In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, politicians were eager to appear in the hardest hit communities, displaying concern, promising salvation… and scouting out photo-ops (OK, I’ll cut New Jersey’s Governor Christie some slack. The man did appear to be sincerely shell-shocked by the devastation in his state.).
 
 
Hustling to prevent the bad press that Bush got for Katina, the feds immediately dispatched FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) to the rescue. Yet – more than two weeks after the storm struck, displaced residents were still facing a temporary housing crisis. And some 800 unlucky souls were hopelessly stuck in a makeshift tent city in Oceanport, NY called “Camp Freedom,” which the Asbury Park Press claimed more closely resembles a prison camp.
 
The reporter interviewed a couple of FEMA’s “guests” ~

“Sitting there last night you could see your breath,” said Sotelo. “At (Pine Belt) the Red Cross made an announcement that they were sending us to permanent structures up here that had just been redone, that had washing machines and hot showers and steady electric, and they sent us to tent city. We got (expletive).
 
“The elections are over and here we are. There were Blackhawk helicopters flying over all day and night. They have heavy equipment moving past the tents all night.”
 
As Sotelo tells it, when it became clear that the residents were less than enamored with their new accommodations Wednesday night and were letting the outside world know about it, officials tried to stop them from taking pictures, turned off the WiFi and said they couldn’t charge their smart phones because there wasn’t enough power.
 
Welcome to the part of the disaster where people start falling through the cracks.

 
It does sound like a POW camp!
According to ABC-NY on November 13th;

While FEMA has approved thousands of people for rental assistance, the supply of available apartments does not come close to matching the demand.

Surprising? Not really.

FEMA’s slow housing response in the aftermath of Sandy was forewarned in (a) Congressional investigation following Katrina.
 
It faulted FEMA for lacking ”clear guidance on specific temporary housing options” and warned that without those guidelines, future “disaster victims (would be) at risk of not receiving temporary housing as quickly as possible.”
 
“We concluded that they had not fully implemented our recommendations,” said Dan Garcia-Diaz, of the Government Accountability Office.
 
The head of that 2009 investigation says FEMA has yet to come up with the temporary housing guidelines.

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A touching photo-op; Barack Obama comforted Donna Vanzant, owner of the North Point Marina in Bergentine, NJ, days after the storm.
Nobly rushing to appear presidential in the midst of his re-election campaign, he promised “immediate assistance.” So far – nada.
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Common Sense 101.
Consider… how many hands does each tax payer dollar have to pass through before it finally reaches the people or project it’s intended to aid? How many levels of bureaucracy and how many miles of red tape must it traverse? Throw in a few personal or inter-agency power struggles, add a couple petty tyrants to the mix, and it’s amazing that any money ever finds its way out of the central planning behemoth.
 
Even assuming the best of intentions, is it any wonder that FEMA’s response to Hurricane Sandy was underwhelming to say the least?
 
Daniel Greenfield, writing at FrontPageMag is a little less charitable; How Obama’s FEMA Criminally Botched the Hurricane Recovery Effort ~

FEMA, along with the Red Cross, failed abysmally at Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, and that story wasn’t told before the election because the people in a position to tell it had no power and the media wanted Obama to win. Afterward the story is slowly trickling out.

 
Greenfield quotes the Village Voice (of the Left):

FEMA and the Red Cross was next to invisible. Weeks after the storm, many New Yorkers in storm-damaged neighborhoods had yet to see any sort of institutional relief at all.
 
A private recovery worker providing transport and logistical support to the first responders (EMT crews) told the Voice about receiving a request for blankets and sleeping bags needed at Floyd Bennett Field. He was confused—wasn’t that the FEMA headquarters? Shouldn’t goods like that be going out to the city?
 
“I called my contact back for clarification,” the logistics worker tells the Voice. “He says to me: ‘We’re firefighters and EMTs and nurses. We’ve been here for days, and they haven’t let us off the compound, they haven’t given us marching orders, they haven’t even given us our equipment. We’ve been sleeping on plastic chairs since we got here.’”
 
Through his work with other relief operations, the logistics worker knew there was acute need just down the road for medical checks, prescriptions, and other work for which the medical workers would be perfectly suited.
 
“I asked, ‘Why haven’t you been sent out?’” he says. “Then he just lays the story on me, tells me about all the personnel they have out there, more than 100 ambulances, two paramedics per ambulance, everybody waiting for marching orders.”
 
Horrified, the logistical worker offered to help transport them to a place where they could be useful.
 
 
“He said they couldn’t do it because FEMA had them all under contract, and they couldn’t go out without FEMA’s say-so. They were so frustrated. They came all this way, and now they’re not going anywhere, and there’s something in their contract telling them they can’t even throw up their arms and say ‘F**k it’ and go into the city and do good.”

Help was arriving for some – just not from Big Nanny Government:

Volunteers and donated supplies are flooding into the Rockaways. Religious groups, for-profit recovery companies, Williamsburg kids in skinny jeans and inappropriate shoes, thousands of vehicles and people are pouring onto the peninsula in numbers that choke the Cross Bay Boulevard and Marine Parkway bridges, backing up traffic for hours.

 
Assistance came from the most unlikely sources. A recovery station in the New Dorp section of Staten Island;

… was set up by members of the Hallowed Sons, a Bay Ridge motorcycle club that crossed the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge that first night to check on the family of one of the club members and never left…
 
…By Tuesday morning, the waters had receded, and the Hallowed Sons had set up camp in the Oceanside Park, serving food and sending teams out with residents to their small, single-family homes to remove wreckage and junk out of the ruined basements and first floors. On a bedsheet they spray-painted the words “Hallowed Sons MC, Just Ask for Help.” Aside from the shell-shocked residents, they were the only people on the scene…
 
…the Hallowed Sons became the de facto recovery operation in New Dorp. With no one else on the ground, volunteers from unaffected parts of Staten Island, Manhattan, and as far away as Ohio made their way to New Dorp and attached themselves to the motorcycle club.

 
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“Government efficiency” is an oxymoron. The federal government is simply too bloated, and bogged down in endless rules and regulations, to respond quickly and effectively when a natural disaster strikes. They churn through millions – billions – of dollars, yet more often than not just make things worse.
 
Maybe they should get out of the emergency relief business altogether and let local governments, competent charitable organizations – and motorcycle gangs – handle things.
 
After all, it’s still that uniquely American spirit that spurs individuals to lend a hand to a neighbor in need.
 
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Related:

 
Latest word from FEMA to Island: Stop ~ No more donations from volunteer groups. It’s not that the victims of Sandy have their needs met, but that FEMA has strict rules what can and can’t be accepted. 😯
 
 

Hurricane Sandy: Staten Island Survivors ~ Photo essay at The Atlantic.
No one’s praising FEMA. In fact, one Staten Island resident was rather stunned when; ‘FEMA Just Walked Up to My House, Stuck a (“restricted use”) Sticker On the Door and Walked Away’ – Fox video interview
 

Fox News Insider Hurricane Sandy Aftermath ~ Latest updates
 
From Katrina To Sandy, FEMA Rumors and Failures Keep Swirling ~

… in 2010 FEMA audited hundreds of millions of dollars it distributed in relief money, sending out 83,000 notices to those who received—and almost surely spent—agency cash. According to the Washington Post, the government was looking to recoup $385 million of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma aid money.

Good luck with that!
 
Adding insult to injury ~ I Told You So Alert: Sandy-Ravaged New Jersey Families Face $6,933 Tax Hike. New Jersey will be the hardest hit state when the Bush tax rates expire on Dec. 31st.