Hilarity Ensues: Thurday 9 a.m.

First I was afraid
I was petrified
Kept thinking I could never live
without you by my side
But I spent so many nights
thinking how you did me wrong
I grew strong
I learned how to carry on

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now
'cause you're not welcome anymore
weren't you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye
you think I'd crumble
you think I'd lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
as long as I know how to love
I know I will stay alive
I've got all my life to live
I've got all my love to give
and I'll survive
I will survive

I was willing to give FEMA the benefit of the doubt for what happened after Hurricane Katrina. It was a situation that just about no one expected. The devastation was unprecedented. The response was slow because they had to get organized. I get that. But people, that was three years ago and you would expect that after the flack you went through, you would have better prepared. Yes, the response was quicker. But then evrything started to unravel. I will admit at this point that niether I nor anyone in my family had to depend on disaster relief to survive. We had enough food and water. So what I am telling you is from what I have seen and heard, well, actually just heard since I never saw a FEMA truck, worker or POD.

Oh yeah, don't you just love governments and their acronyms? POD is the new catch phrase. It means Point Of Distribution. And it doesn't work. Here is why. The lines. There were reportedly lines in excess of 5 and a half miles long. There were 60 PODs in the 26 declared disaster relief counties on southeast Texas, 26 in Houston. I think they could have broken those down a little and spread them out. Use local help, send them to community centers and places like that so that the poeple who need them, the people without cars can get to them. There was one instance where the Pasadena Mayor was told by FEMA that there would be a POD ready at a high school stadium the next morning at 8. He had volunteers there, and police, and had created a 2 mile driving maze on the parkinglot so that the streets would not be blocked. Well, at 8 there had the ice truck there, but no sign of a food truck or a water truck. They didn't want people to have to wait in two lines so they waited to give out the ice. Meanwhile, he had told people the noght before, and so the line started growing, and growing. Finally they put the ice back on the truck because it was melting and called to find out where the other trucks were. "They are on their way" was all he got. Meanwhile the line had now filled up the 2 miles on the parking lot and spilled out onto the street for 3 and a half miles (something they had wanted to avoid). There was another instance where it was geting late and th curfew was about to kick in and a truk still had food and supplies on it. The driver of the truck was willing to sleep in his truck, and the police were willing to guard the truck until the next morning so they could hand out the rest of the food as soon as they could, but a FEMA official would not budge and made the truck return to the staging point. It took FEMA a day or to to start getting things in because nobody had told them where to stage, so they didn't even start sending the trucks into the area. Just little things like that make me wonder. I think our local officials have done a great job. Maybe the next time one of our cities needs FEMA they can just send in the trucks and let us take it from there.