From three years ago. I figure this is needed since there is a lot of misinformation about the hurricane response.
Many people see FEMA as some sort of large Federal organization that responds to emergencies. They aren’t. What FEMA is, is a guy with a Rolodex (Remember those? If you don’t, ask your parents, snowflake.) and a checkbook. There isn’t some magical team of Federal Employees sitting around, waiting for “the big one” so they can swoop in and save everyone. That isn’t how it works.
No, this FEMA guy’s phonebook is filled with the contact information of local and state resources that can be called in an emergency. Those resources respond, tracking expenses and man hours used, and the FEMA guy then breaks out the checkbook to reimburse the states involved. The Governor doesn’t call out FEMA for shit. If you want to get technical, FEMA can’t do a thing unless the President tells them to. (Didn’t Trump catch hell for that recently?) FEMA’s largest contribution is writing the check to pay for it all.
After 9/11, the US government came up with the concept of Urban Search and Rescue Teams. They follow a set of guidelines in equipment and training, so that all of them nationwide operate on a similar set of procedures. This makes them interoperable across state lines: a person qualified for one could easily fit into any of the others. A USAR is equipped with everything from power generators to food trailers and rescue equipment. They have medical supplies, fuel, and all other equipment needed to fulfill their mission. Each USAR maintains over 5,000 pieces of equipment and has 140 or so assigned personnel. They can operate independently for 2 weeks, longer with resupply of fuel, food, and other consumables.
While there are some variations in the mission for each team (a team in Florida doesn’t need to be equipped for blizzards, for example) the teams are remarkably similar in training and equipment.
Florida doesn’t need FEMA resources for a building collapse. The state has eight Urban Search and Rescue Teams, all of whom are trained and equipped for that. Each one is centered on a large city, and draws its personnel from surrounding first responders. These first responders volunteer for the team, are sent to special training, and then become qualified for the team. Specialists are trained in HAZMAT, trench rescue, building collapse, confined space, water rescue, dive rescue, high angle, and vehicle and machinery rescue. Every member is certified as an EMT or Paramedic. It takes 2 to 3 years of training to fully qualify for a USAR team, on top of the extra training that they do on a constant basis. Most USAR members are the best of what their employing agencies have to offer. They are the most motivated and able of emergency responders.
To be honest, I loved deployments. Not because deployments meant people were suffering. No, mostly it was because they were a test of all that you had learned. That, and a FEMA deployment usually pays pretty well. I was deployed to Katrina for 12 days and was paid more than $5,000. You want people who bring years of expertise and thousands of hours of training to come save you? You want people willing to live on 3 hours’ sleep a night without bathing while shitting in a bucket and eating old MRE’s for two weeks? It’s gonna cost ya. That kind of expertise and dedication isn’t cheap.
9 Comments
Tom235 · October 5, 2024 at 7:16 am
Having been on state and county level fire and EMS crews before, I’ve noted that when the Feds get involved, things can rapidly turn into a cluster ….
Don Shift · October 5, 2024 at 9:37 am
Have you seen all the FEMA boogeyman posts on Twitter and elsewhere?
Wilson · October 5, 2024 at 9:55 am
I guess it is all about the money.
Divemedic · October 5, 2024 at 11:33 am
Of course it is. I make my living treating illness and injury. Why would I do it for free?
Tom235 · October 6, 2024 at 8:08 am
I fully agree with you – as a professional, you deserve to get paid – and paid well. But in an emergency, are you stationed at a medical facility (where you probably should be with your skill set) or are you on the front line actually getting “in the blood” so to speak? For example: is your skill set better applied if you are 30 miles up in the hills serving a community of under 500 people (my former situation) or are you at a centralized location where you can apply your skills to a larger number of people as we managed to get people down to that “centralized” medical facility – as others were doing from their small communities?
Our job was to try and keep them living until we could “get down the hill” to you. Never had anyone die in our ambulance – it was not allowed. Even that guy with a 6″ sapling through his chest was “alive” until we got to a proper facility. I got tired of scraping people off the road (literally) or pulling husks out of burnt buildings but we did our jobs anyway. Gives one a morbid sense of humor.
I have respect for both the pros (not the Feds) and the (usually) under- or no pay volunteers that supply their time to aid their neighbors. I’m not knocking your role but it takes a variety of people, skill sets, and effort in such a situation. We worked for free or sometimes a nominal coverage of expenses. Never really thought about pay but we were only on an “as-needed” basis anyway. You guys “downtown” have a different role in a different response environment.
Divemedic · October 6, 2024 at 9:43 am
Dude, I have been a professional and volunteer rescuer for over 35 years. I was an EMT on an ambulance in Virginia back in the 1980s. Then I spent about a year as a volunteer firefighter in Arkansas before becoming both a volunteer and full time EMT, Paramedic, and firefighter in Florida. Then I retired and became a critical care paramedic before becoming a nurse. Along the way, I spent a few years teaching biology and chemistry, responded to over a dozen disasters, including large scale fires, Hurricanes (including Katrina), and other incidents. I received a Homeland Security certificate as an Incident Safety officer, and attended the improvised explosives class at the energetic materials center in New Mexico. I am a certified fire officer, arson investigator, HAZMAT to the operations level, rescue diver, dive supervisor, firefighter, EMT, paramedic, nurse, confined space technician, trench and tunnel rescue technician, combat casualty care, and on and on with a stack of certifications. I’ve been there and done that and have enough certifications to wallpaper my study.
During that time, I have seen every type of disaster and medical problem you can think of, I earned degrees in fire science, public safety administration, emergency medicine, and nursing. So yeah, I have done it all. I did every job in the fire department that didn’t have the word “chief” in the title, and was an instructor or preceptor for most of them. I am a Master of Disaster.
As to not calling people “dead” in the field, that has proven to be a poor way of doing business and is a practice that most EMS agencies abandoned more than 20 years ago. Multiple studies have shown that the ambulance is more likely to kill someone in an accident on the way to the hospital with that “not dead yet” patient than it is to save a trauma patient that presents in asystole. One study showed that, out of 1,000 trauma patients who presented on scene in asystole, not one of them saw a return of ROSC.
Volunteers have a place, and there are some volunteer systems that do very well, and they are needed, especially in communities that can’t afford a full time system, but there is no real comparison there to people who do that job every day.
Tom235 · October 7, 2024 at 7:57 am
Dude: I’m not questioning your skill set or experience. This discussion came about because of your reply to “It’s the money”. Great. You get paid. You should get paid. With your background, you should be paid quite well. You’re over-skilled for work in the field; you’re needed in a serious facility. But – your life in those back areas depends on volunteers, not professionals – there aren’t any close by.
With all your volunteer work, you should understand what volunteers go through and their purpose. I assume you do. Not all volunteers are “untrained”. In our region, all volunteers on the fire depts are state-certified; none are “professionals” (as in getting paid as fire-fighters).
I also assume you realize that many back-country areas don’t have the funding to pay full-time skilled professionals such as yourself. I suspect that’s why you live and work in an urban area rather than back-country Arkansas. I’m not cheap either …
But regards “It’s the money”? which was the original topic – Yep, at the high levels – above “paychecks”, it’s about the money. How much is that person’s life worth compared to the cost of rescue? When the Feds get involved, they put money first. Seen it; experienced it. Looks like I’m seeing it with the Helene victims. Triage or bureaucratic nonsense?
When the person has been decapitated or their brains have leaked out due to a collision with the B post or they drove off a 200′ cliff into a reservoir and have been underwater for the 2 hours it took to get to the scene, it’s “death in the field”, not the ride in the ambulance.
I like your stuff; you’re a regular read – but you’re not the only one that’s been around since the 80s. Or 70s either for that matter. I’m not the professional you are but I am commenting as one who was once trained in NEST (before anyone thought of DHS) and other emergency response services, certified fire-fighter, and much of my work is in remote mountain country. Different than working out on the flats.
I suspect you might be busy in the next few days. I sincerely wish you luck and being Florida, you probably won’t have problems getting emergency funding that those in NC weren’t able to get. Because it’s the money. You’ll get paid – will those out in the weeds get paid?
This is your blog. I’ll not continue this discussion.
But thanks for your efforts – I have some idea of what emergency staff go through. We just try to get them to you. Alive but maybe not kicking.
Cederq · October 5, 2024 at 10:27 am
While living in Alabama years ago and a younger body, I belonged to the volunteer Baptist Relief Disaster Crews. We would rally and drive with our cargo trailer loaded with equipment, food, water and changes of clothes and camping gear and our mandate was to clear debris from peoples home, cut trees that had landed on a home owners house and temporary provide cover for no other water damage. Clear houses of mud and water soaked furniture and cut drywall up to mean water level to allow drainage and minimize rot and fungus. Yes, we did some rescue after entering an area, Our 5 man crew were usually the first on site… We weren’t these highly trained rescue personal, but we had training in other areas and buckets of common sense. With my nursing background I could triage the patient, and provide on scene medical care, there were a paramedic, and two nurses besides myself on my crew. Often days later +Fema and Redcross crews would come in and start throwing their weight around ordering us to stop our activities. We ignored them and as the crew leader I had to intervene and state our position and explain that the BSC was a big bear in the Southern states and had a plethora of lawyers to intervene. Quite a few times homeowners would step out with shotguns and order the Fema and Redcross off of their property. They or family and friends had past contact with those agencies and wanted nothing to do with them as they hampered rescue and efforts to save houses and property. I have no love for them having to deal with those petty tyrants.
Ralph F · October 6, 2024 at 7:41 am
I had friends from USAR FL Task Force 1 respond to the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That team (and FEMA) learned a lot of lessons from that deployment. From clothing (April on OK is a lot colder than Miami) to logistics and comms, FEMA upgraded and standardized equipment for USAR teams.
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