Why Kafka Would Like FEMA
Meanwhile, you had meet with an insurance adjuster. You had come to a rough agreement about the extent of the damage. A check, a first installment, would be sent out immediately. That was three weeks ago. Meanwhile your contractor had spent tens of thousands of dollars ripping things apart and cleaning and dehumidifying your house. It was then you discovered that the check, when it came (it would come, wouldn’t it?), would be made out to you–and your mortgage company. Oh. They, of course (of course!), would only dole out the funds in dribs and drabs, in checks made out to you and your contractor, and of course (of course!) only after their inspectors (what a lot of inspectors there are in the world) had ascertained that the work was done in a way that satisfied your mortgage company. It was unclear whether that would be before or after the town’s building inspectors had decided whether the work was up to code. If, that is, any work could be done, because a building permit could only be issued after the Planning and Zoning board certified that any work could be done on the house in the first place. But hadn’t the insurance company insisted that you must immediately take steps to prevent more damage by removing anything exposed to salt water (floors, walls, wiring, etc.)? Yes. But no one spoke of Planning and Zoning then. At that time—only a few weeks ago, but how distant it seems—everyone was urging you to push ahead quickly, quickly, maybe you’d be back in the house by Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or New Year’s. Certainly by the end of January, or February at the latest. Unless, of course (of course!)—well, let’s just say that there are still more chapters to come.
I used to think that Franz Kafka exaggerated things. I see now that he was not so much a novelist or fantasist as he was a documentary artist. I can’t say I am happy about the discovery.
Roger Kimball as one-the-scene reporter. Different from his usual analytical mode, but always good. I particularly appreciate reading a “kafkaesque” reference from a writer who has actually read Kafka—a rare, very rare, pleasure.
Excellent article, glad to see what it’s like out in the trenches of Sandy recovery. I look forward to future installments.
That being said, much as I’m sure we all feel your pain and sympathize with your encounter with Kafka, this is really a local government problem, not FEMA … right?
I mean, all FEMA has done is sympathize with your plight and ask you to fill out forms … not exactly effective, but at least not actively preventing you from fixing your damage, right?
D
What FEMA has not done is to wake up and note the problem dozens of disasters ago and set a standard for planning boards so that locals would be aware prior to the disaster in their locality that their planning board had no alternates prepared in case that a disaster came that destroyed more than their processing capability. FEMA did not arrange with mortgage holders so that they would not cause excess damage by their own delays. It was their job to do these things but they did not bother.
Having gone through two hurricanes in Florida (Charlie and Wilma) I can empathize. The recovery will take years. People will be permanently relocated by necessity rather than choice and lives will be permanently disrupted. For a more true picture of what will happen look at New Orleans.
FEMA is a big mistake. Its purpose is over sold to the citizens. All flash, no substance.
I feel sorry for the people in New York. Their political class is weak and is only interested in retaining power through deception.
Before reading this post I read a post on Instapundit with the line (paraphrase) “the only thing government can do efficiently is kill people.” Profound.
Question: Why are the horror stories coming out about FEMA only in New York? I bet there are experiences like this in the other states hit by Sandy as well.
Government is also pretty good at collecting money.
FEMA came through West Virginia, gave the counties least affected lots of water and mre’s and dropped off a small amount in the worst affected counties and ran away. Our local disaster management people are pissed, and rightfully so. Some people are just now getting there power back and the down and broken tree clean up will take months.
We can only wonder how many of these inspectors (or their predecessors) approved construction and mortgages in flood-prone areas.
– your healthcare will be handled, but without the sympathy.
It does sound very Kafka-esque. Let’s just hope, Roger, that your fate isn’t the same as that of ol’ Joseph K’s. The culmination of his relationship with the ever-present “They” in The Trial was more than a little disturbing.
Wait, I claim plagiarism. I first heard this story, near word for word back in 2005. Then it was set in the South. Or perhaps the story the same but the names have changed to attract new innocent victims. I guess it can’t be plagiarism bur just that 7 years on, nothing has changed. Fema still has their forms, the building permits reassert themselves, the inspectors rise up to retake their domain, the insurance payments go the mortgage holders who have more forms, etc.
Oh, and as related, none of this is told to the people who buckle down to salvage their homes. Nope, it’s all get to work for rebuilding, then there is this inspector, that approval, which when satisfied are replaced by new and demanding inspectors and approval boards.
A little experiment to see if FEMA has made any progress on this little bureaucratic spiral of death. After Katrina I spoke with a lady whose home had been flooded. She being not completely devastated registered with FEMA via the website announced. Then after a long while, she trucked on down to see the sympathetic FEMA workers in person. She waited dutifully there in line for one her turn. Confident as on the wall above the worker’s heads was a large banner proclaiming that the website was an alternative to standing in line. Well, finally her time comes, when, surprise, the workers at their computers had no record of her registration. A phone call or two later, the lady, the FEMA workers learn that the FEMA workers on the ground had no access to the records of people who used the website. Some contract/database sharing issue. Now, remember, that website was posted right above these workers heads. Logically, a presumption might be made that the two were related in some way. Ah, but grasshopper, you have made the classic mistake, logic has no place when dealing with the government.
BTW, this being the heart of the Left, is some of that new code you must upgrade to simply demands for energy efficient upgrades that in no way enhance the safety or utility of your home? And look out for the soon to arise comment period on the hearing as to whether rebuilding should be permitted, being that “officially” the politicians say Sandy was the result of climate change. If that is so, then worse storms are expected and rebuilding is not a wise planning choice.
Our family dealt with FEMA after the Virginia earthquake in August 2011. Our heating contractor was called by them and asked why he had to replace our cracked boiler with such a new one since it resulted in an upgrade from the 30 year old one that cracked. The contractor was stunned since not only would he not be able to find 30 year old boilers/furnaces for sale but also because the federal government FORBIDS the manufacture of furnaces as inefficient as the one that cracked in half. He then asked them if FEM was a part of the federal government. My chimney contractor was asked why he couldn’t simply remove the two massive chimneys in our 1838 house instead of repairing them. He told us he wanted to be polite but didn’t think there were people that stupid employed by the feds.
Alas and alack,
‘The Government giveth, and the Goverment taketh away.’
Government bureaucracy is the Art of Wasting Time and Money in action. It has ever been and it will ever be.
I went thru Katrina in New Orleans, and Kimball is understating the frustrations, if that is possible. At the time the OSAKA earthquake was the standard by which recovery was measured. It took OSAKA approx. ten years to “recover” (however measured) and at that time only 1/3rd of the pop. were the original pre-earthquake inhabitants. New Orleans is pretty much following that template, but at an even slower pace. And remember, it’s not enough just to get one’s home repaired. If the financial/business/economic base of the area is destroyed one may not be able to financially afford to. Katrina saw half the hospitals in New Orleans destroyed/closed and half the medical staffs in the area displaced. As a result, many displaced Nurses, for example, didn’t have a job to come back to even if their home didn’t flood.
Good Luck to the Sandy victims, life will never truly be the same..
“I bet there are experiences like this…”
Yes.
Galveston, Texas, was hit by Hurricane Ike in 2008. Little coverage and less interest unless you were directly affected by the storm surge.
The downtown had 7 feet of salt water. My neighorhood had 30 inches. Houses built after WWII were heavily damaged, some were demolished. Houses built prior to WWII were built at a higher elevation and many were spared.
City permitting and inspections were a nightmare but eventually were changed to allow contractors to spend the daylight hours working on the site and not sitting in line to get permits.
#2, David H Dennis: “I mean, all FEMA has done is sympathize with your plight and ask you to fill out forms … not exactly effective, but at least not actively preventing you from fixing your damage, right?”
In 2008, FEMA had an operating budget of $5,800,000,000 (that’s 5.8 billion US dollars, for those who can’t figure it out). Even without the legally required annual federal budget having been enacted for over 3 years, and WITH the inclusion of baseline budgeting’s automatic increases to bring us current (2012), that’s a helluva nice amount of money to have lying around for sympathy extension and form processing. Removing those funds from the federal maw and passing some portion of it out directly to people fighting to repair storm damage would provide them with immeasurably more help than they’re getting right now.
“. . . at least not actively preventing you from fixing your damage , . . . ” indeed. We could conclude that there’s a fair bit more than an ounce of prevention in what pretends to be a pound of cure. How utterly stupid of you, Mr. Dennis.
FEMA has 2600 permanent employees and maybe 2X that in on-call reservists (called a cadre – not making that up). If you had a Star Trek transporter and beamed all the permanent employees to a Sandy or Katrina, they would still be inadequate in number to address the problems. Not enough of them, no logistical resources, etc. Obama would like a civilian agency with its own Army, just as big, just as powerful, as the real Army. Maybe they could provide better aid, but what would they get up to between disasters? No thanks.
From the FEMA website, the reservists are expected to be able to respond in 24-48 hours, so you are properly your own first responder for the first 3 days. But 4 weeks out is outrageous. Nicole Gelinas has commented elsewhere on the charlie foxtrot that is the government-raddled LI power company that has done a worse job than the neighboring ConEd. Glen Reynolds observation cited by Robert Ashton is spot on.
I live less than 1/4 mile from the ocean. While I envy the waterfront people their view, in history there have been days when they would envy me my 63 foot elevation, and there will be those days again.
When I was active I used to attempt discussing some works by Kafka. With much madning madness I thought I had cracked a couple of aphorisms and a short story or two. My contribution today will not be to exhibit my madness by saying something rational about Kafka’s world, rather give an example of the bureaucratic insanity of German bureaucracy that he faced and that still exists today.
Some months ago I accompanied my Philippino cleaning lady to the, say, the “Office of Work and Social Aid”. The poor (literally economically) Philipinno spoke no more than a word or two of German. So I was there to interpret for the lady so that she could get social aid. The bureacrat in charge rattle off a series of rules so quickly that I could not grasp them. At one point I interrupted the rattling and asked the Philopinno in English if she understood anything. She said resoundingly “No!”. I noted that to the bureaucrat and communicated that she was speaking too rapidly for me. The woman looked exceedingly offended (which I found out later that she was), something like a Kafkian metamorphosis, and, while pointing her finger at the helpless Philippino cleaning lady, looked with passion into my eyes and said: “It is my duty to explain the rules and it is her (the cleaning lady) duty to understand them!” So the bureacrat explained and we two did not understand. Beaurocratic duty fulfilled! To make the story more kafka-ish, I later learned that I was banned from the beaucracy because I had insulted the bureaucrat.
German bureaucratic bungling can historically take on stupid aspects, at time with very tragic results. When the German army invaded Poland in WW II communications broke down and dispersed German units began firing at each other. Stupidity! Then tragedy! The German military excused such friendly fire killing by blaming it upon Polish resistance groups (which were at the time non-existent) and began rounding up innocent Polish citizens, particularly men, and executed them for active resistance.
One “Kafka” experience I have had has left me, however, extremely affected. After killing untold Jews from Kafka’s part of the world (Kafka himself was long since dead), the camera panned over the countless Jewish trunks with the family name painted on in white. Just about the first suitcase I saw bore the name of “Kafka”. It was not the same Kafka of literary fame, nor even a family relative. Nevertheless, I still have a Kafka-madness experience whenever I view that documentary film.
One of the failures of government education is to teach that government is first, last and always a political animal, that is to say its primary metric is political. Where it engages in economic activity, it is always for political ends and the primary metric will be political.
Business is an economic animal meaning the metrics are primarily economic.
It is a mistake to ignore these core truths when defining the mission of FEMA and the like. The management and employees of an insurance company would express their sympathies by settling a disaster claim as quickly and efficiently as possible. A government employee expresses his sympathy by actions that his management have instructed him to show, actions that have a high political value at the instant. In both cases, sympathy is welcome but what counts are material actions that lead to making the citizen whole as soon as possible. Clearly FEMA’s metrics at this time are more intangible than material.
To Sandy’s victims: After the storm, enjoy the fruits of electing the smartest people in the room. This is one of the reasons why I moved out of New York state and why I would never place myself in the jurisdiction of such voters, politicians and bureaucrats ever again.
Didn’t Obama say he was going to see that red tape was eliminated?
And, of course, he always keeps his word–doesn’t he?
Granting that my sympathy for disasters in Blue states has declined precipitously since November 6, I do realize that in every Blue state there is a veneer of my countrymen and women. But even before the election, from a distance of over a thousand miles I could tell that this was going to be a self-inflicted cluster. In NYC, it was obvious that as far as local government was concerned, once Manhattan was cared for, the job was done. That bureaucracy would rather refuse help from outside if the source was not PC [Non-Union electricians? Heresy!]. That they were concerned with funneling money to mainstream relief organizations that take most for overhead, rather than getting aid to those in need [the Red Cross and United Way staying at luxury hotels].
Katrina and Sandy are merely different aspects of Leftist rule under stress. In New Orleans, they had elected layers of local government known primarily for their casual corruption, like lower level Party apparatchniki. If they were not profiting personally, their concern for the residents was minimal for the duration of their incumbency.
In New York and New Jersey, they are more like mid-level apparatchniki; whose loyalty is to the system, the bureaucracy, and the government fiefdom they work for. In neither case, is there concern for the residents. Maintaining the bureaucratic form, personal power, and covering exposed body parts with reams of properly filled out paper is the priority.
The thing is, the overwhelming majority of those affected by this lack of concern, voted for it and supported it for generations. They are getting what they voted for, and the manifest failures will not change their loyalties one iota. They will continue to support the same bureaucracy, the same incompetence, and the same concealed arrogance. You, and the few non-Leftists there, are caught up in a practical demonstration of the concept that “Darwin Never Sleeps”.
I grant that this is your home, and that you need to try to restore it. But there may well come a time when you realize that the game is rigged against it. At that point, you may have to decide to relocate elsewhere. One of the factors may well be somewhere where the government is not conspiring against the individual as blatantly as in the Northeast.
Subotai Bahadur
Why does the following keep coming to mind?
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their substance.”
Commenters have noted government can do two things efficiently: death and taxes. I think we could do with less of both.
There are many issues surrounding disaster response and the difficulty of improving the system. Here are only a few. One is that the money flows only when the disaster has been declared. That means no – or almost no – training for reservists in peacetime. As has been mentioned, reservists make up by far the largest percentage of FEMA employees.
Also, the agency has an aversion to following Standard Operating Procedures in many areas, which means that reservists often can’t count on doing the same thing in the same way in each disaster. So to some degree, every disaster starts from zero and procedures are reinvented each time. Coupled with the lack of training, this leads to problems. Not a good way to run a railroad.
Then there is the fact that full-time FEMA employees almost never deploy to disasters for any extended period. In part this is a union restriction, as is a lack of multi-functional training. This means there is only a weak connection between the world of the reservist in the field and the world of the full-timer. In some Federal agencies, mid-level (exempt) full timers deploy to the field much more frequently as management teams that might remain together over many years. This is the case with the US Forest Service in fighting wildfires and the US Army Corps of Engineers in many kinds of disasters. Both of these agencies can be quite effective at what they do.
Finally, FEMA and its predecessor, Civil Defense, were built for another America, an America of neighborhoods. This was also an America of churches, the Rotary Club, the Boy Scouts – a Tocquevillian America of associations. The assumption, unstated but clear when looking though old Civil Defense documents, was that citizens would naturally be self-organizing in response to a disaster, probably around those organizations to which they already belonged. FEMA would rely on them to learn the situation and then channel resources through them back to the community.
In the Cold War, it was assumed that much of the emergency aid, debris clearing and some reconstruction would be done by volunteers who needed only a hardhat and a shovel. And who would they have been? They would have been guys who had been through WW2 or Korea, who had some memory of privation and of military discipline. They also had a higher tolerance for personal risk. That America of associations and tolerance for risk no longer exists, or if it does it is only in places or in an attenuated way.
After the multiple Florida hurricanes in 2004, my area was spared the worst of the storm, but the next county over was hit pretty hard. Entire neighborhoods had 100 year old oak trees thrown around like toothpicks, and it was going to take a long time to clear all those trees before power could be restored.
I volunteered with my church group for 2 weeks, sunup to sundown (or later when we got some generator run lights), just chain sawing and clearing branches. We didn’t ask for anything, since most people were without power and living on cold canned food.
The professional tree crews were working the main roads, so that power crews could rebuild the main power lines that had all been damaged.
The only government we saw, occasionally the local police would hold up traffic so we could drag a large tree out of the road.
The FEMA crews never spoke to us, since we were volunteers, and didn’t show up on any of their reports.
C Seidel: It’s not that government is good at death and taxes, it’s that there are no efficient private enterprises in the same fields to show just how poor government performance is. The closest equivalents are gangs and individual criminals, but you can’t run an efficient enterprise when your labor force consists mainly of guys who either couldn’t hold down a McDonald’s job or are flat-out crazy – and teamwork suffers when you’re pretty certain your partner is just waiting for the chance to knife you in the back.
I wish to express appreciation to the writer for this wonderful post http://brazilianweave46.anime-festa.com/Entry/1/