HT Foxfier
Paul in Houston has a story about local volunteers coming to the aid of the mostly volunteer firefighters who were battling a nearby wildfire, and FEMA’s ham-handed attempts at dictatorially taking over. (As an aside, I have family in Magnolia who knew people who were evacuated from their homes due to this fire.)
One of the imported crews from California came into Unified Command and asked where the FEMA Powerbars and water were. He was escorted to the commissary and started through the system. He was flabbergasted. He said FEMA never did it like this. Kenna replied, ”Well, this is the way we do it in Texas.”
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Mind you, all of this was set up by 2 Moms, Kenna and Tara, with a staff of 20 simple volunteers, most of them women who had sons, daughters, husbands, and friends on the fire lines. Someone always knew someone who could get what they needed – beds, mechanics, food, space. Local people using local connections to mobilize local resources made this happen. No government aid. No Trained Expert.
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FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go, that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They stayed.
Go to Paul in Houston’s site and read more, then follow the link he provides to read still more.
It’s terrible that a business would actually voluntarily provide for people in need at a loss to the business. People might actually be thankful to the business and decide to do more business with it. No, people have to be forced to be thankful to Big Government instead, and vote for more Big Government. It’s terrible that a few amateur volunteers were doing all this work, depriving Federal experts the opportunity to get paid tax dollars to do the job volunteers were doing for free.
No, if government would get out of the way, the local people could get the job done much more efficiently and cost-effectively. Sure, having out-of-state trained people come down and volunteer their time and effort is good and welcome, such as the California firefighters, but volunteerism trumps Government Bureaucracy every single time.
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Cross-Post