Revoking Declaration of Power transfer/Hurricane Relief/Long Term Response

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

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If I thought I could avoid this decision, then I would. However I am a realist first and foremost. The forecast is for three days right now of hurricane and/or tropical storm force winds, followed by massive flooding. The likelihood of potential power outages that could last a long time are too great to look past. Even if the power doesn't go out and there is some hope that it might not, the internet will almost certainly get knocked out since it was down for almost five days during Hurricane Matthew.

Therefore I am declaring and official leave from September 13th, 2018 through September 19th, and I am notifying the Speaker of the House and PPT of the Senate, that as of 12:00 PM EST September 13th, 2018, I will be unable to discharge my duties as President and am thus transferring said powers and duties to the Vice President as Acting President.

As per the constitution said declaration is indefinite and only ends when I declare otherwise. So if I am not able to come back on the 18th because of pro-longed outages or worse, The Vice President can continue to handle such tasks as needed regardless of the end of the leave.

I will be able to maintain a limited amount of communication with the Vice President even if the power and internet are out, but I severally doubt my ability to access the atlas much via a cheap dollar store smart phone. Live by the Desktop, die by the desktop.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Just as a last note, I want to urge everyone who is in the path of this storm to be safe and be smart about it, don't take unnecessary chances. I wish you all the best of luck and hopefully we will all get through this.

I want to wish everyone the best over these next few days. It could be a while before I can get back on. I want to thank all of you for your support and for the contributions that you make each day to make this game better.

I also want to thank Vice President DFW. I will hopefully be able to remain in contact with the VP and a few others via text and DFW has been enormously helpful not just to me personally but to all of us in understanding the extreme dangers and the seriousness of this storm. I appreciate his updates and thank him for them and the information provided in them.

I will be back as soon as possible.

Thank You and Good Luck!

President of the Atlasian Republic

[Sirius_]

I wish you the best of luck through the storm, and I certainly hope for minimal impacts to your life.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Hope you are doing ok

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

As I anticipated to be the case, from my experience with Matthew, the internet would be the first thing to go out and the last to come back in a way that is reliable. It was working most of Monday, only to quit again for two days. Then it worked for a few hours Wednesday Afternoon. It has been working now since Friday morning and with the river declining rapidly, I feel confident enough that this will not go out again, to resume my duties as President. Therefore as of 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time (little less than an hour from now), I am officially declaring that that my inability to discharge has ceased and transferring such declaration from myself to the Congressional leadership as required under the constitution.


I want to thank everyone for their support and well wishes over the past week. This has been a truly agonizing experience that I would not wish upon anyone. At the same time, I am fully grateful that it was not worse as it most certainly could have much worse. For many people, people who did not deserve this, people who are already struggling, they have had it much worse, losing relatives, losing homes and losing peace of mind.

In terms of in game, I discussed in the short time that I was able to get, the need for a disaster relief package, and was told that such was already being composed at that time. I presume it is already before congress or soon to be before congress (which I shall find out in mere minutes, wanted to get this posted first and foremost). There are many people hurting as a result of this disaster and we must take every step necessary to be there for them, to support them and show that we are a resilient community that is there for one another.

Beyond that incredible immediate necessity, we have to examine what measures we are taking, not just at the federal level but also at the regional level. I know we have passed legislation to strengthen our infrastructure and minimize the flood risk last  year. Going forward, just as important as we do things to mitigate the causes of climate change, we also have to seriously devote our attention to mitigation of its affects. This includes the dredging of rivers, the building, improving and updating of flood control infrastructure, and also to the preservation and restoration of natural barriers to storms, which have been greatly eroded over time. The erosion of these natural barriers, the aging of existence flood control mechanisms, the rising ocean levels and the warming of those oceans, creates a toxic brew that threatens more communities with historic flooding events, with both increasing frequency and also with increasing severity.

This requires some hard choices. It requires an understanding of the risk that people are getting into before they purchase properties and the valuations of those properties should thus be affected accordingly, as well as the cost of insurance investments. To do that, I would recommend that a public "flood history" be available for every home and potential home buyer, especially for new homes. It means for the love of god, we have to stop building low income housing on the damn river sides and low lying areas. It means changes in zoning to reduce the number of exposed residences and commercial properties to the rising rivers. We shouldn't go about this irresponsibly or in a way that is unfair. I think there is a public interest for local communities, and regions, with the support of the Federal government financially to buy out flood prone property and turn it into public parks, green space etc.

Granted, this is not a solution for everyone locality and every place along the rivers, we have built out cities along rivers for a reason, because in an era before instant communication and fast travel, the rivers were the only means and the only method of transportation. There are a lot of historic communities who are in very flood prone areas like Princeville, which were spared this time by and large but was not so fortunate in 2016. A one sized fits all option is certainly not what I am going for here, what I am calling for a recognition of reality, the new reality of the world we live in and the need to make some decisions about how to respond to it. I do not pretend that this is an exhaustive list, and I am fully interested in hearing what others have to say on this matter.

Naturally of course there are a lot of other matters that are before us that need to be addressed. We have a war to end, a budget to compose, and numerous other challenges facing us. I regret not being able to make progress on these matters over the past week, but my hope is that we can have a renewed appreciation for the importance of decisions like the budget. It is in the budget that we make important decisions about investments and funding levels for thinks like flood mitigation and prevention. As a game we have to have a conversation about our priorities in this regard and how to fund them without over burdening the economy, I look forward to starting and leading that conversation over the next month or so and if the people will it, for a few months beyond that as well.

Thank You and Dave Bless!