''AVOIDING THE HEAT'' meet with the people.

I and my brother and our friend Gus made it thru the crisis. Gus lives up the road about 1 1/2 miles but he came over to thaw out,drink coffee and eat. I cooked us breakfast one morning. Im glad my bro has propane radiant heat,cook stove and hot water tank,so he was ok thru the blackout and dead phone. Most of all we had a place to go and warm up,he even got up earlier to open the door cause he knew we woild be by.
The power's that be sent out a flyer that kinda pissed off.......

''Welcome back to 2006 and the wonderful invention of electricity. I am sure there are those of you out there that when the hydro went out and stayed out,could remember ''the good ole days'' when hydro,thermostats and running water were not a standard of living, but a luxury. You probably fared better than some of the young ones who really didnt know life existed before the electric switch. Well,after 4 days without at least one of the above,a lot more of us feel they are a luxury too. We are thankful that the community pulled together and we all came out not to much worse for the ware. Thank you to all those community members who worked many hours to help wherever they could'' blah,blah,blah.

This was written by our band administrater probably under the direction of Chief and council. She married here and is non-native,so i cant figure out how she can remember ''the good ole days''. She does'nt know back then all houses had a wood cook stove in kitchen and a box stove in the living room. And also most homes used coal oil lamps for light. The majority of homes built before the 60's had no hydro. Another thing how would she, chief and council know how we fared during this crisis when no one came around house to house to check on ppl. My brother gets around on crutches or a moterized scooter [polio age 5-6]. I asked him if any1 came by to see how he was doin and also my elder friend up the road Mrs. Robson they both said no one came by. Even one of our councillors who has a bad foot was stuck in his house cause his wife was away stuck on our sister Rez. No one looked in on him not even any other councillor. I and others found out by flyer after the fact they had warming stations set up for soup and coffee and a place to crash if you brought own bedding.[Medical Center and Crisis Shelter] They lost power but our own acting housing manager on his own initiative went out and secured generators to power the Medical center and the Seniors Complex/apartments. Theirs something seriously wrong if they dont accept this mans application for Housing Manager. He goes above and beyond the call sometimes you dont have time to get permission from our elected body in an emergency. Beside i heard Chief and most councillors and band staff abandoned ship and went to town and got motel or hotel rooms. This is the info i got from people here and the abandoned ship came from a band member,made me laugh. It would have been nice if someone would have come by and told the people what they had in place maybe people would'nt be so mad or at least they could check house to house. We got a chief and 9 councillors[one with bad foot and had no car] plus band staff with cars and some programs with plow trucks and a voluteer fire dept. With all those people it would'nt have taken long to check on every house on the Rez. I realize not all would be able to go house to house but surly with all those people that work for us there would have been people that could. We could have had a bunch of funerals if people got sick ,with no phones to call for help and that means no Med Alert or whatever you call those''I've fallen and can't get up alarms'' But we also got people here with heart problems. We been workin on a Emergency Prepardness Plan or somthing like that for many years now and when it comes time to put something in place there's nothing. Wonder how much weve spent on it so far. So we should have a public meeting to get feed back on this crisis we had ,they should get an ear full. We voted them in so we have a right to let them know how we feel. We suffered thru it who better than us the people to give feed back weather its good or bad it needs to happen. No body likes to hear from people especially when they know they dropped the ball on a major crisis. But thats how to learn by your mistakes at least no one died or needed an ambulance at least not that i heard anyway. Another thing we been workin on since the 70's getting our own ambulance,hope i see it in my life time.