So FEMA's problems aren't only at the top

Philip Blackwell, senior pastor of the First United Methodist Church in downtown Chicago, recently provided an anecdote that says way too much about federal government's failures in the post-hurricane world.

The story was part of a lengthy sermon, so if you aren't interested in theology, don't click here. But I'll excerpt here what Blackwell said about FEMA:

About 70 laity and clergy from the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church went south to help hurricane victims. The farthest south they could get was Laurel, Mississippi, about 100 miles short of the Gulf Coast. This was three weeks after the storm. FEMA had not arrived yet. The United Methodists, organized by the United Methodist Committee on Relief and with supplies from our Sager-Brown resource center in Louisiana, were there. ...

One small group went over to Jasper County, overwhelmingly poor, rural, African-American. They pulled trees off of houses and patched roofs all week. "Why didn't you leave?" they asked one 75-year old woman with a tree embedded in her house. There was a car sitting in the driveway. "I could not get my 95-year old mother out of bed. We just sat in the dark and listened to the wind of the hurricane and then the wind of the tornadoes that followed and prayed that none of the trees would hit where we were hiding. You're the first people we've seen who've come to help."

At the end of the week the United Methodist churches in the area invited all the people to come to a resource day. All the agencies would be there to help. Only the United Methodists showed up. Both FEMA and the Red Cross promised to be there, but they did not appear. It was found out later that the FEMA man actually drove into the parking lot of the rural church, saw all the people coming, knew he would be overwhelmed, and drove away. [emphasis added]

Um, well, at least he showed up? There's just not a positive spin one can put on that story -- as far as FEMA is concerned.