Put yourself into this (fictional) scenario.
Your adrenaline is still pumping through your veins at an astounding pace after the mud came down the mountain and pushed your house, your truck, and your garage right off of their foundations and out of sight.
Despite the chaos and ruin, you feel lucky. Your entire family somehow miraculously survived, and you are all together.
You grit your teeth and go carefully into what’s left of the foundation of your house. You have another thing to be happy for. Not much survived, but you spy those big blue bins in which you store camping gear. Again, you feel blessed.
You set up your tent, you build a campfire, and you try to make it fun for your kids. But there’s nothing to eat, and nothing to drink, and you know you’re going to have to trek into town on foot, with your children, because you certainly aren’t leaving them there.
To your astonishment, the entire town is gone, swept away into the river that runs through it. There is no place open where you can get help. Other people are walking around blankly, shell-shocked from the intensity and destruction of the disaster. You hear of a kind soul who is feeding people and hopefully go over there. You’re led by the smell of the barbecue, and welcomed when you arrive. This neighbor has decided to use up the meat in his freezer before it spoils. From the looks of things, no power will be back on any time soon.
You trudge back home with a cherished gallon of water and you play camping games with your kids until they finally fall asleep. Only then can you let down your guard and weep for all that you lost.
Surely, help will arrive soon, you think, as you drift off to sleep.
Days go by and they turn into a week, then two. You’ve seen a few volunteers who have dropped off supplies such as food and water. Your kids are delighted by the team of pack mules bringing more supplies.
The government is nowhere to be seen, and you can’t get any news, and you wonder if there will ever be help available to get you back on your feet.
You’ve developed a new routine of cooking something over a morning campfire, then walking down to the one remaining building, a local church. There, you pick up supplies and water, then make the steep walk home. Oddly, amidst all this, you kind of enjoy the time with your kids, free from digital distractions.
Finally, you learn that the cavalry is here, and you can get that $750 you heard about in immediate emergency aid. But you’re just given a website to submit an application – there is no help immediately. You also apply for emergency housing. Later, you learn you’ve been declined and they won’t tell you why.
Weeks turn into a month and then two. Your insurance claim has been denied because flood insurance didn’t seem necessary up on a mountainside. Nothing is covered.
Finally a couple of folks with clipboards and FEMA jackets arrive. They won’t give you emergency housing because they’ve deemed your property to be “on a flood plain.” They talk about helping you relocate but you’re not interested. This land is all you have left. You will figure something else out.
Then, two days later more officials show up. They are from the Department of Social Services. They tell you that the camp you’ve created out of the few things you have left is not suitable for children to live there and that unless you find suitable shelter, your kids will be going into foster care.
A few days after that, the DSS people show up, and they’re escorted by an armed law enforcement officer. They won’t be swayed by screams, entreaties, threats, or tears. Your children are gone, and you’re given a business card with a phone number to call to find out where they are.
You feel defeated, but go to where the town used to be to make the phone call. You’re told that your children have been separated. The foster homes are in different directions, several hours away. If you don’t visit them every month, you’ll lose your parental rights. You don’t have a car, you don’t have money, you have no idea how you will get there.
A few real estate developers show up and also give ridiculously low offers, but they will put cash in your pocket right away. You run them off because this land has been in your family for many generations. Then you are gripped by fear that you should’ve taken the money anyway because it would allow you to set up someplace else and get your children back.
You hear that FEMA has a buyout program for the “pre-disaster marketplace value of your property” and leave it “open space in perpetuity. You’re desperate to find your children. You look deeper into the process. Then you learn it’s a tax assessment value that doesn’t include the beautiful house you had built there.
Your back is against the wall, snow is falling, you live in a tent, and you lost your children. Finally, you take an offer from a real estate developer. You’ll immediately have enough money to get an older car and settle somewhere else where you can get your children back.
But don’t worry. As any mainstream media fact-checker will tell you, this isn’t a land grab. You’re not being forced off your property. You made the decision to sell, didn’t you?
It was all voluntary.
About this story
While the story above was fictionalized, people in the hardest-hit areas of Appalachia are reporting all of these things happening to them. Not one single element is entirely fiction. It’s all based on the words of eye-witnesses who are there
For more information about the lack of assistance, go here and see the testimonies of the people themselves. Scroll down to look at the recommendations for providing help if you feel so moved.
I had begun writing this as a brief introduction to an article about what folks are calling “the land grab.” But it kept flowing and in the interest of not making it super long, I’ll continue reporting on this next week.
What would you do if faced with a situation like this?
And remember, the disaster could strike your property next. You, too, will be facing these decisions. You have no insurance payout, no assistance payout unless you leave your land, and your children are veritable hostages. What would you do?
Wow, I got angrier and angrier as I read this. What can be done to help?
The article linked to at the end has several options for helping individuals. Aside from that I think we have to put pressure on the government to let them know we are aware of what we are doing, and remind them they work for us. Social media, tell your friends, share articles like this…
I wish I had more but that’s all I’ve got.
Thank you
I couldn’t imagine what I’d do in that circumstance, as I’ve never walked in their shoes. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve gone out and bought a ton of things to send to both TN and NC, mostly NC, that went out on 3 trucks from our area. I’ve put myself into credit card debt that will take months to pay off, but my heart has been so broken for them. All the things we as preppers save (non-food), I thought about and sent from my own reserves to save money, but also went and bought much for them. Trying to always think what little things I’d be missing most if I lost it all. I saw your article with the links, but couldn’t watch the ones about the children being taken away, I couldn’t have seen it through my tears and my anger. I AM SO ANGRY. So helpless. So frustrated. And did I say angry?? You posted the address to the Baptist Church and I’ll be sending warm gear from Amazon to them, with your link so you very rightfully get a little something for all you do. Wish Amazon would give us a month’s grace from interest for Christmas – I’ve never before carried a balance.
If it came down to my kids/grandkids, I’d sell whatever I had to get them back. And for those having to make that dreadful choice, may God truly bless them. I pray for these families and the children, that our Mighty Lord is watching over them and keeping them safe until they’re reunited. Besides 9/11, I can’t imagine anything that’s happened within our nation’s shores that’s been so devastating to so many. If this was manmade – as so many think – the perpetrators will receive judgment one day, but I wish they could be prosecuted here on Earth, too. People have to help each other because 1) the gov’t won’t help, and 2) we can’t even trust them to.
Please keep posting about it as time goes on. I don’t think I will ever forget this. My sister, who died of cancer 8 years ago, was from NC, and we’ve driven through this area. It truly is/was God’s country and the people are so amazing. It will take years, but their resolve will bring it back. Everyone – please pray, pray and pray for them. It costs nothing, but our Father hears us.
Thank you once again, Daisy.
This is why I didnt even consider voting for the soon to be recent administration. No guarantees what the next one will be like but there is no doubt how utterly poor the last one was. They are so very concerned about splittingbup illegal alien families but not American families. Digusting and treasonous. Joe and Blow need to go.
They tear apart American families under the auspices of (de facto) law. To “establish a religion” you must be willing to do whatever it takes to abolish all dissenting opinions. From a “group think” perspective that would mean, rule by decree, not as a matter of consent, where the Declaration of Independence, and The U.S. Constitution are relegated to “the dustbins of history” and replaced by (we as a group) malum prohibitum Law. What better way to kill, steal and destroy than to cloak yourself in appearance (illusion) of righteousness while condemning the innocent who by no fault of their own are put upon by these same self-serving groups. When Parental rights should be Malum in se and unalienable, these groups will spend whatever they have to to prove that life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness are quite alienable given the prestige that society gives to force and fraud. As long as “Rights” can be defined (or re-defined) by any arbitrary and capricious power, there can be no peace
I pray these folks will actually get their children back. Government is never there to help. It’s a shame they couldn’t kick the government (state and federal) out, and leave everything to the everyday folks that are busting their humps to help others.
I wonder when (and pray it doesn’t) the government is going to start condemning the roads/bridges that volunteers are building?
Rumor has it that they tried with the road built by the West Virginia coal miners. I can’t find the link right now, but the person trying to close it met with a group of very firm gentlemen who pushed back and kept it open – at least for the short term, I don’t know about now.
Yes, pray, for that is proven to help. And then act as if it were all up to us, for G-d uses us to do these things.
It is unlikely that the bridges are actually sound enough to certify. If not, then it is a matter of public safety that they be condemned–as soon as better ones can be built.
We need to work WITH people like building inspectors to give them the courage to make temporary exceptions to normal rules. For that, we must understand the necessity of their jobs. Working with an insurance agent gave me contact with building inspectors on occasion. One woman told me of an elderly couple building a home, with doors that locked the inside. That was against code because it is a fire hazard. With smoke poisoning, your brain can just work a doorknob or push bar, but nothing more complicated. The elderly couple had to comply with the code for an occupancy permit–and then they did what they pleased, and locked their doors inside. A fire DID happen, they did NOT escape, and died.
One of the horrors wrong with our country is too few people care about the local government that affects them most. Another is self-righteous antagonism toward officials, honest or not.
One thing I wanted to do is find abandoned home wrecks in my own nearby state, and persuade our local gov to inspect them for temporary safety, electric, water, sewer, and grant winter occupancy permits for WNC and East TN rescues. In Spring, they go home to rebuild a real house.
Part of why G-d is allowing this horror is because we the people must wake up and see what let-George-do-it has allowed.
It’s a shame there aren’t any attorneys around willing to fight the government on this. No one can afford to hire one if one could be found. It wouldn’t be an immediate help.
It is always about the land. These evil bastards in FEMA and other organizations that are enabling this unethical, mean-spirited land grab should all be nullified, disbanded and those individuals who were “just doing their job” should be made to live in a winter wilderness with nothing for at least 6 weeks.
This breaks my heart for the people who rightfully live in these areas. They are manipulated into these choices and to forcibly take children away from their parents as you write above is evil beyond measure. This makes me livid and fortifies my distrust in all things federal gov’t.
I will use the link you provided and see what more I can do to actually help.
Thank you for sharing.
Wow! Devastating!. I have no idea how I would handle those things. And we all could be next.
Crimes against Humanity!
Well, call me a crackpot, paranoid, tinfoil hat wearing, conspiracy theorist!
Sometimes I find it hard to understand the mentality of other people. If someone outside of government came to take your children away from you, what would you do? Hand them over probably not the answer, correct?
But if Social Services shows up, it’s time to sheepishly surrender the kids. Very well then.
Some of those folks are single moms, grandparents with custody… Not everyone is able to fight back. I have no doubt that at this rate, somebody will though.
The most dangerous person in the world is someone who has lost everything and has nothing left to lose. When they take action against those government agents that have taken from them what little they have left it will be up to their peers, who will sit as jurors, to use jury nullification to find them NOT GUILTY regardless of the evidence, testimony or charges.