Index

Trump is an Emergency

Anybody in the business of emergency planning needs to forget the federal government

FEMA was threatened first, a warning shot

Back at the end of January, the orange sewer pipe threatened FEMA with summary destruction. Those of us with emergency management responsibilities started seeing our worst nightmares coming true. Even with a stripped-down budget, FEMA was the only place we could turn for help in a real emergency. Threatening FEMA is threatening the entire emergency management structure of this country.

I took that as a warning, and started talking to people about what we could do without FEMA. In February it came out that the fascists even were developing a “plan for deep staff cuts and drastic changes at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” I also included the NWS in the questioning for what I considered obvious reasons. I had no idea how fast I would be proven right, though.

NOAA/NWS is now bleeding brains

At the end of this past week, the orange menace and his fascist billionaire consigliere started the process of gutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS). This was quite predictable, since the anti-science lunatic right can’t stand the reality of global warming and want all evidence of it erased. Since NOAA and the NWS unavoidably supply evidence more-or-less proving global warming on a regular basis, they have to go away (in the hallucinatory world of orange fantasies.)

Unfortunately for those of us dealing with reality, that means that the only working early warning system for bad weather is being destroyed. Since the reality of global warming includes the weather turning more hostile, thisstupidity means that more people are going to die. I wonder how the orangutan’s mini-me in Florida is going to deal with his survival system being wrecked, but that is more idle curiosity than anything. The stupid Nazi deserves what he has coming. Those of us with relatives living in Florida should have removed them from the insane situation long ago anyway. Florida is likely going to be one of the first places to figure out just how badly the orange cult lied, and many of them are likely to pay with their lives.

As someone with emergency management responsibilities, I am in the process of trying to figure out how to at least partially replace the NWS. While there are commercial networks of weather stations, they charge serious money for their data, so we would have to find a way to pay for what our tax money used to supply while the fascists in Washington give that money away to the rich.

The radar systems used by NWS are government owned, so they will be shut down as the budget for them goes to zero. These are the systems that supply the local tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings at the community level, so those warnings will probably also end. Even if they don’t end, they will be orders of magnitude less accurate and timely without the weather radar systems. The stations themselves will likely be sold to the highest bidder, ending their usefulness to the general public.

The satellite data the NWS uses for weather prediction also has commercial customers, so that will likely continue working, but no longer be free to those of us who want to protect the public. Once again, something that our taxes paid for (the satellites and all of the infrastructure supporting them) will benefit only the rich and corporate interests.

What can we do?

Sadly, there are people in the emergency management area that can’t look past their orange cult affiliations to see this reality, let alone try to come up with ways of dealing with it. I was talking to one guy in the emergency communications area, and I asked if he had any ideas about how to deal with the oncoming orange hurricane. I said “As to FEMA and NWS, well, Trump has already threatened FEMA once. The NWS would be obvious ‘government waste’ from the Muskrat’s point of view, so I don’t have much hope there.” He told me I was being funny. I sent him the news about NOAA/NWS cuts, and he told me “You need to stop. Do not contact me by any method”. This idiot lives in coastal North Carolina, so I have to feel sorry for anyone in that area. Brainwashed stupidity doesn’t belong in life-preserving jobs.

Back in reality, it is quite obvious that the fake “government efficiency” bit is just an excuse to wreck things. I personally think that we don’t need more killed by government stupidity, and that is exactly what the fascists in Washington are doing. To me the NWS is absolutely necessary, and more so now because of how destructive global warming is being. I am beginning to think that we need to start a non-profit NWS to save the lives that the fascists don’t care about.

If anyone has ideas about how we could collect the billions of dollars needed to replace the stuff that the fascists are trashing, please feel free to create the charity and get it started. There are plenty of former NWS employees already out there looking for jobs, and I am sure more will follow, so there is plenty of expertise available and freshly on the market. The problem is going to be paying them and coming up with the money to rebuild the infrastructure required to support them. Obviously the destroyers are moving faster than we can ever hope to build back, but we need to start somewhere.