FEMA fails to deliver promised shelters, apologizes... for giving interview (12-06-2024--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content, like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] Last hour, I started with an article from The Blaze by Steve Baker and Joseph Hanneman talking about FEMA beginning its exodus from Western North Carolina. There is another part of this article that I want to get to, though, the second half of it. It's a very lengthy piece, but it talks about the overall government response in North Carolina to this storm.

[00:00:55] in comparison to other storms over the last 25 years. So these are just a look at the numbers. The National Guard dispatched more than 51,000 guardsmen to rescue and relief operations after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August of 2005. It was the largest domestic guard deployment in U.S. history.

[00:01:24] National Guard, U.S. Army and Air Force personnel that were assigned to Hurricane Helene relief in North Carolina, a little bit less than the 51,000 that were sent to Katrina.

[00:01:36] It was 6,200.

[00:01:40] Over the course of seven weeks, the last of those service members pulled out the week before Thanksgiving, according to The Blaze.

[00:01:49] The Department of Defense committed more than 16,000 personnel after Hurricane Harvey, 17,000 to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after Hurricanes Maria and Irma.

[00:02:05] And the U.S. military committed 17,000 troops to Haiti after a 2010 earthquake and sent 15,000 to Indonesia after a tsunami in 2005.

[00:02:19] And again, 6,200 here.

[00:02:26] Once again, I said, there's a reason.

[00:02:30] Perfectly explainable.

[00:02:32] Perfectly rational.

[00:02:34] As to why people in Western North Carolina feel like they have been abandoned.

[00:02:38] It's because they kind of have.

[00:02:41] Just before the November 5th presidential election,

[00:02:44] a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Army told Blaze News that the military should have been doing much more in terms of building shelters,

[00:02:53] stringing temporary power to remote areas, rebuilding washed out roads and more.

[00:03:00] Casey Wardinsky, assistant secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs under former President Trump,

[00:03:07] said the failing response by the Biden-Harris administration was, quote,

[00:03:12] quote, pathetic.

[00:03:15] By comparison, Wardinsky said,

[00:03:21] 142,000 guardsmen were activated to fight wildfires in 2022.

[00:03:27] 62,000 American troops responded to Hurricane Ivan.

[00:03:32] With Hurricane Helene in North Carolina,

[00:03:35] support from the federal and even the state government is very, very thin,

[00:03:38] and that should not be the case.

[00:03:41] Danny sent me a message,

[00:03:44] says,

[00:03:45] I am already of the mindset that FEMA should simply be a banker.

[00:03:49] The corruption and incompetence of the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency, or NCOR,

[00:03:57] is equally bad, though.

[00:03:59] What recovery that has occurred has mostly been by the grace of God and the kindness of private individuals and organizations.

[00:04:06] Folks need to remember who needs a primary loss going forward,

[00:04:10] though I'm afraid most will not.

[00:04:12] It is a microcosm of the reforms for which Trump was elected.

[00:04:17] The North Carolina state legislature has a role.

[00:04:21] They have a role here.

[00:04:23] And maybe we're going to see a more muscular posture on this going forward.

[00:04:31] But I also understand, you know, their jobs are a little different.

[00:04:35] They're supposed to, you know, allocate the money, pass the legislation,

[00:04:38] and then the executive is supposed to carry that stuff out with the legislature providing oversight.

[00:04:44] I get that.

[00:04:47] But the NCOR is just a mess.

[00:04:52] They went before we covered the hearing.

[00:04:55] We had the testimony of the director.

[00:04:58] After that testimony, she was out.

[00:05:00] We still never found out.

[00:05:01] I'm unaware if anybody has ever tracked down whether she quit or was fired.

[00:05:05] Don't know.

[00:05:07] Don't know.

[00:05:08] I suggested maybe block grants instead of FEMA.

[00:05:12] Just do block grants and have it based on, you want to do a formula of some kind,

[00:05:17] square footage or acreage, population harmed, density, whatever.

[00:05:26] Like, throw a whole bunch of factors into the mix if you want.

[00:05:29] Or have the states apply for the grants or something.

[00:05:32] I don't know.

[00:05:33] It's going to be inherently political, obviously,

[00:05:36] because you're asking political bodies to free up money for you.

[00:05:43] But, like, I don't know how you just keep doing this same thing.

[00:05:46] And I'm sure FEMA, well, they already have, right?

[00:05:48] They came back.

[00:05:49] So did NCOR.

[00:05:49] They both came back and said, we need more money.

[00:05:53] Even though they're failing miserably, have been failing miserably at this,

[00:05:58] and their answer is, we need more money.

[00:06:00] See, we wouldn't be failing so badly if we just had more money.

[00:06:04] And they're like, oh, my gosh, are you saying that you don't have the money for this?

[00:06:07] Oh, no, no, no, no.

[00:06:08] We're not saying that.

[00:06:09] See, because they got bad PR when they said that they didn't have enough money.

[00:06:14] And then all of a sudden people were responding with, well, wait a minute.

[00:06:17] You've been using FEMA money for the migrants.

[00:06:21] For asylum seekers who came into the country illegally, you've been giving them money.

[00:06:26] You've been paying for hotel rooms.

[00:06:28] You've been doing all of these programs for that population.

[00:06:32] And now you say you don't have money for Americans who are suffering through a natural disaster.

[00:06:38] And their response was, no, no, no, we didn't mean it like that.

[00:06:41] It's a different allocation.

[00:06:43] It's a whole different pocket in the same set of pants, don't you see?

[00:06:49] So you don't need the money.

[00:06:51] Oh, no, no, we need the money.

[00:06:56] Mark says block grants to the states is a great idea.

[00:06:59] And then you can hold governors like our good friend Ray Cooper, hold his feet to the fire and hold them accountable.

[00:07:04] Yeah, it is one of the more amazing things about the Roy Cooper administration that is now coming to a conclusion.

[00:07:16] The amount of disasters, the number of disasters that he has been in charge of responding to, whether it was Hurricane Matthew, Florence, COVID, and now Helene.

[00:07:33] These massive disasters and how crappy he has been as the leader over the response efforts.

[00:07:45] Okay, that part's not actually surprising.

[00:07:47] That's not the surprising part.

[00:07:48] The thing that's amazing to me is how little the North Carolina political press corps seems to care.

[00:08:00] In example after example, okay, COVID is different because the media was kind of playing along with that.

[00:08:07] So they can't really go after him too hard for that stuff because then they're going to be kind of culpable too, you know, because they were sitting there with the triple masks working from home.

[00:08:18] You know, they were COVID afraid as well.

[00:08:22] And so they played a role in all of that.

[00:08:24] They went after, you know, purveyors of disinformation.

[00:08:28] They attacked Dan Forrest who said, you know, masks don't work.

[00:08:32] How dare you trying to kill grandma?

[00:08:35] They were part of all of that.

[00:08:37] So I get it that they're not going to want to hold my good friend Ray accountable for anything that he did that might not have been the best response during COVID.

[00:08:47] The fact that we are now what three years out from COVID almost four and there has still been no accounting any kind of a like a postmortem an autopsy, you know, an after action report to identify things that that Roy Cooper got right, which in his mind, I'm sure is everything.

[00:09:10] But there are things that he did not get right because how could he write a once in a lifetime pandemic?

[00:09:18] He didn't know what he was doing.

[00:09:20] Nobody did. Right.

[00:09:21] That's what we were told.

[00:09:22] We were we're flying or we're building the plane while we're flying it.

[00:09:26] Right.

[00:09:26] But I'm also then to believe that every single decision that was so hard to make.

[00:09:31] That they made the right call in every single instance.

[00:09:34] I don't believe that that's not possible.

[00:09:37] It's that's not logical.

[00:09:40] Yet nobody in the political press corps seems to care.

[00:09:42] And when Roy is gone in a couple of weeks, they don't have to think about it again.

[00:09:46] So, oh, that's just, you know, I was before.

[00:09:49] And I suspect part of it may be that they're trying to protect his legacy for his run for U.S. Senate, I guess.

[00:09:57] If that's what he's going to do.

[00:10:00] But shame on them and shame on them for not holding him accountable for all of the the failures in the response to the other natural disasters.

[00:10:10] To all of the hurricanes.

[00:10:12] And specifically, I mean, you got people down at the coast.

[00:10:15] They've been living in temporary shelters since, what, eight years ago when Hurricane Matthew hit.

[00:10:21] Is that what the West is going to look like?

[00:10:23] As one lawmaker pressed the the N Corps director before she quit or resigned.

[00:10:29] We don't know that either.

[00:10:30] Nobody seems to be interested in that answer in the political press corps.

[00:10:35] But why would we give you the West?

[00:10:38] Why would we give N Corps the West if this is how you handled the disasters down east?

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[00:11:46] I got some messages here.

[00:11:48] This is from John.

[00:11:49] He says, if the federal government can build temporary housing for FEMA employees, why can't they build some temporary housing for the people that need it?

[00:11:59] That is a very good question, John.

[00:12:01] They set up the FEMA housing camps for their volunteers and employees in Candler.

[00:12:08] Well, why can't, like, if we've got these problems getting permitting and all this other stuff, you can obviously contract somebody to come in and build these shelters.

[00:12:18] Well, then why can't you just build more shelters everywhere else?

[00:12:22] I know, these are obvious, logical questions that I ask.

[00:12:28] Hence, there are no answers from GovCo.

[00:12:35] Timoteo sends me a message on Twitter.

[00:12:39] How about the governor declare a state of emergency and suspend all building codes for temporary shelters for victims of Helene?

[00:12:48] Right.

[00:12:49] Right.

[00:12:49] I suggested that the other day as well.

[00:12:50] Like, it seems like that's the obvious thing to do.

[00:12:53] If the governor can, you know, call these emergency declarations, these EDs.

[00:12:59] If the governor can call for ED, then it seems to me that he could be doing that for this.

[00:13:08] And, like, what, you're going to get sued?

[00:13:12] Is somebody going to come in and sue the government for temporarily lifting building permitting regulations on temporary shelters?

[00:13:24] Make the inspectors go and give us a seal or a stamp or something on the temporary shelter that says this is a temporary shelter as per the governor's ED.

[00:13:34] Just do it that way.

[00:13:35] Like, I don't understand what the blockage is coming from.

[00:13:41] Meanwhile, a spokesperson for FEMA apologized to our friends down the hall here at WBTV in response to a question about why the agency failed to deliver dozens of trailers to North Carolina residents displaced by Hurricane Helene.

[00:13:59] The questions came after a FEMA spokesperson told WBTV the week of Thanksgiving that the agency would deliver a total of 103 temporary or portable trailer homes to families by the end of that week.

[00:14:14] At the time, FEMA had delivered 27.

[00:14:19] By Wednesday, December 4th, FEMA had still only delivered 46 homes, well short of the number of promised trailers.

[00:14:29] WBTV learned that more than 500 families have been approved for a FEMA travel trailer or manufactured home in the wake of Helene.

[00:14:36] The agency's slow deployment of the homes means hundreds of families are weathering the snow and freezing temperatures currently hitting the mountains.

[00:14:46] A reporter asked, there could be 500 of these that eventually are given out.

[00:14:50] And the FEMA media relations specialist, Latanga Hopes.

[00:14:57] What is with these Dickensian names?

[00:15:01] Seriously?

[00:15:01] Last name Hopes?

[00:15:03] And you work for FEMA?

[00:15:05] Anything but.

[00:15:06] Anyway.

[00:15:07] All right, hey, real quick.

[00:15:08] If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day,

[00:15:14] send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:15:19] It's super affordable.

[00:15:21] It's baked into this podcast forever.

[00:15:23] And podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:15:28] Send me a message.

[00:15:29] Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and I can show you how it works.

[00:15:33] Run the numbers with you.

[00:15:34] Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:15:38] Oh, Brian didn't hang on.

[00:15:43] Oh, that's too bad.

[00:15:49] Okay, hang on.

[00:15:50] Because I saw Brian's comment and I'll channel Brian here.

[00:15:54] Okay.

[00:15:57] Pete, you're a raging hypocrite, man.

[00:15:59] You want government out of the way.

[00:16:01] And now you're saying you want government to do stuff.

[00:16:05] Ah, that's a fair point, Brian.

[00:16:08] So here's the deal.

[00:16:10] I live in Realville, as Rush might say.

[00:16:14] I'm not the mayor.

[00:16:15] Rush was the mayor.

[00:16:16] There can only be one.

[00:16:18] But I live in reality.

[00:16:21] Just like, for example, school choice.

[00:16:25] School choice.

[00:16:27] I would prefer a dismantling of the government controlled K-12 education system.

[00:16:33] But me being a resident of Realville, I know that a lot of people, dare I even say, a majority

[00:16:42] of my fellow citizens do not agree with me.

[00:16:44] So my concession, my attempt to work with my fellow citizens is to kind of meet them halfway.

[00:16:55] And so say, okay, you want to keep your K-12 system?

[00:16:58] Fine.

[00:16:58] Fine.

[00:16:58] But how about we give the vouchers to people who don't want to participate?

[00:17:02] So give them a choice.

[00:17:03] Let them opt out.

[00:17:04] Right?

[00:17:05] So much like that approach, where I recognize things as they are, I recognize that there

[00:17:12] are a lot of people that want government to continue doing these things.

[00:17:16] And when government comes in and says, we will do these things, first off, I think, no, you're

[00:17:21] not going to do that.

[00:17:22] I'm not confident.

[00:17:25] But I recognize many of my fellow citizens do believe that government will do all of the

[00:17:31] things.

[00:17:32] And then when government does not do the things, I feel it necessary to point out that they're

[00:17:37] not doing all the things.

[00:17:39] But you know me, I am all about solutions.

[00:17:41] And so I offer solutions, again, as a member of Realville, I offer solutions in the current

[00:17:49] framework that we are operating in.

[00:17:52] Would I prefer there be a completely different mechanism for this?

[00:17:56] Yes, I would.

[00:17:57] But we don't live there.

[00:17:58] We don't have that.

[00:18:00] So I say, hey, here are some ideas for solutions inside the current framework.

[00:18:08] I hope that helps, Brian.

[00:18:12] Thanks a lot, Pete.

[00:18:13] You're really smart.

[00:18:14] I thought that was a really good answer.

[00:18:15] And now I'm convinced.

[00:18:17] Thank you, Brian.

[00:18:18] I appreciate the call.

[00:18:19] OK, that's how that call probably would have went.

[00:18:24] Yeah.

[00:18:26] Kudos to WBTV.

[00:18:29] Claire Kopsky, I believe there were other contributors to the piece as well, but she's

[00:18:36] got the byline on the story.

[00:18:37] FEMA apologizes after failing to deliver promised trailers to Helene survivors in North Carolina.

[00:18:46] When BTV asked FEMA, so could there be 500 of these trailers eventually given out?

[00:18:54] And the FEMA media relations specialist named Latanga Hopes said, quote, here's the beautiful part about it.

[00:19:05] The answer is yes.

[00:19:07] And we've done even more so we can handle it.

[00:19:11] Oh, OK.

[00:19:13] So.

[00:19:14] She said, yes, they're going to be given out 500 of these mobile trailers.

[00:19:19] Awesome.

[00:19:19] But.

[00:19:21] They've fallen short.

[00:19:23] They had fallen so short, actually, that BTV asked for an explanation as to why you've only delivered 27 of the homes when you had promised 103 by Thanksgiving weekend.

[00:19:36] And you only did 27.

[00:19:39] Why so short?

[00:19:40] The FEMA spokesperson said they had miscommunication within the agency.

[00:19:47] They're bad.

[00:19:48] Sorry.

[00:19:49] So from now on, we are going to caution against disseminating information with methods other than written communication in the future.

[00:20:00] So the apology.

[00:20:03] Is for talking to you, BTV.

[00:20:06] Sorry.

[00:20:07] That's that's our bad.

[00:20:10] We shouldn't have talked to you.

[00:20:11] That's we will not let that happen again.

[00:20:15] From now on, only written communications.

[00:20:20] The FEMA spokesperson also said.

[00:20:23] That the agency will not be issuing timelines for the delivery of the homes anymore because it's just too difficult to confirm any kind of a timeline.

[00:20:33] They said that was in part because of the necessary utilities not being confirmed at the planned site.

[00:20:42] Also, weather conditions, roads being opened and the recipients showing up at the scheduled time.

[00:20:49] So, in other words, what they are describing is a disaster area.

[00:20:54] So they are not able to meet the timeline because it's a disaster area.

[00:20:59] And FEMA is not prepared.

[00:21:02] To create timelines in disaster areas.

[00:21:07] I guess.

[00:21:08] FEMA said there were 100 temporary homes in North Carolina.

[00:21:12] 46 had been delivered and the keys had been handed over to the survivor.

[00:21:16] Other homes were either undergoing final inspection in route to delivery or waiting for the destination to be ready.

[00:21:26] But no timeline.

[00:21:27] And totally our fault there for telling you a timeline.

[00:21:33] We will no longer do on-camera interviews.

[00:21:37] So that's going well.

[00:21:39] See, there's a solution right there for Caller Brian.

[00:21:43] Right?

[00:21:44] When you promise you're going to have 103 trailers delivered by Thanksgiving weekend.

[00:21:49] And then you don't deliver them.

[00:21:52] The solution is to stop doing on-camera interviews.

[00:21:56] As I understand it.

[00:21:57] That's.

[00:21:58] See?

[00:21:59] We are all about solutions.

[00:22:02] Got a message from Russ regarding Caller Brian.

[00:22:06] who I convinced with the power of my persuasion.

[00:22:11] Yeah.

[00:22:12] Apparently, Brian would prefer government do almost nothing.

[00:22:15] Oh, sorry.

[00:22:16] I would prefer government do almost nothing.

[00:22:19] However,

[00:22:20] if, as Brian wants,

[00:22:21] they're going to take our money and claim to provide services,

[00:22:24] the least we can expect is basic competence and accountability

[00:22:28] for how much money is taken and how it is spent.

[00:22:32] Crazy.

[00:22:33] Right?

[00:22:33] Right?

[00:22:34] One would think.

[00:22:37] Tara, welcome to the program.

[00:22:39] Hello, Tara.

[00:22:40] Hey, Pete.

[00:22:41] Thank you so much for what you do for the western part of the state

[00:22:44] and the people that you know.

[00:22:46] And my son lives there.

[00:22:47] He was not just a little flooding, nothing major.

[00:22:50] But, you know, I love court TV.

[00:22:53] And when the orange man gets in there, I would love it.

[00:22:55] When CNN goes under, do a 24-hour thing about this.

[00:22:58] Court case for all the different agencies he's going to get rid of

[00:23:02] and have them explain themselves.

[00:23:04] Number two, as they, you know, go away.

[00:23:07] I want to know the money they spent on themselves.

[00:23:09] When you volunteer somewhere, I've been to wherever you go,

[00:23:14] you're not eating.

[00:23:15] You don't have a cafeteria set up for you.

[00:23:17] You're told to bring.

[00:23:18] I wonder how wonderful they felt FEMA eating nice warm meals

[00:23:23] and going out and seeing these people have nothing.

[00:23:26] Right.

[00:23:27] It's a complete utter failure.

[00:23:29] I don't know the level of service that the people that, you know, were sent.

[00:23:35] Because a lot of the FEMA people that come in, that's not their full-time job.

[00:23:39] They have other jobs that they do, right?

[00:23:40] And they come in and they do this work for FEMA.

[00:23:42] So I don't know all of the particulars on that stuff.

[00:23:46] But, like, to me, if you have the ability, as FEMA obviously did,

[00:23:51] to set up these housing complexes for their people and their contractors,

[00:23:57] then why couldn't they do something similar for the victims?

[00:24:03] Well, that was my other question.

[00:24:05] Where is the – all the tents that we still have in Charlotte and these tent cities

[00:24:11] that are still around and how long it took – are they – were they breaking the law,

[00:24:16] setting up tents, setting – you know, doing housing?

[00:24:18] You remember that problem in Charlotte for so long?

[00:24:21] Now it's still – they just set up a tent somewhere.

[00:24:23] But nobody can go arrest them.

[00:24:25] That's people that are homeless due to some of their decisions.

[00:24:28] And then you've got people that are really homeless now due to a catastrophe.

[00:24:33] And you're going to put a law with this crap, even though it's temporary?

[00:24:38] It's insane.

[00:24:39] It drives me literally insane.

[00:24:41] All right.

[00:24:41] Well, don't go literally insane.

[00:24:42] That's not good.

[00:24:43] Tara, I do appreciate the call.

[00:24:45] I advise against going insane, if you can help it.

[00:24:48] I appreciate the call.

[00:24:49] Have a great weekend.

[00:24:51] Yeah, I think there is a solution here to lift the regulations,

[00:24:56] to cut the red tape, just temporarily, to help people, you know?

[00:25:00] All right.

[00:25:01] That'll do it for this episode.

[00:25:02] Thank you so much for listening.

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