Worthless till the very end:
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.”
***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?”
Just fucking worthless.
If you want a Katrina-related story that will cheer you up, go here.