Too many snafus for a snit
Posted on Sunday, April 15, 2007
Six million prepared meals valued at
about $ 43 million: That’s the tally
on FEMA’s latest snafu. The latest one we know about anyway. Was ever an agency of the federal government so mismanaged ? Don’t bother trying to come up with an answer. It was a purely rhetorical question. Walking across the parking lot the other day, I spotted a bumper sticker from the Clinton library. “I miss Bill,” it said. I don’t miss Bill, but I sure miss James Lee Witt. I first met Witt at a meet-and-greet at his home for then-Gov. Bill Clinton. Nice guy, I thought, but given Clinton’s propensity for rewarding loyalty, his later elevation from county judge to director of the state’s emergency management office struck me as just another patronage appointment. Wrong. Arkansas, in case you haven’t lived here long, is a bit disasterprone, what with tornadoes, droughts and floods, and Witt handled the workload masterfully. His tenure as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was not without its missteps, but his previous experience at the state level and the fact that he was a fast learner served the agency and the American people well. Witt continues to serve people well, most notably as a private contractor whose services were enlisted by a FEMAweary Louisiana governor in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but since his return to the private sector, the agency hasn’t been worth spit. You’ll forgive me, then, if I’m having trouble working myself into a good, fiery snit over $ 43 million worth of prepared meals left to molder in storage because FEMA didn’t know what else to do with them. I’m afraid the $ 900 million worth of trailers, the $ 1 billion in improper payments to individuals in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the $ 1. 8 billion spent on cruise ships and fancy hotel rooms when apartments would have served storm victims a lot better for a lot less have kicked the snit right out of me.
In case you missed it, The Washington Post reported last week that prepared meals, commercial versions of the military’s Meals Ready to Eat, were among the supplies stockpiled along the Gulf Coast last year in the event of another catastrophe in the region.
“We were so concerned over the failure of Katrina that we... probably bought more commodities and had on hand more than what otherwise might be the most prudent business choice,” FEMA’s deputy director was quoted saying. He’ll get no argument on that point from me.
Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. It just wasn’t well thought out or properly implemented. I mean, you can’t really fault FEMA for wanting to be better prepared in 2006 than it was in 2005, but somebody should have taken into account the unpredictability of the weather and the limitations of packaged meals, particularly when stored in metal trailers. MREs don’t hold up too well under intense heat such as the summer sun produces in the Southern climes. They can last up to three years when stored at no more than 80 degrees, the Post reported, but let the mercury hit 120 and they’re garbage in about a month. Apparently, FEMA hadn’t intended to store the meals as it did. It did so because it brought in so many supplies that it ran out of warehouse and refrigeration storage space. All told, 279 truckloads of food had to be scrapped. Corrective action is being taken, but that’s not altogether reassuring. According to the Post, FEMA now intends to cut in half the amount of food it stores along the Gulf Coast and “expand its reliance on the military, which has supplies in huge cold-storage facilities in Albany, Ga., and Kansas City, Mo.” Ah, yes, the military. The stretchednine-ways-from-sundown American military, which, when it isn’t building fences along the Mexican border, is fighting wars halfway around the world. I mean no disrespect to our men and women in uniform. They performed gallantly and well amid the chaos of the back-to-back Gulf Coast storms in 2005. But given the recently announced tourof-duty extensions and redeployments, how much can they be relied on to be here in sufficient numbers should catastrophe strike at home again ? Has anyone at FEMA given that any thought ? About as much thought as they’ve given to everything else for the past seven years, I’d imagine. You know, history will be the proper judge, but from this little corner of the universe, it’s looks as though FEMA doesn’t handle disasters, it is a disaster.
—–––––•–––––—Associate editor Meredith Oakley is editor of the Voices page.
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