Bring
Them Home, Where We Need Them; Where is the
Florida
National Guard?
By
WAYNE MADSEN
OpEdNews.Com
My
sister just found my 80 year old mother late this morning sitting in a
state of shock in a Red Cross church evacuation shelter in
Tarpon Springs
,
Florida
. Wiith her were some of her neighbors, along with a number of the
regular street derelict residents of the facility. She was forcibly
evacuated yesterday afternoon with only minutes warning and only enough
time to grab her medications, cell phone, and phone charger.
Because
the state of
Florida
waited so long to evacuate people along
Dunedin
Beach
on the Gulf coast north of
Tampa
, my mother had to be carried into a bus by two firemen because the 70
mph winds from Hurricane Jeanne would have knocked her over otherwise.
There were no provisions for anyone to sleep in the evacuation shelter,
so my mother and several other of her elderly neighbors were forced to
sit up all night on metal folding chairs. The Red Cross personnel
provided no blankets or electrical outlets for evacuees to charge their
cell phones. People at the shelter were prevented from using land lines
to inform their families of their whereabouts. After not hearing from my
mother for several hours, I had to call the Disaster Coordinator for her
town of
Dunedin
and use my
Washington
,
DC
jorno credentials to force them to tell me where she was taken. The
roads were impassible until this morning when my sister was able to
rescue my mother from the rather dodgy church facility.
There
are clearly not enough professional and trained disaster recovery people
in
Florida
to deal with the current spate of hurricanes. Most of the most critical
Guard and Reserve units, particularly medical and civil affairs
personnel, have been called up to
Iraq
. The only thing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has
managed to do was cordon off my mother's neighborhood and refuse to
allow anyone to retrieve belongings from damaged buildings until FEMA
deems them structurally sound. Knowing Jebbie Bush and his billionaire
friends, the Gulf front buildings are likely to be condemned to make way
for expensive beachfront condos.
I
consider the repeated disaster response SNAFUs in
Florida
to be Jebbie's and Dubya's fault. Neither Jebbie nor his brother cannot
be allowed to claim any credit for adequately responding to this
unprecedented series of hurricanes, which are obviously caused by global
warming. Moreover, the global warming reason for the unprecedented
series of destructive hurricanes in the
Atlantic
is something the educationally-challenged Dubya has called "silly
science."
This
of course is my own personal story and I know that others with parents
in
Florida
spent a similar sleepless night not knowing what became of their loved
ones. There are currently elderly people throughout
Florida
who are sitting in evacuation shelters without any means to contact
their families. This is a disgrace for which the responsibility rests
solely at the feet of the state's Governor and his brother in the White
House.
Dubya
originally claimed credit for sending the Red Cross to
Florida
during Hurricane Charley. He obviously doesn't realize that the Red
Cross is private and not a Federal agency. The Bushes cannot substitute
faith-based and other charities for the National Guard which has the
necessary vehicles (Humvees and deuce-and-a-halfs) to properly evacuate
people, especially those with special needs. Most of the Florida Guard
transportation units based at Camp Blanding have been moved to Iraq
where they are sitting targets for Iraqi insurents while they are busy
ferrying around supplies for Halliburton and Bechtel. These motorized
units should be in
Florida
helping Floridians and not in
Iraq
helping to keep oil flowing to Chevron Texaco and Exxon Mobil.
As
for the hot dog the Red Cross fed my mother, I will keep that in mind
the next time they ask me for a donation. Count me in for $1.50 to cover
the cost of the hot dog, roll, and mustard.
The
inability of Freres Bush to deal with
Florida
's natural disasters should be a campaign issue for John Kerry. The
repeated mismanagement of disaster relief in
Florida
should fire up all Floridians whose post-disaster needs have not been
adequately addressed. Members of the Kerry campaign staff in Florida
should be immediately dispatched (with cell phones, Internet-accessible
personal digital assistants, hot coffee and tea, and small hotel-type
amenities) to shelters across Florida to make sure the elderly and other
homeless people have been supplied with basic necessities, been afforded
to opportunity to contact family and friends, and understand who has
taken the time to look after them. The benefits of this very traditional
Democratic Party principle of tending to those who are the neediest will
become very apparent on November 2, Election Day.
As
for the National Guard, it was created to deal with national issues, not
international ones. They are needed at home, not in
Iraq
.
Wayne
Madsen
is the author of the forthcoming book: Jaded
Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops, and Brass Plates. He was with the
National Security Agency during the Reagan administration and is a
native of
New Jersey
. He can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
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