New Local Newspaper Editor Disses Trump - Blames MAGA for recent FEMA Camp Fire Fuckery
Nearly three months into the recovery process from the Camp Fire, the federal government has thrown a very large money wrench in to the works.
Faced with the reality that there weren’t enough places to park the trailers or recreation vehicles many people were living in after losing their homes, Paradise and the county both passed emergency ordinances allowing folks to park on their property, as long as they were 100 feet from burnt-out structures.
Mind you, this wasn’t done in secret. The 100-foot distance didn’t come out of thin air. At the time these laws were approved in December, local, federal and state officials were meeting every day to discuss how to respond to the crisis. The collaboration was being praised by the feds as the textbook way to respond to a disaster.
And the people at the table included the local representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. County Supervisor Doug Teeter indicated the FEMA folks had agreed the 100-foot setback was appropriate, and the local agencies moved to allow it to happen.
And now, after folks have been moving home for several weeks, FEMA officials in Washington say, “No no, you can’t do that or we’ll take away $1.7 billion in federal debris removal funding.”
So now the Board of Supervisors and the Paradise Town Council will have to meet Monday, and take it all back. And the people who have moved home will have evacuate once again. The town and county are considering things like allowing temporary RV parks in shopping center or church parking lots. Maybe in the near future the Yankee Hill Hardware Store and Kmart in Paradise will have a steady supply of customers, camped right at their doors.
But it’s a mess, and you have to wonder why it took so long for one hand of FEMA to notice what the other hand was doing. Two possible explanations come to mind.
The first is that FEMA itself may be a mess: the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency. That could be it, given the way it has changed course on things like places to pile debris, and deadlines for people to appeal for aid. That’s not good news for the recovery, because we really need that agency to function well for our communities to rise from the ashes.
The other possibility has to do with Donald Trump’s border wall. With funding stymied by the people’s representatives in Congress, he has raised the option of declaring an emergency on the border, saying it would allow him to spend money to build a wall without Congress’ approval.
It’s a questionable legal theory that would undoubtedly face a legal challenge. But his administration is known to have been casting around for money that can be taken from existing Corps of Engineers and FEMA projects to build the wall. Those projects would be thrown into limbo as the issue worked its way through courts, with the money frozen, unable to be spent on one option or the other.
That’s also not good news for the Camp Fire recovery. This is going to be expensive, and the money is needed now.
We’re sure no one’s going to admit that’s what’s happening with the $1.7 billion, but it is kind of a strange number. It doesn’t have the ring of a number based on calculations of how the people who’ve moved home are going to interfere with the cleanup. It sounds more like a figure from a spreadsheet adding up to the cost of building a wall.
Trump has already threatened to withhold FEMA aid from California because of the bad job we do at raking … err, maintaining … our forests. And he’s the guy who visited Paradise in a presidential show of compassion, then couldn’t even remember the town’s name a few hours later. Our recovery doesn’t even cross his mind.
We’ll know shortly, and have a better idea of what “Make America Great Again” actually means.
https://www.chicoer.com/2019/02/03/editorial-fema-switch-doesnt-bode-well-for-recovery/
Butte County voted for Trump in 2016. Chico Enterprise Record got a "new" editor 1/1/19 after nearby Paradise burned. Mike Wolcott worked for eight years at the San Francisco Chronicle.