Millennium Ark: Hot News

January 17, 2009
By Robert Travis Scott, Capital bureau
Times Picayune

BATON ROUGE -- Nearly five months after Hurricane Gustav, the public relations battle between Gov. Bobby Jindal and FEMA continues over who was to blame for the exasperating depletion of emergency food and water supplies soon after the storm.

At stake is a clear understanding of how to prepare for disasters.

FEMA's argument, contained in a retort to comments made by Jindal last week, is that basically the responsibility for the problem lies with the storm victims of Louisiana, who gobbled up food and water at an "extraordinary" rate after Gustav swept through.

The federal agency said it worked closely with state officials to pre-position what was believed to be an adequate supply of Meals Ready to Eat packets, water bottles, ice and tarps, but the actual demand was far greater and resupply efforts stumbled.

"FEMA brought up this same assertion during the storms, and the governor made it clear that it is nutty to tell the people of south Louisiana that we are simply eating too much and are choosing MREs over our terrific local cuisine," Jindal's spokeswoman Melissa Sellers said.

The renewed flap apparently started when Jindal on at least two occasions in the past week brought up the post-Gustav supply problem.

"FEMA took too long to replenish the MREs, the water, the tarps that were in desperate need by our people," Jindal said Wednesday at the grand opening of the National Guard Readiness Center in Reserve. "Victims should not have to worry about delays in FEMA shipments of food, water and emergency supplies."

In a "Fact Sheet" released Friday, FEMA described a massive program of emergency supplies for Louisiana and Texas both before and after Hurricanes Gustav and Ike struck in September. FEMA said it had more than 1.4 million meals, 4.5 million bottles of water and more than 20,000 tarps stored and staged for Louisiana before Gustav hit.

Materials were kept at storage sites and delivered to points of distribution, or PODs, with the Louisiana National Guard managing the operation.

"FEMA and the state met on a daily basis to determine what the requirements were and made decisions on resources as partners," the FEMA report said.

"The reality is that the state was urged to push out our pre-positioned supplies in the first few days, with the promise that they would be replenished quickly by FEMA," said Sellers, Jindal's spokeswoman. "Instead, there was a significant lag before FEMA supplies arrived, and during that time the state paid for private contractors to set up camps to cook for people in communities still without power."

For each person, the distribution sites were anticipated to hand out two 12-pack cases of MREs, 48 bottles of water, two bags of ice and two tarps. The requests and consumption by the distribution sites reached 3.6 million meals from Sept. 3 to Sept. 6, FEMA said. That amount would represent supplies for about 150,000 people, if FEMA's assumptions about distribution were figured.

"The rate of distribution exceeded the stored and reserve quantities of meals that were in the distribution pipeline, requiring expeditious action to resolve this shortfall," the FEMA report said. "This extraordinary burn rate caused FEMA to place additional large orders for shipment to the staging areas."

At that point, "processing backlogs developed" and "deliveries to PODs were late based on finalization of POD lists and delivery requirements during early morning hours . . . causing shipments to depart from staging areas to the PODs during the day rather than at night," FEMA's report said.

By Sept. 25, FEMA had supplied Louisiana with 10.5 million meals, 10.6 million liters of water, 6.6 million pounds of ice, 540,882 tarps, 92,062 blankets and 30,272 cots.

Jindal has been pressing for an overhaul of FEMA policies.

"We also arranged for nonprofit groups to cook meals for citizens throughout South Louisiana without needed supplies," Sellers said. "This is why the governor has said he looks forward to working with Congress and the incoming Obama administration to pre-position a greater amount of supplies along the Gulf Coast and to contract with private entities who can often provide meals quicker and at a lower cost, to better respond to future disasters."

Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or 225.342.4197.

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