I am told there will be a warming station set up in town today. This will be a place with satellite television, chargers and heat. No word yet on a shelter with beds, but it is warmer now. The snow has melted and the temperature is supposed to be in the fifties today. Tomorrow the sixties!

I have to say our mayor and village employees are doing a great job cleaning up. The garbage trucks were out immediately in the aftermath. The guys were going around first collecting any garbage that they could determine had food in it. They were relentless, picking through garbage piles to find bags, boxes, anything that contained food which would draw rodents. That was no easy feat as people were pouring their homes into the streets!

     Most blocks in the village have had the pay loader treatment I explained yesterday, and it's not quite as depressing driving through them. I know the sidewalks will fill up again since a lot of people just left things as is until the insurance adjusters come. They are going to have mold problems. The  black mold was already creeping up the studs when we opened the walls.
     Our first floor is gutted now of everything below 27 inches. Many people had water up to the tops of their windows and will have to gut everything out. Others will just need to be bulldozed.

We drove over into Long Beach again yesterday and boy oh boy, they have a time ahead of them. It made me really appreciate what a great job our little village is doing ourselves.

More good news, the Red Cross has come to town! Hooray! They were driving the streets with hot meals for all of the people. People came streaming out of their houses for hot dogs, baked ziti and other meals cooked up by Southern Baptist Convention. The truck in our neighborhood had a Spanish speaking volunteer, and I found a very nice woman from Red Cross at the FEMA tent to help my neighbor.

The Red Cross has been kind of persona non grata in our town because they've been noticeably absent. The Salvation Army on the other hand, has been here big time, and they have become town favorites.

I spoke with one of the volunteers from the Red Cross and she said they were ready to go the day after the storm but weren't allowed to. That was very cryptic. What did she mean, they weren't allowed to? She said they have rules and regulations to follow and they need approval from Washington to move in. As a result they didn't get on the ground in Long Island until Saturday.
   
 The man who was driving the food truck said he'd spent days up on the North Shore feeding people with big cars and even bigger boats. He didn't understand why they weren't in our town sooner. Hey, we've got some pretty big cars and boats down here too,our boats are just capsized and our cars are underwater- like our mortgages! But hey,we all need to eat, right?

Understanding the workings of FEMA and the Red Cross is a job in itself. Everyone wants everything from FEMA but I've been told repeatedly, FEMA just pays. I still don't know why they can't pay for a generator for a shelter, but they don't, and the Red Cross doesn't have any. They do the food, the cots, hygiene kits, etc.
More later...