False Alarms.

So, my mom coughed up a big blob of blood two times in the last month or so. Mom's a nurse, which means two things. 1. She gets regular TB tests, and knew she didn't have TB, and 2. She doesn't feel the need to go to the doctor unless she is certain she will die.

So, when mom used words like "blood clot, bronchial scope, CAT scan, and chest x-ray," in a conversation with me last week, I, naturally, pictured a giant throbbing tumor. Today, though, she called me with the news that she, basically, has a scar from a severe childhood sickness, and should treat this by going to the doctor before death is immanent. No big deal. Thank God, false alarm.

Onto the next story. Did you know that Athens County, with a poverty rate of around 27% is the poorest county in the state? Consequently, we, at Good Works, were not surprised to get a call from the Red Cross/FEMA today asking us to feed an additional 40 people who had been flooded out of their homes at our community dinner tonight. (See actual photo of Chauncey when flooded, left.)

We scrambled a little bit, given this would be a 30% increase in the crowd we usually have, but we're pros. This is what we do. By 4pm, when our Friday Night Supper staff left our afternoon meeting for the dinner, we were ready. Ready to feed 40 more people. Ready, even, to distribute non-perishable food to them.

At about 4:15pm, when our staff had already gone to work at the supper, our Director of Operations, Paul, made one last call to the Red Cross/FEMA to make sure we were prepared. The response he got went something like, "Oh, this was just a drill. I told the pastor of the church where you have the dinners. No one is coming."

And the incompetency of FEMA hits home. If you run a disaster organization and want to condition the helping community in areas prone to natural disasters to NOT respond when there's a crises, might I recommend holding drills and not letting anyone know it's a drill? I know I won't jump so quickly the next time I hear from FEMA. That is one hell of a false alarm.