talkinggoat wrote:LARanger wrote:chaser1 wrote:
Are you frigging kidding me??
They meant "work with" in a professional capacity . . . donating, fundraising, et cetera, obviously. Not "you there, with the boat, show me your non-profit papers."
Exactly. I worked for one of the groups I mentioned, in a high level position. While I was there, we performed background checks on all volunteers that would perform rescues. I personally worked to put this policy onto place, after we found a convicted murderer performing water rescues during Harvey.
As an ex police officer and cyber security expert, I also researched claims of fraud and abuse. I found one guy, after Harvey, who was calling people, saying he was with the "Cajun Navy." His reasoning was because he was a Cajun and he had a boat. He was doing this to figure out when people were at work, so he and his buddies could go steal everything out their houses. Of course, this dude didn't work with us, but these disasters bring the scammers out the woodworks.
About the pets, they ask this because they need to know what supplies to bring and which shelters to route you to. If you have animals, but don't have a pet carrier, we'll find one. We even found a boat to transport a man's pet donkey, because the sheriff refused to take it and he refused to leave without it. Many of them partner with animal rescue groups, to help facilitate extraction. Further, If you have pets, it's going to be hard to bring you to a shelter that doesn't accept them and it's even harder when you have to leave your cat behind. Idk if how many of us are still with that group, but we know why they ask, "do you have any pets?" Some of these groups take this very seriously.
...and about the coastguard, they are some fine people, but they don't have the resources to deal with something of this magnitude. During 2016, I was performing rescues in Sorento, La. The USCG has 1 boat, with a 12 HP engine, while there was a steady stream of citizen volunteers. They were doing more to help people launch their boats than actually rescuing people. During Harvey, they received so many phone calls, it either shut down their system or they transferred their phones to Washington DC, because they stopped taking calls at their local office.
I setup the software used by one of the groups, during Harvey, to receive, track and verify rescues and I can say there were over 3,500 people we pulled out of floodwaters and delivered to dry land, in 24 hours. I estimate the actual number being closer to 5500-6000, because there were boaters being sent into areas where there was no cell service for a family of 3 and they would come out with 10 people. We heard about this later in the day, so it never got officially recorded.
LARanger is correct. My comment was directed at donations, volunteer work and mentions. Rant over.
Rant appreciated LOL; it's just amazing the length that some will go to in order to take advantage of others. Hopefully that'll mean that people on social media will feel comfortable knowing that they are actually contacting the legit "Cajun Navy". I suppose that there might still be some who will continue to take advantage and solicit their name and number falsely however I can only hope that if and when this were to occur, those people on social media will be shut down fairly quickly. Unfortunately, i'm still not sure that absolutely protects those who broadcast their own or other persons address on social media during a moment of crisis hoping that "anyone" (friend, neighbor, Cajun Navy, or police) will see and try to respond. Desperate times do call for desperate measures. Its sad that such a risk would possibly exist during a time of peril and those attempting to hurt or take advantage under such false pretense should be convicted to the fullest extent of the law.
