![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutOr, FEMA no longer supplies ice except in cases of "medical emergency" which is not defined.
It would be relatively easy for someone who doesn't live in a place like Houston and doesn't take cold-chain-mandatory medications and isn't heat sensitive to think that no ice is not that big a deal. However, it's worth remembering that in heat waves of the past, a lot of people died every summer from the heat all around the country. A/C changed that, so dramatically that now a lot of people live in places where they would die without it. So the ice thing has gotten more necessary, not less.
But even before A/C, even in the days of tenements, cold water (if that) flats, and 8-people-per-room in immigrant neighborhoods, Visiting Nurse Associations provided a very short list of things to help with medical problems and emergencies and high on that list (remember, _before refrigeration_, in many cases, so this ice was chipped out of a lake somewhere and shipped in sawdust) was ice.
The idea that the emergency assistance of last resort is just opting out of providing ice is breathtakingly irresponsible.
_This_ is the new and improved FEMA?
Live in fear. After all, that's how this administration got elected, got re-elected, and has generally evaded prosecution thus far. They want you to be afraid. They'll come up with new things for you to be afraid of. This one might not look that scary, but it really and truly is. These are people who care so little about the health of the people who are in their hands, that they will literally not supply the basics of health care as it was understood (correctly, in this case, and even more urgently today, since so much of modern medicine is pharmaceutical, and a lot of that requires a cold-chain) over a century ago.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5828158&page=1
It would be relatively easy for someone who doesn't live in a place like Houston and doesn't take cold-chain-mandatory medications and isn't heat sensitive to think that no ice is not that big a deal. However, it's worth remembering that in heat waves of the past, a lot of people died every summer from the heat all around the country. A/C changed that, so dramatically that now a lot of people live in places where they would die without it. So the ice thing has gotten more necessary, not less.
But even before A/C, even in the days of tenements, cold water (if that) flats, and 8-people-per-room in immigrant neighborhoods, Visiting Nurse Associations provided a very short list of things to help with medical problems and emergencies and high on that list (remember, _before refrigeration_, in many cases, so this ice was chipped out of a lake somewhere and shipped in sawdust) was ice.
The idea that the emergency assistance of last resort is just opting out of providing ice is breathtakingly irresponsible.
_This_ is the new and improved FEMA?
Live in fear. After all, that's how this administration got elected, got re-elected, and has generally evaded prosecution thus far. They want you to be afraid. They'll come up with new things for you to be afraid of. This one might not look that scary, but it really and truly is. These are people who care so little about the health of the people who are in their hands, that they will literally not supply the basics of health care as it was understood (correctly, in this case, and even more urgently today, since so much of modern medicine is pharmaceutical, and a lot of that requires a cold-chain) over a century ago.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5828158&page=1
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-18 08:22 pm (UTC)There is some kind of ice machine in Charlotte Yonge's _Pillars of the House_ (published 1873, mostly set earlier). I have never figured out how it worked, but it definitely seemed to create ice, rather than just storing it.
"Clement looked up from the ice-pail in despair, for all was melted; and she could only steep handkerchiefs in the water and in eau-de-cologne, and lay them on the head, while Clement wondered if he could find a shop; but where was the use at three in the morning? and poor Lance [who has got sunstroke] rolled round wearily, sighing, 'Oh, I did not know one's head could ache so!'
"Just then a step crossed the court, and a low voice said, 'Is he awake? I have brought some more ice. ... I thought you must want some by this time. I have a little ice-machine for Indian use,' he added, as Clement looked at him like a sort of wizard."