West, TX

As I'm sure you're aware, on April 17th, a fertilizer plant exploded in West, TX. The blast destroyed a nearby apartment complex, a nursing home, schools, and many houses in the vicinity, and damaged hundreds more. Of the 2,800 residents of West, 15 were killed as a result, most of them first responders who had been called to the fire which led to the explosion.



The Middle School

 Not long after, my team was informed of the possibility of our deployment to West as part of the Disaster Survivor Assistance Team (DSAT). We were issued equipment to use in the field, and told to pack our belongings. We were waiting on the President to say the word. Most disasters only require Public Assistance from FEMA. This means, the federal government will assist the state with repairing things like roads, bridges, and government buildings. Individual Assistance (IA) is what helps individual homeowners. Region VI felt pretty confident that Obama would sign off for IA for the West explosion, so we packed up all our stuff and were ready to leave by last Tuesday. It didn't come through, so we pulled out enough stuff to sleep and then packed up again the next day, because if it was declared, they wanted boots on the ground as soon as possible. Still nothing. We stayed "FEMA flexible" until Saturday, at which point we started to settle back into our rooms at Camp Copass, because we were told that the longer it takes to go through, the smaller the chance that it will. However, while we were at work on Wednesday, our TL came in and announced we were going to West. Because of the process of getting clearance through AmeriCorps as well, we didn't actually leave until Friday around noon.

Arriving in West was a bit surreal. As we pulled into town, we began to see boarded up windows, and as we drove closer to the site of the explosion, we began to see bricks blown off the side of houses, garage doors caved in, and piles of debris set out on the sidewalks.

We got to the high school, where FEMA and other agencies had set up shop. It was all a bit surreal. We made our way to what used to be an English classroom, and was now the DSAT office. On one wall an English assignment dated "April 17, 2013" was written on the whiteboard, on another wall the whiteboard was covered with blown up satellite pictures of west with different colored dots representing different degrees of damage, the contact info for different agencies, meeting times, and priorities. And here we were amidst the seasoned FEMA staff, in our crisp blue jackets, feeling a bit out of place.

We went over the game plan, were introduced to the FEMA reservists we'd be working with, and tested out our systems and connections to make sure our equipment was ready to go out in the field. Then a couple of the staff members took us for a drive around the town to see what kind of damage we would be dealing with. If you followed the story, you probably saw images of the apartment complex next to the plant. The walls were completely blasted out from one side to another, with the contents strewn across the lawn. A car on the side closest to the plant was crushed. The roof of the nursing home on the opposite side had fallen in. The way I understand it from what was explained to me is that the negative pressure basically caused the houses to collapse in on themselves. All the windows shattered in, leaving shards of glass all over the floors. The cielings caved as well, covering most people's possessions with insulation and fiberglass that's impossible to remove. Whole walls were caved in in some houses, or blown completely through and out the otherside, leaving the odd sight of a kitchen littered with sheetrock and the sun shining through from the other side. On the outside of some houses, things like "God Bless West" and "West Strong" were spraypainted on the brick. After some safety briefings and a welcome from the local emergency manager, we headed to the Econolodge in the neighboring town of Hillsboro, our home for the next few days until we can secure other lodging, and tried to get some sleep before our first day in the field.

The apartment complex

Today, I was up at 5:15 so that we could all shower before heading out at 6:30. We met back at the high school, had some time to do some planning and preparing, had a morning briefing at 8:00, and partnered up with our reservists. To start the morning out, our partner took Ian and I to the Czech Stop, a pretty well-known stop along I-35, where many people pull over to grab a kolache or any of the yummy Czech pastries served in the bakery there. We stopped there for gas, and went in to grab some breakfast. The lines at the bakery counter were huge, and as Ian and I walked in, he muttered to me, "I've never been more aware of my uniform and badge as I am right now." We had FEMA on our shirt, and that all of a sudden meant a lot of things. To everyone who saw us, it meant someone with inside information, someone who was supposed to have the answers, someone to blame. However, as we found out throughout the day, most people in West are not looking for someone to blame. For the most part, there's not the kind of mistrust or resentment here that people sometimes feel towards FEMA in other disasters. As we stood in line, a woman behind me thanked me for being here and helping the survivors. She asked me where I'm from, and when I told her South Dakota, she said she originally came from Minnesota. She told me it would take me a bit to get used to the weather, and that it took her a while to adjust when she moved down here.

Afterwards, we stopped for a few minutes at the Disaster Recovery Center to check in, and then drove around the most damaged zone, to do some assesment. Like I mentioned, West is a town of 2,800 people. Driving around town, it was easy to compare it to my hometown of Winner, population 3,300. I imagined what it would be like to come back to Winner and see the nursing home roof collapsed and caving in, the high school gym destroyed, one side of the middle school burned up and the other side torn apart, my neighbors' houses, my friends' houses, or my house with the windows busted out, the walls caving in, and nothing but rubble inside. In a town that small, everybody knows everybody. Some people went blind from the explosion. Some lost their hearing. With 15 fatalities, everybody is grieving. It's funeral after funeral. I can't even imagine.

A big part of the morning was spent dealing with technical issues. FEMA recently devloped a way for teams to register applicants through iPads when they are going door to door, so that if the person is unable to go to the Disaster Recovery Center, or doesn't have phone or internet access, they're still able to register. This is just starting to get used, so there are still a few hiccups. These were dealt with, however, so in the afternoon, I started going door to door with Samantha and a different FEMA reservist. We knocked on doors in the zone of town where most homes were damaged but not destroyed, gave people information about assistance, checked their status if they'd already registered, and registered them if they wanted to.



The Nursing Home



It was not the impersonal encounter that you might imagine when hearing about FEMA coming to someone's door. The FEMA employees are extremely concerned with each individual and each household's welfare. They will take the time to talk with the survivors, hear their stories, discuss their options and do what they can to comfort and reassure them. Everyone - literally every single person that we talked to - was warm, welcoming, kind, and thankful. They were just trying to figure out what to do next. They gave us directions to neighbors they were concerned about, to make sure we connected with them. They talked about how thankful everyone was that not more people were badly injured or lost their lives. And if you look around the town, it's really hard to believe that they didn't. 

We went around until 6:00, when we met back at the high school for a quick meeting, where we heard from the other teams, about the people they'd talked to and the stories they'd heard. Tomorrow's another big day, it's late, and I'm exhausted. More to come.

An Introduction to My Team

For those of you who were readers of my blogs about Peru and Georgia, I feel like this one might seem a little dry. Instead of writing about tarantulas peeing on my face or about getting wine-drunk with my principal, I'm writing about scanning bills and reports into an archive file. Pretty exciting stuff. So for this post I'll take a break from the boring stuff and talk about something a little more interesting. The pack of hooligans that make up my team.

In order to protect the privacy of my team members who may not wish to have their names plastered over the interwebs, I will use appropriate nicknames for each.

Let's start with my Team Leader. We'll call her "The Biebs." She's a typical Long Islander. Loud and obnoxious. In the most endearing sense of the word, of course. She was in the traditional NCCC Corps last round and loved it so much she came back as a TL. She loves Billy Joel and every chain restaurant in existence. Favorite phrases: "Good stuff!" "HEELLLLLOOOOO!!" and "I don't WAANnnnnnnaaaaa!"

Next we have "B" from the Bronx. She's very professional and gets down to business, but every once in a while, her ghetto side (my favorite side) comes out. You never know when it's going to happen. I'll share one of my favorite stories as an example. We're sitting in training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in New Mexico, learning about FEMA Individual Assistance. As soon as the instructors announce that it's breaktime, she turns to the 3 of us at her table with an angry look on her face and says, "Yo! Who turned on the air conditioner in here?? It's freezing! Yo, some dude's sweatin' in here and I'm gonna find out who it is!"

Then there's "Quack Quack." He's what you would imagine someone from Washington to be like, walking around in his North Face jacket, always trying to stay in shape and eat healthy. In fact it's not uncommon to see him eating plain leaves of spinach out of a plastic baggie like a rabbit. Quack Quack is the team motivator, inspiring us to set all kinds of goals (learn French, watch educational documentaries on a weekly basis, start a book club, learn the Korean alphabet) which it turns out we have very little time to accomplish. But at least we have lofty dreams. And he's half Korean, so he's teaching me how to say really offensive phrases in Korean, which may be useful someday, because if Kim Jong-un ever decides to stop being such a turd and threatening to bomb everyone I would really like to teach English in South Korea.

My next teammate, I shall call 'The Enforcer.' She doesn't take no crap from nobody. If you tell her that someone is bothering you, she will tell you "Go punch 'em in the throat!" She loves driving the 15-passenger van, which is great because then I don't have to do it. She's also a bit OCD. Her part of the room is always impeccably organized and she will punch you in the throat if you double dip that chip. We've sort of made it our mission to break her out of it though, so we'll casually let it slip that we stuck our grubby fingers in the food that she's eating. Slowly but surely it's working. She borrowed my chap stick the other day.

Next up we have "Ron Howard." Ron, unlike most of us, actually has a degree in Emergency Management, so FEMA Corps was a logical life choice for him. He's like the dad of the team, walking around in his checkered golf sweaters and long khaki shorts with Birkenstocks, handing out sage advice. And if you ever have a beer with him, make sure you ask him about his theory of men and women. And then order another beer, because you're going to be there for a while. :)

The next girl on our team, I will refer to as "The Bird." Her signature dance move is the Birdie, and when she gets scared or excited, she tends to squawk like a bird. Ironically, she's terrified of birds. She's known for phrases like "Ako taco!" - used in awkward situations - and "Probs not!!" She's from a small town in Maine and is definitely the whitest girl on our team. (Yes, I am from a small town in South Dakota, and yes, she is whiter than me). She also has a strange phobia of being shot.

Next we have "Rye Bread." He lived in Guyana for the first part of his life and the moved to New York. He is simultaneaously the sanest and the weirdest person on our team. You can count on him to keep a level head in any situation, but you can also count on him to do incredibly strange things like make a Nutella and turkey sandwich. (He ate it, too). It's not uncommon for him to turn to someone in the van and ask a really profound question out of nowhere because he's "just curious." One of Rye Bread's great downfalls, however, is tuna. He eats a massive amount of tuna, and I've become very concerned about the amount of mercury coursing through his blood stream. Luckily, I've had an intervention, calculated safe levels of tuna consumption based on his body weight at http://www.ewg.org/research/tuna-calculator and am currently monitering his tuna intake so that his future babies aren't born with 3 heads.

Then there's the baby of our AmeriFamily, "Timmy." Timmy is a girl, just to avoid confusion. She's from the Buffalo area of New York, and is the only other person on the team who says 'pop' instead of soda. She is best known for her creepy habit of staring at people. It can be really unnerving. She's a sweet person in general, but in the mornings it's best to avoid her. I learned this when I roomed with her at FLETC. She would just stand, unmoving, glaring at me in the morning, for a really long time. I would finally say, in as unconfrontational voice as possible, "Do you need something?" She would just shake her head no and continue glaring at me. There's been more than one morning where I've feared she was going to murder me. We have a lot in common, such as our love for Harry Potter and Arrested Development, and we also make a great cooking team.

So those are my peeps for the next 7 months! I think we love each other as much as 9 strangers who live and work together can. We're much closer than most teams, and we've gotten to know each other really well after living in such close quarters at Camp Copass. Maybe too well. We probably look strange to outsiders because we find it entertaining to talk to each other in British or southern accents for days at a time, we cartwheel and tumbleweed in the lawn, and we have fake polygamous marriages. After weeks of spending every waking (and sleeping) hour with the same 8 people, you find that everything becomes an inside joke. You also find that this tends to scare off any normal human beings who may have otherwise wanted to interact with you. And then this isolation continues to make you weirder and weirder. It's a vicious cycle, really.

Why I Miss All of Grandpa's Phone Calls

Although sometimes I think he doesn't believe me, it's because I'm busy. Really busy.

Of course, there's work. We leave for work at 7:30 a.m. each morning and get home around 5:00. After work there's various things we have to get done.

PT: Three times a week we have to work out. Two of those are group PT and one is individual. We might play basketball or soccer, or do circuit training or an Insanity DVD. This lasts about an hour.

Laundry: We don't have laundry facilities at the camp, so we have to make a trip to the laundromat once a week. This usually eats up about 3 hours of our day.

Team Meetings: We have those once a week, but usually have them at the laundromat while our clothes are washing.

Grocery Shopping: I'm a Food POC along with 2 others on the team, so it's our job to make sure we're stocked up on groceries. We usually make Wal-Mart runs about twice a week. Since we're buying about $150 worth of groceries for 9 people with different tastes on a tight budget, these shopping trips usually take a while, too. And then there's the unloading labeling of food (we share a kitchen with 4 other FEMA Corps teams).

Cooking: Someone has to cook for everyone each night. Here, we're only equipped with a microwave, a grill or a propane burner, so this can take longer than usual as well.

Recruiting Events: I'm a CAPper (Corps Ambassador Program) which means I go to colleges, high schools, etc to recruit people to apply for AmeriCorps NCCC. We only do that every 2 weeks or so, so it doesn't take too much of my time in the evenings.

Cleaning: We have a rotating schedule for cleaning our bathroom and kitchen.

So basically, the weeks are jam packed. By the time you get done doing all your stuff and eating dinner, you have to make your lunch to pack for the next day, and it's probably about 10:00. It doesn't leave much time to do things like reading, skyping, watching netflix, or answering grandpa's phone calls.

However, I shouldn't complain, because this is nothing compared to what the Vinton and Vicksburg teams experienced when they were working Superstorm Sandy. From what they told us they didn't have to choose between sleeping or catching up on Mad Men when they got home. They had to choose between showering or eating supper, because they were too exhausted to do both.

And the National Weather Service says this is going to be a particularly active year for hurricanes, so I think busier times are in store for us.

Off to Work We Go

So here we are in the middle of our 3rd week working at the FEMA offices. Our team is working alongside a team from the Vinton, Iowa campus in the Response Division. The first 2 weeks were a little bit slow. The full-time employees have been very busy with different things, so they didn't have enough time to explain our project to us and help us really get going with it. However, a lot of our time has been filled with some interesting trainings.

The staff at FEMA are very good about giving us opportunities to go to any of the trainings they're holding for their employees and to come grab us if anything interesting is going on that we might want to see. They want us to be able to learn as much as possible while we're here. So we attended a 2-day training/simulation that focused on the Regional Response Coordination Center (RRCC), basically the regional support unit for the staff on the ground, and how it would function in the event of a disaster. We also attended a short training on the Endangered Species Act and how FEMA works with the Fish and Wildlife Service to make sure that any work they do will not have a negative effect on any endangered or threatened species or their critical habitats. Another training adressed social media and how FEMA is using it to reach the public. (You can follow FEMA Region VI - the region I work in - on Twitter @femaregion6 and you can also follow FEMA on Facebook to get updates of what the agency is doing). Next week, we're attending another training which will teach us about the different equipment that is used when working with hearing or vision impaired disaster survivors. They also grabbed us to show us how the IMAT team, basically the first team on the ground when a disaster hits, gets packed and prepared to deploy on short notice (they were conducting a drill).

The entire staff is very welcoming and friendly. I was a little nervous on our first day, expecting a lot of stiff, serious government employees, but they're always really laid-back and nice. They threw us a barbecue on our first day, they chat with us, they give us homemade cookies. It's great.


And the work is definitely picking up. We're beginning to archive old Mission Assignments by scanning them and storing them electronically. It will definitely keep us busy. And today we got to go on a field trip to the Fort Worth Distribution Center. This is one of the places where they store the commodities that they'll need in the event of a disaster. We walked through huge warehouses stacked from bottom to top, and front to back with pallets of water, food, blankets, tarps, plastic sheeting, etc. They explained to us the complexity involved with moving all those items and figuring out how much they'd need, how they'd get it there, and how long it would take. Not to mention getting it all back after the disaster efforts are completed.

The weirdness still hasn't worn off. Every time I look down at my blue polo with the Department of Homeland Security seal sewn in, or at my super official badge that says FEMA with the holograms and everything, I think "How did I end up here?" I never would have thought.

Arriving in TX & a Brief Interlude Outside the AmeriBubble

As you can probably tell by my lack of posts, it's been a busy couple of weeks. (Also, sorry about the lack of pictures, but it's not letting me add them to my posts right now, for some reason.)

On Wednesday, March 27th (ish), we left New Mexico and embarked on our short 8 hour journey to Ft. Worth, TX. If you don't think 8 hours is short, you should talk to the teams who had to drive for 5 days to get to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Our lodging in Denton wasn't quite ready for us yet, so we hung around Ft. Worth at the La Quinta for a couple of nights. Oh the La Quinta, with it's giant soft beds, it's numerous fluffy pillows, it's amazing showerhead, it's ice machine, pool and hot tub. We soaked it all in, knowing that might be our most luxurious dwelling for the next 8 months.

FEMA didn't make us start work until Monday, so we enjoyed a relaxing 4-day weekend. And we needed it after 2 weeks straight of classroom time, trying not to confuse PPI with PII, or trying to remember whether a microwaveable is reimburseable or not. Not to mention trying to keep straight the multiple rules being enforced for the training center, which was not easy, since they changed them every day. Plus, Ft. Worth was a nice taste of civilization after being cooped up in Artesia, New Mexico, home of nothing. So we took advantage of our little break there. We went to the Ft. Worth stockyards, a historic center that was used as a livestock market in the late 1800's. Today it's a tourist trap and I loved it. It reminded me a lot of Deadwood or Keystone in South Dakota, so it was a nice taste of home. We browsed a cute little tea and spice shop, which was sadly way out of our AmeriBudget. We talked to the cowboys who were riding their horses or walking their longhorns up and down the street, and we went to a petting zoo. It was probably aimed at children under the age of 12, but remember that most of us have dogs or cats that we had to leave behind (my Macy, *tear*) so petting a baby goat was very therapeutic. Then we went to the thrift store, where we spent the entire time trying on Hawaiian shirts, coveralls, and muumuus and then taking pictures of ourselves. It kept us entertained for a good hour and we bought nothing. I'm sure the employees loved us. Afterwards, we were going to check out downtown Ft. Worth, but we can't park the van in parking garages, and couldn't find a spot big enough for our colossal 15-passenger, so we just headed back to the hotel.

On Friday, we were able to head to our lodging in Denton. However, 3 of my friends from my days in Peru were meeting up in Austin for Easter weekend, and I really wanted to join them, since we had the weekend off. Although my Team Leader is a self-described "worried Jewish mother" to all of us, she was nice enough to let me stay behind and grab a ride down to Austin with a friend who was coming from Arlington.

And thus began my first venture out of the AmeriBubble. This term is used to describe the tight-knit AmeriCorps community that is formed from the start of the program and the isolation, so to speak, from the outside world. You eat, sleep, live, work, and play with the corps. Contact with "outsiders" is rare. Contact with outsiders without another corps member within 20 feet of you is almost nonexistant. We live in our own little world of blue shirts and khaki pants.

On Friday I took a brief hiatus from that world, and it was both refreshing and really weird. I had a great time being around old friends and getting away from it all for the weekend, but I also truly did miss my team. It's strange to be around a small group of people for 6 weeks straight and then hang out with people outside that group. You start to make a joke about ground guiding or

My friend Joel had moved from Lima to intern with a company in Austin, and my friends Hannah and Carlin both lived in the region, so they decided to reunite for Easter. Luckily, Hannah saw on Facebook that I was moving to Denton, and I got the invite, too! It was a really fun weekend. Austin is a very cool city, and it was great to see friends that I haven't seen in a year and a half. We went up to Mount Bonnell, where we had great views of the city. We went to a park with peacocks roaming around. We ate delicious Peruvian food in a partially abandoned mall. We went to an outdoor grafitti gallery. And of course we enjoyed Austin's night life. I personally loved Rainey Street, a street where all the houses have been turned into bars and the backyards have been decorated with fire pits, torches, lanterns, and comfy chairs. It was brilliant.

Meanwhile, my teammates were arriving at Camp Copass, our new lodging until June 6th. The feedback I was receiving did not sound too promising. Cold showers, gross bathrooms, cramped living quarters. Rustic, to put it nicely. So I enjoyed my last shower in Joel's nice apartment, and braced myself to return.

I took the Mega Bus back to Dallas where my team picked me up and we headed to Denton.

Read my next post to find out if Camp Copass was as terrible as I feared...

The Land of Enchantment

I just realized I haven't blogged at all while in New Mexico, so I have a lot to fill you in on.

First of all, we had a great ride down from Denver. We were the first team to arrive, which meant we flew through badging and room assignments, and had time to use our travel per diem on a nice dinner at La Fonda, Artesia's Mexican restaurant. I was going to make a great Napoleon Dynamite hyperlink there, but I can't get it to work. : (

The training center that we're at is also being used by the Sacramento FEMA Corps, so it was cool to meet our counterparts from the other campus. They came in a few days earlier and just left yesterday.

The first four weeks of our training in Denver was for the most part the basic AmeriCorps NCCC training that traditional corps gets as well, but with a few FEMA specific things peppered in. This 2 weeks in New Mexico has been all about FEMA. We started by getting our equipment and badges issued (I feel so official!). Of course, I look absolutely terrible in my ID picture. My campus ID that I was issued here looks like a meth head's mugshot, which I find much preferable to my FEMA badge, which looks like I'm sunburnt and am about to cry and/or punch someone in the face.

After that process was done, we started training. We had some general sessions and then got split into our specific job training. First, I had training for the Individual Assistance Applicant Services Program Specialist role, or IA ASPS. That lasted a few days, and went over the process that disaster victims go through in receiving aid from FEMA and voluntary agencies, and explained the ways in which people qualify or don't qualify for FEMA assistance. In addition, we got to learn a little bit about the computer systems that we'll be working with while we're assisting applicants in the Disaster Recovery Center. It was a lot of information to process but I think I have a grasp on the basics now.

After we finished ASPS training, we started training to be Community Relations Specialists. Because it's a new program, and they might need us to be "FEMA flexible" with our roles, they decided to cross train IA and CR in both. The job of a CR specialist is to go out into the community and talk to people, make sure they've registered for FEMA, explain the different programs and the application process, and also interview them to report information back to the Joint Field Office about what's going on in the community. It sounds like an interesting job, so I'm glad I'll be trained to do that as well.

It's nice to meet all our trainers and get a real idea about what it's like to work with FEMA. And now for the big news.....

WE KNOW WHERE WE'RE GOING!!

If you've seen my facebook post pertaining to that issue, than I'm sorry that you were throroughly unimpressed by my shouty capital letter exclamation mark sentence.

But if you haven't seen my facebook, then here's the big news. We're going to Denton, TX!!!

Denton is home of FEMA's Region VI head office, and is also the location of one of their National Processing Service Centers (NPSC), which is where they take the calls of people trying to register with FEMA (1-800-621-3362 --It's burned in my brain) and is also, as the name implies, where they process applications.

Fun fact, Denton is also the home of Dr. Phil!

We will be working in the regional office doing some filing and archiving and whatnot. I know that doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs to a lot of people, but I'm really excited to see how the regional office is run, and maybe even the NPSC, although I'm not sure if our job will take us there. Our first spike (the NCCC term for a project away from your campus, i.e. outside Denver) is set to last until June 6th, but since tornado season is beginning, and we'll be right in tornado alley, I have a feeling we might get called up to go somewhere else before that date comes around.

What's really exciting is that Denton is right outside Dallas, so it just takes a half hour on the light rail and you're there! I've already been looking up concerts and things to do. Plus, one of my teammates used to live in Denton, and she says it's a fun little city with a good nightlife and live music. It should be a good time!

Just today we found out where we would be leaving. If my information is correct we'll be at Camp Copass, a church retreat out on a lake. I googled it and it looks awesome! It's totally going to be summer camp style, like a room full of bunk beds, a lake, all kinds of rec activities. When I was little I always wanted to go to summer camp (do you remember watching Bugjuice on the Disney Channel? I was so jealous of those guys!), but I never got to go. So here's my chance! I'm not sure whether they'll give us access to all their facilities or not, but let's just say that if they do, I'll be zip-linin' and mini-golfin' my little heart out!

We leave in 2 days!! Which is incredibly exciting, but also sad. A lot of the friends that we've made over the last month and a half will be spread out across Kansas, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There will be 2 other teams with us in TX, but they are from other units, and all our Alpine friends will be gone. Hopefully we'll all be able to meet back up again during transition weeks, but because we're doing disaster relief, there are no guaranteed schedules or timelines. Although I'll miss my friends, I won't miss Artesia. There's really not a lot here, and anything that is here is a 45 minute walk away. Not to mention some rules that are a bit stricter here than they were back in Denver. I will miss the food though. It's probably going to be awhile before I have access to an ice cream machine again.

So here we go! First spike of the season! I love my team and I'm so excited to start working for FEMA! It's gonna be a great year!

The end of CTI

Ok guys, I'm going to make this quick, because we're leaving for FEMA training in New Mexico bright and early tomorrow morning and I still have a lot of stuff to get ready!

It's been about a week since I last posted, and I can't even recall all the stuff that's happened since then. First of all, we had our induction ceremony. In attendance was the Lt. Governor of Colorado, some higher-ups in FEMA, and the Director of AmeriCorps NCCC. A few CMs from Alpine Unit (represent!) sang  the National Anthem beautifully, we listened to some speeches, and we're all officially in the Corps now!!

After the ceremony, we had a session with the NCCC director and the FEMA people to ask questions and get a little more concrete information about what our year is going to be like. Afterward, we had a nice luncheon, and were free to enjoy the rest of the day. Of course, we decided to celebrate, so some friends and I went downtown to sample the fine offerings of a few of Denver's breweries. We were given the weekend free to enjoy ourselves, but unfortunately the snow made it a little difficult to get out and about. 

On Monday, we started doing a FEMA 101 course with some trainers that have come in and we're continuing that today. We'll finish up this afternoon and then it will be a scramble to pack, clean and get everything ready so that we can have final room inspection at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Then it's an 8-10 hour drive down to Artesia, New Mexico to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which we will call home during the next few weeks, and where I'll be getting the information I need to start working as an Individual Assistance Applicant Services Specialist!

We still don't know where we're going, but one of the Federal Coordinating Officers from FEMA was telling us which areas currently need Individual Assistance (IA) and it seems to be mostly on the west coast - NJ, NY, CT, ME - but also Mississippi, so hopefully we should find out soon!