FEMA diverts $85M meant for survivors

Joetta Rogers, chairperson of the Northeast Katrina Survivors, hasn’t had a new pair of shoes since Hurricane Katrina destroyed her home in Mobile, Ala., in 2005.

But thousands of brand-new shoes sat for two years at a warehouse in Fort Worth, Texas. There were new dishes, brooms, coffee makers, pots and pans, towels, blankets, buckets, boots, cleansers, mops and brooms, tents, lanterns and camp stoves, clothing, cleaning supplies, bedding, plates and utensils—all earmarked for Katrina survivors. Instead, the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave away $85 million worth of desperately needed supplies—121 truckloads. (CNN, June 11)

Who got them?

First FEMA gave them to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Postal Service and the Border Patrol. It then extended the giveaway to the National Guard, U.S. Marshals Service, the Air Force and Navy, and the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

James McIntyre, FEMA’s acting press secretary, said the supplies were “in excess to FEMA’s needs.”

These items also were offered to 16 states—except for Louisiana, where the majority of people displaced by the disaster live. 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.” He declared the supplies “federal surplus” and gave them away.

“’These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now: basic kitchen and household supplies,’ said Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, a nonprofit agency that helps find homes for those still displaced by the storm.

“Kegel said FEMA was told in regular meetings that Unity was desperate for household supplies and that the group has been forced to beg for donations. But she said FEMA never told Unity and other community groups that it had tens of millions of dollars worth of brand-new items meant for storm victims.” (CNN)

Ivey Parker, co-chair of the Northeast Survivors Assembly, goes back and forth from New York to New Orleans, where her family still lives. “It hurts your heart to see how ordinary people are trying to survive with nothing, no household goods, no assistance. The government did not get it right,” she said in a New York meeting of survivors and supporters on June 14.

“Homeland Security forced tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors into a diaspora all over the U.S. and will not tell us where they are, and FEMA and Red Cross robbed millions from us,” said Rogers.

“This was a conspiracy,” said Hilda White, who at 88 is the oldest survivor living in New York. “The government has cruelly manipulated us. It is like slavery, forced separation of families.”

“This is war,” added Rogers, “and the National Survivors Assembly will be meeting in Houston in October to demand an end to this injustice. The government is not there for the people, so we have to unify for this struggle.”

As the floodwaters recede in Iowa, the lessons of government indifference echo. Most of the victims there may not be Black and poor, but “people who turn to FEMA for help are going to find out that they are ineligible for grants and that FEMA will direct them to the Small Business Administration [for] low-interest loans”—at a profit. (Des Moines Register, June 16)

Rogers said, “The federal government fails the people in every way. Those folks in Iowa are facing big trouble.”