Transition Week and Beginning of Round 2

Once again it has been a long time since I have posted, but Tundra 2 has been keeping pretty busy. We finished up in Oklahoma City where - as I previously said - I was working at the JFO (Intelligence Donations Unit) with two of my teammates (Donations Field Support) in the Voluntary Agency Liaison department while the other half of our team was working at the Mult-Agency Warehouse under the Logistics Department. After that we headed to Denton, Texas to do our transition week which went pretty smoothly albeit very boring. Personally I find it a quite tedious aspect of the AmeriLife that there has to be more than one day designated to transition when there happens to be an active disaster and therefore people in need, nonetheless, that's how it is. It was pretty fun to have been able to spend Fourth of July in Texas and cool to have been able to explore Denton; so if anyone is every there I recommend going to Fuzzy's and Roosters or basically any of the bars down there because it's lost of fun. One Monday July 8th we left for Mandan, North Dakota. It took us three days to get here! Our first stop was somewhere in Nebraska where we stayed at the Riverside Motel. That town had absolutely no restaurants that were open past 8pm and all the places that were open only accepted cash; and since we had to use the government credit card to pay for our meals it was a no go for all the places. We actually had to eat dinner at a gas station which was a first for our team. The second day of travel we made it to South Dakota where we stayed in Hot Springs a beautiful town which seemed to be rich with history. Two of my teammates and I stayed out late - by late I mean 10:30pm - and enjoyed a lovely patio area behind this restaurant. On the third and final day of travel we stopped at Mt. Rushmore and then finally made it to Bismarck where we are staying at an extended stay. Fortunately, we have three rooms between the seven of us so the boys have there own room, my TL with two of my teammates have one room and they use the pull out couch as a third bed, and then Kaitlin and I have our own room. The rooms are very nice because each has its own master bathroom and kitchen with full sized fridge and comes supplies with kitcheware. Additionally, the cleaning staff cleans it everyday so we always come back to a clean room which is awesome! The JFO here in Mandan is completely different then that one in OKC. JFO Mandan is very small it is only one building with two stories and one whole floor is designated PA - which is obvious since this disaster is only PA declared. We are the only FEMA Corps team here and they asked for us specifically since both our instructors back in Artesia - FLETC, are Leads here. They have been quite welcoming of us and have been trying to vigorously train is in all aspects of PA - once again as we haven't really done active PA work. Our team is an odd number since we have 6 CMs and 1 TL, but they have been accomdating of that and split our team into two groups 3 and 4 and each team has there own POC who are Task Force Leads. Our TFL already took us to mock scenario and we have written our first sample PW as well. Additionally, what makes this disaster unique from all the rest is that it is not a state that asked for help it is a Native American Reservation. Under the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act of 2013 a Native American Tribe no longer needs to request assistance through the state instead they can directly appeal to the president. So not only is it the first time that a FEMA Corps team is in North Dakota, but it is also the first time that FEMA has directly worked with a Native American Tribe that requested help directly. It is very exciting to realize that we are doing something that no other team has yet to experience; furthermore, we are actually going to be writing PW's! So far it has been great and hopefully I will be able to update this blog more and more. Once again if anyone has any questions feel free to comment. Lastly, I have applied to be a Team Leader (TL) for next year and my application is currently under review, yay!