0.1: Who I Am

Working disaster relief you learn to hit the ground running. The very first day of training, I accompanied a senior inspector, John Flint, to a neighborhood near Poncé where a giant mudslide had engulfed the homes of more than two hundred people in the middle of the night. We pulled up to a corner colmado (small grocery store) directly across from now abandoned rescue scene. A crowd quickly gathered about the little shop. The proprietor introduced us to a small neatly dressed man about 30 years old or so, one of the few people to have actively survived the tragedy. I'll never forget that fellow. He was already half-drunk at ten o'clock in the morning, but I quickly learned why. If ever a man had a good excuse for being that way, he did. On the night of the storm he had been shooting pool in a open-air bar a couple streets over from his own home (which the slide in fact missed), and was standing looking out into the rain when he heard the mountain let go. He yelled a warning to his friends and took off running. He excitedly told us the tale of his panicked flight - fleeing down the street a step ahead of the flow, hearing the sleepy surprised screams of soon-to-be-dead neighbors and friends in the collapsing homes around him, but powerless to do anything but run and scream himself. He expressed guilt and anguish over being one of the few people to make it out alive (exhibiting classic "survivor trauma" I've since learned). Because his own home wasn't affected, he didn't need / wasn't eligible for FEMA housing assistance. He wasn't wanting money, Mr. Flint told me, he hadn't applied for aid - he only wanted someone to listen to his nightmare. Wow, OK, Good luck, friend, I hope everything works out. And for me? Well, it was one heck of first case, a haunting introduction to the field of disaster relief, I can tell you that.

Since then I have written over three thousand damage inspection reports and reviewed maybe ten thousand more. Although I've enjoyed being an FEMA inspector, and I have especially enjoyed the camaraderie with my fellow inspectors, the stress of the job is sometimes a great challenge, and the traveling is hard on normal family life. This book reflects my desire to continue to be of service to my country and to my fellow citizens, to pay my bills, and just maybe to hone a latent writing talent.

0.2: How This Book Happened

0.3: Synopsis

In my experience, the great bulk of Disaster Housing Assistance grants go to low and middle income homeowners - folks who, by and large, are members of the working class, handicapped, veterans, or retirees. Disaster relief is one of the few programs where the average American might realize some small direct return on his and his family's lifetime investment in his country, and at a time when he or she needs it most. As an inspector it makes me most uncomfortable to "happen upon" a $500 or $1000 item of concealed or otherwise unapparent damage - something the applicant either wasn't aware of, or was aware of but hadn't thought to mention in the course of our interview. "Uncomfortable" because: a) professionally I don't want to miss anything, and: b) I know that we inspectors only discover a small percentage of that kind of damage (things like burnt-out water pumps, cracked septic tanks, broken sewer lines, and so on) and that these people need to get those things fixed - and most of the time they can't afford to without some kind of outside assistance. Disaster victims are our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our sons and daughters - sometimes literally and always figuratively - and they merit compassion regardless of their income level, the color of their skin, where they live, or whatever. In my personal contact with thousands of disaster victims, I've seen that people everywhere still strive for and admire the virtue of self-reliance. It's a little harder to pull off lately, though, now that the great technological advances of our age have shredded the historical safety nets of rural community and small town "neighbor-help-neighbor" and the (Oh so dearly missed!) extended family way of life. Disaster victims are no more responsible for the degradation of these precious social intangibles, or for our planet's worsening weather patterns, than you or I - and I would not leave them to bear the brunt of it unaided. Now I am certainly no champion of big government, it's power and intrusiveness scare the heck out of me, too, so if there's a better way to handle emergency disaster assistance for the common man, as Harry Truman might have said, well, show us, and let's have a go at it that way.

0.4: Now, Who Are You ?

Sincerely yours,

John Porter
- Email: John@BestInsurance.com