Category: FEMA & Other Disaster Agencies

The Apex, North Carolina Fire–My Story

Hi Jim, Love your web site! I live just on the outskirts of Apex, NC which is basically a suburb of Raleigh.One week ago, as you know, a hazmat processing facility there had a huge chlorine gas leak that led to a massive industrial fire with multiple explosions and leaks of all kinds of nasty-kill-you-dead-chemicals leaking into the air. 17,000 people were evacuated from Apex that evening. You can read the complete story here. What I want to share with my fellow SurvivalBlog readers is how that thing that “will never happen here” happens and the very real need for …


What Happens After: Observations on Hurricane Katrina

Jim; Just a few notes about my experiences with Hurricane Katrina a year later. On the evening that Katrina passed our retreat, my partner and I began to make our way back to our homes (less than 30 miles) and businesses to secure them – (both firearms related). We chose to take different routes, him on foot, and me in my truck with my dogs & supplies. The routes required pushing and/or cutting trees, poles, fences and all manner of lines and debris from the road ways. The few roads that could be made passable with chain saws and simple …


Letter Re: East Coast WTSHTF: You Can’t Get There From Here

Sir: In my role as “the good citizen” and amateur radio operator, I have just competed a state sponsored FEMA “Incident Command System” class (IC-700). My worst concerns regarding bugging out from my coastal home in Connecticut were confirmed at that class. Here in Connecticut we have no mass evacuation routes available or realistic plans in place to deal with a catastrophic scenario resulting in the exiting of the people who live in this area. You see we already have quite an impressive rush hour traffic pattern which as gotten geometrically worse over the past 30 years. Back in 1976, …


Letter Re: Unintended Consequences of a Failure of Basic Services in a Disaster

Jim: When I was a river [rafting] guide we used toilets made of [military surplus wooden] rocket boxes.   The premise is to take a large Army rocket box (a toilet lid fits inside ) and use double lined plastic bags and plenty of powdered lime. Regular old lime for the disinfectant.   We would use on of these on extended wilderness rafting trips for 30 or 40 people.   Here’s how it works. Set up the rocket box and remove the large roll of heavy black plastic trash bags. Take TWO bags and double bag them and line the …


Letter Re: Suburban Emergency Management Project Website

Mr. Rawles, Please let me commend to your attention the website of the Suburban Emergency Management Project: http://www.semp.us/ This is an excellent website with material written by professionals but useful to laymen. There’s more info on this site than I can assimilate in a week. Their “Biots” are short papers on a whole panoply of emergency preparedness topics. There are 340 of them, as of today. Some of my favorites are: #334: “Please Remain in Your Seat”: The Federal Government’s Role in Quarantine (26 February, 2006) #332: What Is “Earthquake Baroque” Architecture? (21 February 2006) #259: Revisiting Looting Behavior during …


Letter Re: First Hand Observations on the Post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans Bus Evacuation

James: I was a bus driver for the evacuation of the New Orleans Convention Center and figure that I should put my two cents in worth.We drove straight through from Ohio to a staging point (LaPlace) in New Orleans and were escorted to the Convention Center. This was on Saturday morning around 9 a.m. New Orleans time about a week after the dikes let go. We were lucky not to be in the first wave that came into the Super Dome earlier in the week as we heard they were still ordering parts to repair the busses that got busted …


David in Israel on “Relocation” Camps — Guest or Inmate?

If you are relocated: Depending on the circumstances of a relocation it may be salvation from danger (large disaster) or because you are considered a threat (a la the Japanese Americans during WWII) In any case, a government camp can be one of the most undesirable places to be once you are out of danger. Once you are their “guest”, the organization who has sheltered you may feel they must continue for political or security reasons to see to your well being. Ease of providing security, lack of ID, or fear of rioting may be excuses for denying or making …


Letter Re: Katrina’s Aftermath: Lessons Learned

Mr. Rawles: Well, it seems that Katrina and friends have amply proven what you and many, many other survival writers have been saying for a long time. 1. You cannot depend on any governmental agency to look out for you and yours. Not federal, not state, not county and certainly not local. You have to be fully responsible for looking out for yourself and for your loved ones. It also proved what I have always felt about FEMA‘s vaunted 72-Hour home survival/preparedness kit. 2. A 72-Hour (three day) Kit simply does NOT cut it, at all Anyone who plans on …


Letter Re: S.F.’s Letter Re: Medical Kits

Jim, In regards to S.F.’s letter regarding medical kits, suture/wound closure, and use of Ipecac… 1. I would not recommend the use of Syrup of Ipecac to anyone without proper training in airway management, i.e.: intubation/suction equipment on hand .The airway problems far outweigh the gains, you have to know what can come back up without problem also, leave this to the trained and save your money for other supplies. 2. Wound closure, "to be or not to be closed," again if you do not have the supplies or the know how ALL wounds can close from secondary intention, that …


Letter Re: S.F.’s Letter Re: Medical Kits

Jim, In regards to S.F.’s letter regarding medical kits, suture/wound closure, and use of Ipecac… 1. I would not recommend the use of Syrup of Ipecac to anyone without proper training in airway management, i.e.: intubation/suction equipment on hand .The airway problems far outweigh the gains, you have to know what can come back up without problem also, leave this to the trained and save your money for other supplies. 2. Wound closure, “to be or not to be closed,” again if you do not have the supplies or the know how ALL wounds can close from secondary intention, that …


Letter Re: Former FEMA Director Michael Brown is Now Consulting

Mr. Rawles: Here is a link to the jaw-droppingly absurd, but true. CNN ran a story about Michael Brown getting fired from FEMA only to go into the Emergency Planning “consulting” business. See: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/11/24/brown.consultant.ap/index.html We can all sleep better now knowing that America is once again safe. Regards, -B. Adams


Letter Re: First Hand Account from New Orleans

The following comes to us from a SurvivalBlog reader who was deployed with a WMD/Hazmat Team to New Orleans, very soon after the hurricane struck. Cellular phone difficulties and 15+ hour work days kept him from making reports to SurvivalBlog as he had originally planned. James: I’m very sorry that I couldn’t make contact [while there] and keep you all up to date with the Katrina Deployment. I rotated out of New Orleans yesterday and made it home it time for my daughter’s 16th birthday. Quite an emotional ride, to say the least. Katrina…wow…First I want to say thanks to …


Hurricane Katrina Update:

The situation on the Gulf Coast is still fairly grim. The evacuation is nearly complete, and much needed supplies are now pouring in. But the communities that are still hurting the most are the small inland towns that were cut off from communications and that still don’t have power restored. The power utilities are making Herculean efforts to get power restored, but is is a slow process. Their crews are working around the clock. These are good men doing a commendable job. The bureaucrats at FEMA are getting mostly bad reviews for their performance in coordinating the disaster relief effort. …


Letter Re: Lessons from Katrina

Jim, You might want to have a section dedicated to the lessons we can learn from this. If you do, my two cents worth would be: 1-The authorities may cut off the water and phones-even if you are a politician. The Feds want you to go to an approved shelter-and they want control of all information. Your life is not really that important to them. 2-The shelter may lock you up for five days or so with no water, food, or medicine. And you can’t get out-and charities won’t be allowed to come to you. 3-The shelter may have druggies …


Hurricane Katrina Update:

I again recommend reading Interdictor’s blog –direct from the central business district of New Orleans. There is nothing quite like reading something from the perspective of someone who has “boots on the ground”. Please keep all of those affected in your prayers! Next, a letter from our regular correspondents, “John and Abigail Adams” in Ohio: It looks like we will be seeing some relief in regards to gasoline and diesel supply and prices in the very near future. Crude oil is now being shipped into Ohio and the refineries are producing product once again! Supply is opening up and prices …