If there's anyone in cyberspace who has been reading this blog, I have decided to shut it down. Not, I'm sorry to say, because there was an overwhelming response. Rather, I've been quite underwhelmed. As far as I can tell, not one person has taken notice.
I originally created this blog to let people know that our government was not taking proper care of people affected by natural disasters, such as our devastating flood. I can't say this was ever resolved in any suitable fashion. Instead, FEMA basically ignored us and waited for us to go away.
While we were totally cheated out of everything we desperately needed in the way of personal property, we did manage to replace everything, with zero help from FEMA. It took months, with no help from anyone whatsoever, and in particular, none from our "community." Unfortunately, as we had yet another flood almost exactly one year to the date of the previous flood, many of those replacement items we'd worked so hard to get were damaged in flood #2. Since we had insurance, we are once again in the process of replacing everything, only this time not entirely at our own expense. (It's still somewhat at our own expense, because there is no such thing as "replacement value" on contents with flood insurance. Even brand new still-in-the-box items, of which there were many, considering we'd just frigging replaced the flooded ones from the first flood, still were subjected to a deduction of 10% in depreciation, if memory serves.)
Our main goal is to get out of this flood plain. We purchased a very modest home because we believe in living within our means, but flood insurance or not (which is still ridiculously expensive), there is nothing like not having a flood in the first place. If we had a million dollars worth of items (which we don't) and a million dollars in insurance to cover it all, it still wouldn't be worth the trouble. I would forfeit the insurance money in a second to not have experienced either flood - or the work needed to recover from them. It is back-breaking work, and we've both been literally in pain for months from the sheer effort it takes to clean floors, tote up dry items and carry things to storage. We've both managed to hurt ourselves, and healing is going very, very slowly.
The other factor in this is my hope that with the new administration, things will greatly improve with FEMA. I have to say that with the luck of the draw, after this last flood our FEMA inspector was spectacular. He spent almost 2 hours in our home, asking questions, looking around, doing his job. This was quite the antithesis of the two inspectors from last year, who each spent 10-15 minutes in here, tops. This latest inspector explained that it behooves FEMA inspectors to rush through inspections, as they get paid per each one they complete, so if they can get through 10 in a day as opposed to 5, they must be doing very well, indeed. Meanwhile, inspectors like our latest one do everything right and get less of a reward. Well, what can one do? I am one person and with the pain I now suffer from two years of hardship in a row, I'm exhausted. I can't fight it anymore, and my hope is the new administration will take care of these issues and let inspectors know in no uncertain terms that they must do a thorough job during an inspection, not a slapdash one.
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