Dakota Beacon

Some readers will recall their experiences with FEMA following the disastrous 1997 flood in the Red River Valley.  For many, FEMA left a bad taste.  We saw a lot of corruption at various levels.  Sadly, it looks like FEMA is, if anything, worse now that it was then.  As the champions of our Second Amendment observe, when you have seconds, help is only minutes away.  It's been a good long week now.  Where's FEMA?  

Well, we’ve seen how our federal government deals with a domestic crisis.  Our government basically ignores it.  Hurricane Helene swept through the southeastern quadrant of America, devastating communities and rural areas, wiping out roads and bridges, leaving its victims in trees, in the water, on rooftops and on the tops of mountains.  Hundreds have died.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCHx9LfdPi8 

President Biden took a look.  He had a plane fly him over it, halting all other air traffic.  Meanwhile people don’t even know the fate of their loved ones because there is no internet there and no other communication either.  We’ve seen this kind of devastation and heartless disregard for victims before during this administration - in Maui.  Some 500 children are still unaccounted for in Maui and this was over a year ago.  No help there either.  Instead, the authorities there blocked every escape route, leaving some to attempt to survive by going into the ocean.  

While Biden basked in the sun and Kamala pretended to be a serious candidate for President and Tim Walz admitted what a knucklehead he is, people were dying.  There is more interest on our campuses and in our government in the plight of Gaza’s terrorists or the worthless meatwad we put in charge of Ukraine than in the hundreds of thousands of Americans left to literally twist in the wind in our own states.  

People there are crying out for “the government” to come and help, wondering where FEMA is.  Well, some of the Feds are posting up in the few available dry hotel rooms.  And Kamala announced a bountiful $750 for victims.  Of course the people left on rooftops must use an app and apply online to get their benefits.  Now, keep in mind that nothing is cast in stone.  There could be more or there could be less.  We hear different stories - albeit vague and wanting in details - from FEMA itself.  The website offers nebulous benefits and attempts to “debunk” its critics (which presumably include the victims which have been rescued), yet we have been told by the horse’s mouth himself - Mayorkas - that they are out of funds now (ABC News - https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mayorkas-warns-fema-funding-hurricane-season-114449475).    We have spent about $200 billion on Ukraine’s pointless war.  One figure was roughly $4,000 per Ukrainian head and $750 per American victim.  Most of the tax money earmarked for FEMA went instead to settling migrants from Haiti, Venezuela and elsewhere in American communities that can’t handle them.  While FEMA tells us first that they are out of money, next that they didn’t spend it all on migrants, the House Homeland Securty chairman says otherwise (https://homeland.house.gov/2024/10/04/chairman-green-on-secretary-mayorkas-claims-about-fema-funds-biden-harris-administrations-priorities-are-completely-backwards/)..

As to the lame request of FEMA that those who wish to help should not offer real help but instead offer them money through official donations to various relief organizations, this would be cold comfort indeed to someone sitting on a mountaintop waving at airplanes and helicopters in the hope of rescue.  Independent pilots and suppliers of relief items needed or front-line emergency medical assistance are turned away and even threatened with arrest for their efforts.  Jesus Enrique Rosas has a summary (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ea1y4kbGuY), wherein he discusses efforts of private citizens like Elon Musk to at least try to supply communications technology.  One good Samaritan was threatened with arrest and told to leave a man alone on a cliff after promising to return to rescue him after delivering his wife to safety.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si9kPy7IffU).  

Governor Ron DeSantis, having had a lot of experience in getting relief to people after hurricanes addressed his own state’s problems and then turned his attention to helping those less fortunate - in North Carolina and the Blue Ridge Mountains - through his “Operation Blue Ridge” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKahNOEaAPQ ).

Isn’t it about time we just terminated FEMA?  I mean, as one of those affected by the Red River flood of 1997, I think I concur with many others in the belief that FEMA was the worst part of the disaster.  The graft was disgusting, the corruption was rampant.  It will be the same in our Southland for these Hurricane Helene victims.  And besides, people who are really familiar with the local area and conditions also know what to do and whom to call upon for expertise and boots-on-the-ground assistance.  They know the pilots, their suppliers, the terrain, the weather.  They can probably get help faster to those who are not in communication - they know who is out there and where power and other services are out and where they are not out.  Just as DeSantis knows how to get bridges reopened quickly and restore services to the people of Florida, others in their own areas might well have better knowledge and know-how than some clipboards from FEMA.   

We recall the disaster of Katrina still.  One of the brighter moments was a teenage boy’s successful rescue.  While the totally corrupt authorities left the people in the French Quarter stranded (most French Quarter people do not have places nearby to park cars) and for reasons we might speculate on left school buses to float away in the flooding (I might even be persuaded that New Orleans wanted new buses), this kid commandeered a bus, took it down to the Quarter and asked who wanted a ride out of Dodge.  He filled up the bus and drove to safety in Texas.  No telling how many of these people would have survived had they not taken a chance on this kid (https://www.google.com/search?q=teenager+steals+New+Orleans+school+bus+and+rescues+residents+from+katrina&rlz=1CAGUZK_enUS1039&oq=teenager+steals+New+Orleans+school+bus+and+rescues+residents+from+katrina&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCTIwNjMzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 ).  We do know that people in hospitals and nursing homes were euthanized in order to be able to leave them behind.  

Sometimes it is the quick response of someone rather than the slow machinery of the government that makes the difference between life and death.  The man on the cliff in Lake Lure was, in the end, rescued, but in the day it took he could as easily have perished from dehydration or just been swept away.  Oh, well, we can’t have the PEOPLE do anything to help themselves or each other without going through some bureaucratic clipboard manager.  

For many years, in fact, ever since my first-hand look at FEMA and its ubiquitous clipboard bearers and pencil pushers, I have felt sure that there was a better way.  I’ve thought a lot about this every time I have heard about another disaster on American soil, whether wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, floods or man-made disasters such as the one visited upon East Palestine, Ohio.  It seems that a better way would be a less centralized way, a less irresponsible way.  People responding to the needs of their neighbors might, in the end, be a more responsible, immediate form of help than a top-heavy bureaucracy like Homeland Security and FEMA.  

The FEMA annual budget, somewhat reduced from a year ago, is approximately $29.5 billion.  Of course our expenditures on irrelevant foreign wars dwarf this, but even so, much could be done for less on a local or regional level.  We did not always have FEMA.  We probably need it less now than we ever did.  It seems like a good time to reassess this and begin to build a parallel system which we could switch over to in the future.  Mayorkas has a fortune of around $8 million now anyway, after a lifetime of public employment.  What do he and his huge staff and department actually contribute to the guy on the cliff in North Carolina?  A bit less than the helicopter pilot who showed up on his own.  

The more centralized any program is the more easily it is corrupted and the more expensive it is and the less effective for those who need the help.

I would propose regional associations of states which can call upon experts in the kinds of issues specific to these areas - earthquakes in our Pacific coastal states, floods along the Mississippi and other waterways, hurricanes in our East coast and Gulf coast areas, etc.  States with common issues could form associations and collect funds from member states in a pool to be loaned to member states to address such disasters.  Instead of federales swarming in with clipboards, posting up in luxury suites while they are purportedly there to serve are out in the weather or under the rubble.  The money would be LOANED, not handed out, in the amounts really needed.   There could be a 15 to 20 year payback period, no interest, and if not paid back or otherwise adequately accounted for (say, in the case of multiple disasters before the period were up) there would be suspension of the funds.  I can guarantee this would limit the graft and corruption.  Instead of this being a windfall for some it could provide real help to those who need it.  Knowing the money is to be repaid would mean no deliberate waste.  Knowing it isn’t a grant would mean that those who would take advantage within the bureaucracy would have concern that there would be some kind of accounting.  People are far less likely to attempt to piggy-back on relief funds for ordinary “improvements” and upgrades if they know it is to be repaid by a date certain.  And, of course, in a crisis of large proportions, neighboring regional associations could also lend assistance.  Every year these associations could hold seminars for first-responders and other experts and let them know how to use the people-power that is offered in emergencies. 

In Grand Forks there was unnecessary demolition of public buildings, there was suspicious destruction during the height of the disaster and everything was rebuilt  “new”.  Some of this was nice stuff, to be sure.  But at what cost?  And the help we got came in the form of these infernal clipboards.  People with absolutely no knowledge of the area - not experts -  were dispatched to satisfy the requirement for “help”.  Regulations strangled many people’s efforts to recover.  

At the very least, it is time to overhaul and redefine the role of our federal government and re-cast our budget for emergency relief in our own country, to cut waste in the bureaucracy, build coalitions with those on-site, establish better protocol to marshal local and national assistance and volunteers.  America is full of great people - people who want to help each other in time of need, people who can’t stand to see their fellow citizens left abandoned in need.  Some offer help locally, assembling emergency supply kits for delivery to these places, kids in the next state help to load trucks full of bottled water, some employed mules - the animals - to get to otherwise inaccessible areas; others jump in their private boats or helicopters and look for lives to save.  We can’t afford to turn them down.  And obviously we can’t afford the likes of Mayorkas’s Homeland Security much longer.  

P.S.  Where is our Department of Transportation, by the way?

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