Thanks, FEMA...For Nothin'

FEMA, this Call-Out goes out to you.

After an unprecedented year of rain (even for Pittsburgh), landslides, mudslides and sinkholes have become commonplace.  Seems if you turn on the local news, not a day goes by that you don't see road closures and even more construction repairs than usual due to the wrath of Mother Nature.

Your Crusading Blogger Herself has had to scrub her cellar four extra times this year due to excessive spring deluges, over-zealous warm-weather storms, not to mention a hurricane or two.  We had a sinkhole that opened up on the road in front of our house, necessitating the removal and replacement of two drainage pipes on my property, presided over for ten days by the combined efforts of Messrs. Thump, Bump, Clang, and Bang.  Let me tell ya: you haven't lived until you've had your peace disturbed by a piece of heavy machinery slashing open the street in front of your house at 12:50 AM of a Friday.

And we are lucky compared to the pretty much daily pictures of homes and businesses extensively damaged or destroyed by land- and mudslides.  So with a documented $22 million in local damages, Allegheny County and Governor Tom Wolf applied to FEMA for aid, only to be turned down, appealed, and then turned down again.

Why?  The extensive damage is very much legit, and on the record.  We definitely had a typical year's worth of rain by September.  So what's the hold-up?

Is it that our tax dollars are being spent on studying the mating habits of the tsetse fly again?  Would we be more likely to receive this FEMA aid if our Mayor and Governor were Republicans and local Senator Bob Casey wasn't branded as "that resisting obstructionist who wouldn't even meet with Kavanaugh," (the words of his mid-term election opponent Lou Barletta, and not this blogger)?

No, of course not.  Wink, nudge.  And as usual hard-working people and small business owners take it on the chin.

And, as usual, the pendulum swings.

https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2018/10/16/allegheny-county-landslide-disaster-relief-denied-fema/