Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Now for Boredom:::::

Just a note.. I am sure that the former morgue at carville would have been used as a staging area for hurricane Ernesto if it came on shore.. they were going to send a group there to wait out the storm and then be behind it for operations..I can imagine being in there ... probably it would produce a new short story.....

They are taking a few people from this disaster to send to New Mexico for the two declarations going on up there this week. Also sending home several of the Community Relations people that had come for training and making that group more reasonable in size.

Some of our people are pretty bad with computer skills.. not knowing how to create or move documents on a desktop or make folders.. rename things.. pretty basic windows. I have spent a lot of time the last two weeks correcting things like that.. You do not need to be a genius to make most people get up and running in this environment..just a little common sense.. plug things in.. read the warnings that pop up..that sort of thing.. be patient.

I can see that we are goign to get horribly bored very soon here.. much like Arkansas was. We should staart to get smaller reasonably soon here. I will be glad to get home....MOre as it becomes available..

Sunday, August 27, 2006

A Sunday Lunch::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

92 degrees and a 40% chance of rain... New hours tomorrow at the JFO so life is going back to a more normal way of doing things and fewer hours.. harder on the paycheck but easier on your body. 8-6 five days and saturday till noon is not a bad schedule. Figure an hour and a half by the pool on each weekend day and a dinner and laundry and you got a weekend.

Going for Mexican Food tonight to a place that has been recommended. No weenie Southwestern cooking here.. people would spit out cilantro.. all straight tex mex and no Beano. These folk can sure make beans though.. Had some tomato bisque at the restrauant last night and it was just the best ever.. seemed to have a bit of bacon in it and fresh tomato as base.. and floating chunks of chilis put a great bit of bite in it. The food here is fatty but not salty like Louisiana... my blood pressure for those of you that follow such stats is doing quite well.. This morning after Breakfast it was 100/60 which explains why I wanted to go back to bed and sleep some more.

Toured some of the damaged areas this morning. A remarkable number of damaged trailer houses... a FEMA trailer would be a massive upgrade for many many of them. The upshot of this flooding is the arroyos that feed the Rio Grande. The fall several hundred feet of sand covered hills leading into the drainage. These storms park and dump a couple inches of rain at a time on these spots and it goes WHOOSH downhill.. a wall of sandy muddy water that clogs drains and then spills over the walls of these dry gulches into communities.. and finally dumps several inches to feet of sandy muck into the farm land at the bottom covering crops etc... I neglected to bring my camera this time but will try to post some representative pictures from the PIO boys that have the fancy cameras...

Will know more tomorrow about how Ernesto will imapct my operation... not likely now that it is projected so far east so we can focus on the two pending declarations from New Mexico and finish this El Paso thing.......

My daily rant... Ray Nagin can kiss my sweaty white ass. He is STILL complaining about money that no responsible adult will give him. His diversion of his own lack of leadership on the "hole in the ground" in New York gets this comment from me... a year after those towers fell.. there was no debris left in place.. only a hole in the ground waiting to be rebuilt.. why are there tens of thousands of cars still rusting on the streets of New Orleans, and 85% of the original debris in place in New Orleans a year later? I will never willingly work in that state again, I may have to but I will do my minimum to get out if it does occur. People that will vote that moron back in office deserve to starve in the dark.

Friday, August 25, 2006

Now for the Heat::::::::::::::::::::::::::;

wow is it hot. Our building has spotty air conditioning... my desk sits under the thermostat and was at 88 degrees for most of the day yesterday. Kept me moving to the cooler areas to do work... ;-). The disaster is moving along very quickly.. they are already reducing hours to five and a half days a week and I expect they will get out of here in record time. It has been good to be involved with setting up a disaster center and making all the pieces parts run. I have become more impressed with the region I work in as a result. They work very hard to be prepared for this type event.

We are about to lose people to both the anticipation of the hurricane out in the atlantic and also the two declarations apparently out of New Mexico and the fire declaration out of Nevada. Due to the security constraints that DHS has placed on us we cannot reasonably hire local hires for work at places like this... I am not sure what that means long term for our Cadre but it does mean we are going to have to hire people for disaster work we have not seen perform in this environment.

The room I am in is quite nice.. very close to the pool... they serve snacks at night till 7 and a continental breakfast... you can drink there in the evening too if you like... so I am lookingforward to being able to spend some time here.

I am pretty much already tired of Mexican food. Imagine that.........

Monday, August 21, 2006

WHEW::: or maybe GLUB

Hello readers::: As you may expect, it has been a bit hectic here. Working tons of hours.. we are officially on 12X 7 days right now but the IT and logistics folk have been doing a bit more. The flooding has continued, hard to imagine for such a desert place but these have been horrendous thunderstorms that just refuse to move at all and dump huge amounts of rain. El Paso got a years rain in the last week of July if you can imagine... it has been hard on homes.. drains and bridges.. snarling traffic and looks like something over 1000 people and about 500 homes impacted. There are also related disasters taking shape in New Mexico.

Got a pretty good hotel.. a suites (Chase Suites here) and I am about 20 feet from the pool presuming we will eventually get a day off. Restaurants here are good and the Mexican food is excellent.

I am reasonably tired... the politics here are very different than Louisiana... lots more work and lots less bickering. This is a true Region 6 disaster... no people from other regions and no meddling from WAshington. Work just flows better.

More soon

Monday, August 14, 2006

Leaving On a Jet Plane:::::::::::::: Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Leaving on the 15th for El Paso via America West. Looks like a hotel for this trip at first. No JFO to check into so far so I will have to call the Log Chief when I get there and find out when the equipment will arrive...

Managed it all in one suitcase this time plus a took kit and a computer bag... I hope security lets me keep my computer carryon for at least this trip. What a pain and risk tocheck your laptop.

Friday, August 11, 2006

El Paso now? :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Hi Guys again...

Got notice of a mobilization. El Paso Texas to do Individual and Public assistance declaration for flooding done there last week. According to my boss, the declaration could be any day (not sure what that really is in FEMA language).

More news as available