Claim: A flurry of activity in FEMA Region 3 indicates that "something big is coming."
FALSE
Examples: [Collected via e-mail, September 2013]
Well this is pretty creepy. According to a notice sent by Senator
Region three includes, DC, DE, MD, PA, VA, WV.
The preparations listed include; Nine-week training course for UN Peacekeepers in CONUS to learn Urban Warfare, English, and US weapons systems beginning
$11 million in antibiotics to be delivered to FEMA
FEMA purchase orders for over
FEMA purchase orders for 22 million pouches of emergency water to be delivered to
FEMA purchase orders for $13.6 million for MREs and heater meals to be delivered to Austin by
2800 MRAPs must be delivered to DHS by
Origins: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) figures in wild schemes cooked up by conspiracy theorists, who have long claimed that the federal agency has constructed and maintains concentration camps in the U.S. for the inevitable detention of dissenting American citizens. The August 2013 warning referenced above, which asserts FEMA is planning for a "major event" in Region Three (which encompasses the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia) around
First of all, given FEMA's mission as an emergency management agency, it's hardly surprising that FEMA would be keeping a stock of storable food and water supplies. That FEMA might have ordered certain items with the specification that they be delivered before
maintains a Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) comprising "large quantities of medicine and medical supplies to protect the American public if there is a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out," so it's hardly surprising that the CDC might be stocking up on antibiotics prior to the end of the fiscal year. (Government agencies that don't spend all the money that has been allocated for them within the current fiscal year often risk having their budgets cut for the following year.)
The World Health Organization (WHO) did call for its second-ever emergency meeting in July 2013 to discuss the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) Coronavirus in conjunction with the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee (IHREC) system which was implemented after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2002. However, the IHREC decided that MERS did not at this time constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHIEC), defined as "an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response." Moreover, any shipment of antibiotics to a FEMA region wouldn't have anything to do with MERS, as no vaccine for MERS yet exists, and antibiotics are of little or no use in treating viral infections such as MERS.
Finally, the notion that 386,000 "foreign" U.N. peacekeeping troops have been training in the U.S. outside the public eye is beyond belief. That number is greater than the entire population of the city of
That many troops in training would leave an awfully large footprint somewhere (even if they were dispersed across several different training locations), yet no one seems to be able to produce any evidence of this 386,000-strong contingent of "foreign troops" in the U.S., or even identify where they might be.
In October 2014 this warning was resurrected in connection with a then-current outbreak of Ebola, but the warning originated long before anyone anticipated or recognized that outbreak.
Last updated: 17 October 2014