Pray You Don't Need Them

Just in case you thought the slow response to Katrina was a fluke and mostly the fault of bad management at FEMA you might want to consider rethinking your disaster preparedness. Yes, I know a lot of tax money and time has been spent equipping and training the National Guard to be ready to help us in case of NATIONAL emergency but you are just going to have to be prepared to do without that support.

Just off the top of my head I would say an additional 30 days of rations, water and medical supplies for you and your family. Get a boat if you don't already have one and don't forget that generator and fuel. Oh, and don't forget jumpkits for the entire family as well. You know the drill. Plan for everything and expect the worst. DO NOT EXPECT ANY HELP FROM THE GOVERNMENT!

Army National Guard units are short of equipment on the home front partly because they are told to leave vital equipment such as armored Humvees in Iraq for replacement troops, according to a report released Thursday.

As of June, Army National Guard units had left overseas more than 64,000 pieces of equipment worth more than $1.2 billion, and more than half cannot be accounted for by the Army, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office.

On average, National Guard units at home have only 34 percent of their essential war-fighting equipment, said the report released at a hearing of the House Committee on Government Reform.

''National Guard officials believe that the National Guard's response to Hurricane Katrina was more complicated because significant quantities of critical equipment such as satellite communications equipment, radios, trucks, helicopters, and night vision goggles were deployed to Iraq,'' the report said.

[snip]

In addition to equipment left overseas, more than 101,000 pieces of equipment from units on the home front have been transferred to deploying units, the report said.