asheris

Up In Flames: Tons of British Aid Donated to Help Hurricane Katrina Victims to be Burned by Americans
Excerpts from the article:

The food, which cost British taxpayers millions, is sitting idle in a huge warehouse after the Food and Drug Agency recalled it when it had already left to be distributed... the badly needed Nato ration packs, the same as those eaten by British troops in Iraq, [have] been condemned as unfit for human consumption.
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"It is perfectly good Nato approved food of the type British servicemen have. Yet the FDA are saying that because there is a meat content and it has come from Britain it must be destroyed.
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"If they are trying to argue there is a BSE reason then that is ludicrously out of date. There is more BSE in the States than there ever was in Britain and UK meat has been safe for years."
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Food from Spain and Italy is also being held because it fails to meet US standards and has been judged unfit for human consumption.

And Israeli relief agencies are furious that thousands of gallons of pear juice are to be destroyed because it has been judged unfit.

Federal Govt Diverting Truckloads of Ice from Hurricane-Relief Effort to Cold Storage (No crisis, but Maine's getting plenty of ice.)

The Federal Emergency Management Agency says it has more ice than it can use in the hurricane zone and wants to keep it in storage for use in a future emergency.

But critics, including some truck drivers who have been paid $800 a day while hauling the same loads for a week or more, say the process seems like a waste of taxpayers' money.

"The $9,000 they're paying me to move this load should have gone to some family down there," said Loren Reeves, who hauled his load of ice from New York state to Alabama before being sent to Maine. "There is definitely millions being wasted that could go to people who need it."
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Rick Benn, who had been shepherding his load of ice from Indianapolis for two weeks, said he's worked disaster relief before, but this was the worst. He couldn't understand why he trucked a load of ice all the way to the deep South, waited for a week in Alabama, then hauled it to northern New England.
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Still, he's being paid $800 a day. He would normally spend almost half that money on fuel, but when he's waiting instead of hauling, his operating expenses are minimal.

Reeves, who is from New York, said he's gone from feeling upbeat about his disaster work to feeling guilty. "I thought I was doing some real good," he said.

Faith-Based Disaster
Excerpt:

Immediately after the hurricane, there were only two secular organizations to which FEMA's Web site urged that contributions be made; all the others were faith-based*. What's worse, in at least some instances, FEMA relied on faith-based charities to spearhead the emergency-relief effort, regardless of whether they had expertise. Case in point: Tulsa, Okla.

Years before Katrina, a coalition of public agencies and nonprofit groups in Tulsa, led by the Red Cross, had devised a disaster plan. In the wake of Katrina, the coalition quickly developed a detailed strategy to aid the survivors who, it was anticipated, would be sent to Tulsa -- to provide help not just in the immediate aftermath but for the days and weeks ahead.

An estimated 1,500 to 2,000 hurricane survivors were indeed bused from New Orleans via Houston to Camp Gruber, a nearby National Guard facility. But in deciding which Tulsa agency to turn to, FEMA chose Catholic Charities -- which wasn't part of the coalition, had no relevant experience with long-term placement of disaster victims and whose mission is "bringing Christ's merciful love to people who suffer in our midst."

FEMA was so intent on relying on a faith-based group that it neglected to look at the state map: it initially contacted Catholic Charities in Oklahoma City, 123 miles away from where the storm victims were being housed. FEMA also shipped hurricane survivors to a youth camp for Southern Baptists in a remote corner of the state, a site described by the faithful as "the most prayed place." Meanwhile in Tulsa, because Catholic Charities lacked the necessary personnel for the assignment, local fire departments were enlisted to help in doing the job. While firefighters are trained to do many things, they don't know how to help victims of natural disaster start a new life.

This lack of expertise made the resulting failures entirely predictable. Because the wrong organization was placed in charge, there was no effective long-term plan for the survivors. Consequently, no one knows for sure how many people were brought to Camp Gruber or where they've gone to. Check out the Tulsa Catholic Charities' Web site and you'll read instead about the bishop's visit and the "active pastoral presence" at the camp.

* One of those, Operation Blessing (#2 on the FEMA list, after the Red Cross) is run by Pat Robertson. "According to its most recent filing with the Internal Revenue Service, Operation Blessing gave more than half of its yearly allocation of cash donations -- $885,000 -- to the Christian Broadcasting Network, or CBN, of which Robertson is also the chairman."