I live in Gilford, Connecticut.
I am from Portland, Connecticut.
I live in Hartford now.  I have been out of work for about four months.
I was working in financial services. I have been out of work for awhile. I saw 
an ad for FEMA and thought it sounded very interesting.
(Taking oath)
FEMA does a local hire program every time we have a disaster declaration for a number of reasons.  So much of what local hires do for us, first and foremost  is the benefit to the local economy, folks that may have been unemployed due
to the disaster, we have an opportunity to hire them and get them back on a regular pay schedule.  Certainly the amount of knowledge they have about their community, their neighborhood, their state, is invaluable to us because we come from other places.
I have volunteered for the American Red Cross before.
I was a supervisor in a bank.
I have been working in call-centers and my last job was with an optician.
We are looking for folks who have a broad variety of skill sets.  We may hire anyone from someone who has an administrative background that can do administrative work for us to engineering types that can help work with us in our public assistance program reimbursing applicants for damage to the infrastructure, we may hire folks that have kind of a caring background, in social services background, things like that, to work in our individual assistance program to help.  We work with the state employment office to advertise those positions and get the word out we are hiring locally.  We put out press releases.  We kind of go 
through every channel that we can,  we are also working through the disability advocates community so that folks who may have a disability also have an opportunity to apply for 
work.  The majority of FEMA workers come from a reservist program so they are  temporary, intermittent employees.   And many, many of those started as a local hire   really enjoyed the experience, liked what FEMA does and wanted to continue working with FEMA.
I ended up working ten months during two storms and then got called back for this one.
It is just a win-win for the locals because we are hiring people who may have been displaced by the event, and able to put them back to work and it’s really infusing money back into 
the local economy, not just through the salaries that we’re providing but the money that those people are then able to spend in their local community, in their local businesses.  
It is perfect for me because I enjoy assisting those that are in need, at the same time I am getting paid for it, it is good, for my family.