Tag: natural disasters

BEAUTIFUL! Hundreds of College Students Are Spending Spring Break Helping Rebuild Homes in North Carolina

There may be hope for America’s future, after all.

While college students have become known for being woke and are often shown in the media doing nothing but leading protests, one group of students has given up spring break to help rebuild homes in North Carolina where many areas are still reeling from Hurricane Helene.

This is great experience for these students, too. Everyone should learn how to build things and some basic construction.

From WHII News:

Triad college students are spending spring break in western North Carolina helping those in need

Winston Salem State students are among the wave of volunteers helping communities in western North Carolina, spending their spring break hard at work to help people rebuild.

“I can’t imagine what these people went through with having everything they had just lost in the blink of an eye without any control of theirs,” said Cayla Parrott, a sophomore.

They’re part of a ministry called Chi Alpha that can be found on multiple college campuses. They’re working alongside nonprofits like Building Compassion, which has been organizing those efforts.

“We’ve got other teams that are down closer to the river bottoms, and they’re literally doing all kinds of different work,” said Frank Frankovsky of Building Compassion. “From standing up retaining walls that got undermined to rebuilding trailer homes and stuff, just whatever the community needs.

It’s been almost six months since Helene made landfall, and there’s plenty of work that still needs to be done.

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HUD Secretary Scott Turner Rejects Asheville’s $225M Disaster Relief Request After Shocking DEI Clause Exposed

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has decisively rejected Asheville, North Carolina’s outrageous $225 million disaster relief request.

The reason? A jaw-dropping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) clause buried deep in the city’s draft action plan—a clause that prioritizes woke ideology over the urgent needs of everyday Americans still reeling from Hurricane Helene’s devastation six months ago.

In an interview with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo, Secretary Turner condemned the city’s initial draft action plan for prioritizing assistance based on race and gender identity rather than need.

“This draft action plan that the city of Asheville presented at first has elements of DEI, and that is not acceptable to HUD,” Turner told Bartiromo.

“It’s not acceptable to the President, according to his executive order to get rid of all DEI. We’re working with the city of Asheville. They have been very responsive to make sure that their upcoming draft action plan is in compliance with HUD and how we give funds out according to HUD’s principles.”

“We’re happy to be here. They’re working with us, and we’re looking forward to helping the people of Asheville recover from this disaster.”

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FEMA fired three supervisors following probe into crew told to avoid Trump-supporting homes hit by Hurricane Milton

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has fired three more supervisors following an internal probe into claims a crew of disaster relief workers were told to avoid Trump-supporting homes hit by Hurricane Milton in Florida, The Post can exclusively reveal.

Cameron Hamilton, the current acting administrator of the agency, announced in a Tuesday letter to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that an “exhaustive investigation” had concluded the supervisors failed to “meet our standards of conduct” or reign in their partisan underlings’ behavior.

“[I]t is essential that the entire workforce understand that this incident was reprehensible, and this type of behavior will not be tolerated at FEMA,” Hamilton wrote.

“Further, in accordance with my commitment, and that of President Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, to ensure that Americans receive impartial assistance from FEMA, I have directed a comprehensive additional training for FEMA staff to reinforce that political affiliation should never be a consideration in the rendering of assistance.”

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The Tyler Burleson Story – Tennessee Patriot Sits in Jail Today after He Stopped Everything to Help the Victims of Hurricane Helene

Tyler Burleson is behind bars tonight awaiting an arraignment in Unicoi County, Tennessee, three days past the 72-hour limit required by law. Burleson has been instrumental in bringing relief to those affected by Hurricane Helene over the last four months. Tyler has put his business and life on hold to help serve the community. He helped the community open a distribution area where hurricane victims could come and get supplies they need. This was done due to the lack of response given by FEMA to bring aid to those suffering. He has received pushback from authorities about having a distribution center and not having the proper permission to run such a place for the community. However, This has not stopped him and the other volunteers from providing for their fellow man.

Burleson revealed to Steve Bannon on his Real America’s Voice Warroom show this week that he was arrested on allegations of a bounced check even though he claims the check was made whole and resolved even before the arrest last week. Also, the alleged victim is not pressing charges. Although, there seems to be more to this arrest than meets the eye and some have ideas of why it took place, Burleson just wants to be free of this and continue helping his fellow citizens.

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Maxine Waters Suggests People in California Can’t Get Services Because the Rich ‘One Percent’ Don’t Pay Their ‘Fair Share’ in Taxes

California Congresswoman Maxine Waters appeared on NewsNation this week to talk about the devastating fires in her state.

Waters, who never missed an opportunity to be politically toxic during Trump’s first term, has been conspicuously quiet since the 2024 election. During her appearance with Chris Cuomo, she claimed that she did not want to talk about Democrat vs. Republican. Cuomo correctly points out to her that politics is involved here because California’s governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass are both Democrats.

Waters then pivots to the victims of the fires and suggests that some of California’s richest people, the one percent, are not paying their ‘fair share’ in taxes. California has the highest taxes in the country.

From Breitbart News:

“The first thing we’ve got to understand is, services cost money and we should be willing to get the richest people in this country, the richest 1% that is protected, make sure they pay their fair taxes so that we can have the money to provide the services. With that money and with those resources, the people who have been selected or elected to do the job should do the job.

I don’t care who it is. It could be Democrat, it could be Republican, it could be whatever. But the fact of the matter is, we all should have heavy hearts right now, but we should have faith and we should be on point by making sure that we do everything to help the people that need us. Dammit, you can do the politics later. You can come and talk about Gavin Newsom later. You can talk about the Democrats later.”

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Richmond and Los Angeles Have Been Mugged By Reality

Windsor Farms is a beautiful residential neighborhood in Richmond. My great uncle developed it 100 years ago. The streets are laid out in the style of an English village and there are many stately Georgian homes with beautiful gardens.

During the George Floyd “Summer of Love” antifa and Black Lives Matter marched through Windsor Farms, no doubt to protest against “nice stuff,” preferring everyone to live in graffiti ridden squalor as a measurement of social justice fairness.  I wrote at the time that if any of these Georgian mansions were given to any of these neo-Marxist protestors, within 6 months all the windows in the house would be busted out, there would be broken glass and 3-foot-high grass in the front yard, and the mechanical systems would all be trashed.  The same is true with a city. Give these types of people the keys to any city and in short order, the city, just like the free house, will be destroyed. They are incapable of taking care of anything.

Here in Richmond, we just went through nearly 3 days with no municipal water. Now, we have to go through 2-3 days of not being allowed to drink the water coming from our taps.  Several hundred thousand people in a major metropolitan area with hospitals, manufacturing plants, universities, nursing homes, and millions of square feet of office space had no water. It’s third world. Our race hustling, low IQ Marxist mayor hired a DEI candidate to run the Department of Utilities, the first time ever a non-engineer held that post. Her major initiative was hiring other DEI candidates to work for Public Utilities. Incompetent boobs, hire other incompetent boobs and before you know it, there are more boobs than the runway at the Bada-Bing.

Los Angeles is burning down. The government incompetence there is extraordinary. LA has its own DEI problems. Its fire chief was hired because she is an outspoken lesbian. Her initiative has been to hire more women and LGBTQ firefighters. Yep, I want a 99 lb mentally ill woman who thinks she’s man pulling me out of a burning fire! Who wouldn’t?

I’ve been known to be unabashedly blunt, but of course always right. DEI is the process of hiring simple minded knaves at the expense of competent and qualified artisans. Worse, it instills a sense of unearned entitlement in those who “Didn’t Earn It.” It is a cancer metastasizing through the ranks of work forces given grave responsibilities, and it spreads to the point where no one in an organization has the work ethic or skill to change a light bulb.

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Where’s the Outrage? Biden Gives SoCal a Blank Check While FEMA Leaves North Carolina Out In the Cold

The nation’s attention continues to be hyperfocused on Southern California as devastating wildfires continue to burn in and around Los Angeles. The fires have displaced thousands of people and destroyed entire towns. There is an overwhelming need for immediate aid, and the recovery from these disastrous fires will take years.

With less than two weeks left in office, President Joe Biden has informed California Governor Gavin Newsom that the federal government will be picking up the tab for California’s recovery for the next six months. Biden has told them to spare no expense.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the residents of Western North Carolina have been all but forgotten. Thousands remain displaced from flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. Entire neighborhoods were washed away, and many of the buildings that survived the flooding are unlivable because of dangerous mold.

FEMA has been on the ground in North Carolina for months—not that you can tell. Many North Carolinians live in tents because assistance has been scarce, difficult to obtain, or unreachable.

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Homeland Security Inspector General Confirms Audit Of FEMA Over Trump Sign Controversy

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general this week confirmed it is auditing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) over concerns that its employees avoided homes that displayed signs supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the aftermath of several hurricanes.

In a letter dated Jan. 6, the office told Reps. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that an audit of the disaster relief agency was initiated on Dec. 17, 2024, to “determine how well FEMA followed its policies and procedures when addressing safety concerns and determining community trends that impact disaster survivor assistance in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.”

Two months ago, a now-terminated FEMA employee, Marn’i Washington, allegedly told a FEMA team in Florida to bypass homes that display Trump signs. After reports surfaced that FEMA workers were told to avoid those homes, FEMA Director Deanne Criswell announced that the employee, Washington, was fired.

“I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA, and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct,” Criswell said in a statement at the time.

But Washington later said in several media interviews that the policy was systemic and that she was being scapegoated. FEMA officials “were already avoiding these homes, based on community trends, from hostile political encounters,” she told Fox News at the time, adding that the policy had “nothing to do with the campaign sign, it just so happened to be a part of the community trend.”

“Firstly, I’m being framed,” she told NewsNation in mid-November 2024.

“There’s no violation of the Hatch Act. I was simply following orders.”

On Dec. 3, 2024, Graves and Perry, two lawmakers who sit on the House Transportation Committee, called for an investigation into the claims made by Washington and other reports “of the deliberate avoidance of homes with Trump campaign or political signs” during FEMA’s response to the two hurricanes.

“The actions taken by FEMA supervisors in directing employees to avoid homes that displayed Trump campaign signs or flags are disturbing and raise serious questions about the culture and political bias that permeates FEMA leadership,” they wrote, adding that the committee is also concerned about whether the practice was “more widespread than reported” and could have harmed hurricane victims.

In November 2024, Criswell testified before a House subcommittee and said that not providing aid to people due to political beliefs is “completely at odds with FEMA’s mission,” stressing that the incident wasn’t part of a broader FEMA trend.

FEMA had faced criticism late last year after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Criswell suggested the relief agency would run out of funding needed to last the remainder of the 2024 hurricane season.

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North Carolina counties demand full property tax payments — even for homes wiped out by Helene

Residents of several counties in North Carolina are still on the hook for the full payment of their property taxes, officials warn, even if their homes were destroyed by Hurricane Helene.

In late September, Helene battered the mountainous region of Western North Carolina and the surrounding states, causing massive floods that swept many structures away or left them in a pile of rubble. As a result, some residents remain in RVs or even tents, despite winter temperatures, as Blaze News previously reported.

Though the devastation in the area is unprecedented, state law requires property tax payments to be paid by midnight on January 6, no matter what. So county leaders say their hands are tied.

“Please be aware: North Carolina law does not allow property tax waivers or exceptions due to natural disasters,” read an online statement from Buncombe County, one of those hardest hit by Helene. “Regardless of circumstances stemming from Hurricane Helene, property taxes are still due by Jan. 6. The Tax Office is here to help you figure out a plan, so please contact us as soon as possible.”

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Hospitals ration IV fluids as shortage extends into 2025

The US healthcare system continues to grapple with a critical IV fluid shortage caused by Hurricane Helene, which brought catastrophic flooding to North Carolina and heavily damaged Baxter’s North Cove manufacturing facility. Responsible for 60% of the nation’s IV fluid supply, the facility has been steadily working to restore operations, but full recovery is anticipated during the first quarter of 2025.

Baxter has restarted 85% of its manufacturing capacity, according to a December 19 update. Eight of the facility’s 10 manufacturing lines are back online, with some operating near pre-hurricane levels. The company anticipates reaching full pre-hurricane production levels early this year, which would allow distribution channels to normalize shortly after.

Previously, in a December 5 update, Baxter announced the resumption of its 3-liter irrigation manufacturing lines and peritoneal dialysis solutions manufacturing lines. The company also detailed that its IV solutions manufacturing lines had restarted, producing much of the site’s pre-hurricane capacity of 1-liter IV solutions—the size most commonly used in hospitals and clinics.

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