Emergency declared in Flint by President Obama

Matt Pierce
February 21, 2016

President Obama has declared a federal emergency in Flint this past week. It meant freeing up around 5 million in federal aid funds to help the ones with health crisis immediately. Furthermore, he did deny Rick Snyder’s request for the declaration of disaster.
President Obama declares emergency in Flint;
If the president did declare disaster, it would have meant a lot more funding available to the public and the Flint residents who have got even their drinking water contaminated by lead, would have had something more to cheer about. The president didn’t make any mistake though; only natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes can be considered eligible to be declared as disasters. The lead contamination is thus a “manmade catastrophe”.

With the President’s declaration, the FEMA has been authorized to cover around 75 percent of all the costs that are needed to provide water and filter cartridges to the affected people. With this order, the president has also assisted the residents in providing other required assistance.
While the governor’s stance of asking for disaster declaration was justified in his own place, President Obama did well under the circumstances because to declare some happening as a disaster requires a lot of contemplation and legal clearances. Where the flint incident is really tragic and the affected people should get all the care and the support that the government can provide them, it’s not necessarily a natural disaster of any sorts. Here’s hoping that the assistance that they will end up getting is substantial enough to make them persist through these hard times and emerge stronger than before.