Lamentations from a FEMA Reservist's Perspective

To the FEMA Corpse Blogger (and contributors),

I want to applaud you FEMA Corps members for speaking up about the gross failures that you have endured from FEMA and AmeriCorps.  Keep posting your stories and inform your elected representatives about what has happened to you.  Don’t be intimidated or feel isolated; you are not alone.  In fact, over 6,000 FEMA reservists have endured far worse than you have.

I had been a FEMA Reservist for many years and observed all of the same passive aggressive, ignorant, cruel and incompetent treatment of FEMA reservists which you FEMA AmeriCorps folks have seen.  Whether or not you realize, 6,000+ FEMA Reservists have quit over the last two years due to ‘gestapo’ abuse by FEMA HQ.  Two years ago, FEMA HQs Manager, Dan Hetlage, ripped all Regional Cadre’s rights apart and forcefully stole them from Regional control.  

If you have ever followed history lesson’s with Dictatorship behavior, when one person forcefully takes command and control over an entire population, the rights of the populace have been undermined and will continue to be broken down.

FEMA Reservists have no bargaining rights and no benefits, rendering them extremely vulnerable to the fascist whims of Dan Hetlage and his HQ cronies.  Of course, he cannot pull his abusive tactics on reservists without permission from Craig Fugate.  As all reservist’s painfully witnessed in 2009 during Fugate’s first All Hands Address, he called reservist’s ‘Walk-Ons’ to the horrific demoralization of the reservist ranks.  In early 2012, the epic fight between the Regions and HQ took place with the Regions losing all control over their Cadres.  This loss began the gradual decline of the Reservist culture in FEMA while the FEMA Corps program was being lauded and fast tracked by Fugate.

Also in 2012, the June ‘Conditions of Employment’ or COE, began the legal binding to further strip FEMA Reservists of their rights and forced everyone to take a two year contract.  Mind you, there have been Reservists serving FEMA for over twenty years.  Many reservists didn’t re-up. HQ kept threatening their three strikes (deployment call ups), the December 31 deadline (which they kept extending), and now the June 2014 COE renewal arrives.  All of the promises by Hetlage for guaranteed once a year thirty-day training was nixed, along with all of his other lies.  Health care benefits only existed for thirty days past your last deployment date.  With the interjection of Obamacare, that rendered Dan’s sleight of hand parlor tricks.  Like many of you faced inquisition and firing squads, anyone who spoke up against HQ was fired.

Last fall (2013), I recall Command staff lamenting that nobody (FEMA reservists) would respond to deployment calls.  The rumor mill is that HQ will automatically downgrade all pay scales to barely above $12 per hour.  Many reservists have relied upon unemployment to make ends meet with their current grandfathered pay grades.  I doubt many have considered the implications of having their hourly pay rate impact their unemployment quarters from seeing ¾ pay cuts.

So what does all of this mean to FEMA Corps?  This means that Fugate and his front gunner Hetlage has plans for you folks!  They assume that FEMA Corps members will be gullible enough to fall for this shell game.  The only way to avoid it is to NOT sign up for FEMA Corps.  FEMA wants you to think you are important to their cause, when in fact it’s playing into Fugate’s fiscal hawk schemes and adding to the grand plan of destroying the FEMA reservist culture once and for all.  Fugate and Hetlage knows that most reservists make over $30 per hour and some pull over $50 per hour.  HQ wants to eliminate those ‘high’ pay scales and will do so through the next COE in June 2014.  FEMA Corps is Fugate’s huge brain child to use cheap labor to do cheap tasks with NO carrots.  Trust me, FEMA Reservists have major respect and admiration for what FEMA Corps kids endure, I know several reservists who have paid for meals and helped some kids out on disasters due to crappy stipends (less than $5 per day).

The classic way to divide and conquer a populace is to encourage citizens to not communicate with each other.  HQ’s grand scheme is to defraud reservists and FEMA Corps by destroying all rights to defend ourselves.  FEMA isn’t going to give you kids real jobs.  FEMA isn’t going to pay you fair wages.  FEMA doesn’t care if you live or die.  FEMA wants you to buy into their fake compliments and promises of padding your resume with lofty accolades.  Don’t ever, ever fall for ANYONE in the federal government approaching you with ‘kiss-ass’ compliments--it’s a false ruse for getting you to do something you should NOT.  Do your time in AmeriCorps and do not sign onto this FEMA Corps nonsense, it has a false bottom.

I hope this background will help future FEMA Corps volunteers to avoid falling into HQ’s grand scam to ‘use and abuse’ you young people.  The pay doesn’t change for you if you sign onto this program and FEMA doesn’t offer you squat either.

If reservists and AmeriCorps workers join forces and REFUSE to be treated as slave labor, then the entire ‘house of cards’ at HQ will completely collapse and maybe FEMA will finally get their just desserts.  Because HQ will have nobody else to bullshit if the reservists and FEMA Corps can no longer be bullied and treated like beaten servants!

The above paragraphs were submitted to FEMA Corpse from an actual FEMA Reservist, who sees the same problems with the program that we did from a different perspective.