Who Is The FEMA Corps?

'Homeland Security has announced the creation of a new FEMA corps to tap volunteers for disaster/emergency responses. The program is a partnership between FEMA and the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), itself managed under the Homeland Security umbrella.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to start with 1,600 volunteers dispatched across the country and specially trained to provide “critical disaster services” during an emergency response. Volunteers are not FEMA employees, but will wear branded uniform clothing and will be directed by FEMA. DHS boasts that the entry level positions will prepare these trainees for careers in the ever-bloating disaster response bureaucracy.'

Feds Take Control Texas Fires

Hundreds of firefighters from all the surrounding counties worked two days and nights in a heroic effort to contain the fires, but high winds Sunday night and all day Monday thwarted their efforts. So the call went out for more volunteer firefighters to join the effort from across the state.

Before they arrived, however, the federal government showed up and claimed it was in charge of the situation. "Agents with the federal National Interagency Fire Center, a coalition of federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, assumed command of firefighting efforts Tuesday afternoon," reports The Gonzales Cannon.

RealNewsReporter.com is now reporting that volunteer firefighters who had in some cases driven all night to reach Bastrop county were turned away by the feds, who claimed that since local officials never made a "formal request" for volunteers, the volunteers could not be "activated." So while Bastrop County burns from 40+ fires that are still raging, the federal government is actually telling volunteer firefighters to go home.'

NOTE: Naturally, when peoples homes, livestock and lives are in danger, they will turn to any "help" A similar event happened in Northern Washington state some years ago, where Feds swooped in and screwed up the entire fire fighting operation causing several real firefighter deaths. Once again, FEDS do NOT have any jurisdiction outside of DC and their federal buildings, if any, in a particular state.

Nobody knows the local terrain, environment and conditions better than the locals. The Sheriff can choose to allow the feds to stay or he can order them out, the local firefighters do not need to be "activated" with federal permission. Let's hope the fires are quickly brought under control without more loss of property or life.

Let's hope this doesn't become another botched FEMA project or that people aren't rounded up and placed in camps that resemble prisons.