Profiles In Incompetence.

I have been working on a design project in New Orleans in which FEMA is involved. We got the project more than 18 months ago, and were this any other project of it's type, it would have been designed and be under construction by now. So let me say, from first-hand experience, that FEMA personnel are actually demons who inhabit a logic-free, reality-free level of Hell called the Stafford Act, and they have descended upon my fair State to sow inaction, indecision, and general bureaucratic regulatory exasperation with respect to the recovery. (And trust me, I'm being diplomatic here.)

The 'M' in FEMA stands for "management," not "solutions," and they take that charge very seriously. (If you solve something, it goes away. Where's the regulatory management opportunities in that??) So I thought I'd pretty much heard it all when it came to FEMA logic. But this story takes, or more accurately, gives away the cake (sit it down before you read this. -ed.):

"FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.

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."

FEMA said they were excess to "their needs." But not apparently, to the needs of residents, which FEMA seemed to know about:

"(Martha) Kegel said FEMA was told in regular meetings that Unity (a non-profit) 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.

Put a towel on the floor, folks, 'cause your jaw is going to hit it again. It gets worse. Someone from the State of Louisiana got in touch with his inner Blanco and passed up getting any of these supplies:

"These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them.

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.

"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said."

And you wonder why we're STILL in the shits down here???

Hattip: Carole. (Who, if she had a bloody blog, woud get a link.)

UPDATE 13JUNE08: Well, it appears somebody grew a brain - the Louisiana Recovery Authority is trying to recover that $85 million in supplies intended for Katrina victims so it can actually go to, y'know, the victims. What a concept. Welcome to FEMAworld.