Politico has a piece on another FEMA screw up that victimized the people of Puerto Rico following the destructive winds of Hurricane Maria. Walmart and other grocery stores had to throw out tons of meat, dairy and produce after power was knocked out and perishable items began to rot following the storm. Congressional investigators found that the stores urgent pleas for emergency fuel for their generators were ignored by FEMA.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) released details of the emails in a letter to the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), on Tuesday. In the letter, they repeated a longstanding request for a subpoena to force the Department of Homeland Security to produce documents related to FEMA’s disaster response.
“Senior officials at Walmart took extraordinary measures to try to convey their emergency requests to FEMA,” Cummings and Plaskett wrote. “FEMA did not respond to requests for fuel as tons of desperately needed food went bad.”
On Sept. 25, a Walmart official said the company had two days’ worth of generator fuel left at its distribution center on the island.
“It is critical that we keep that going in order to preserve our fresh inventory,” the executive said in a text to a Puerto Rico official. “If that goes down it could take weeks to replenish which would have a big negative impact on the island.”
“Noted,” the official responded. “I do not know what is going on with communication in FEMA right now.”
Politico notes that in October Trey Gowdy and Cummings asked FEMA for documents related to their response to Hurricane Maria. DHS has been “stonewalling” ever since.
The lawmakers wrote to Chairman Gowdy: “We reiterate our request that you issue a subpoena to compel DHS to produce all of the documents we originally requested,”
