Wednesday, June 11, 2008
That's our FEMA!
Posted by Kevin Allman on Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 7:45 PM
Hoo boy. From CNN's special investigations unit, and currently front-paged at CNN.com:
FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.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, told CNN 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."
The whole story deserves to be read and discussed (and, once again, several people at FEMA should probably be "excessed" themselves) but this item stood out:
These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them.
The 'state' passed?
Who, exactly, would that be? Offices and names?
Comments (1)
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How is this FEMA's fault? They offered the stuff to Louisiana and Louisiana said NO! How many times can you blame one agency? Formaldehyde - let's blame FEMA, not the industry that makes the darn trailers. Supplies not given out - did you read the article "FEMA ... gave it away to cities, schools, fire departments and nonprofit agencies such as food banks -non-profit agencies and food banks...isn't that where people go for help, yet Louisiana said no. Isn't this Unity group a non-profit? If they aren't, that's interesting. Read on... These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them. 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. Yet we'll put out a story and blame FEMA for not letting this stuff go to waste. That's right, the Federal Govt. is SUPPOSED to come in an tell the state what they need & if the state says they don't need it, the federal government should ignore them and just come into the cities and see if the state was incompetent or lying. Thomas Jefferson would be so proud.
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