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FEMA screws it up again.

July 21st, 2008 [Financial, General, Law & Politics, News, US]

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Last month, CNN revealed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had stored $85 million worth of household items in warehouses for two years. Instead of giving the supplies to victims of the 2005 hurricane, FEMA declared them surplus and gave them all away to federal agencies and 16 states in February.

FEMA fucks it up again: A recent CNN investigation revealed that for two years FEMA was paying $1 million to store millions of dollars’ worth of supplies that were intended to go to Louisiana and Missouri residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Eventually it declared the items “surplus” and gave away the supplies to prisons, colleges, fire departments, and even government agencies – everybody but the intended Katrina victims.

Nobody can really say why this happened, except that everybody (except those actually on the ground) claims that there wasn’t a “need” for the supplies. The folks living in tents in New Orleans more than two years post-hurricane are saying otherwise.

Now FEMA is downplaying the error, claiming that it made a HUGE accounting error and it was only $18.5 million worth of supplies “given away” to non-Katrina victims, not the originally-estimated $85 million. (So let’s get this straight – when they were bragging about how much they were planning to Katrina victims, it was $85 million, but now that they’re caught with their pants down, it’s suddenly “only” $18.5 million? Either way, there are thousands of people who could still use these supplies and aren’t getting them.)

They’re also blaming Louisiana for not taking all of the items in the first place (no clear explanation on exactly why or how that happened), and even claiming that the items weren’t really JUST meant for SPECIFICALLY Katrina victims, PER SE.

Louisiana is demanding answers from FEMA, but I’d certainly like to know why Louisiana turned down the items in the first place. That said, how utterly out of touch does an agency have to be to not know that there is still a need for disaster relief over there?


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