The package

The next day a package from FedEx arrived. It had dozens of forms that I needed to fill out. The standard stuff, drivers license, social security, all the places I had lived for the past five years. I quickly returned these. I was told to report for a medical screening and immunizations, which I did.

A few days later I recieved a call and was told I had given them an invalid drivers license number. I left a message reminding them that they had a copy of my drivers license, but reading the number. The next day I recieved another call, they still were not satisfied. They wanted letters as well as numbers for my drivers license number. After considerable back and forth, they accepted my word that there were only numbers.

All the paper work was finally squared away.

Follow up

The follow up phone call was about as informative as the first. I was told the hours would be long, 12 hours days 6 days a week, but I would be paid for all my time. The salary was mid thirties per hour. Hotel, food, rental car and, yes, laundry and phone calls were covered. He also could not tell me where I would be deployed or what I would be doing. They had people doing everything from historic preservation to counting dump trucks to make sure contractors did not lie about the number of loads of waste. I told him I was interested in one of the two.

FEMA was one of their most valuable clients and they were highly selective, I was told. The hiring manager then told me the company made him ask ten questions. He quickly droned his way through the form, "Did I know how to use Microsoft Word? "Did I have any reason to fear a background check?" When he finished he offered me the job.

If I accepted, they would put me in the computer. When the computer found a match with an open job, they would call.

I accepted.

Other avenues

With FEMA on the slow track I decided to apply through a consulting firm.

I knew several friends, planners and historic preservationists, who were in the Gulf Coast working for a private contractor. I will call the firm EAP (Engineers, Architects and Planners). For them, the process was very fast. They applied, interviewed, were offered a job and started work all within a week.

I sent in my application to EAP and was greeted with silence. A few weeks passed and still nothing. I called and left a message in the voice mail labyrinth. I called again in another week and managed to get through to someone.

The first person explained the details. She asked when I could start and explained that the "deployment" would last three months. She could not tell me my salary, what I would be doing or where I would be based. The only thing she seemed sure of was that I would have a weekly phone allowance of $5, a laundry allowance of $10 and that I would could expect a call from another person.

The lead up

Faced with dwindling work prospects in the rural Midwest, I began considering my options. The options seemed to be 1) sell my house and move 2) let the sheriff sell my house and move 3) take a temporary job in a place that pays well enough to postpone options one or two. I decided on option three.

I knew a number of people that had gone to the Gulf Coast to help with disaster recovery planning so I started making some calls.

FEMA was a logical place to start. They needed historic preservations and planners immediately, so their website said. "Overnight your resume, " the job announcement said. While I love FedEx and all, I simply emailed my resume.

After a few weeks of quiet, I tracked down the staff person in charge of evaluating resumes. Polite and earnest, she told me she had been working evenings and weekends to get through the flood of applicants. She said FEMA was desperate for more people, their people were overwhelmed in the field. Still, because FEMA was part of the Department of Homeland Security, there were procedures. It would be a month before my resume was entertain into the computer. Once that happened I would be sent a packet of forms. I would need background checks, health checks, security checks, health checks and credit checks. Once I filled the information in I could expect several months to pass.

FEMA encouraged me to hang in there. I decided to pursue other channels.