I've got to notate *from disaster zone* from irene. I live in new bern nc, we had power outages, some trees down, some flooding. This was not a major event.
But unlike past, stronger, hurricanes - I noticed several things different. Biggest thing I saw was an entire parking lot filled up with big trucks that had "EDS - Emergency Disaster Services". There had to have been at least 20 of those things...semi trailors. And at all times of the day there were men sitting around outside the trailers in chairs, obviously in no major hurry. I never saw any other companies other than local service companies doing any repair work. The city electric and progress energy handled the power outages, the local electricians handled the smaller service repairs. Local contruction and handyman services, tree removal services, cable and telephone services all were busy taking care of things. I still today have no idea what their scope of work was. Everything is pretty much back to normal now and they left on friday to return to god knows where...
I suspect that they collected huge sums of money just by being here, based on they high shine look of everything they had, but question if they needed to be here at all. I would love to learn about what they did, and how much they got paid to do it, but my gut tells me that I could never be granted such privledged info. Maybe some. Investigative journalism could shed some light.
Next thing I noticed was the instant police state situation that came of the situation. There was a curfew for 6 pm for the county, and most of the area had very minimal damage.. only structural damage occured of a tree fell on a house, or flimsy structures tossed about. There was no need for a curfew, yet the government was instantly attempting to gain control. How much money went to this little project?
I also have to wonder, just where is the 10b in damages they claim? I know a couple roads washed out in low washout prone areas, but what else?
Is this simply a case of "I spent $500 to fix a $3 problem. Therefore total damages are 500?"