Aliens

Aliens descended on Robert Lee County today. Worse than from Mars, they are from Hollywood. Two women, both in their twenties joined the meeting of the housing task force. The first, Mia, wearing faux fur, introduced herself as a developer from California that had moved here to start a nonprofit named Relief Now. She said her colleague was delayed in a Sheraton Hotel valet parking debacle. When asked she was vague about the projects she had worked on, mentioning a project in Boise and some work in California. Mia had moved to Mississippi to help. Eventually her colleague, Ashley, arrived (the valet de-debacled the problem I guess) wearing bell bottom jeans studded with rhinestones and frayed to thousands of fringes at the end. Ashley carried a poodle dressed up in a sweater and booties. The dog’s name was Chica Bonita. Mia promised that Relief Now has access to movie stars and capital. She talked about all the great projects they were going to put together. They had already arranged scores of tractor trailer loads of supplies immediately after the hurricane. Their next project was a toy give away.

Slipping into another role, she also promised that she could build new houses for the county at half the price of others. She wanted to set up factories to pre-make walls and other parts of houses. She claimed connections to major supplies of wood and other products. “Pre-fab” did not mean low quality, she explained.

It is hard to say what the locals make of it all. They are unflappably polite. I don’t even know what to make of her. She is totally out of place, but if she can do some good, more power to her. My only advice would be to start by getting an email address that does not end in yahoo.com.

Why people hate the feds

Why people hate the feds

The hospital in the county was trashed by the flooding: equipment ruined, staff scattered, records destroyed. Rumor has it that the administrators fled by helicopter as the flood waters rose and left everyone else to look after themselves. I am not sure if that is true, but I know what happened after the flooding receded.

The hospital board decided they were not reopening. In its place is a medical clinic operating out of a triple wide clinic. Not surprisingly, residents, particularly elderly or those with children, do not want to return unless they know there will be medical care. The problem is that the population of the county is very small right now, too small to justify a hospital. It is a catch 22, no people no hospital – no hospital no people.

In step the fed. They agreed to pay for 6 months of costs at the hospital. That would give it some cushion while it waited for payments from health insurance companies to begin coming in. It would also reduce the losses of operating the hospital for the first year or two, when the population will still be low.

The locals went to work. Doctors spent their evenings making calls. They squeezed in business discussions between patients. In the end, they found a new non-profit hospital chain to come in and reopen the hospital.

Well, a few days ago the feds “de-obligated” the six months of funding. The non-profit chain pulled out and the citizens were left with egg on their face. They had discussions based on the feds promises and now they have lost face because the feds are not going to deliver.

The Players

Background

I should explain a little about who the players are.

FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a key player. It is a multi-headed beast and I don’t know most of the heads. I know I work for the arm called ESF-14. This is the part of FEMA concerned with long term recovery planning. There are ESF-7s and 8s, and I assume 1s and 2s but I have not met them. We at ESF-14 work closely with the state. In fact, the content of the plans are pretty much dictated by the state.

The Mississippi Recovery Authority – Post-hurricanes, the state created a new entity, called the Mississippi Recovery Authority (MRA). It is mostly made up of people from other state agencies that now have two jobs. Their ranks are supplemented by consultants.

There are a number of different people that work for FEMA, some directly and some indirectly.
Contractors - FEMA gave some major contracts to national engineering and architecture firms. These are called TACs. There is a FLUOR TAC and a NISTAC. Many of the people are working down here signed on with on of the largest firms. The standard “deployment” is for three months.
Local hires – FEMA tries very hard to hire local residents. Local hires often are the first hired and last fired. Some of them will continue to work for FEMA for years, wrapping up all the loose ends.
FEMA and other federal employees – A small number of people are FEMA employees or employees from other federal agencies.

Local governments – The county governments in Mississippi are, more or less, the clients. They will look over and approve the plans before they are submitted to the governor for approval.

Colleagues

A professor working on the project encouraged me to get a PhD at the University of Mississippi, where he teaches. I declined and he tried to explain the virtues of the program. I explained that I did not want to get a PhD because once you get a PhD you do not do planning any more. He said, “That’s true. I have not worked on a planning project in 15 years. All I do is teach. This is so much fun.”

No comment beyond that.

Priorities

Priorities

The project is spending an insane amount of money. There are probably about 200 working on Long Term Recovery Planning. Some of them are FEMA employees, but most of them have other jobs and are working on a short term contract (contractors). Others are local hires (people who lived in one of the counties affected by the hurricanes). Finally, there are personnel from other agencies that are being lent to FEMA for the project. In any case, most of these people are working 60 hours a week at prevailing wages and have a hotel room, rental car and food budget of $50 a day. You can do the math.

Now, compare this to a request from the outreach team. They wanted $6500 to mail a newsletter to all the residents of the county to tell them what is going on and how they can be involved. They were turned down.

The Hollywood Crowd

The Hollywood Crowd

Aliens descended on Robert Lee County today. Worse than from Mars, they are from Hollywood. Two women, both in their twenties joined the meeting of the housing task force. The first, Mia, wearing faux fur, introduced herself as a developer from California that had moved here to start a nonprofit named Relief Now. She said her colleague was delayed in a Sheraton Hotel valet parking debacle. When asked she was vague about the projects she had worked on, mentioning a project in Boise and some work in California. Mia had moved to Mississippi to help. Eventually her colleague, Ashley, arrived (the valet de-debacled the problem I guess) wearing bell bottom jeans studded with rhinestones and frayed to thousands of fringes at the end. Ashley carried a poodle dressed up in a sweater and booties. The dog’s name was Chica Botica. Mia promised that Relief Now has access to movie stars and capital. She talked about all the great projects they were going to put together. They had already arranged scores of tractor trailer loads of supplies immediately after the hurricane. Their next project was a toy give away.

Slipping into another role, she also promised that she could build new houses for the county at half the price of others. She wanted to set up factories to pre-make walls and other parts of houses. She claimed connections to major supplies of wood and other products. “Pre-fab” did not mean low quality, she explained.

It is hard to say what the locals make of it all. They are unflappably polite. I don’t even know what to make of her. She is totally out of place, but if she can do some good, more power to her. My only advice would be to start by getting an email address that does not end in yahoo.com.

Sorry for being gone

My computer crashed and burned. I am back in business now and will update every couple of days.

Other details

Mostly, I spend my days waiting for my security clearance to wind its way throught he FBI. I often go the reading room in the morning and when I see that it looks about the same as when I left, I go for a walk. I then come back and maybe go for a drive or go exploring. Some people never report to the reading room, while others (particularly the engineers) feel obligated to wait in the reading room. When I tried to get some of them to accompany me to the Musuem of Rural Mississippi Life they refused. They said they thought they better wait in case they get their clearance. I reminded them that they all had cell phones and the way we find out about getting clearance is via phone. Still, they said they prefered to wait, unless anything came up. I fear they will not thrive in this chaotic fly by the seat-of-your-pants environment.

Also, I found out that the reason I my beginning was so disorganized was that the people in the first office never gave me an essential piece of paper that lists the contacts at the second office (the JFO).

Escape

I escaped from purgatory today. I reported to the office today planning on showing my face briefly before going to another museum. About 30 minutes after arriving, chaos descended. I am not sure how loading a van can result in such disorder. There were even packing lists, but that did not stop the confusion. Part of the problem was that we were hosting five pubic meetings at nearly the same time. Because of the schedule, we could not share easels and flip charts and projectors. So there was a minor crisis as we realized that we did not have enough of anything besides sharpie markers. A rental company supplied the necessary additional supplies just in time to hop in vans and take off. The drive down was my first experience near the coast seeing the true effects from the hurricane.

It was sobering. Still now, three months after the hurricanes boats, cars, and even houses sit upside-down in lawns or in streets. Entire neighborhoods are empty, without life. Electricity is still out in neighborhoods, which means that that stop-lights are out. Piles of debris taller than me litter many corners and front lawns. Insulation, moldy drywall, wood and broken siding mingle with teddy bears and clothes, all waiting to be carted away. At times the air stinks and stings my lungs, a mix of burning garbage and churning refineries.

The meeting, held in the Embassy Princess, a cruise ship docked in the Mississippi, was a bit of a flop. Logistically it was fine – we had all the supplies we needed. We just did not have the people. Unfortunately, the Mississippi Redevelopment Authority sent out nearly illegible invitations via email with no personal follow-up. Many people never heard about the meeting and others only found out about it an hour before the start time. All total we had about 20 stakeholders.

We started 45 minutes late, failed to explain the big picture plan and covered ground that had already been covered in the three hours that we had people locked up in the meeting. Part of the problem was there were about 40 people - from FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers and the national guard and HUD – all hanging out in the back of the room talking. The participants were supposed to answer four or five questions (issues, challenges, important things to preserve, etc) and all the background chatter distracted them. They started getting up from their small groups and the meeting began to deteriorate. By the end, there were one or two people in each group trying to have a “discussion” with a moderator recording their ideas. Of course, with so few participants there is no way to have a discussion.

FEMA brought in consultants from New York City to “train the trainers” and plan the meeting. They buy-and-large failed to produce. They decided that the planners could not participate in the meeting because we had to remain neutral. This is a little like a doctor not being able to participate in any of the discussions leading up to surgery because she needs to remain impartial. So I just sat back and watched.

As a final note, I want to say how many committed people there are down here trying to help. Many of them will work through Christmas and New Years, living in platform tents and eating at mess halls, all trying to help. For every image you see of fights, fraud or selfishness there are 100 souls that show the good in humanity.