GOING Home:::::::::::::::::::::::

Started the trip home yesterday. Checkout at Katrina 1603 was without any comment worthy delay. Seems the FEMA machine is working smoothly and not even the car rental company wanted to give me any grief. (I knocked off the front license plate). Great learning experience here but glad to be going home. I have to go to Arkansas on May 7 for a couple weeks or perhaps a bit more to finish up a little tornado disaster over there. The good news is I am going as a Network manager for this little disaster which is actually smaller in manpower than the bit of network I had to manage out at the Morgue at Carville.

I got most of my stuff packed today in Andrews for the trip back .. my trailer and truck are loaded and I got to at least touch all my toys again!!!.. The motorcycle started instantly and while it is still trailer mounted, it was a sight for sore eyes. I will be driving tothe springs tomorrow with Trena and we are taking two vehicles and two trailers full of all the stuff I brought down here in the days before deploying for Katrina. I am looking foreward to sleeping in my own bed (my fema bed sucked) and having some days of doing my own stuff. Making money pales in a while in lieu of having time to go spend it.

I am going to quickly purchase a new Big Screen TV. .. and a DVD player to use with it (HDMI of course) and I am going to upgrade my wireless network (going wireless g with that fast stuff that lets you connect at 54 instead of 11) and build a server on it in Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 server edition.. I guess I need to do that to study over my break time and be more proficient with server software on the next trip out. I am buying a brand new BBQ grille for those steaks I am going to make. I look forward to my second spring in Colorado this year having had the first one in Louisiana a couple months ago. and a LONG summer by the pool.

So the movers are bringing my stuff out of storage on Friday and I hope to be substantially moved in by afternoon saturday, go to TESS' party and brunch on Sunday the 30th!! I am going to relax as best I can during that week before the 7th roles around, visit the doctor and get some sweaty excercise then pack up the "GO" bag and head for the hills again for a little while. I look forward to seeing you all here soon!!!

A Dead City:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

So a trip to New Orleans today seemed appropriate. Almost 8 months after the landfall of Katrina it seemed appropriate to see the place. I am prepared to pronounce the city dead and not recoverable in any sense of the word towards what it was before. My impressions are: miles of filthy streets still littered with storm debris in the gutters, miles of non functional traffic signals, abandoned houses with swollen walls and missing roofs , FEMA trailers on perhaps one in 50 driveways, abandoned apartment complexes, Strip malls with abandoned stores and scattered trash and debris in the parking area. Porta-Johns every half a block or so for miles on end are also de-rigueur for this place. Empty McDonalds and absence of people make the place look like video my daughter took in Yugoslavia in the early 90’s. There was a section of the elevated interstate that had storm damaged cars under it…. Miles and miles of cars… all of them stripped for parts by locals we presume.. I saw men lined up for day work on Easter Sunday …. There is great demand for labor here even semi skilled…. None of these men looked like locals.. they all appeared to be Hispanic folk and from somewhere else just here to make money. While they are fixing the roof of the superdome, they are not getting the sewers running again or the power back on. All are snapshots of a dead city that does not know it is dead. No permanent jobs, no housing, no commerce….. Ray Nagen has the audacity to run for mayor again……… hopefully the ones that left will rekindle some kind of sense of community somewhere else and not call this horrible place home ever again. 8 months….. checks from the FEDS in excess of $8 Billion dollars and you still got a dead city that looks like the storm hit last week. Mississippi has begun to rebuild.. they are complete with their debris removal…. The only difference is leadership and the heart of the people involved. They do not seem to be able to get out of their own way. I for one am sick of seeing good money go in after bad.

I got a place in the springs.. be back there on the evening of April 27th. I will be moving in that weekend , home there for a week getting settled and connected and then off to Arkansas for two weeks to finish up the end of that tornado disaster that has been going on there.. we should be closing that and then I am home for the summer. I am looking forward to a motorcycle ride and some bicycling and some food grilled on my new grille I am going to buy.. :-D see you all soon

FEMA Land::::::::::;;;;;

Here in FEMA land we have no problem planning things, only we DO have problems deciding which plan to follow. :-D. Ok.. for now I am on Standby for Arkansas…. It looks like they are going to try to manage this entire disaster from the existing small JFO in Little Rock. This should be good news and I am still looking at 18 days left here. Another day in the 80’s I am sitting by the pool after work, I must be tan before I come home, it is an imperative.. :-D….

A new cycle::::::::

As some of you might have read…. There were Tornados in Arkansas last week (other places too all the way through Ohio) but the Region 6 part is in Arkansas. They are taking some of our better people from Katrina to go work that disaster and leaving us thin at the top. This is such a strange business to be in…. you look at the weather completely differently when you work like this. The DAE cadre is doing little else these days but preparing for this seasons disasters including trying to get some rest, getting equipment staged and working on leaning up this organization so we can leave it.

Sorry it has been awhile since I wrote. This is kind of the Doldrums of a disaster from a FEMA point of view and from a personal point of view, I am about ready to come home and get started I have rented an apartment in the springs (address etc to follow for you guys that need it) and am handling the lease signing and all through snail mail. I hope to be able to just drive up to the garage and start unloading…. By the way I am going to need a burly guy to help me pull that motorcycle off my trailer when I get there.. any burly guy volunteers out there? Will take no more than ten minutes and I am asking no other work help.. :-D.

For the most part I am just gathering software that I would need if I had to work remotely and alone without a lot of support. When we did this big Network conversion a week ago, I saw a bit of the future here. They had to have the Admin team from Mt. Weather go out to the new staging/COOP site (still called “The Morgue at Carville”) to convert some of the equipment out there. The IT coordinator said “no one knows that place like you Steve so go show them around”…. (eyeroll)… Right after that I was tasked with preparing the site for a staging area for inbound disasters and also for COOP operations. The fun part is I get to go play server administrator again, place everything on the new domain and make the organization of IT out there for the next time it is used extensively. I have this sneaking suspicion when the wind blows again, someone in Region 6 is going to say, “we are gearing up that staging area.. who knows that morgue place better than anyone for the IT lead there?” and off I am again for the boondocks in Louisiana facing an inbound hurricane. Perhaps there is a short story in that………

We had a Region 6 DAE fire himself this morning. It was odd cause it dredged up old memories. He had been on site about 30 days.. and came here from Austin where he had been for the previous 6 months. He left work Friday and we never saw him again although he did call in Mon and Tues. What it sounds like is he went off on an alcoholic bender ….. now you are only allowed to miss 3 days in any disaster or they send you home so when he did not show this morning his supervisor called him and asked about his condition. Obviously drunk he said he was on a flight this afternoon and would not be back, never checked out, never filed any paperwork, left all his stuff in place and just walked. Hmmmmm…I sorta wonder if he is still in a blackout and gonna wake up tomorrow wondering what the heck happened. Disasters are not for everyone even at this stage of the game. These are very desired positions and hard to find and also get assigned to. Oh well!!

I have been sitting in the sun lately getting some color. It has been mid 80’s or higher here every day for the last week and it has felt very nice. I will get to see two late springs this year and that is something else I am looking forward too