Local reports put some Illinois National Guard units heading east to assist with Irene. Regards, Bob S.
On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:04 AM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Aug 29, 2011, at 3:13 PM, Paul Stenquist wrote: >> >>> Well, we'll just have to disagree on this one. I believe it was >>> indeed much ado about very little. >> >> I'm not surprised it seems this way. From what I saw it looked like >> they were expecting a lot worse than what actually happened. With >> Katrina in their minds they would not have wanted to screw this up as >> doing so would guarantee losing the next election. >> >>> The federal government declared New York a disaster area before it >>> was a disaster area >> >> I did wonder about that I wonder if it's a procedural thing as >> making declarations like that can free up certain sources of funding, >> give extra legal powers, allow civil defence / the armed forces / >> national guard to be mobilised, and all that sort of thing. > > It's mainly about making recovery/reconstruction money (government > guaranteed low interest rate loans [1]) available thru FEMA. > > It's very seldom a natural disaster is serious enough to require Federal > troops. For hurricanes, that's mainly Coast Guard, who would be doing what > they do anyway, and don't have to wait for disaster declarations. A lot of > times the scope of what's declared a disaster in the wake of a hurricane is > based on what the Coast Guard can observe from their rescue helicopters. > > Going back to Hurricane Floyd in 1999, North Carolina got some assistance > from active US Army CH-47 helicopter units, but those units were from Ft. > Bragg in North Carolina and were actually ordered to render assistance > before the disaster declaration was made. The actual "boots on the ground" > were all NC National Guard - plus an additional CH-47 unit loaned by > Georgia's Governor. > > The governor of any affected state doesn't need Federal permission or > disaster declaration before using the state's National Guard for disaster > relief. The National Guard is a local resource that can be employed much > more quickly than Federal troops could be. > > There are also pre-existing regional compacts between some states to share > National Guard resources, such as that CH-47 unit Georgia loaned to North > Carolina in 1999. North Carolina National Guard doesn't have any heavy lift > helicopter resources of our own. > > But what we do have is an aerial fire retardant dispersal system that fits > the Air Guard's C-130s that gets used from here to California every year. > > > > [1] Not, however, interest rates as low as the Wall Street Banks got! > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and > follow the directions. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
