LACK OF SHELTERS CRITICIZED …
S.C. governor Nikki Haley isn’t the only public official whose response to “Floodmaggedon” has left a lot to be desired. Richland County, S.C. emergency management officials are being slammed for their tardy response, too.
“As bad as it is in the city of Columbia, S.C, it’s much worse in rural areas surrounding the city,” one source told us.
Those rural areas are the purview of Richland County government … which has reportedly been slow to move in response to the crisis (far slower than neighboring Lexington County).
As of 1:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, Richland County’s parks and recreation department had yet to open shelters to thousands of residents who had to be evacuated from their homes. In fact sources on the (soggy) ground tell FITS it took repeated calls from state lawmakers and Red Cross relief aides to get officials to begin the process of opening the shelters.
“They’ve got emergency assets streaming in from all over the south but no where to put them – and nowhere to put the people being rescued,” one first responder told us.
“We practice this every year,” one angry county council member told FITS. “I don’t know why, though, because they’re not doing any of the things they practiced.”
County emergency response leaders have also failed to keep local leaders abreast of the developing crisis, the council member told us.
“We’re flying blind,” the council member said, referring to a deluge of calls received in the aftermath of the storm. “These people are tired, soaking wet and most of them have just lost their homes – what they need right now is someplace to go.”
31 comments
when your highest priorities are more guns, overturning Obamacare, and cut taxes, this is what you get, somebody running on raising taxes for infrastructure, better education and safer gun laws would be burned at the stake much less elected
Yes,but we have our”Conservative values.”
What do gun laws have to do with the others ? Increased taxes for infrastructure is OK even though some politicians getting off the already taxed money would help. Better education is a winner for everyone. I’m a conservative and would wholeheartedly support a nickel tax on fuel. There is enough money for education if the combined fed. state, and county money followed the student rather than the other way around. The money is there , just the priorities are wrong.
they are all left leaning ideas, i don’t think the money is there in education and you are correct the priorities are all wrong, we don’t to throw money at new buildings, we really need to up the anti on teachers salaries to attract the best and brightest
I asked someone a couple of years ago when did Republicans start hating teachers? There are plenty of overpaid professions today, but teaching isn’t one of them.
We dont hate teachers we hate educrats and their waste of our money, dont simplify our disdain of government waste by saying we hate anything, it’s not true,
My thoughts about all this hatred of public employee salaries and benefits, is they still have the last shreds of what the average US worker use to have – a good salary, job security, pension and healthcare package into retirement. That’s plenty to be pissed off about – but who let big business get away with it and promote all these changes?
I dont know sorry,
They hate public school teachers because they want private schools to run things. The private school teachers will be underpaid too but the administrators will support Republicans rather than the public school administrators supporting Democrats. It is all politics and has nothing to do with improving education.
The Democrat Party run teacher unions destroyed public education.
When the democrat Socialist NEA and AFT teachers unions mandated that teaching kids how to put a condom on a banana was more important than teaching critical thinking skills.
What’s pathetic is that many to most white teachers and other government workers vote Republican…they must think it’s that other teacher or what ever that that GOP politician is demonizing. But, they pay the price when they vote for the guy who wants to screw them over and seem oblivious to it.
You just made my last point to you so clear,
…that
… you just don’t get it.
Keep on riding the government gravy train til it runs out or until people like me quit supporting it, then what will you do?
Horseshit.The public schools will spend $12-15,000 a year per pupil.
Parents can spend less than $5,000 a year for a Christian school education or < $2500 a year to home school a child.
Administrators make to much money and teachers are payed what they are worth.It is a great gig.
I sent my child to a private Christian school. If I had another child, I wouldn’t do it again. They put more emphasis on religion and their dogma than actual education. The principal/owner of this school even created his own class on politics, taxes and government – which he wrote himself. Very rightwing and government conspiracy minded nonsense. If they stay thru to graduation they are socially repressed and brainwashed. Which is OK, if you think the Duggars and Kim Davis are examples of how you want to live your life.
Even a good thing can be carried to the extreme.
Almost, Flip. Administrators are vastly over paid while GOOD teachers are underpaid. If pay were determined by student performance rather than seniority things would change.
“wholeheartedly support a nickel tax on fuel”, the real test would be if you would support raising the income tax or sales tax on cars and boats…
Income tax – no . Sales tax on cars and boats – yes. I am a proponent of the Fair Tax. There should be no income tax.
We could build new, better dams with metal recycled from confiscated guns?
Have you ever taken a good hard look at the money they spend on these things already, funny how some of the richest liberals I know lick their chops to tax me more …
What we really need is someone to really put in the time to get more from government run agencies which have enough money already,
…start by trully smoking out all the corruption. Know one in their right mind would willingly give our inept government more tax money to pocket or blow …
really, look at the average pay of a garbage collector, it is about what we pay our teachers and more than we pay our police and firemen, and that is shameful
Well, garbage collecting is more dangerous than police work statistically speaking.
Look at the salary and retirement package of the average tax paying citizen and it shouldn’t be hard to figure out why we want them to do better with what they already get before asking for more.
But, you don’t want any help from a union to get you better pay and benefits, do you? You can do it all by yourself.
Actually I’ve mentioned to many people in my trade which is home construction that a union would be great to hold the feet to the fire of large track builders who are destroying our living with the continued and illegal use of illegal immigrant labor, but unfortunately their just as blind to the republicans agenda as you are to the liberals inability to see what a wreck to our economy the same illegals are as long as they become your voting block.
.ie read fits article
Columbia water, sewer neglect. ..
People who are relying on government will now have their expectations lowered. That’s not a bad thing.
We don’t need any federal assistanc!!!
Very Truly yours
Nikki
No wait!! I changed my mind. That was when the Secret Service was offering to help us make sure hackers couldn’t steal taxpayer information and when CMS offered to provide healthcare for poor people. We have business people and Republican voters involved here. We definitely want federal aid.
20 (+/-) years ago, Beasley administration, Hugo still fresh in the mind, I was assigned to shelters in towns 100 miles from the coast due to hurricanes approaching SC – wish I could remember the names/2 in one year – and no residents showed up because the storms didn’t turn out to be that bad…but, County Emergency, DSS and Red Cross (late) were there and ready.
They appear to have known what was coming with this flooding. So, there is no excuse for the shelters to have not been staffed and open Friday night, Saturday AM at the latest.
From what I’m hearing here in the hinterlands, there does appear to be a serious flaw with the county seat located DSS trying to run shelters in other county municipalities when all roads to those shelters are flooded and impassable.
It was never a decent thing to do to dump these shelters on mostly low paid DSS workers. But, floods should teach us that an assigned county shelter needs to have local resident volunteers trained to staff them with Red Cross, not people who have to ride 20+ miles from the county seat to get there.
Just because a system worked during Hugo, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have learned enough to make changes as necessary and realize hurricanes are not the only kind of disaster we will ever deal with.
Emergency communications were terrible. With the power out, no internet, no wireless obviously, the radio was the only source of info. Not one time did I hear the emergency buzzer, no reports from the country, the state, the Highway patrol, nothing at all. With Keven Cohen being the only live station able to get on there and take calls, that was it. WIS couldn’t put together package spots to make announcements, and even public radio simply said–go to our website for more info. Didn’t even bother to give the url. There was massive flooding right near my location–didn’t even hear about it until two days later.