[fireftr18]

FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, is a civilian agency to help local areas plan for potential large scale natural disasters. It is a federal agency simply because the event scale is often over multiple jurisdictions and states. It is meant to help all these jurisdictions coordinate with each other to plan, respond, clean up, and restore. The agency keeps stock piles of supplies and equipment ready to be moved and used. It also has on going contracts with private companies to be ready to respond immediately. The "FEMA camps" are real, they are decommissioned military bases, warehouses, etc located in different areas of the country. They are being maintained to hold the fore mentioned supplies and equipment, and double as refugee shelters in the rare cases that people are displaced from their homes for an extended period. Yes, they are fenced in with barbed wire around them. If I had a facility that is normally kept unstaffed, I would do the same. FEMA itself is not meant to respond immediately to emergencies, that is what the local agencies are for. FEMA itself is meant to provide the additional resources to help restore the area. I have had several opportunities to work with FEMA. As a federal agency, it may be one of the best. The people were great to work with. I did stay in a temporary FEMA camp, it was about as secure as my neighborhood (actually, even less secure. Nobody wanted to hurt the alligators).
The stock piling of body bags and coffins. Well, unfortunately, death is a part of a disaster. They also stock pile MREs, water, fuel, cots, tents, RV's, house trailers, medicine, first aid supplies, tools, generators, the list goes on. Most of this, even if it's "durable equipment," will be worn out by the time the event is mitigated and things are back as normal as can be.