US Hurricane Sandy Victims Still Without Power, Heat, Water

The US is turning 'Japanese', as some Hurricane Sandy victims have spent nearly three months without power or running water. Other families are still living in hotels, with FEMA picking up the tab which has to be renewed every two weeks.

With the presidential election over, no more photo-op necessary for the power that be.

They still have 17 more months to go until they catch up with the Futaba-machi residents living in an abandoned high school since April 2011, eating bento meals that they are now made to pay for.

From Fox News (1/25/2013):

Sandy victims left out in the cold during arctic blast

The brutal cold snap affecting much of the country is taking a devastating toll on victims of superstorm Sandy, many of whom are camped out in tent cities or living in homes without power, heat or running water.

Those unable to get proper lodging have hunkered down in their homes without the basic necessities of heat, electricity, or running water.

“Many families in Union Beach are using space heaters to warm upstairs,” said Jeanette Van Houten, a resident from the small New Jersey town that was among the hardest-hit communities. “There’s people with no heat, no electric, but they are staying in the house because it’s better than having to deal with FEMA and having to leave hotels every two weeks.

“There are families who have chosen to stay in their homes just to have some sort of normalcy,” she added.

The cold wave has brought single-digit temperatures to the Northeast, some 10 to 15 degrees below normal for the time of year.

Residents of the New Dorp Beach section of Staten Island have taken shelter in tents set up by aid workers with only small propane heaters, sleeping bags and blankets to stave off the bone-chilling cold, according to reports.

In the Queens neighborhood of Breezy Point, one of the most storm-ravaged areas of the region, residents lined up at the local recovery center this week to pick up donated ceramic space heaters. Many of the suffering residents in the five boroughs of New York City say their homes still are barely habitable, despite the city’s so-called Rapid Repairs program that was supposed to make their homes livable quickly.

According to the city, construction teams for the Rapid Repairs program have restored heat, hot water and power to more than 12,000 city residents, with work still to be completed in another 1,900 buildings.

Some 3,500 families are still living in hotels in New York and New Jersey, with FEMA picking up the tab. But the expense authorizations expire every two weeks and must be renewed, leaving families in a state of anxiety over where they will sleep at night.

(Full article at the link)

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Hurricane Sandy Aftermath: FEMA Solicited Bids for 2.3 Million Gallons of Water on Friday

No words yet on how they plan to deliver them, supposedly on Monday, once they select the vendor.

From FedBizOpps.gov:

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Follow Your Government's Instruction and You'll Be OK, Says the Government

First, the Japanese government who is losing credibility by the day, if not by the hour, among the Japanese population and the world at large over its (non-)handling of the nuclear and radiation crisis.

The Ministry of Education and Science has just created a new booklet for elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools to be used in the new semester starting in September to teach children about "radiation", and what to do in a nuclear disaster like the one they've been having since March 11.

So let's take a look. What are the children supposed to do in the post-Fukushima age? Here's from Asahi Shinbun (3:02AM JST 8/14/2011) as to why this booklet has been created:

• To give children the basic understanding of radiation

• To prevent bullying of children from Fukushima in their new schools outside Fukushima [for those children lucky enough to get out of Fukushima]

• To teach that radiation is emitted from radioactive materials like uranium, and that we may be exposed to radiation from natural sources as well as in medical treatments anyway

• To teach them the effect of radiation in different dosage

• To teach them that radiation is not contagious

• To teach them to pay close attention to the announcements by the national government and municipal governments in the event of a nuclear accident and evacuate accordingly.

About the last point, many people did just that. They followed the government instruction on evacuation and ended up going where the radioactive plume went - north and northwest, then change direction and headed south from there. The government instruction, assisted by the nuclear experts back in March, was to go as far away from the plant, in any direction, as the strength of radiation decreases with the distance. What they forgot to tell the populace is that it was not a nuclear bomb that exploded in a flash but a broken nuclear reactor releasing a tremendous amount of radioactive nuclides in a plume.

Anecdotes of children from Fukushima being bullied were reported back in April and May, and the media made much of them. Whether they were true or another "baseless rumor" from the government, I do not know.

The booklet continues the government's position to confuse "radiation" with "radioactive nuclides", making it appear as if radioactive nuclides that exist in nature are no different from the man-made radioactive nuclides. (That will be another post.) I'm pretty positive that the booklet will have the illustration of the different level of radiation from different sources, rendering everything into numbers in microsievert and millisievert.

And here's the US government, telling farm supply stores, gun shops, military surplus stores and even hotels and motels to watch out for domestic "terrorists". The FBI brochures ask proprietors, clerks and others to watch out for "potential indicators" of terrorism. In the brochure "handed out to surplus stores by agents of the FBI in Denver in recent days", those "potential indicators" include, among other seemingly legitimate concerns:

• Insist on paying with cash

• Significantly alter appearances from visit to visit (haircolor, beard, dress)

• Have missing fingers/hand, strange odors, bright stains on clothes

• Make bulk purchase of the following items:
  Weatherproofed ammunition and match containers
  Meals Ready to Eat
  Night vision devices, night flashlights
  

Cash is now a terrorist tool. Flashlight, too.

Never mind that, as the linked article points out, another branch of the same government, FEMA, tells citizens to store up on flashlights and matches in a weatherproof containers and ready-to-eat foods as part of disaster preparedness. So you go to a surplus supply store to stock up on these essential disaster preparedness items as recommended by FEMA, and you may become a "terrorist" according to FBI. Catch 22.

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