CNN: FEMA giving away Katrina supplies
Source: CNN
Today's entry in the never ending game we like to call "FEMA SUCKS!:
FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.
These items, stored by FEMA, were meant for Katrina victims but were given to state and federal agencies.
The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.
James McIntyre, FEMA's acting press secretary, said that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so "we needed to vacate them."
"Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory," McIntyre wrote in an e-mail.
He declined a request for an on-camera interview, telling CNN the giveaway was "not news."
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FEMA said some of the items were donations from companies after Katrina, but most were purchased in the field as "starter kits" for people living in trailers provided by the agency. And even though the stocks were offered to state agencies after FEMA decided to get rid of them, one of the states that passed was Louisiana.
Martha Kegel, the head of a New Orleans nonprofit agency that helps find homes for those still displaced by the storm, said she was shocked to learn about the existence of the goods and the government giveaway.
"These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now: basic kitchen household supplies," said Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans. "These are the very things that we are seeking right now. FEMA, in fact, refers homeless clients to us to house them. How can we house them if we don't have basic supplies?"
Oh and yes, the state of Louisiana really didn't know there were still Katrina victims in need of household goods:
John Medica, director of the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency in Baton Rouge, said he was unaware that Katrina victims still had a need for the household supplies.
"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said.
Instead, 16 other states took the free items.
"Louisiana Recovery Authority Director Paul Rainwater is taking the lead on determing where this serious breakdown in communication occured and ... and is working to pursue options for the state to still make use of these important supplies," said Michael DiResto of the Division of Administration.
Kegel said she could not understand how Medica could not be aware of the need in the New Orleans area.
