Spongebob Squarepants, who has gained worldwide fame for proclaiming, “I’m ready!” loudly and publicly, was recently selected by FEMA as the mascot of a new federally funded campaign to promote emergency preparedness. However, the Flipside has obtained an advance copy of a report from the Bikini Bottom Department of Public Safety indicating that the undersea invertebrate’s own disaster and home evacuation plans were, to quote one official, “sorely lacking.”
Inspectors raised many red flags over the design of Squarepants’ house. His home’s all-fruit construction – “probably an HOA violation,” quipped one inspector in a note in a margin – is highly flammable, creating a considerable risk of fire. Even worse, the report points out that all of the doors in the building are metal, meaning that they would heat quickly and become unusable in the event of a house fire, ironically surviving the unsuspecting residents they would trap inside amongst the flames. This is particularly troubling, given that Squarepants’ chosen pet is a snail, which was characterized in one section of the report as “the animal evolution least prepared to escape a burning building, and thus most in need of safe egress routes.”
Inspectors said they also interacted with Squarepants’ close associates, most of whom they found to be equally poor models of emergency preparedness. For example, Squarepants’ employer, when asked what items he should put in an emergency kit should he need to evacuate his home, responded unsatisfactorily with “All of me money!” However, one of Squarepants’ friends, a squirrel living underwater, impressed visiting officials with her food stockpiling and general resourcefulness; she has reportedly been put forward to replace Squarepants in the campaign.
