5 ms·

Spoiler: FEMA does not do a good job at managing hurricane emergencies.

malandrew 6y ago
Spoiler: Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes do not do a good job at preparing for inevitable hurricane emergencies.
- ohazi 6y ago
  It's a witty reply, but it essentially boils down to "just be less poor." Is this really the argument you want to make?
  - abduhl 6y ago
    GP does not mention money, wealth, or differences in populations due to either. I don’t understand how you landed on “just be less poor” as the thrust of his argument?
    - enraged_camel 6y ago
      It's unstated but very obvious, because people who aren't able to evacuate, or move away permanently, are those who are too poor to do so.
      - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        There are a lot of other reasons for not being able to move away even if you could afford it.
    - ABeeSea 6y ago
      Preparing for a hurricane in Florida means building a house entirely out of concrete, moving, or accepting you will lose a lot of your stuff at some point. All of those options cost a lot of money.
      - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
        True, there are people who can't afford to prepare, but if few do it even among those that could afford it, then the point still stands.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        You don't need to build out of concrete. In fact concrete isn't a great material to build from, it just happens that the mass needed to work around its limits also stand up to hurricane winds. Conventional stick framed houses do fine in hurricanes when engineered to modern building codes. You see it once in a while when modern houses are near old ones in a hurricane.
    - peglasaurus 6y ago
      I think we learn more about the assumptions of the complainer rather than who wrote the "witty reply". That and the spoiler can be applied to any number of people in government agencies who are meant to be taking precautions and setting up contingencies.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    abduhl is correct. Those who are not poor within a community should be prepared to help others in their community. As someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to? If you are not prepared yourself when you have the financial means and technical capacity to do so, you're taking away resources from those that actually need that support in the event of a disaster.
    - ohazi 6y ago
      You're missing or ignoring a long history of extreme poverty in the American South, and deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities in order to maintain the status quo. Nobody in this thread is proposing that FEMA help idiots in their multi-million dollar Florida oceanfront mansions that regularly get decimated by hurricanes. Those people can and regularly do bail out and return to their other homes in California or Nevada at the first sign of trouble. Your stated position is not based on reality -- most rich people do very little to help their communities. But even ignoring this fact -- random towns along the Mississippi coast don't have a lot of lawyers or doctors or directors of engineering with overflowing bags of money to graciously spend on their community, even if such philanthropy was common (which, again -- it isn't). Everyone in those communities is poor, and struggles to get by during good times. That's what FEMA is supposed to be for. And under-investment in FEMA's hurricane preparedness is yet another deliberate policy decision to throw these poorer communities under the bus, in favor of the wealthier communities where terrorists seeking visibility are expected to focus their efforts.
      - malandrew 6y ago
        > deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The government invests in protecting the revenues streams that allows it to continue to operate with surplus and those communities that don't provide much if any revenue benefit disproportionately relative to how much they contribute to funding the government they rely on for help. What you're proposing is to divert dollars from activity that creates the very surplus that affords the government the budget to help those that can't help themselves. Pretty much all countries cannot provide even a fraction of the support the US is able to provide to its disadvantaged communities. This is largely due to the fact that our government makes the smart decision to protect its cash cows. We have so much surplus that we're actually able to provide to many disadvantaged and advantaged communities beyond our own borders. We can of course debate the particulars of how much goes to protect the cash cows and how much goes to the communities less capable of contributing, but what's not up for debate is that the optimal solution we should both be solving for is the one that creates the greatest surplus. Many of these poorer communities are often better prepared than the cities where well off people are. During Katrina, much of the support rendered came from people outside the city that are self-reliant. They even had a name for these people, the Cajun Navy and they did far more to help the poor people in New Orleans than the rich people in New Orleans. So I ask you again, as someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
- inscionent 6y ago
  Stated another way; Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes need more support from FEMA.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    Many people need to take more responsibility. I live in a place on the Pacific Rim with tsunami, earthquake and volcano risk. I have a massive mobile first aid kit, equipment/training for swiftwater rescue, baofeng radios, etc. When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes. It's a shame that we've strayed so far from "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". Replace country with neighborhood, community, town, city, county, so on and so forth. FEMA is a great extra layer of safety, but it's no replacement for community preparedness. FEMA's effectiveness is proportional to the preparedness of the community it is called in to help. FEMA is also a SPOF. Everyone should operate under "No one is coming. It's up to us". When you assume the opposite, you create the conditions that greatly reduce the likelihood of a positive outcome in the event of disaster. You also consume resources that could have gone to people that do not have the means to prepare such as the poor, the elderly and the infirm.
    - vharuck 6y ago
      >When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes. That's a government: a community that pools resources, creates plans, and executes those plans to benefit the community members. I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. Why can't FEMA help with that?
      - malandrew 6y ago
        > I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. You have it reversed. FEMA is the help. You and your neighbors are the first line of response in any real emergency. In the event of a tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest, it's expected that many communities may be unreachable for a week or longer. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big... "In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America, outside of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed upward of a hundred thousand people. By comparison, roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million." No federal response will ever be capable of effectively responding to such a disaster without serious local support.
chiph 6y ago
As someone living in hurricane country, the joke around here is that FEMA stands for "Futilely Expecting Meaningful Aid". But really, their job is coordination, and usually will only contribute relief supplies if the state or county/parish is overwhelmed. They have a problem with people expecting too much from them - they are not going to show up in a convoy of trucks with food & water the very next day. But Wal-Mart, HEB, and Waffle House do a fantastic job of post-storm logistics, once the roads & bridges are open. Anyone who has lived here more than a few years knows that they should prepare for the season and have important papers ready to carry with you, 2 weeks of water & food on hand, etc. but human nature being what it is, many don't. A good site that can help you prepare is https://www.ready.gov/ https://www.ready.gov/ Check with your relatives and neighbors to make sure they've got the supplies they need or a way to evacuate ahead of the storm.

Spoiler: Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes do not do a good job at preparing for inevitable hurricane emergencies.

ohazi 6y ago
It's a witty reply, but it essentially boils down to "just be less poor." Is this really the argument you want to make?
- abduhl 6y ago
  GP does not mention money, wealth, or differences in populations due to either. I don’t understand how you landed on “just be less poor” as the thrust of his argument?
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    It's unstated but very obvious, because people who aren't able to evacuate, or move away permanently, are those who are too poor to do so.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      There are a lot of other reasons for not being able to move away even if you could afford it.
  - ABeeSea 6y ago
    Preparing for a hurricane in Florida means building a house entirely out of concrete, moving, or accepting you will lose a lot of your stuff at some point. All of those options cost a lot of money.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      True, there are people who can't afford to prepare, but if few do it even among those that could afford it, then the point still stands.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      You don't need to build out of concrete. In fact concrete isn't a great material to build from, it just happens that the mass needed to work around its limits also stand up to hurricane winds. Conventional stick framed houses do fine in hurricanes when engineered to modern building codes. You see it once in a while when modern houses are near old ones in a hurricane.
  - peglasaurus 6y ago
    I think we learn more about the assumptions of the complainer rather than who wrote the "witty reply". That and the spoiler can be applied to any number of people in government agencies who are meant to be taking precautions and setting up contingencies.
- malandrew 6y ago
  abduhl is correct. Those who are not poor within a community should be prepared to help others in their community. As someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to? If you are not prepared yourself when you have the financial means and technical capacity to do so, you're taking away resources from those that actually need that support in the event of a disaster.
  - ohazi 6y ago
    You're missing or ignoring a long history of extreme poverty in the American South, and deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities in order to maintain the status quo. Nobody in this thread is proposing that FEMA help idiots in their multi-million dollar Florida oceanfront mansions that regularly get decimated by hurricanes. Those people can and regularly do bail out and return to their other homes in California or Nevada at the first sign of trouble. Your stated position is not based on reality -- most rich people do very little to help their communities. But even ignoring this fact -- random towns along the Mississippi coast don't have a lot of lawyers or doctors or directors of engineering with overflowing bags of money to graciously spend on their community, even if such philanthropy was common (which, again -- it isn't). Everyone in those communities is poor, and struggles to get by during good times. That's what FEMA is supposed to be for. And under-investment in FEMA's hurricane preparedness is yet another deliberate policy decision to throw these poorer communities under the bus, in favor of the wealthier communities where terrorists seeking visibility are expected to focus their efforts.
    - malandrew 6y ago
      > deliberate policy decisions to under-invest in those communities You're missing or ignoring the fact that government is funded by economic activity. The government invests in protecting the revenues streams that allows it to continue to operate with surplus and those communities that don't provide much if any revenue benefit disproportionately relative to how much they contribute to funding the government they rely on for help. What you're proposing is to divert dollars from activity that creates the very surplus that affords the government the budget to help those that can't help themselves. Pretty much all countries cannot provide even a fraction of the support the US is able to provide to its disadvantaged communities. This is largely due to the fact that our government makes the smart decision to protect its cash cows. We have so much surplus that we're actually able to provide to many disadvantaged and advantaged communities beyond our own borders. We can of course debate the particulars of how much goes to protect the cash cows and how much goes to the communities less capable of contributing, but what's not up for debate is that the optimal solution we should both be solving for is the one that creates the greatest surplus. Many of these poorer communities are often better prepared than the cities where well off people are. During Katrina, much of the support rendered came from people outside the city that are self-reliant. They even had a name for these people, the Cajun Navy and they did far more to help the poor people in New Orleans than the rich people in New Orleans. So I ask you again, as someone who is a director of engineering at a tech company in one of richest zip codes in the country, what have you done to prepare to help both yourself and others within your community that are more vulnerable such as the poor, elderly and infirm? Or will you be another helpless victim adding to the burden that FEMA responders will have to attend to?
inscionent 6y ago
Stated another way; Many (but not all) people who live in the path of hurricanes need more support from FEMA.
- malandrew 6y ago
  Many people need to take more responsibility. I live in a place on the Pacific Rim with tsunami, earthquake and volcano risk. I have a massive mobile first aid kit, equipment/training for swiftwater rescue, baofeng radios, etc. When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes. It's a shame that we've strayed so far from "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". Replace country with neighborhood, community, town, city, county, so on and so forth. FEMA is a great extra layer of safety, but it's no replacement for community preparedness. FEMA's effectiveness is proportional to the preparedness of the community it is called in to help. FEMA is also a SPOF. Everyone should operate under "No one is coming. It's up to us". When you assume the opposite, you create the conditions that greatly reduce the likelihood of a positive outcome in the event of disaster. You also consume resources that could have gone to people that do not have the means to prepare such as the poor, the elderly and the infirm.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    >When things go sideways, members of the community need to be prepared. The justification for community preparedness goes up as the frequency of the concern goes up, such as with hurricanes. That's a government: a community that pools resources, creates plans, and executes those plans to benefit the community members. I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. Why can't FEMA help with that?
    - malandrew 6y ago
      > I agree it would help for individuals to have emergency kits and some training. You have it reversed. FEMA is the help. You and your neighbors are the first line of response in any real emergency. In the event of a tsunami hitting the Pacific Northwest, it's expected that many communities may be unreachable for a week or longer. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big... "In the Pacific Northwest, the area of impact will cover some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America, outside of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which killed upward of a hundred thousand people. By comparison, roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. fema projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million." No federal response will ever be capable of effectively responding to such a disaster without serious local support.

chiph 6y ago

As someone living in hurricane country, the joke around here is that FEMA stands for "Futilely Expecting Meaningful Aid". But really, their job is coordination, and usually will only contribute relief supplies if the state or county/parish is overwhelmed. They have a problem with people expecting too much from them - they are not going to show up in a convoy of trucks with food & water the very next day. But Wal-Mart, HEB, and Waffle House do a fantastic job of post-storm logistics, once the roads & bridges are open. Anyone who has lived here more than a few years knows that they should prepare for the season and have important papers ready to carry with you, 2 weeks of water & food on hand, etc. but human nature being what it is, many don't. A good site that can help you prepare is https://www.ready.gov/ https://www.ready.gov/ Check with your relatives and neighbors to make sure they've got the supplies they need or a way to evacuate ahead of the storm.