, or wonder how they will pay the rent or try to decide between paying a utility bill or buying food. I seriously doubt they know where the cheapest eateries are so when they have $3.00 to spare, they can take their children out for a treat. I doubt they’ve ever had to save up for a month to be able to afford the 50¢ matinee at the dollar theater to see a third run movie. I’ll bet they don’t know milk prices can vary by as much as a dollar depending on where they go for milk – and that they may have to pay that extra dollar for milk because they haven’t got the $1.10 bus fare to get to the cheaper milk.

More than that, I seriously doubt they’ve ever invited someone to dinner just because they looked hungry – and “dinner” was potato soup to which more water had been added to stretch it to feed another mouth.

Our elected employees may never have known what it was like to snake a power cord from the one house on the block that still, miraculously, had power after an ice storm to as many others as they could so everyone could have some warmth (or after a tornado so they could still run refrigerators to keep insulin and milk cold). Our elected employees may never have stopped at a stalled car and offered a ride to the nearest gas station – or crawled under the stalled car to replace a broken gas line. Our elected officials may never have opened the doors to their home to let neighbors in because you had a storm shelter and they didn’t, and there was a tornado heading right for them. Our elected employees may never have done a single thing that makes the rest of us Americans.

You can read it on the blogs, and in the media – and probably said it to your friends and co-workers – the first response of a real American is “I can do this to help” or “What can I do to help?”. Fishermen took their boats out and converged on the flooded areas to rescue people even before Katrina was fully gone. People in undamaged nearby towns were driving in supplies as the rain still came down. Others, too far away for immediate response, were donating money and queuing up at blood banks. As the extent of the damage and disaster became known, they were gathering supplies and making preparations and opening their homes to the evacuees. That’s America. That’s the American Way.

Our elected employees were already passing the buck, blaming the victims, and counseling patience while they “studied” the problem, and “determined the best course of action” – while people died in the heat of thirst and injuries.

Don’t tell me they didn’t know what to do. Don’t tell me they didn’t know the levees would break. Don’t tell me they couldn’t marshall forces quickly.

We knew by August 26th that Katrina would be big and would hit somewhere along the northern edge of the Gulf Coast. We knew this because the meteorologists were tracking the storm and told us this would happen. They just couldn’t predict exactly when and where.

We’ve shown in the past that we can mobilize aid in a hurry from previous disaters. It’s never taken 3-4 days before for our government to respond to a natural disaster in our country or in someone else’s country.

Our elected employees aren’t American anymore. Since the last major disaster, somehow, somewhere, they’ve lost their Ammericannes. They’ve become frightened to act without direct permission. They require “orders” and “accountability” and they have to wait to be asked. And when they are asked – over and over again, even when they can clearly see they need to act quickly – they have to “study the situation” and “determine the best course of action”. For days. While people – American citizens – die. And they block rescue attempts from real Americans. Turn away help.

I love America because I love the American Way. Our government doesn’t follow the American Way anymore. Actually, it hasn’t followed the American Way since October 2001, when the USA PATRIOT Act was signed into law.

That is the exact moment in history when our government ceased to be American.

I have to get back to work. I have another load of supplies to get to a delivery point. And wait to hear about the people who will be quartering indefinitely with me.