Homework Blog #3

In recent news, it was supposed to be a forum on federal assistance for those who were left without natural gas for seven days. But a crowd who packed into the Mission Museum in Espanola on Thursday seemed more interested in hearing from the New Mexico Gas Company directly, and began shouting when they found out gas executives had not shown up. About 200 people packed the museum building for a forum hosted by several federal agencies to discuss "post-storm aid."

Representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development went through several grant and loan programs aimed at helping people who have lost live stock or had their houses damaged because of the cold. Those programs are typically offered with or without a disaster declaration. But many took turns venting their frustrations, one man yelling that they didn't want loans, they wanted results.

The crowd asked the speakers dozens of questions including, who would reimburse medical bills incurred because of the cold, who was going to pay for broken pipes, who would pay for lost business and who would pay high electricity bills that are expected to soar after seven days of space heater usage. Others began to question whether they should wait to file claims with FEMA or the New Mexico Gas Company— or file their claims with their insurance companies and risk higher premiums.

Representatives from federal agencies were not able to provide specific answers to most of those questions, but did offer to give hotel vouchers to those who had been temporarily displaced and gave out phone numbers and packets of information on grant and loan programs. An hour into the meeting one man demanded to know why New Mexico Gas officials were not in attendance to answer questions and was told company had been invited but did not show up.

Taos Mayor Darren Cordova began to address the crowd, speaking out against the New Mexico Gas Company and vowing to "hold their feet to the fire," and "make them pay." After the forum broke up a smaller crowd gathered at the front doors and began expressing their anger at the gas company with a loudspeaker while others complained that they still had not had their natural gas restored at their homes.

After reading this report and hearing about this on the news, what do you think about this incident? Should NM Gas Co. have to take more responsibility for the outages? Should people be reimbursed for their monetary losses?
-Noriega