The failure of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to use $85 million worth of household goods that were meant to be used as Hurricane Katrina and Rita relief supplies, including $18 million bought with tax payer money, was the result of both bureaucratic bungling and the agency’s failure to communicate, according to a joint hearing on the Hill July 31st, “Lessons Learned: Ensuring the Delivery of Donated Goods to Survivors of Catastrophes” called by Subcommittee on Emergency Communications, Preparedness, and Response and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Disaster Recovery. 

FEMA officials tried to explain their actions and defend the agency, saying that it acted according to strict policy. Since it is illegal, “to give away government-purchased items to non-disaster victims in the recovery phase of a Presidentially-declared disaster,” Assistant Administrator for the Disaster Assistance Directorate Carlos Castillo said, FEMA, “utilized the otherwise applicable Federal Management Regulation process, whereby GSA [General Services Administration] disposes of surplus property.” 

When an unprecedented flood of unsolicited donations were received in the wake of the hurricanes, FEMA, Castillo testified, “was unable to clearly distinguish between the donated items from the government purchased items,” and was legally required to warehouse all $85 million worth of unused items. 

Representatives from both parties and key non-government organizations (NGOs) were unimpressed with the explanation, demanding to know why the states and NGOs did not know of the items, leading them to be declared surplus in the first place. “If service providers had even known it was available, if FEMA had simply communicated the existence of these critically-needed resources,” said Louisiana-based charity Acadiana Outreach Center CEO Valerie Keller, “we would have jumped through whatever hoops necessary to ask for it and get it to people we’re serving who need them so desperately.” 

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) pointed out that FEMA did little to get the word out, as the senator listed off all the leading Louisiana state and non-governmental organizations involved in the recovery effort, including FEMA’s regional office in New Orleans. She asked if they had been made aware of the items in question. To each one, the response from Assistant Administrator for Logistics Management Directorate Eric Smith was, “No, not to my knowledge.” 

“Since no one in FEMA contacted anybody, even yourselves,” Landrieu asked, and “you [FEMA] didn’t contact your regional office, you didn’t contact the state office, you didn’t contact the non-profits, how did you determine that these items were not needed?”. 

“If [states or NGOs] have a bona fide need,” Smith replied, “it is their responsibility to pass that on.” 

States bore some responsibility for the supply mix-up as well. The Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency, a nine-person agency that helps the government and non-profits get access to the surplus federal supplies, had been told that there would be an opportunity to screen goods in Texas but the e-mail, which Executive Director of the Louisiana Recovery Authority Paul Rainwater described as, “hardly unique,” failed to mention what the supplies were or that they were meant for survivors of the hurricane disasters. 

“It is regrettable,” Rainwater said, “that we were not fully synced in state government at the time, and we at the recovery level didn’t know that this small agency that dealt in surplus goods could be the recipient of items intended for hurricane victims or that it had access to such household goods.” 

Bill Stallworth, executive director of Mississippi’s East Biloxi Coordination and Relief Center expressed the anger and frustration of the hundreds of non-profit organizations that have been exhausting their own meager budgets on the very items that were collecting dust in GSA warehouses. “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Stallworth exclaimed to the committee. “Shipping stuff back to a warehouse because some bureaucrat didn’t want to deal with it is unacceptable.” 

In the wake of the CNN report that exposed the surplus items and the need for them has been firmly established, FEMA is compiling a comprehensive inventory of its stock and has handed out thousands of manuals to NGOs on gainingaccess to the items. 

“We learn from our mistakes,” Smith assured the committee, “and we will fix them.” Indeed, while subsequent disaster and charitable outpouring have been lesser in scale, FEMA and certain states have already begun to reap the benefits of Aidmatrix- a network begun in 2006 by the nonprofit Aidmatrix Foundation in partnership with FEMA. The Aidmatrix network works to ensure that doesn't get lost again by connecting the, “government, the private sector and nonprofit organizations to a database which tracks available resources in real time,” wrote former Wisconsin governor and current Aidmatrix President and CEO Scott McCallum on FEMA's website. 

“State donation coordinators now have the software tools,” McCallum wrote, “to allow for rapid deployment of the network at call centers where all donation offers can be immediately entered into the system and also allows states and VOAD [Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster] members to post resource requests. Transportation, warehousing, and final distribution of goods,” he added, “take place only on items that are needed.” 

Smith and Castillo, when questioned by the committee, spoke highly of Aidmatrix’s performance during the California wildfire crisis. McCallum himself declined to appear at the hearing but submitted written testimony on behalf of his organization. Currently, Aidmatrix is active in 24 states, serving more than half the U.S. population.

Much work remains, however, as is made obvious by the annoyance displayed by all three of the NGO representatives at the hearing. “The software that FEMA is talking about, we know nothing about,” said Stallworth. “We have no access.”