Friday, September 22, 2006

Winding Down:::::::::::::::

The powers that be have staked the end of October for closing up this place. It seems to have gone very smoothly compared to other disasters out here. The City and County are very cooperative and the money is flowing to the people to go ahead and start their lives over.

There is one community named Moade (and probably still spelled wrong) that is west of town that was incorporated into El Paso that is going to dissappear. The folk here do odd things compared to how we would think about owning things in other States. This is called a "Colonias" and is simply a community that sprang up without any regulation at all. None of the buildings are to code (some of the walls for instance are just propped up pallets with dry wall on them.. electricity is often done with expension cords...etc...) FEMA and the state and city/county are excercising 'eminent domian' and are going to condemn this entire neighborhood... I know I am missing some of the details of this transformation but these folk are all going to be offered buyouts... (and the implication is.. they will be forced buyouts if they refuse)... and they are going to turn the neighborhood into a flood plane for relief of future flooding. Things that are challenging here are things like a single mailing address on a street may have five or six 'houses' on it that all get mail from that same box.... it is very much like a foreign country here in some respects. Illegals are mixed with legals.. citizens in the same families with aliens... legal aliens owning property... holy cow what a mess. I have been very impressed though with the group here managing to cut through all that to the core issues and making the money flow and the people are making the best of it.

I am going to be here another week.. then home for ten days.. then back on oct 9th for the duration.. we are going to be breaking all this down starting the 16th for sure when all the application periods and paperwork demands are over... at some point this becomes a logistics building and mission and no one else is allowed.

Friday, September 15, 2006

It Had to be posted somewhere:::::::::::::::::::::::

Our safety officer has been butchering his native English language in little cautionary emails to us all disaster. I am surprised by this time that he has not asked someone to perhaps proof read them in advance of his sending them. His latest was so bad I just have to pass it along...

The email was titled "Mosquetoe Infestitation". I spent some time walking around the JFO wondering quietly if this was some sort of strange Islamic Foot Fungus.... or perhaps some kind of religious slur.... I actually had tears in my eyes over this one though... he went on to explain how the standing water had greatly increasted the mosquetoe population and we should be careful when in the open lest one of them get on us.

It IS his native language so I do not feel so bad abusing him about it. People that write for large and professional audiences should know it well enough to use websters.com if for no other reason than to avoid people like me..

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

You know you work for FEMA when:::::::::::::::::

20 You have dry cleaning waiting in 17 states

19 You have to look up the word "weekend" in a dictionary

18 You wear your Badge in the Shower

17 You think working half-day is 12 hours

16 The local McDonalds drive through knows your voice

15 Your favorite channel is "The Weather Channel"

14 You write email home and send a copy to the JFO for record retention

13 Your family considers FEMA a four letter word

12 Your spouse has a picture of yo uby the front door to ID you

11 Things actually begin to make sense

10 Your favorite restrauant is the Red Cross truck

9 The finally tell you to go home and you thnk they mean your hotel

8 You walk into a new JFO and know everyone there

7 You can name every announcer on the Weather Channel

6 You have memorized every one of the 110 channels in your hotel room

5 You submit your Christmas list on a 60-1 (form to purchase things here)

4 You get a date and spend the evening looking at floodplain maps

3 You are offered a 40 hour a week job and ask if they have a full time position instead

2 You start getting junk mail at your hotel

1 Your last three children are named after hurricanes (and more resemble the mailman?)

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Another day::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The floodwaters have subsided and moved downstream a hundred miles or so expending themselves in the wilds of the Trans-Pecos. All the evacuees are back home and the roads and highways are all open again. Concerns for earthen dams and some sets of local farm pond type dams failing have been abated by this afternoon and life proceeds apace. This entire set of events has happened with no fatalaties and no serious injuries. The disaster in New Mexico is primarily a PA disaster (roads, bridges, power and other infrastructure).

They have set the date here for closure of our DRC (Disaster Recovery Center) which seems early to me but, today had onlyl 15 applicants there. 3200 total applicants of which most are ending up in the SBA (Small Business Administration) or VOLAG (Voluntary agencies) assistance lists. It is odd to see how differently this thing runs than Louisiana... people are interested and kind of respectful of FEMA here... we are going to be able to dish out a ton of help and people are actively helping both themselves and their own government to make this work. Lots of money is in the pipeline already and I believe that the part already declared for DR 1658 will be mostly done by Mid October. The damage yesterday was literally thumping the rubble in most respects. The same arroyos have flooded the same trailer villages.... some additional damage has been done but it does not look like a whole new declaration to me (ok.. that is a wild ass guess but the places I saw did not look remarkably different than before... just scarey as hell when the water comes that fast.....)

I am concerned that i am in the desert for three weeks and my tan is fading.. it looks like working in Seattle in February.. even wore a jacket to work one day. What an odd place this is. :-D

Monday, September 04, 2006

Inside a developing Disaster::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Rain continues today quite heavy following rain almost every day within eyesight of us here for the last 8 days. Likely this will be declared as a new disaster since there was a distinct gap in time between the events that caused the damage for 1658 that I am working on and this mess. The soil in this entire region is and has been totaly saturated for many days now, we have had several accumulations of the average annual rainfall here in the last month and a half. The Rio Grand is running bank to bank (like a mile wide)and has white caps like you see in the bottom of the grand canyon. New Mexico is a green splotch of rain on the radar of weather bug.. (if you do that sort of thing.. look at zip code 79925 on weatherbug)

The drains everywhere are full of sand and clay so the water has defeated the drainage systems in place and goes where it wants.. the streets run hub deep everywhere and if the current rates continue I10 will be closed today, both directions, till it subsides. I am personally worried that they are going to have to begin releasing water from Elephant buttes reservoir in New Mexico which will further strain the Rio Grande.. fortunately east of here that river gets very steep banks and flooding is unlikely.. but river crossings will go down for sure.. :-D

Days off are a challenge when the weather is bad like that, but I got all my chores done and went to eat Sushi. There is a feeling of anticipation for a second or expanded declaration and the locals are antsy about additional help. I do have to say that everyone here is working. There are no piles of debris that the storm piled up 6 weeks ago, someone has worked every one of them.. they are shovelig muck while it is still raining.. the locals are out with what they have trying to make things better. This is not Louisiana and I am proud to be here with this bunch.

Friday, September 01, 2006

A New Month:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::;;

Starting a new month in the field is always fun. People are trying to get reports to the managers they report to off site.. politicians are trying to make hay this time of year before the elections so they look good.. and it all runs on data.

The PA people are a hoot... lets be generous and say most of them are long retired and while they are interested in helping and hold a great deal of knowledge, they lack a certain patience for modern methods of dealing with data (computers) and other things the rest of us call rules. They tend to like the room temp to be about 78, and are generally retired people of substance that tend to make the mistake of talking to people like me as if we are servants.. :-D usually only happens once. Today I got a computer ticket, hand written that said simply "Cannot get it up".... My boss actually shot coffee through his nose when I showed it to him... so.. I went all through the call center asking for assistance with this problem as I am not at all sure what to do with the problem at all. Thankfully an unnamed Logistics manager gave me a little blue triangular pill which I taped to the work request and which I quietly returned to the desk with the instructions, "take immediately... call a doctor if erections lasts more than four hours" (now personally if I had one that long I would brag big time about it)... All told when the PA crew that this gentleman was imbedded in came back and read both the request and the solution I had quite a bit of hilarity on my hands and one beet red and angry septigenarian that wanted to talk to my boss that actually had to look away to control himself. The day ended with no one hurt and the little blue pill returned to its owner.. (it was a cut down altoids). And you thought desktop support did not have its moments.

New Mexico will be running Monday for some reason and I will not have anything to do with it.. going to be here for awhile longer for sure. We are starting to lose people already and are down ten this week from last. So it begins.

More as it becomes available