When The Bough Breaks

by

I have so far in life been sufficiently fortunate never to have been caught in a full-frontal weeks-long, totally-life-destroying national disaster. But I have been on the fringes of several brief national disasters; the earthquake that hit Sylmar in 1971, a massive typhoon that hit Northern Japan in the late 1970s, a horrendous rainfall in late 1998 which put a lot of South Texas floating down various rivers and creeks, another rainstorm a few years ago which flooded out the small Hill Country town of Wimberly, and an early spring snowstorm which dumped almost a foot of snow on South Texas, snow which stubbornly remained for most of a week, featuring freezing temperatures which knocked out both power and water in much of metro and suburban San Antonio. My parents’ retirement home in Northern San Diego County was destroyed in a massive wildfire in 2003. I also was on-line and paying attention to disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, to the fires that destroyed Paradise, California, and Lahaina, Hawaii …

So, one way and another, I’ve gained a pretty good notion of what can be expected to happen during the disaster, and then afterwards. One of those insights is that first and foremost, you have to be prepared beforehand to help yourself and those closest to you; family, friends and neighbors. Having a plan, and the gear and supplies to cope with the emergency and the aftermath is key. The second insight is that most normal people will want to help out however they can when the waste matter hits the rotating foil. Most such people will start running towards the scene of disaster bearing aid and comfort even before the stuff stops falling. Which is a good thing because – and this is the third insight – it generally will take a week before official orgs like FEMA and the Red Cross pull up their socks and hit the ground, even with the best of intentions.

Yet it is heartbreaking to read social media posts and watch amateur videos taken by volunteers of the chaos in the wake of Hurricane Helene – of the hills and hollers and mountain creeks, of places that only have a single road in and out, a road that the torrential rain wiped out, or collapsed a moraine of mud onto. You know that even if folk had taken heed of warnings and prepared for the worst … what happened when the rain began to fall and the creek to rise out of its banks overwhelmed any sane preparation taken by the dwellers in those little mountain towns. This and the establishment media does do the constant Apache dance of ‘most horrendous storm ever is coming!’ – that perhaps a lot of people shrugged and wrote it all off as just another media panic, a troll for eyeballs and ratings.

National Establishment Media … oh, and that reminds me of the absolute sh*tstorm of rumors repeated and amplified over conditions in New Orleans after Katrina. Rape gangs! Snipers! Dead bodies piled up in the Superdome! Dead bodies washing through the flooded streets! All too horrible to be true, and all eventually proved to be … rumor and fabrication. Because all those horrors could be blamed, however unfairly, on GW Bush’s disinterest and inaction, and the NEM took enthusiastic pleasure in heaping that blame. In the interests of proving that the NEM is even-handed and dispassionate, it would be only fair if they heaped an equal portion of blame on Biden et al, but hey – we all know that media blame is only heaped on those administrations with an “R” in their designation, while those with a “D” are treated with kid gloves and generous paddings of cotton-cushioned excuses for their many, many failures of character and conduct.

Is the ineptitude so far exhibited by FEMA only their usual … or has the corporate emphasis on taking to heart the principles of Diversity, Inclusion, Equity had the effect of excising whatever shreds of competence and professionalism were left to that organization? Is this ineptitude a form of deliberate malice, or just a means of suppressing votes in a region not noted for enthusiasm for the Dems?

Discuss as you wish.

Addendum – my daughter has a friend living in the affected area, who provided this link to a guide focusing on assistance, both long and short-term, and asked for as wide dissemination as possible.

8 thoughts on “When The Bough Breaks”

  1. At this point, the deliberate government interference with those volunteer efforts, reports of them blocking aid, and most importantly the reports that the normal SOP’s have not been followed [using the normal brokers to get truckloads of supplies to the area, the seemingly impossible act of getting the USC Title 10 paperwork signed by Leftist officials which prevents the military (which is ready, eager, and standing by to help) from rescuing their fellow Americans] leave me at the point where your this ineptitude a form of deliberate malice, or just a means of suppressing votes in a region not noted for enthusiasm for the Dems? seems the most likely answer. There probably should be an “and” there in place of the “or” in your quote.

    I note that the Social Contract is a two-way arrangement.

    Subotai Bahadur

  2. Look at it this way: the people hurt by Helene in N Carolina/Tenn(Russians in Donbass) are being abused by the US govt(Ukraine). ZOG kinda sucks if you are a normal person.

  3. I think you’re right about FEMA taking a week in best of circumstances, which is a travesty given how fast another government – Florida – reacted, It’s not like there aren’t aerial assets around in NC, isn’t there an AIRBORNE corps there abouts, Fayetteville?

    I’ll add to your excellent list of things to prepare for. First realize the town devastated in NC and Tennessee are isolated mountain towns where (probably) a lot of people know one another but you mentioned New Orleans and Katrina and there are a lot of decent-sized communities that get hit where people don’t know each other. It only takes a very small percentage of people to go on a rampage when the power goes out and if you don’t know the people around you, well you’re in trouble.

    So get to know your neighbors. Throw block parties, go to community events… get to know who and who can do what and needs what; roster of skills, equipment, and needs especially medical. Social networking, the meat way, always pays. Networking Second, know people outside of your community. If the last week has shown us anything is that when the power goes out and the one road into town washes out, you as good as invisible. Make sure you are on the equivalent of a deadman switch so if people don’t hear from you they coming looking for you

    Always make sure you can act without electricity. There was a video of two guys on a private helicopter who were altered by someone on the ground using a mirror. Smart guy

  4. I’ll add another thought about DEI and bureaucracy,

    Alot of people tend to focus on the tradeoff made between DEI programs and competence as why organizations, whether business or government cannot do anything anymore.

    There’s another aspect to it which is DEI, diversity programs in general, tend to feed the worst part of bureaucracy. The original sin of bureaucracy is that it needs to apply process and routine to human behavior, it needs to design those processes to account for future actions and as the complexity increases, whether trying to account for future action or more people, the more bureaucratic and procedure-bound things get.

    So it is with diversity especially with grievance culture. The more diverse a culture gets, the less there are of common norms and behavior that allows people to get by and just get things done. Government becomes a larger version of Motor Vehicles where everyone becomes hidebound to procedure because to allow any discretion to a government official is to allow room for choice and that can be indicative of favoritism which means the chance for discrimination, unless of course favoritism is written into the rules and regs. Keep in a mind that another definition for discrimination is using good judgment,

    It’s the nature of the bureaucratic beast which leads you to focus on procedure as opposed to capability. Which is why decisive leadership at the agency-head level is so important in an emergency and why DeSantis is so good at it.

  5. Well their goals are equity (which means misery) and climate resilience (which they mean no human occupation) from that perspective it makes sense

  6. I have tried that link your friend provided using two different browsers. In each browser the page displays but none of the links respond. It displays as a flat and inactive page.

  8. It worked for me after I opened up the script blocker. If it works on Pale Moon, it should work anywhere.

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