To thank my buddy for the fodder for this post his link is below, he has all kinds of great military shirts, stickers and other support our troops gear and gifts.
Linkin Mall
My older son called me tonight about his assignment assisting in Beaumont, Texas, after Hurricane Ike. It was different than he expected. He said, "It was a cluster fork – I'd rather spend 14 days on a fire." At forest fires, there is a unified command drawn from the Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, etc. The commands are already integrated into the dispatch system and the incident command system. My son's crew was sent as part of a larger wildland firefighting contingent. He was told his crew would use their chainsaws to assist in recovery efforts. They'd help local firefighters and power crews with access. However, the Texas state government had to approve what was being done, because the costs would come from their allocated disaster recovery funds. He wound up in the parking lot of a convention center. FEMA rented the parking lot for $12 million. It was fenced. He was told to set up his tents on the pavement, so he circled his five trucks, and his crew spread sleeping bags on the pavement, encircled by their trucks. There was no group briefing. Somebody from FEMA said, "We'll tell you when we're ready for you." In about two days, the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and the Defense Logistics Agency (a component of the Department of Defense) had set up refrigerated tents with cots and catering. DLA normally handles logistics for wars. My son was then given his task. Basically, he "ran a truck rodeo" – his words. Hundreds of 18-wheelers came into the parking lot loaded with bottled water, MRE's, or ice. My son's crew checked their bills of lading, recorded their truck number and contents, and directed the truck drivers where to park. They segregated them by type of contents. My son received incoming orders from COE, FEMA, or DLA, telling him where they needed what supplies. He assembled convoys of the requisite number of trucks, but he said COE, FEMA, and DLA were not talking to each other and didn't recognize each other's paperwork, so each specified that they wanted only the trucks that they'd sent to his site. COE didn't want its locations receiving DLA trucks and vice versa. He said that he had 1000 trucks parked at any given time. At one point, there was a 30-mile backlog of incoming trucks on the Interstate. He said he saw 9 GS-15 Managers yelling and swearing at each other. He said relief workers ate fried chicken and slept on cots in air-conditioned tents, while truck drivers were told to eat MRE's and bottled water and stay in the cabs of their trucks. The temperature was 110. He said he expected a revolt of 1000 truck drivers – something on the nature of a C. W. McCall song – but there were armed National Guardsmen ringing the tents. My son told me that when his tour ended, the trucks full of ice were driven to an airport. They dumped the ice on a runway and let it melt, rather than incur the continued expense of delivering it to people who could use it. Last night, his crew drove toward home in Colorado. My two daughters joined his crew at a Houston restaurant for a meal, but he couldn't get enough motel rooms for his crew, so they drove to Dallas before bedding down for the night. He said, "If you divide $12 million dollars by the number of nights we were there and the number of cots that were filled, it cost $2000 per cot per day to feed and house the rescue workers." He also said his crew was awarded a Certificate of Merit from FEMA. In answer to my last question, he said, "No, we didn't hand out any duct tape." Kayecee must still have all the duct tape. I heard she buys rolls of duct tape by the thousands "so the hoarders don't get it." |
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