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Safety Wars Live 10-10-2024 People Who Lie About You When Doing Your Job, FEMA's Role in Disasters.

Broadcast on:
11 Oct 2024
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for reactions from other agencies, legal cases, and criminal activity. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Propose fines are exactly that, and they are often litigated, reduced, or vacated. We use available public records and news accounts and press releases. We cannot warranty or guarantee the details of any of the stories we share, since we are not directly involved with these stories, at least not most of the time. Enjoy the show! This video, this show, is brought to you by Safety FM. And from the border of Liberty and Prosperity. Turn that down, I kind of address the volume well man, cut in there. From the border of Liberty and Prosperity, in the highway from North Texas, Safety Wars, for Thursday, October 10th, our little calendar person is getting the calendar ready with us and she's saying hello to everybody. She has, what do you call that, a pull over by blanket, strawberries, her Amazon Prime. Treasures, Prime Day is over. But anyway, that was Jessica. We all know Jessica from one of the promos. That's my dad. Anyway, it's been a week, basically, since I've been here. What's gone on? A lot has gone on. Like I said, last week we were involved with some of the festivities yesterday, to the National League Championship Series wild card, the Mets versus the Phillies. What a game! And as, my brother John used to say, it's the Mets, anything can happen. That's why they're so endearing, anything can happen. They can be up 15 points in the ninth inning and lose. Very frustrating, but last night, big win. We were right to the, we were in the right field side, right to the side of the big apple, right? And we had a lot of fun. They had, I mean, I was describing the scene to a lot of people, I'm going to put together a little video from that, from last night, couldn't do it today. But basically, they had, for those of you not familiar, with professional sports. There are a lot of people out there not familiar, and I'm surprised. They have what are called tailgate parties. And it really is anonymous with football games, so they have a pre-game party. And back in the day, I don't know if this still happens, there are people who can give forward tickets to get into see the Giants, who were not season ticket holders, they used to be impossible tickets to get, I think they still are. They used to have the portable TVs and generators in the parking lot, and they used to watch the game on TV and be out there with everybody else. Well, and radios, obviously. And what, no, and that's evolved over the years. You don't, now you see everybody out there with iPads, some TVs, but iPads, and portable barbecue grills. Some of it's even catered. I mean, those are catered food out there, and they're partying it up and everything before the game, because that is cheaper than the concessions in the game. I mean, you're paying $18 for beer. I mean, come on. And it's like, no, your father is beer from the 1960s and 70s before the microbrews. And that's basically what we're looking at there. But anyway, great time. So they had like a stage set up, and they had dancers, they had food trucks, my daughter is yelling. Oh, I guess I'm going to have a co-host here today. Food trucks, and they had, you know, free drinks, no, like Coke, nothing, you know, they're not giving a hard look around there. And it's just a very festive attitude. And then after the win, right, there was even more celebrations on the outside. It was great. I mean, we had a phenomenal time out there. Sorry to my Philly's fan listeners out there, but it didn't work out so good. You had a, you played a very good game there, but for Cisco Endure, with the Grand Slam, you can recover from that. But anyway, safety. We're going to talk about this is safety words. We're going to talk about safety. And there's a lot of stuff going on there in the war for safety, for your safety, my safety, the country's safety, voting safety, safety out there in the Middle East, safety, and the Ukraine and the safety all over the place for us to talk about. So I woke up to this this morning. I do something that the experts tell you not to do, but I do anyway. I'm off at 4 a.m. every morning. Got a love tonight. No, I, for me, it's, or tinnitus. For me, it's congenital with other people. No, they, it's not congenital. And you're at a higher risk of getting tonight is if you don't wear that hearing, all important hearing protection out there. Anyway, we're going to talk about PPE tomorrow. I promise you, even all my safety meetings are about PPE tomorrow. We'll talk about that. So I'm on Facebook and I'm in the group safety consultants. I am one of the administrators. The other administrators are Shelton Primus and the safety consultant and Alan Warford. I believe those are the other two. Diary of a bald man. But let's see. Hold on. Let me see who are the administrators. I'm not in charge of adding things. So some go, some don't, that sort of thing. I get this host on here and it's very, very relevant to this to what a lot of people go through. I'll read it to you. I'm not going to put it on the air because I know on the video, but here is. This is from an anonymous member. I pissed off an employee because he couldn't put his hard hat, wouldn't put his hard hat on on site. Whereas posted policy, he wasn't the only individual doing this at the same time. I never sent any particular individual's name. They all tried to turn the narrative, claiming I was screaming and yelling. I projected my voice. I wasn't screaming and yelling. My bigger concern though is how those individuals, these individuals are still upset enough to continue talking about it later in the day. The employees that had no clue about what had happened didn't need to know about what happened. The employees who weren't complying were still upset. They continued to speak of it through the day and it occurred to me at home that maybe I need to inform my boss and whoever else will be involved. No thoughts. Please don't negative responses. I'm hard enough on myself and see how I should have done things differently. I want to know if I need to be concerned for my own safety. This is basically what it comes down to it. We had a very lengthy discussion here. My answer, very simple here. Been there, done that. Any type of direction is always yelling and screaming off the wall. That's what I hear. Quote unquote. I now put any confrontation on video and audio record. I'll add this if it's legal and allowed. That's just the way it is. No meaning and I'll add this nowadays. And this is another one. I agree with you. But once the cam comes down, things may escalate even more. It might be better to set off and bring the employees supervisor into the mix and let him or her deal with the situation. Not a big fan of retraining for basic hard hat and safety glass issues. Just to let you know, on one of my projects, we'll mention where we had to actually do that last week for the employees. Not that anyone who is violating anything, but we'll talk about that tomorrow. What happened? We actually had to do some tree training on PPE standards with that. I don't want to digress from this. So that might happen. These folks should know the standards local leadership needs to enforce. All right. And then I responded, your approach is better if the supervisor isn't in on the non compliance. More often than not on my projects, as Jimmy talking, the supervisors give directions that are contrary to safety. Even at a higher level. Also, the younger generation views and interaction as yelling and screaming, I'll add this. We've had a cultural shift in our society. Real simple. People do as a respect type thing. They feel that if you point out something that could be done better, even no matter how nice you say it. And again, sometimes on a construction site, you got to raise your voice. Why? On the job I'm on. You have jackhammers. You have grinders. You have trash pumps. You have copious flowers. You may have a generator in there. You're not going to talk like this on that job and because no one's going to hear you. And we're going to assume that they have hearing protection on. And if they don't have hearing protection on, they're still not going to hear you because they have a threshold shift and they're hearing. They can't hear anything anyway. So what do you have? Hey, heart hat, safety glasses. Hey, you're a reminder, a gentle reminder. Oh, well, he yelled at me. Happens all the time. So you have to be able to mitigate and address that. All right. Now, what I do, if this sounds like a construction job, what I do is mandatory on all my jobs. Let's all say this together because you've heard it before. Am I allowed to hire? Do I hire? Do I fire? Do I discipline anyone? Right? Do I reward anyone? And can I make changes in every employment agreement? If not an employment agreement, some kind of email. I want to know exactly where my authority starts and stops. And guess what? If I don't have the authority to do all of that, I'm going to get the supervisor. Even if I do have the authority to do that, I'm going to get the supervisor. Because usually on my projects, we get hired. Again, the safety words moniker right here, right there. No, you have to go in with a little bit of an assertive mindset. I'm not saying being a dictator with the emphasis on dick. No, no, no, no, no. You have to be assertive. You have to have backbone. And you have to know what that will go on with some of the other things, right? So what I find is, I make sure that the contractor has a designated confident person. If I'm the designated confident person, I'm getting paid a little bit more than normal, number one. And number two is, it's good when I say goes, real simple. Yes, do I take input? Yes, I take input. But ultimately, I'm responsible for that. And I'm going to make sure all the standards are followed, all the rules are followed. And people need to retraining. We're going to retrain them. If they need explanation, we're going to explain. I'm in charge. If they need coaching, I'm going to coach. Whatever that's going to be, but you got to be firm. Because if you're going to do work in states like New York or New Mexico, and you're the confident person, you're the one with the authority, even if they don't use that word, guess what? Someone gets hurt, someone gets killed. Your problem, not so much the company's problem. All right. Company will deal with what the company does. Your problem, you're the confident person. All right. And we're going to sit down, no, in a non-adversarial process or out there. Hey, dude, you got to wear your heart hat. Or rather than say, wear your heart hat, fatter question is, explain to me why you're not wearing your heart hat. Just explain, I'm here to learn. Does the heart hat not fit? Is it uncomfortable? Do you not like the heart hat? Because now we're switching over into a more of a helmet style heart hat, most of my projects. Is there, do you get migraine headaches? Do you have a religious exemption? Do you have something like, there could be a million reasons why people are not wearing heart hats? Don't assume, oh, well, they're not wearing a heart hat and believe you. No, no, no, no, no. You got to explain. You got to see, you have to have a learning team. Absolutely. Have a learning team. Talk to people. Say, help me to understand. How could I make the job easier to set up easier if, so you can wear the heart hat, right? Pardon me. Again, all this has to go into that. You try to be non adversarial here, but because this is what happens that will get twisted. Now with the advent of these lovely things, right, they're called smartphones. And now body cameras, there is one service out there. I'm not going to mention them, you know, but that actually has body cameras set up, like the police do, and it's all downloaded on a secure platform, and it's all time stamped. Boring me, they eat stamped and everything else. Teachers needed to drink soda on there on the air, but all of this stuff. And guess what? Now, you know, again, if it's legal, sometimes it's not legal, depending on what state and jurisdiction you're in, or job site, for that matter. Do I like to go that way? The answer is no. However, on one job I had to, and guess what? It didn't work out so good for the other person because she was caught in a lie, outright lie, and couldn't do anything about it, but it was an outright lie. She lost her credibility rather than me losing my credibility. Now, the other thing that happens here, going back here to the rules for radicals, this would be along the lines of keeping pressure on you. So they want to get, use a strategy. Maybe you're a strict safety professional, they want to get you off the job. They want to get you off the job, so they will lie about you. They will ridicule you. They will keep the pressure on you as they're doing with this person. I don't know if it's male or female, but they're doing it with this person, with this. All right, so document, document, document. The other thing is this, you want to be in control of the narrative. Whatever the narrative is, you want to be in control of that narrative. So this goes on and on that he went to manage when he believes first with this. Again, you want to make sure that that is done. Go first, make yourself in control of that narrative. The other thing is this. If you think no one's are recording you, you got another thing coming. Believe me, these things are ubiquitous here. By the way, I did order a new cell phone. Yes, it's all cracked on the back and now the battery life is only about three hours. Time for a new cell phone. Now, things are old. Now, I have this on video here for you people at home. So again, they're documenting you. You've got to document them. You've got to be first there, especially if you have, and I'm not saying anything against labor unions or anything else here. But with the labor unions, they're very organized. That's really cool, organized labor. So if they don't like you, believe me, this is all planned out ahead of time. And what their idea is, is that this person is being so strict. This person is being such a pain in the rear end. This person is so mean, and again, they're going to make a narrative to fit whatever the situation is, truth or not true, that we're going to get rid of him, and we're going to get somebody else here who's going to be easier to work with. Really? So what I point out, though, again, is this, and as we've gotten along here over the years, the last 30 some years, where we come up with certain strategies. And like earlier in my podcast history, you can go back, you got to have everything planned out, what to say ahead of time. So often what I point out now is the general duty clause. We have part one, when the employer is responsible for safe and helpful workplace, for your recognized hazard, blah, blah, blah, we know the text and everything. Well, what's part two, the employee has got to follow the rules. It says a lot. Well, for whatever reason, OSHA, and if you're alive in the 1990s and aware of politics, there was a phrase, no controlling legal authority, where some politicians, the initial was AG, did not, was caught doing something, and said, well, there's no controlling legal authority here. That's how that is with, in part two, the general duty clause. Now, there's some debates in there, right, whether employer, employees should be cited, and everything else that's going to be an ongoing debate. I don't see that happening. I don't necessarily agree with that unless it's some kind of egregious case, but OSHA allows you to use the employee misconduct defense. Well, I'm not an attorney. I don't play one on the radio, all right, or TV, or YouTube. Now, where they allow you to use that employee misconduct defense, extremely difficult defense to use, number one, because you're saying, dude, I've been watching the guy, the guy did X, Y, and Z, and not my fault. Very difficult case to win, and it's my understanding. I don't see anyone ever winning that case from, I don't know anybody who's done that, except for, you know, but nothing official got done with my case. So, you know, yes, I, there was an employee misconduct, and we were able to argue that with OSHA before it got to the citation level. But ask me some time outside the program, and I'll tell you. But anyway, what ended up happening was that the employers dropped to work with the employees, to manage the employees, and the employees not do something, and you know about it, you have a progressive discipline policy, written warning, verbal warning, written warning, right, and then something fire, suspension, something, right, and it's all got to be documented, meaning that nothing is verbal, everything is written, right, you have a progressive discipline policy, and you got to show that you actually have one, and that it's actually used. Now, with that, now getting back to the case in hand here with this, you got to, you know, again, show respect, everything else, but the thing is this, you have to have a backbone, and everything you do. I'm not, I'm going to change the guy's name, it was another name we use, we call them no backbone bill, right, it was a different B name, right, on one of my, why? No backbone. Oh, you kind of even talk to the operators in control of a facility, and hey, oh, we got to do this, no, no bill, go out and go, oh, okay, and then the guy goes, and he goes, well, you know, with that. Do you think that they tried that with me when I raised the safety concern? No. Do you think it raised to anybody else who had backbone? No, not really. Hey, this is what I need done. How do we need, and this is what we need to get to. What do I need, and this is what I need done. How do we make it there? Or do you have a better way of doing things better yet? Now you're including them on that. Oh, yeah, you know, Jim, blah, blah, blah, or no, we got to do it this way, we got to do about it. Okay, great. Now we discuss things. But what happened was he had the reputation of not having a backbone, and people who argue with him, and he'd be, oh, I'm afraid. Well, yeah, well, he had good reason to be afraid. He had a wife and two kids at home. Didn't want to lose his job because if he stirred up the move, no, guess what? Out of a job. That goes into a lot of these things, and I guess what? It's not only in the field level with the safety cop. It is also with the senior level management. I've seen it time and time and time again. But again, if you show that you have no backbone, if you show you that, hey, you could go level with them. And if they're not going to treat you like a peer, that's fine. But they may, they're not going to think it. Let me rephrase that. They're not going to think of you as a peer, right? But you're going to have, they're going to have to treat you as a peer. If you know your stuff, you've done your homework, you're assertive, you're not a dictator, and you're able to work with people in a nice way. You'd be surprised, right? I set up learning team, one man learning teams all the time, or two man learning teams all the time, right? Maybe you're with, uh, you've been with Sam this week, right? Same Goodman there. The hot nerd, he had a little seminar out there in Vegas this week. Maybe you're out there with him. You're at, you know, and he teaches you this stuff. You listen to his podcast, read his books, great, great, great thing. You, but essentially, you go out there and you, hey, how can we do this better? To know what I learned today? Good thing that I, they have this fancy hammer out there. I said, man, that's one hell of a hammer. I've never seen that one before. True. This guy said, I said, how does this thing run you about 75 bucks? 80 bucks? Jimmy, try 374 bucks on Amazon. I said, you're kidding me. So what's special about this? Handing me the hammer. Perfectly balanced hammer made, um, I believe aluminum or something else. Very light. But what happened is when it made up what lost some weight, it made up in length. So this is what I use. I'm a carpenter. This is what I use. This makes my job a lot easier. I said, well, it makes it a little bit more ergonomic probably. He said, oh, yeah, dude, when I'm on a job and I have to bang nails and I'm banging like 500 nails to 700 nails a day by hand on these jobs. This is great. Well, guess what? Now I learned something. So what's the moral of the story here? Have back phone, right? Go back and listen to my rules for radicals, right, uh, uh, programs. This is some leadership with this. Learning teams get alert, learn the job, get along with the folks. Now, you may not be able to do that with the workforce for whole host reasons. And a lot of times we are, uh, we are, uh, uh, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Now we're forced to put, we are the victims. That's what I'm looking for. We are the victims of other people's attitudes, other safety professionals' attitudes. So for example, one, uh, situation I had was with full protection improper tie offs. I said, no, you got to tie off. You got to tie off this way. It has to be to have five, uh, average point, 5,000 pounds or two to one safety margin on that, that little piece of conduit ain't going to hold stuff when you fall. Ain't going to hold you. Well, this is the way we're going to do it. I said, uh, no, you got to deal with this? So you're the competent person. You know this. No, blah, blah, blah, blah. Turns out he's one of these guys that bought his certificates off the street and because he used to brag about it, right? Uh, no, that's what he said. Anyway, he ended up going and, uh, uh, you know, starting, no, I'm in charge. He's going to tie off to that conduit. No, you're not going to charge. I got in charge when he starts yelling and screaming. I said, no, you're not going to do it. I said, either you're not going to do it or I will get someone out here to tell you and train you on how to do it. If that's what your decision is on here. I've never had a safety professional tell me that. And, uh, well, always the first time for anything. I said, I'm not like the other safety professionals because it has to do with life safety and it's an immediate thing, especially with something with fall protection. You have a 30 foot fall off the side of a building and you're tying off to a conduit, right? Guess what? I'm, you think I'm not going to say something? No, everyone's supposed to be afraid of you and go away. Every safety person I've been with them mention this to me and guess what? I'm, uh, blah, blah, blah. I tell them to go leave themselves and they walk away. I said, well, you got the wrong safety professional here and it turned out he wanted to start a fight over fall protection. All right. Guys are strained him and then, oh, Jim, you better get out of here before you know it. The next day he was off. He was gone. There's a no one that we've been waiting for. And then they comes from management. We've been waiting for someone to stand up to him because we have this issue every time with him, if not for fall protection with PPE, with JHJ, with everything, they went through the whole litany. Again, uh, this goes into my Soul Allen skis, uh, stuff that I talked about where oftentimes you're hired, whether we know it or not, as hatchet people when they're trying to document make a file against people and they're not going to tell you that. But they want to see if you're going what you're going to do. Client was thrilled that I actually did this. They said, that's what we hired you to do. And everybody else is afraid of this guy. You're like the fifth safety person on here. Why is everybody afraid? I don't know. You got to have backbone. Among other things. I went on a little bit too long with this, but guess what? I guess this counts for a safety wars rant. So go and check out safety consultants on Facebook. You're applying for it. If you meet the requirements, you may get in here on this. I'll put out an invite to anybody listening here. So, uh, no, and people, no, again, it's, uh, people like, well, Jim, you're, you know, uh, no, you got to, you know, want to escalate this. Well, guess what? Sometimes it warrants it. And you have to be a little bit judicious here. It also helps that you're bigger than everybody. But, you know, uh, with this, uh, you have to come up with your own techniques on how, uh, you're going to do this. Now what I would recommend everybody who's a safety professional, one of the books that I recommend you read is the art of war by Sun Tzu. All right. Uh, that's, uh, read that book. Why? Because that tells, teaches you how to manage situations. And one of the things that is in there is this, a wise general wins the war before he starts to battle. What does that mean? You got to have your, you organize and have your stuff ready to go before you start talking with these folks. I don't know. Give me some feedback on how, uh, what your thoughts are on here because, you know, I'd like to know. And we're going to come back with some other stuff I made a promise to someone that I would go over some, uh, things. And, uh, that's what I am going to do. We're going to set that up, uh, right now and... Have you listened or watched, uh, the safety warship? It does stream live on, on the radio and, um, on the streamer embers that we have. So if you have not taken a listen to Jim Bowlesl and what the hell he's doing every evening with, uh, safety wars, I would, I would strongly encourage you to, um, to take a view or take a listen, um, whichever option is available for you and take a listen to what the hell he has to go again. Uh, it's definitely, it will take some deep dives and some information that you might be interested in. In a world where danger lurks in every corner, one man stands as a beacon of hope. Jim Bowlesl, a veteran safety expert with over three decades of experience, now bringing his knowledge to you with safety wars. Engaging informative and always relevant, that's safety wars. Join the safety revolution with safety wars available on Spotify, Apple podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts and videos. In the professional safety community, communication and planning are just a few keys to your program success. The question many practitioners have is where do I start? Dr. Jay Allen, the creator of the safety FM platform and host of the rated R safety show, has built a global foundation to help you along the way. Go to safety FM.com and listen to some of the industry's best and most involved professionals, including Blaine Hoffman with the Safety Pro, Sam Goodman with the Hopner, Sheldon Primus with the safety consultant, Jim Bowlesl with safety wars, Emily Elrod with unapologetically bold, and many others. As individuals, we can do great things, but as a team, we become amazing, dial in to safety FM.com today and surround yourself with a powerful force of knowledge and support. Ocean recordables, catastrophic losses, environmental disasters, you want answers? So do I. This is Jim Bowlesl with safety wars. That's my daddy. So we're going to go into some information here. I'm sure everybody here will find useful here. So basically, there's a lot of misunderstanding as to what FEMA does with this stuff. Hold on, let me get the appropriate music. So we're all often told. The other one, FEMA, is like dealing with something out of vaudeville comedy. Right? Yes, this is royalty-free. And no, they don't know what they're doing and everything else. Let's not think negatively about what these people do. A lot of them have a lot of trauma and everything else. So we're going to go here and discuss some of what FEMA does. I was talking to Dawn Becker, one of our guests from AccraSure Insurance, previous guest. She's a dreamy. You really need to talk about this kind of stuff. Where is? And hold on. All right. All right. So what does FEMA do? All right. FEMA goes out and what they're doing now in Hurricane Helena and also the current situation in Florida here. All right. What does FEMA do? Here, let me get this up. FEMA's mission is to help people before during and after disasters. Here's what you could expect from FEMA before a disaster. We work across the country every day before disasters happen to help people and communities understand the affair for possible risks. We work with individuals and communities to build a culture of national preparedness through active community engagement, training, education and planning. You may have heard of the CERT program in your local community. Our National Ready campaign, that's ready.gov, gives you the information tools to be proactive and prepared for potential emergencies. And they also have flood maps that they put out through the National Flood Insurance Program right here. Managed by FEMA. You can learn about flood insurance policy by visiting floodsmart.gov. We also work with communities to manage flood risk through floodplain management and support coordination across all levels of government to protect citizens, property from flooding. We help communities become more resilient through emergency or disaster-related grant programs and training and education. Let's click on that. All right. They give training to first responders and emergency managers and through the National Preparedness, Directed Training and Education Division and the U.S. Fire Administration. Some of those are open for the public. You don't have to be an official responder. Here we have the Center for Domestic Preparedness with this. They have web-based training, non-web-based training and self-based online courses. A lot of these you get CEUs from them. They also have the Independent Study Program here for that. For that. Through the Emergency Management Institute. That's one I'm most familiar with. I've taken a lot of their courses here. I have that pulled up right here. Pretty cool stuff here and they have all different stuff. When a disaster strikes, local government officials review the damage to determine the extent of the incident and its impact. If the state, tribal nation or territory determine they need federal assistance, they submit a request for federal disaster declaration. All emergency and major disaster declarations are made solely at the discretion of the President through the Robert E. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. So recent disaster declarations. So let's see here. We have one right here. A seven old tribe of Florida Hurricane Milton on October 5th from October 5th onward. Florida Hurricane Milton, another one. It goes on and on and on related to this. Georgia Hurricane Helene. Again, the locals, the way this is all set up is the locals have to be prepared. Again, in the Catholic Church, I believe this, they have a term for this. Confiscatory, I believe it's called, or a consistent territory. I can't pronounce it. They're not the ones who came up with it, but what the idea is, those closest to an emergency or a disaster are the best to deal with it. Doesn't that sound a little bit like a learning team or human or organizational performance where the employee is the expert on a job, right? This is like the same idea where the person's closest to the situation are the ones who are going to be best at managing this here. And they go through a disaster declaration process and how a disaster gets declared, right? And disaster declarations, types of declarations, you have major emergency declarations. Then they have a disaster. So what happens is a major disaster declaration provides a wide range of federal assistance programs or individuals. And infrastructure and emergency declaration is for any major instance of one of the federal assistance needed supplement emergency for services provided by the state. So for a major one, my understanding is that you get federal resources like maybe the military. With that during COVID, I know that we had the hospital ship from the U.S. Navy. That was a New York harbor to add capacity to the hospitals in New York City. I know there's a big story behind that. And that's for the intention was that was because major disaster. Now, what ended up happening with COVID, you had 50 some different ways when you include the territories. It was 56 or 57, something like that. And that's not the number. It's close to it. Of different jurisdictions here that were controlling COVID response. And one of the debates that I got before I was on the air here, meaning back in 2020 was the time to reform the Stanford Act, if we don't like things doing it, is when there's not a disaster. People don't like that happening. They don't like the way it's managed. They got to do their hazard and debate. Again, what again, this is campaign season. What are we seeing? I tell you what, a lot of stuff, because right here in my district, for Congress, this is one of the key districts in the United States here for this. We have Congressman Waller versus the former Congressman Montefur. At both local guys, I'm not going to give an opinion on them, but I'll say only one of them was a response to what I had an issue here, and it was safety related. The other one did not completely ignore me when it came to that. So you know who, you can figure it out just once I said who I'm voting for, possibly. The FEMA also offers disaster assistance. What are the disaster assistance programs? No, I do not want that, right? For individuals and families, requirements and nonprofits, all right, and some other stuff here with us. Now, this is what the issue here. FEMA implemented the most significant updates of the disaster assistance this year. Let's learn more. Flexible funding, providing directly to survivors when they need it most, I think that's at 750 bucks that they're talking about. Displacement assistance, simplified other needs assistance, help under insured people, expand criteria for home repairs. Now, couldn't we can use that a couple years ago here? Computing devices, again, that's all part of our infrastructure. This smartphone technology and internet technology is just like electric. Now, and then it gives you the appeal process here. Now, let's go into this. This is what Dawn and I were discussing. I don't think I'm telling anything out of school here with this. If you have insurance, you should file a claim with your insurance company when you apply for FEMA assistance. FEMA cannot aid with losses already covered by insurance. If your insurance does not cover all your losses or is delayed, you may be eligible for a FEMA assistance regarding your unmet needs. And it goes on and on and on here. So, what do you need? What do you need to file for this? Again, if you - no, we talked about having all your paperwork together and everything else, this is where you need duplicates. And maybe you put them with a relative or a friend or somewhere else out of your area. So, if you need it, you have access to it. You need documentation to identify your identity. All right. What does that mean? That means you need to have ID, social security card, employers payroll document containing full or last word digits to your social security number, military ID, U.S. password, marriage license, especially if you change your name when you got married with that. All right. And I would include state licenses also if you have anything to identify you. All right. If you are applying for someone else like a minor child in your household, you have to send any of the documents that we just talked about or the child's birth certificate and the child's social security card documentation. You have to send - you have to have on file ownership and occupancy, verification. All right. And what's that? Basically, you have to have a lease, rent receipt, utility bill, employer's statement, pay stub, bank or credit card, statement, one of these things, driver's license, voter ID, public officials document, police chief, mayor, I don't know what that means, maybe a gun license or something like that. Medical provider bill, social service or organization documents like a Meals on Wheels sort of thing, motor vehicle registration, affidavits, a residency or other court documentation, local school documents, must include a child's disaster damage residence, a name of the applicant or co-athicking, or a letter prepared after the disaster by mobile home park or manager confirming your occupancy. FEMA acceptance following documents that's for you if you own the home, right? Deed mortgage insurance documentation. All this is on FEMA.gov here. Contracts, right? And they do have a recently done that. So you have to have some kind of proof of ownership with that. So you have to have insurance documents, ID, they're going to ask you, I went through this already, and they're going to ask for ID insurance documents. They're going to require a home inspection. Usually, they come over a couple of them when they can, because that's special when you're dealing with this stuff down there, what we're dealing with back-to-back hurricanes here in a week and a half, they're on overload. So you have to go, and you have to have an inspection. FEMA will ask you to take photos, make a list of your losses. What are your major things? Again, this is, again, people say, "Well Jim, I can't do this. This isn't too much work. I only got two days of hurricanes coming." Oh, well, well, guess what? This, I always say to, for basic disaster preparation, it's going to take two weeks or more to get your stuff together, and this is all part of it. We think about disaster preparation, respirators, food, all of that's important. That's all important, but this, believe me, you don't want to be raised running around finding this stuff when you're making this stuff. You kind of have this on hand. You have to have organization here. Make a list of your losses. So, for example, if your basin floods out, you need a new washing machine and dryer, you better have documentation of what you had with that. Keepers, seats, and everything else. And again, with that, they're going to ask for a photo ID. They're going to ask for a proof of ownership, list of hassle documents, all disaster caused damage and property, and your insurance policy. They're going to go through the whole thing, verify them. They're actually very nice with this, and this is all a follow-up once you do the inspection. I think you're going to need this information for the, you're going to need this information for the inspection here. Now, what do they give you? Shape tags here. Isn't that nice? Right? Here we go. And they have a handout here. You'll receive a letter of electronicon response. If you are determined, eligible for assistance, you may receive a U.S. Treasury deck. Check where direct deposit. And the other thing is this, they're going to ask for your employment information, and possibly, when I applied, they had asked for your, we had to get our prior years in defense return, and they needed a whole bunch of information off that. So, again, you may say, "Well, the government already has on fire." I just dealt with someone yesterday, or maybe it was the day before yesterday, where we were discussing that he needed IRS documents. He got recently went through a divorce. He went to the IRS, got the documents. They didn't have them. Guess what? They couldn't find them, but they didn't have them. He said, "Now he's suffering, he's up moving those creek here without a paddle." So, make sure you have all this stuff. Now, the SBA manages disaster loans and things of that nature. So, again, they supply low. So, here's the application at the SBA at smallbusinessadministration.gov. So, SBA.gov is a small businessadministration. So, how do you apply it? Has your apply, and then, okay, we have, are you eligible? That's just, okay, I'm going to, this is just for educational purposes. I'm not deliberately doing it in select academy. Citrus Academy. Select your property type, home. Please survive, right? And then, it goes on and on. October 9th, right? Continue. Now, this is it. Florida, home, or renter? Hurricane Helen, right? Disaster number, and then, you're going to need this here. So, let's hit select. And it gives you some information. View documents related to the disaster. Disaster to all of the declarations and everything else. The locations receive assistance. Let's sort of that fact sheet over, and let's see what we got here. By the way, I think we're the only program that's going through this. And this gives you everything else. All that loans here. So, in Florida counties, and it gives you that, application filing deadlines, for physical damage, for November 27th. So, guess what? You got to get your rear running gear. That comes up real quick. Economic injury by June 30th of last next year. This may change. All subject to change. You got to check it out yourself. So, what kind of disaster loans are available? This is physical disaster loans. Economic injury disaster loans and home disaster loans. And you have to have applicants to have a credit history acceptable to the SBA, and you have to show that you could repay those loans. And this gives you all the loan terms and everything else. I have a feeling that things are going to change because of the scope of this disaster. So, I think this is just what they have ready to go. I can see things changing because there's a lot of real P.O. people out there. Listen, if you're paying attention, you're listening. So, and that's with that. But again, you have to have all the information that you're going to need to apply for that loan. And I think I mentioned all of it. So, you need your ID. You need ID for people that need a house. You have to have, right, those are the first two. And you have to have proof of residency. You have proof of damage. Which means you've got to need to know what you had beforehand. And the more documentation you have, the better. Believe me. If you're able to document everything, it makes things so much easier and so much nicer. And everything. And then, you have to have your financials in place. Tax returns from the last several years. Bank account information. Proof that you can repay the loan. Do you have a job? Do you have all this stuff? It's a lot of stuff that you need to have your stuff in order, right, for you to do this stuff. What makes it nice is that we have cloud services now. You can probably scan this in on a secure network. If it's secure, don't go out on it. A lot of stuff gets hacked, but if you can get a secure thing, that would be great. Or if you can get a little drive here, I'm holding it up in front of me. A little drive, right, where you're able to load things on to it. And send it off to a trusted relative. That would be, that would go a long way. And I would also include the medical information that we talked about last week. There's a lot of stuff we didn't talk about tonight. We're going to save it for tomorrow. With this, I have a suspicion that all the people at OSHA are down there helping out with the disaster. A lot of them, because things are not being updated on their website. I think they're on overload themselves. I'm possibly maybe they've been impacted by the disaster. And anybody who's been impacted with that, check in on them, if you can. I have two friends, three, actually three friends, that are in the disaster area here. And two of them, no problem. They get this out. We got a little bit of water in the house. It's not a big deal. They were just going to mop things up and take care of things that proceed, that sort of thing. Minor, minor, minor damage. They said, however, 10 miles to the west, so you'll forget about it. And they lived for the center of the state. But one person, major, major problems, a major house damage. Roof completely blown off. Huge, huge, huge issues. So, where I know, we've been impacted by this with some people I'm thinking about you out there. If you want to give, make donations or legitimate charity. Again, there's a lot of scamsters out there with a subplease do so. I specifically, who do I donate to? As everyone knows, I am a member of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. I primarily give donations and stuff through them. They have Lutheran Disaster Relief with that. So, that's who I give. It's on their website LCMS.org. They are in A-listed charity. And whatever that is, they give something like 90% of their stuff to the actual disaster, very little overhead. That's generally what you want to give to. But again, different charities do different things. Some charities may be solely for teaching disaster preparation, for example. They're not giving out money, but they need support to help the communities out and things of that nature. Guess what? Everyone has a different situation. There is one organization out there years ago that said, "Well, they use 99% of their money on salaries and overhead." Well, yeah. Well, there were a public education group that met the requirements of a 501(c)(3). They're not handing out money, but all their money is going... So, what am I saying? Be discerning as to what you're doing. That's what I have for tonight. I hope this was helpful at all. We're going to go to our regular outro here, and we will talk to see everybody tomorrow. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as there is only a... The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis... [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]