The floods in Middle America are bad. Like I said in a post last week, it seems much worse than what happened in New Orleans after Katrina. The Red Cross needs resources, both financial and physical. The point of that post was that the MSM seems to be ignoring this disaster and the Red Cross compared to what we saw in New Orleans.
I sarcastically joked as to one possible explanation as to why there isn’t the media coverage you might expect . . .
Why the relative silence in the face of such a widespread tragedy? Or is the aid getting to the people, all evacuees have a roof over their head, and there’s nothing to be gained by accusing Bush of totally improving FEMA? But I haven’t seen any such stories. Like I said, you probably wouldn’t anyway. You have to ask yourself, what’s different here?
Here is the bad news that the media does not think important. A quick report from the field.
It’s much worse up here than you see on TV. It’s much further reaching than they show. You only get the devastation pictures where there are many feet in a major town – but there are countless basements that had several feet in them and even some collapsed or caved in. there are many small towns that don’t make for good footage that you’ve never heard of because gas is too expensive to go that far out in the country. There is NASTY rashes running around these lakes because all the septic holding tanks have been over run with water. there are towns dumping RAW sewage in the rivers because their city systems went under. remember – they all feed into the Mississippi, then to the gulf, if it hasn’t seeped down into the aquifer. One elected official said to me yesterday – “well, we aren’t puttin’ anything in that ain’t already there”
Here’s something else i’ll tell ya if you haven’t already figured it out: If you have any yard – you better be planting what ever vegetables you like to eat. because with the WHOLE Midwest (the corn belt, the soy belt, the WHOLE Agricultural belt) is under water and rotting in the ground – it’s all going to go up this fall. maybe sooner than we think. supply and demand is about to be upset i believe. just a word to the wise.
And here is the good news for FEMA that you haven’t seen anywhere else.
Below is an update of the support provided and the actions taken by FEMA and its federal partners as of June 18, 2008, in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin and Missouri.
Joint Federal Activities: FEMA, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. General Services Administration and the Defense Logistics Agency have worked together to provide
- 3,222,000 liters of water – enough to provide for more than 465,000 people per day.
- 213,120 meals ready-to-eat (MRE’s).
- 12.8 million sand-bags bags – enough to reach from Washington, DC to San Francisco if laid side-by-side.
- 46 generators.
- 2,500 tarps.
- 4,032 rolls of plastic sheeting – which would measure more than 50 miles long if laid end-to-end.
- 23 Mobile Disaster Recovery Centers (MDRCs).
- 30 trucks deployed to help with debris removal.
- Another 108,000 liters of water, 50 generators and 7 MDRCs are currently on the way to impacted communities.
H/T Shery
