DR-4145 Colorado

Shortly after returning from my trip to Utah, I was informed that our team would be spending our third and final round working at FEMA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. I had mixed feelings about this. I have a strange dislike for D.C., based solely on the fact that every time I go there it's about 110 degrees and 90% humidity and a bottle of water costs $5. But there were a lot of other teams that would be stationed there and of course there is a ton of fun stuff to do.

The day before we were supposed to leave, the plans changed. If you haven't heard, there's been terrible flooding in Colorado, and the President has declared it a major disaster. All the DSAT teams were told to stay. The rest of the teams were told to wait through the weekend on standby (as of Monday morning they were told to wait through the week on standby as well).

So the next day, instead of heading east, we headed to the FEMA Region VIII office in Denver. We got all of our IT issues taken care of on Saturday and got briefed on updates to the reporting app that we use in the field on Sunday. The weather was too bad and the conditions were still too dangerous for us to be out in the field.

Both of those days we had the afternoons off. I savored it, because I knew it would not happen again for a while.

Honestly, when they told us we were deploying for another disaster, all I could do was take deep breaths and tell myself I had one more in me. It exhausted me to think about it.

Our team has not had a normal work schedule since we deployed to West, TX towards the end of April. Since then we have been on disaster, probably averaging around 70 hours per week. Our "relaxing" project was working 50 hour weeks in Long Island. I was excited to go to headquarters, and have time to hang out and do fun things with my team, and have a relaxing last round.

When I heard that I would probably be putting in 12 hour days, 7 days a week for the next few weeks, I kind of deflated.

To be perfectly honest, it also sucks to know that I'm still going to make $80 a week whether I work 40 hours or 80 hours. Trust me, I didn't join FEMA Corps for the money, but it's hard, after working overtime for 4 months, to be broke.

But...today was our first day out in the field, and I have to say, my head's back in the game.

I didn't really think they would send us out today. We had a meeting in the morning, and I figured we wouldn't be cleared by safety to go out in the field yet. But they surprised me. The TL's had a short meeting with FEMA and came back with our assignments. My team was being sent to Boulder. When we got there, it was the familiar "hurry up and wait" because things were still chaotic, but then we got word to go to the Disaster Recovery Center in Longmont, and off we went.

They were happy to see us. The DRC was just getting set up, and people had been there earlier in the morning wanting to speak with FEMA. The city emergency managers were awesome and met with us to learn about how we would be able to help the survivors, then set us up and let us go.

For the first 10 minutes no one was really coming over to us, but as soon as it started, it never stopped. I was registering people nonstop from around noon until 5:30. At 5:30, I stopped to take a break and have a piece of pizza in the back room. I was in there for a while talking with one of the awesome volunteers who was there helping to run the DRC, and my crew lead came in and said that she didn't mean to rush my break, but there were some Spanish speakers in line waiting to get registered. I came back out and there were about 10 people in chairs in front of my empty computer, waiting to get started.  Then it was go, go, go until the DRC closed at 7. We drove back from Boulder, got food for the next day at Walmart, and got back to campus at 9.

It was a long day and a rough day. My Spanish got put to the test almost all day long because Longmont apparently has a pretty large Hispanic population, I had to get back into DSAT mode after being in mitigation all last round, and I made an 80 year old woman cry because I had to be honest with  her about the limits of the assistance FEMA would be able to offer her in the unfortunate circumstances she was in.

But at the end of the day, I also feel like we helped a lot of people. We got them started in the process of receiving assistance, and we offered them some comfort and clarification in a really difficult and confusing time. I was also really proud of our team. We were FEMA at this DRC. There were no reservists there yet, just us, and we got things done. Like bosses.

I'm exhausted, but in a good way, and ready to get back in it tomorrow.

P.S.

If you would like to help out the folks in Colorado, click here to learn how.