Last December, CREW released a blockbuster report, Homeland Security for Sale - DHS: Five Years of Mismanagement, detailing massive failures and billions wasted at the Department of Homeland Security.  The waste and abuse never seems to end at DHS.  A new report from the DHS Inspector General will show how "millions of dollars" were misspent from selling used trailers.

The Associated Press broke the story: 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency misspent millions of dollars it received from selling used travel trailers, government investigators have found.

Instead of buying more trailers - as allowed under the law - FEMA used more than $13 million toward fully loaded sport utility vehicles, travel expenses and purchase card accounts, according to a draft report by the Homeland Security Department's inspector general obtained by The Associated Press. The report is to be released Friday.

During its three-month review last summer, the inspector general found that FEMA used some of the proceeds from trailer sales for tree-removal services, agency decals and banners and global positioning systems. FEMA spokesman James McIntyre said the agency discovered these problems on its own and has taken steps to fix them.

Today marks the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina striking the Gulf Coast.   The ramifications of that storm are still being felt.   Last month, CREW released the most comprehensive matrix available to date detailing all offers of assistance from around the world in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.   The report and accompanying documents can be found here.  The report paints a very disturbing picture of the failures of the U.S. government to accept and utilize foreign aid in the wake of the devastating hurricane.  When we released the report, Melanie Sloan said:

A review of the State Department documents reveals distressing ineptitude. Countries were trying to donate desperately needed goods and services, but as a result of bureaucratic bungling and indifference, those most in need of these generous offers of aid never received it.

CREW’s matrix is based on 25,000 Department of State (DOS) documents it received as a result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act in December 2005 for records relating to the federal government’s handling and acceptance of international offers of aid after Hurricane Katrina.

The matrix includes all international offers, whether they were rejected or accepted and the reasons why, if available. The documents reveal a number of disturbing responses to offers from 145 countries and 12 international organizations from around the world. 

In June, CREW issued The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans detailing the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) plan to respond to a hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude and, very importantly, FEMA's subsequent failure to implement that plan. The full report can be found here.

Today, CREW released a comprehensive matrix of all offers of assistance from around the world in the wake of Hurricane Katrina disaster. The full matrix and accompanying documents can be found here. In the report, we compiled a global matrix, which includes dates offers of aid were made, the nations that made the offers, a description of the type of assistance offered and whether the donation was accepted or declined.

A lot was offered by nations around the world. The U.S. government failed to capitalize on many of those offers.

CREW just released a new blockbuster report:  The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans.   

Best Laid Plans details the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) plan to respond to a hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude and, very importantly, FEMA's subsequent failure to implement that plan.  The full report can be found here.

Shortly after Katrina struck, on September 7, 2005, CREW sent a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of which FEMA is a component, seeking records related to the federal government’s long-term planning for a hurricane on the Gulf Coast as well as its immediate preparations for and response to Hurricane Katrina.

The Best Laid Plans is based on the 7,500 records DHS provided in response.  What we found is disturbing -- and dangerous.

Critically, CREW found that FEMA had created a “Southeast Louisiana Catastrophic Hurricane Plan” (SLCHP), which forecast a range of specific consequences, including:

• New Orleans would be flooded with 14-17 feet of water, the levee system inundated with at least 10 feet of water and the hurricane would move into Mississippi;
• One million people would evacuate, but flooding would trap at least 250-350,000; and
• Each hurricane victim would require a minimum of two Meals Ready to Eat, one gallon of water and eight pounds of ice per day.

The SLCHP included plans to:

• Evacuate residents and position resources pre-hurricane;
• Provide power, water and ice to hurricane victims; and
• Provide short-term shelter and longer-term temporary housing.

Nevertheless, despite the comprehensive SLCHP, post-Katrina FEMA documents demonstrate that that the plan was never implemented. On August 28, 2005, the day before Katrina hit, FEMA Deputy Director Patrick Rhode sent an email to Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks Altshuler and Michael Heath, Special Assistant to FEMA Director Michael Brown, with the subject line, “copy of New Orleans cat plan” stating, “I never got one – I think Brown got my copy – did you get one?”

Having a plan only works if those in charge know about the plan -- and how to implement it.

CREW also found that the catastrophe was impacted by:

• Significant funding cuts to federal flood control and the Army Corps of Engineers budget for hurricane protection for the Lake Pontchartrain region;
• Communications problems between key personnel that impeded coordination of overall relief efforts; and
• Lack of a mechanism for fielding and distributing donations and offers of assistance.

Upon our release of this devastating report, Melanie Sloan said:

CREW’s report catalogues the government’s failures in responding to the most significant natural disaster ever faced by the United States. The next national emergency -- whether another natural disaster or a terrorist attack -- undoubtedly will require both adequate preparation and competent execution; based on the findings in this report, what confidence can the American people have that our government will be ready to face those challenges?

Based on this report, not much confidence at all. Not much at all.

Yesterday, NPR covered the Katrina foreign assistance scandal. You can listen to the piece here:

New details indicate that the U.S. government failed to collect most of the foreign aid offered for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. Melanie Sloan of The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington explains the controversy.

Last night, Melanie Sloan appeared on the Tavis Smiley Show to talk about the Katrina foreign aid debacle:

Tonight, Melanie Sloan will be a guest on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS to talk "about the unused aid intended for Katrina victims." The show's air time varies by media market. We'll get the video posted tomorrow.

Last night, NBC Nightly News covered the failure of the U.S. government to utilize foreign assistance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. CREW compiled the documentation -- and provided the information to the Washington Post, which broke the story yesterday:

The Times-Picayune, the newspaper in the city of New Orleans, examines the revelation that the United States government failed to act on offers of foreign aid after the devastation of Katrina.  Congress needs to figure out why before it happens again:

Only a small fraction of the more than $800 million in Hurricane Katrina assistance offered by foreign governments was used by federal agencies, according to documents released Sunday by a private watchdog group. 

Rejected were the offers of foreign governments to send medical teams, search-and-rescue units, body bags, bottled water, food, fuel and even offers of specially trained rescue dogs from Poland, according to documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. Also turned down or stalled by bureaucratic delays were offers of two cruise ships by the Greek government for use as medical facilities and to house workers and displaced residents.

The United States didn't have a system to process so many simultaneous offers of assistance, and if another disaster of the scale of Katrina occurred, it still would be unable to accept most aid, said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director.

"I'm afraid the same thing would happen again," Sloan said in an interview Sunday in which she called for congressional investigations. "It's been nearly two years since Katrina, and still the government doesn't have a mechanism in place to deal with offers of foreign assistance."

CREW provided thousands of pages of documents to the Washington Post that revealed how the federal government failed to take advantage of offers of assistance from foreign nations after Hurricane Katrina.  The documents can be found on our website here.  The United States government didn't collect most of the $854 million offered:

The struggle to apply foreign aid in the aftermath of the hurricane, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 billion so far, is another reminder of the federal government's difficulty leading the recovery. Reports of government waste and delays or denials of assistance have surfaced repeatedly since hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005.

Administration officials acknowledged in February 2006 that they were ill prepared to coordinate and distribute foreign aid and that only about half the $126 million received had been put to use. Now, 20 months after Katrina, newly released documents and interviews make clear the magnitude of the troubles.

More than 10,000 pages of cables, telegraphs and e-mails from U.S. diplomats around the globe -- released piecemeal since last fall under the Freedom of Information Act -- provide a fuller account of problems that, at times, mystified generous allies and left U.S. representatives at a loss for an explanation. The documents were obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a public interest group, which provided them to The Washington Post.

In one exchange, State Department officials anguished over whether to tell Italy that its shipments of medicine, gauze and other medical supplies spoiled in the elements for weeks after Katrina's landfall on Aug. 29, 2005, and were destroyed. "Tell them we blew it," one disgusted official wrote. But she hedged: "The flip side is just to dispose of it and not come clean. I could be persuaded."