Good day all. I haven’t written to much about the Hurricane Helene disaster. There have been a lot of rumors and some bad information. However, there have been a lot of verified reports of the sheer incompetence of FEMA.
One report, apparently now verified, was how a FEMA team was thwarted in reaching a town in North Carolina by a sign. Here are the details from the New York Post:
Residents of a tiny North Carolina town that was almost totally destroyed by Hurricane Helene have been fending for themselves after FEMA told them that a “Road Closed” sign is an insurmountable obstacle for the agency to navigate.
“FEMA called me and told me they wanted to inspect my house, then called me back to say they couldn’t drive around the ‘Road Closed’ sign. They weren’t allowed,” local Chelsea Atkins, 38, told The Post.
“You can drive it by car for sure, it’s not that bad, you just have to drive around the ‘Road Closed’ sign. I explained that to them. They said they couldn’t,” she said, recounting her maddening exchange with the embattled federal agency.
This should get people fired. This is a level of incompetence and flat out stupidity that demonstrates why you can never, ever trust the government in things like this. Obviously, none of these fools bothered to get out of their vehicles and simply walk up the road to see if they could travel along it. Other people did just that.
Left to fend for themselves, Bat Cave residents banded together — opening the roads and starting the arduous work of cleanup and recovery. Residents told The Post that they don’t need FEMA now — and at this point, they don’t even want the disaster relief agency to come.
What? You don’t want that massive $750 promised by Kamala Harris?
While the sick and elderly residents of Bat Cave were airlifted to safety a week ago, those left behind have seen virtually no sign of government agencies, save for a handful of Louisiana state troopers “keeping an eye on everything,” who locals say haven’t done much of anything.
Louisiana state troopers? That surprises me. It doesn’t surprise me that they’ve done nothing. That’s about their speed from their history. There have also been military helicopters flying around. None of them have bothered to check out the town, let alone land there. The only people who have done anything are private citizens.
Here, apple orchard workers armed with chainsaws worked with a local grading contractor to clear the roads well before the Department of Transportation arrived to help, although they were grateful for the assist when it finally showed up.
I’m not surprised it took a while for the North Carolina DOT to get there. They have limited resources and have to prioritize what gets fixed first. At least they did show up, unlike FEMA.
The few remaining locals have scavenged building supplies to shore up homes teetering on the edge of the Broad River, which is now 10 times wider than it was before Helene carved its path of destruction.
There are pictures of the devastation of Bat Cave, and I suspect the houses are going to be declared total loses. From the pictures, it looks like the actual land they sat on has been washed away. I hope these people had flood insurance.
Atkins, a health researcher, originally from Buffalo, NY, said she thought she was going to die when the storm hit Bat Cave. She and her husband, Andy Wells, 40, sought shelter Friday morning in the foyer of a small white brick post office across Highway 64 with neighbors Kendall and her fiancée, Curtis McCart, 58.
“It was wild,” Atkins said.
Apparently, even the post office started to flood and people taking refuge made for higher ground.
When floodwaters started to deluge their makeshift refuge, the displaced locals made their way to empty houses on higher ground, trudging up the side of a mountain in a desperate attempt to reach safety. The first home they tried had a gas leak, and the ground beneath the porch of a second slipped out from under them.
The next cabin the group tried had a screened-in porch and provided them with the shelter they had sought.
It appears that this was at least a 500 year flood. There were trees over 100 years old that were flooded and torn down that were there when there was a flood over a century ago. That should tell you just how bad this one was. Then FEMA decided to pretend to help.
Atkins said FEMA called her to arrange an inspection of her house on the Broad River rendered uninhabitable by the storm, but that they never showed up because the road was closed — the very same road The Post successfully traversed on its way to Bat Cave.
The road is treacherous, but navigable. It’s littered with downed power lines, and whole sections have collapsed. One portion of Highway 9 is entirely washed away, forcing traffic to navigate a huge chasm through someone’s front yard.
So a few reporters, probably in a four wheel drive vehicle, were able to reach the town that FEMA declared impossible to reach? I wonder how they did that? Probably by following the tire tracks of other vehicles that reached the town earlier.
“FEMA hasn’t been here,” Atkins said.
“The DOT’s been here, and random fire departments, like Kannapolis. They were great. But nobody’s been bringing in supplies except civilians,” she shared.
I wouldn’t expect the DOT to bring in supplies. They would have limited space and would need that for tools and equipment to clear and stabilize the road. I doubt that the fire department showed up with their big engines. It was probably a couple of guys in a pickup truck checking for ruptured gas lines and what not.
At this late stage in the recovery effort, Atkins said there are concerns FEMA showing up at this point could do more harm than good.
“It’s been a civilian-run operation since day one. You can’t ask the authorities for help — they’ll say you need to leave,” she said, calling Bat Cave a “country-boy can survive” kind of place.
“We’re handling it. Leave it to us and we’ll get it covered.”
Curtis McCart, a retired Los Angeles fire department captain and paramedic hasn’t seen anyone in Bat Cave wearing a FEMA uniform, and like Atkins, he also worries about what will happen if they show up as he works to buttress the third floor of his home to stop the attic roof from toppling.
“At this point I don’t care if FEMA comes by. I don’t want somebody to pull me out of here, saying I’m working in an unsafe spot,” he said. “I’m wondering if Big Brother is going to allow us to rebuild.”
I wouldn’t put it past the FEMA bureaucrats to just decide that the town should be abandoned. They are that dumb after all. However, considering the increasing reports of the mess that FEMA is and is making of things, I suspect they probably won’t show up now. I have a feeling that quite a few people have had it with “Fedzilla” and may just run them off if they try throwing their weight around.
Right now, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security are starting to get raked over the coals. Recently, FEMA put up a page on their web site to “Dispel misinformation.” There is just one problem. That page is full of outright lies. There are reports from whistleblowers that money that should have gone to this and other disasters is gone, spent by DHS Secretary Mayorkis on Illegal Aliens. (And not to get them deported) It may not happen until next year, when, hopefully, we have a new, competent president and a new house and senate, but a serious review of both the DHS and FEMA needs to be done. (Minor update. The DHS IG has identified billions of unspent dollars that FEMA is sitting on)
It may be time to disband FEMA and put a fair chunk of their disaster response protocols under the Pentagon. If there is one group that knows how to handle logistics and can get things done, it’s the military. In the mean time, President Trump help set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds for people affected by Helene. Please consider sending a few dollars. You’re money will do far more good then anything FEMA or Kamala Harris will do.
***Update***
Note: I did most of the work on this post last weekend, Now Milton has hit Florida and other information FEMA incompetence came out that I had to write about.
Thatisall
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