Tuesdays with FEMA

We just got our FEMA award letter and I'm more mystified than ever.

If you read any of my prior posts (and if you didn't, we need to have a talk), you may recall that I've previously complained about the refusal of three different FEMA workers to tell me what exactly I needed to do to qualify for assistance, and what items would be covered, at what rate, if I did. In another post, I questioned the necessity of FEMA sending me a supplemental Spanish copy of each of the 29,516 (give or take) documents it has mailed me thus far, given that I've conducted all of my considerable business with the agency entirely in English.

These petty annoyances could have at least conceivably been attributed to bureaucratic inefficiency. But after receiving my assistance letter, I'm convinced that FEMA isn't actually a government agency at all, but a cover for a hidden camera reality show that's secretly recording the frustrated exasperation through which it puts its applicants. I'm just hoping the payoff for the unknowing contestants prove worth it in the end.

Don't get me wrong. I am glad that a pool of our tax money goes to this sort of thing, and I'm thankful that we were lucky enough to receive even a small measure of assistance from it, even if it means subjecting ourselves to a comedy of errors and the snickers of a studio audience that must be watching this process unfold in parts unknown. I just wish FEMA would put as much effort into assisting people as it does into stupefying them.

We got a letter listing a dollar amount of our assistance, $754.04 (with copies in both English and Spanish, as one might have come to expect at this point). I'm happy for the help, even if it was less of a return than FEMA had led me to believe we might be getting. The inscrutably weird part was that the letter contains no explanation of where how the agency arrived at this precise amount (clearly, $754.05 would have been excessive!), which of our damages were covered and which ones were not, or why the award check didn't fully cover the things FEMA claimed it would. Curiously evasive throughout the whole process, FEMA did, after a whole lot of arm-twisting, begrudgingly reveal to us was that our replacement hot water heater and the wet vac we bought to clean up would be reimbursed. Instead, what we got would have almost paid for the new hot water heater, had we taken the damaged one to a plumbing junkyard and sold it for its parts at a premium rate, and then found a couple of twenties laying beside the road on the way home, while driving a car someone else filled with gas.

And we're left to wonder what became of all our other damaged items. Did FEMA forget to include them, were they not part of the reimbursement program after all, or due to budget limitations, did they just pay us pennies on the dollar for everything, water heater included? Is there any logical reason why FEMA doesn't want me to know this?

Conveniently, there is a fax number listed as to where to direct an appeal (I'm surprised they don't make applicants guess at the fax number as well), but, of course, FEMA provides no information as to what specifically, one might be appealing. If FEMA's letter had told me what items qualify for reimbursement and what doesn't, and what how much I get for each, I would just go about life, happily free from its enigmatic benevolency. As it is, I have no way of knowing whether FEMA shorted me or not. The decision letter contains no information other than: "here's what you get" with a dollar amount filled in, as if it were a number picked from a powerball tank. Which in fact, for all I know, IS how they do it.

I was so perplexed by the letter, that I actually read the Spanish version to see if it made any more sense, hopeful that at the very least, I might reference some obscure reality show on Telemundo recording this whole thing. But to no avail.

Make no mistake, I'm not complaining about not getting enough money to cover our damages; I didn't expect to. I don't want a cent more than to what we're entitled under the federal guidelines that cover these situations. I just wish FEMA weren't so careful about concealing what those guidelines actually are.

I have no idea whether we got the right amount or not. Nobody else does either. So I feel like I might as well appeal, just in case. But I have a sinking feeling that when I do, they are going to take away some of my award (without explanation, of course) just to provide a plot for next week's episode.