While public pressure and mounting accounts of FEMA’s failures to assist drowning communities in western North Carolina and other hurricane-battered regions seem to have forced the federal government to do more, some living the nightmare say FEMA relief remains spotty at best.
Sarah Parkhurst, a Montgomery, Ala., resident who was born and raised in Marshall, N.C., one of the hardest hit communities in the Tar Heel State, is assisting private relief efforts for hurricane survivors. Parkhurst told me that she and her family are heading to her hometown early Saturday morning, traveling with a semi-truck filled with essentials from her church for the Appalachian people in need. Everything from diapers to dog food, she said.
Her mother, who leads a nonprofit health care clinic in the area, had been begging FEMA for oxygen tanks for days, Parkhurst said. A supply finally arrived late Sunday.
“It took FEMA nine days to get my mom oxygen,” Parkhurst told me late Monday evening. “A FEMA truck driver randomly called and said, ‘I’ve got your oxygen.’ It was not really coordinated.”
