FEMA needs to enter an area with the campers, equipment, and supplies to sustain themselves, not by grabbing up what little remaining resources that the refugees/evacuees are depending on & utilizing! They need their own self sustaining capability as the military has and uses.
This is how DMATs operate. We arrive with 3 days of essentials in our personal kit.
We also used to have our own caches consisting of all the equipment necessary to set up our field hospital as well as additional sustainment equipment like MREs and water purifiers, that we brought with us in trucks. However, the Feds, in their infinite wisdom, has removed our team caches and turned them over to private contractors to maintain and deliver to us (in theory)once we are on site. This did not work well in our most recent experience.
Among other problems, supplies were disorganized, missing, expired or otherwise incorrect. Also, it seems no one gave any thought as to how we were supposed to unload giant metal containers weighing several hundred pounds each from the back of commercial trucks without a lift-gate, forklift or anything other than muscle power, in a vacant lot in the middle of a disaster area. We adapted and overcame, but we weren't happy, and spent untold worker-hours sorting out the mess. Its a good thing we weren't met by hundreds of patients needing immediate care.
Jeff
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