welcome back. i m kendis gibson at msnbc headquarters in new york. it s a sign of the troubling times. scores of people lined up at popup food banks, churches and donation centers across the country. this as the government shutdown crisis stretches into a fifth week. for many workers, furloughed or working without pay, the future is as uncertain as where their next meal is coming from. the shutdown has hit home for low income seniors in assisted living facilities like san jose man nor behind me. we worked all our lives. these are supposed to be our golden years. and here we are facing possibly losing our homes. in columbus, ohio, faa aircraft inspector john jeffreys is back on the job. i m out here to perform a safety function to help the folks out and to keep aviation
we also have to talk about all the people caught up in the middle of this. right? the whole country. hundreds of thousands of people whose last paycheck was a month ago now worried their next one may be a long way off. this is probably, i believe, my third furlough that i m going through while being at tsa. the other ones didn t last as long and i didn t have as much responsibility. i can manage just me and my wife, but now i have a son to provide for. i can only survive two to three weeks, maybe two at the most before, you know, before i m evicted. i m out here to perform a safety function to help the folks out and to keep the aviation industry safe. but i would like to be compensated for it. joining me, kevin bulger, a furloughed epa employee. thank you for coming on the show today. i appreciate it. thank you so much. your wife is a preschoolteacher, but you are the primary bread winner for your family. can you talk about your biggest,
and how old are you? i don t know that s okay. reporter: the amount of people hurt, staggering. how many patients are there, do you think? one, two, three, four, five, six probably a dozen. reporter: all told, police say nearly a dozen taken to hospitals. three people killed including friends jim hamley and zack willholt. and in hopes of preventing another tragedy on the tracks. and hallie, the ntsb now says a full review could take one to two years and part of that review may be looking at whether positive train control an automated system could have prevented this crash. that safety function has been mandated across the country next
made things cheaper or more efficient. well, that s the thing. they re talking about two ideas at the same time today. the argument that you could have this safety function of air traffic control housed in an entity that is not part of the government but is regulated by the government. they are the backers of this. congress points to europe and canada and places where this is working as a matter of safety. the longer temporary goal and what the president talked about today is on next gen and a system that would save time and money. that s something that the existing government agencies have been trying to build and trying to get airlines to improve their equipment so that they could work on a system like that. that s a longer term reach goal. they re saying we can get there easier if you took them up on privatizing this function of the government. the airlines are for this. others have signed on. what from your reporting are the
that anything that s a safety function will continue to be funded. and any employee that comes here to feed and take care of the animals will continue to do that. but if you want to see the pandas online, too bad. even the animal cams are going dark. when we re shut down it takes away from things that families can do. reporter: locally owned businesses around the hill worry that lack of tourists will dry up their income as well. d.c. might be the next detroit, because when half the city is unemployed or doesn t have a paying job, this could become detroit in close to two months. reporter: across the mountain, national parks taking a hit, too. in the angeles national forest, the crown jewels of the park system, grand canyon, yellow stone, mt. rushmore, yosemite, all closed. anyone in any national park allowing camping has 48 hours to vacate. we ve been coming here 35 years. this is not fun if we have to get booted out. it s very frustrated.