My educated guess on this is: No predeployments of assets

Posted on: October 5, 2024 at 06:06:07 CT

in Georgia or North Carolina. The focus was Florida. (2) the overall Leadership in FEMA. There are scatered reports of prepositioned teams waiting days for new deployment orders. The overall all posture of the disaster response is slow. The FEMA leadership (Washington) was slow to grasp the scope and severity of the situation. Part of this is due to lack of communication. The main central exchange codes for telephone communication are down. Likely 80-85% of cell towers. People on the ground can not tell outsiders of their situation. Unless you have satelite communication you simply can not properly assess the situation. This is hampering rescue operations.
(3) Citical lack of helicopters. Both for rescue and supply operations. With respect to FEMA it is likely a lack of familarity with terrain and difficulty assessing and processing the damage due to thirty inches of rain. While Emergency support function 9 (ESF 9) was declared , (The Stafford Act) which puts FEMA as the lead agency (not Homeland Security) They have the authority to order Deparment of Defense (DOD) assets. It is a mystery to me why this hasn't been done?

It is easy to sit on the sidelines and say what should or shoudn't be done, it is quite another to be confronted with extensive damage to lives and infrastructure hampered by the lack of functional communications.
The first priority is saving lives.