I’m not a free-loader. I got food from FEMA because I didn’t get my tutoring paycheck until September 10 and we needed food. I had no money, my bank account was overdrawn because my mortgage payment was debited on 9/5. My boss was out of town and couldn’t get back. I couldn’t get online to bill my consulting clients for over 2 weeks.

This city was devastated and our infrastructure was down for days. Banks weren’t open because they had no power. Stores weren’t open either. We couldn’t get to a hot spot to get on the web and even pay any bills for two weeks.

If we hadn’t needed the food we wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of sitting in line. The lines were available daily, but we only went through the lines when we needed something, and we only got what we needed. Mostly we needed ice. We didn’t have power for 10 days so we had to live out of a cooler. With the stores closed, we couldn’t buy anything. Ice was scarce and the only way to get it was from FEMA or the Red Cross.

I applied for and received emergency food stamps because my income from all sources was drastically reduced by the hurricane. I couldn’t do my online consulting work, I couldn’t blog, and schools were closed for half the month. I only had 6 tutoring hours in September. The usual tutoring ramp-up didn’t happen. It should happen this month, October, but my income will still be negatively affected because of the aftermath of the storm. They don’t just give you food stamps because you experienced an emergency. Your income has to qualify you for them. My income qualified us for them and we needed them. Otherwise I wouldn’t have applied.

Just because my house wasn’t damaged or destroyed doesn’t mean we didn’t need some help. Storms inflict economic damage as well as physical damage. We don’t have a generator so we had no refrigeration or freezer. We had to get ice every other day.

I hope that clears up the reasons we got the supplies provided by FEMA and the State of Louisiana.

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