Free Republic

<p>To the north of California's famous San Andreas fault is a less known, but possibly more deadly, fault line. The Cascadia subduction zone runs some 700 miles from northern California to Vancouver.</p> <p>In a deeply reported article for The New Yorker, Kathryn Schulz tells the tale of how this fault lies dormant for periods of 243 years, on average, before unleashing monstrous tremors. The Pacific Northwest is 72 years overdue for the next quake, which is expected to be between 8.0 and 9.2 in magnitude.</p>

...only a fraction of the aid money earmarked for recovery has been used, in what some claim is a painfully slow and opaque process. Only $5.2 billion of the pledged $47.9 billion had been tapped by cities and states by the end of August, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And tracking those funds has been complicated, lawmakers said. "Transparency is woefully lacking. We don't know where the money is. We know people have been approved for grants, but the money has not been distributed," said New Jersey Assemblywoman L. Grace Spencer, chair of the environment...

Following the bread crumb trail of FEMA orders, retired State Senator Sheldon R. Songstad of South Dakota State issued an “Emergency Fema Region 3 Alert!!!,” on August 13th. Region three is comprised of; Washington DC, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. Songstad’s research turned up some very interesting facts. Each item on its own could go unnoticed, but the collective facts may be worthy of your attention and scrutiny. The U.S. government appears to be preparing for a major event. It appears that this event is being staged for approximately Oct. 1st. Let’s look at the numbers and dates....

President Obama will gain one more day of respite from the controversies that have crowded in on his administration Tuesday, as he tours the New Jersey coast to inspect the recovery and rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Six months after Superstorm Sandy devastated the Jersey shore and New York City and pounded coastal areas of New England, the region is dealing with a slow and frustrating, yet often hopeful, recovery. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless. Housing, business, tourism and coastal protection all remain major issues with the summer vacation — and hurricane — seasons almost here again.

Underwater doesn't even begin to get at the heart of Maurice Corkery's predicament. "This was my summer home," the Delaware County plant manager said of his little rancher on Third Street in Ocean City, N.J., flooded with its foundation cracked - totalled, really - by Sandy. "I was trying to think of a time line," he said. "It's been so long. I'm so screwed up. I haven't seen any money. Where is the money? All they do is talk about it." [snip] "It seems like people who are responsible and have paid for coverage are the losers," he said. "The...

The post-storm housing — a refugee camp on the grounds of the Monmouth Park racetrack – is in lockdown, with security guards at every door, including the showers. No one is allowed to go anywhere without showing their I.D. Even to use the bathroom, “you have to show your badge,” said Amber Decamp, a 22-year-old whose rental was washed away in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. The mini city has no cigarettes, no books, no magazines, no board games, no TVs, and no newspapers or radios. On Friday night, in front of the mess hall, which was serving fried chicken and...

Volunteers and disaster victims have taken rescue, recovery and security into their own hands on New York's storm-ravaged borough of Staten Island, where they say FEMA has forgotten them. Already without power for more than a week in the wake of superstorm Sandy, hard-hit residents of the borough's South Shore braved a nor'easter Wednesday night, many -- perhaps hundreds -- huddling in condemned homes and ignoring orders to evacuate out of fear looters would take what little Mother Nature has left them. "FEMA packed up everything yesterday and left the area," said MaryLou Wong, whose home in the Midland Beach...

FEMA's vaunted "lean forward" strategy that called for advanced staging of supplies for emergency distribution failed to live up to its billing in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. In fact, the agency appears to have been completely unprepared to distribute bottled water to Hurricane Sandy victims when the storm hit this Monday. In contrast to its stated policy, FEMA failed to have any meaningful supplies of bottled water -- or any other supplies, for that matter -- stored in nearby facilities as it had proclaimed it would on its website. This was the case despite several days advance warning...

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has placed a rush order of two million meals to be delivered to Floyd Bennett New York Harbor Parks, and Lakehurst New Jersey. The solicitation was placed at 2:30 pm EST on 2 November 2012, with a response time of no later than 8 pm on the same day. The solicitation was amended less than four hours later for providers to provide a quote of four million meals, preferably of the self-heating variety. The request is for self-heating Meals Ready to Eat (MRE) with a 13-month...

Natural disasters usually follow the same political trajectory: First the incumbent experiences a bounce as he tours the impacted area, shows his concern, and pledges help to his beleaguered constituents. But then reality sets in and the shortages, delays, mishaps, deaths, and devastation becomes apparent and people turn against the incumbent. George W. Bush had his Katrina. And now Barack Obama has his Sandy. Last week, Obama asserted a kind of ownership of the storm by touring New Jersey in the now infamous embrace of Republican stalwart Governor Chris Christie. Now that we are all appalled by the lack of...

. "And he's going to do whatever it takes to make sure that the American people are safe and secure."

He's trying to come off as so in charge. The fool can't find his way to a microphone to explain why four Americans died under his watch, yet for Sandy, he's saying, "No red tape. Whatever the states need, just let us know, blah, blah, blah..." Too bad he didn't show this kind of leadership back on 9/11. He cut into Chris Wallace's show too, jerk.

A person posted a remark on a Facebook private message group that I got included on. She claimed that 0bama was on MSNBC (today, I think) talking about FEMA detention camps for those who weren't going along with his reforms in his next administration. She said youtube had videos but I didn't find any. She's apparently not on right now because she's not responding to my questions. I figured if anybody knew, it would be someone on FReerepublic. At any rate, this is a heads up. Maybe we should be checking the net in case the interview does exist but...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The federal government has denied Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's request for individual assistance to help homeowners hit by a June 29 windstorm, Tomblin said Thursday night.

President Barack Obama has declared Washington, D.C. a major disaster zone, but it’s not because of the red ink flooding from his pen. It’s not due to the president’s collapsing approval ratings. And it has nothing to do with the mud-slides and verbal infernos that he has loosed on his political rivals. Obama declared D.C. a disaster zone Tuesday because of the August 23 earthquake that damaged some pinnacles and a gargoyle on an Episcopal cathedral, frightened some zoo animals, dropped some bricks into an alleyway alongside Ecuador’s embassy, and cracked the stones near the top of the Washington Monument....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama says that while Tropical Storm Irene is weakening, it is still a threat to those communities in its path. Speaking from the Rose Garden, Obama says the public is still at risk of flooding and power outages.

Before Hurricane Irene made landfall, environmental extremists were spouting off three certainties about the storm: It is catastrophic; it was caused by global warming; and it is all President Obama’s fault. On Thursday, climate alarmist Bill McKibben wrote, “Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming.” ... [snip] The past few years have seen significant body blows to the global warming theory, including major revelations of altered, misused or just plain fraudulent data, undue financial interests and appearances of impropriety among climate scientists, and contrived “carbon markets” closely tied to global warming alarmists who stood to make millions of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama visited the Federal Emergency Management Agency's command center on Saturday as Hurricane Irene began making its way up the East Coast, and 6,500 American troops were told to be ready in case they are needed for relief work. The center helps coordinate the government's response to natural disasters such as this weekend's hurricane, and the president offered encouragement to emergency management staff from across the federal government. "Everybody here, you guys are doing a great job," Obama told dozens of workers who were at their computer stations. The workers wore red or blue vests...

The earthquakes yesterday scared people along the East Coast, but the truly terrifying earthquake may strike the Midwest—and FEMA is preparing for it. Early in the morning of May 16, while most of America was being titillated and transfixed by the appearance in court of the then-suspect Dominique Strauss-Kahn, an urgent message was suddenly received at the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, D.C Reports were streaming in of a catastrophic earthquake, magnitude 7.7, that had struck the Midwest near the town of Marked Tree, Ark. First reports were alarming: phenomenal property damage; casualty figures were...