FEMA Gives Away $85 Million of Supplies Earmarked for Katrina Victims

A new investigation by CNN has discovered that the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave state and federal agencies approximately $85 million in household goods that were supposed to go to Hurricane Katrina victims.

In an article on the CNN website, Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost report that the goods, which range from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before FEMA gave them away to federal and state agencies this year.

James McIntyre, FEMA’s acting press secretary, told Boudreau and Zamost in an e-mail 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.”

He also wrote that: “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.” Boudreau and Zamost say he then declined a request for an on-camera interview.

Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, told Boudreau and Zamost 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,” she told them. “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?”

To read the full article, click here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/11/fema.giveaway/index.html