BEAUMONT, TEXAS

I got a call early this afternoon asking me to go to Beaumont Texas to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. I went to the aftermath of Rita and swore that I would never, not ever, do a hurricane assignment again. I went to Rita and worked hard for 23 days and nearly missed Christmas at my house because of it. I went home and spent all day Christmas day sitting on the couch thinking how terrible it was that all those people I just left (I came home December 23) were not only not going to have Christmas presents they had no shelter or nowhere to go to celebrate it. Needless to say it was a totally wasted Christmas (much of it spent with tears running down my face) for me and I don't intend to ruin another part of my life.

I am surely sorry for the impacted folks but I know from experience that there is really nothing I can do to help them---there is too much red tape in the government to help them---quite frankly all of the work we did while were doing Rita (and it was a lot) simply went into a box that allowed for the cleanup of the debris from the peoples property---it didn't clean anything up and it didn't provide anywhere for the people to live---I have never been so disgusted in my life. I understand that before you can do anything on peoples property you have to have permission to do it but I don't understand why you have to have every single person in a community agree to the work before you can go to work----'nuff said---I'll be at home.