This week, FEMA proved once again that it has massively failed the people of Puerto Rico. On Wednesday, the agency auctioned off 34,496 unused meal kits (known as “meal ready to eat” or MREs) that had been brought to the island for distribution in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The kits were set to expire in November and December of 2018—though FEMA claims they were most recently inspected in October and have a shelf life of approximately four months past their expiration dates.
According to NBC News, the final winning bid for the meals was $10,010. This may sound good but the actual price of the individual meals ranges from $4.55 to $4.75. Thus, the cost to taxpayers for the unused meals is about $157,000. While the winning bidder secured these meals at a massive discount, American taxpayers are footing the bill for tens of thousands of meals that were shipped to Puerto Rico after a catastrophic hurricane but never actually made it to people in need.
Apparently, the MREs were sent in February but after the Puerto Rican government decided that they were no longer needed, FEMA stopped distributing them. They’ve been sitting in a warehouse since the summer. And these aren’t the only ones. The agency says there are more meals stored in Puerto Rico with 2020 and 2022 expiration dates.
On the surface, it may just seem like a surplus of goods after a major disaster. But we know too much about how badly FEMA messed up in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria to think this is business as usual. Agency officials even admitted in a report released this summer just how unprepared and uncoordinated they were in responding to this crisis.
San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz agrees. And she says that auctioning off these meals provides yet another example of how FEMA didn’t do its job.
“It’s an example of bureaucracy inefficiency,” [Yulín Cruz] said. “It reinforces the general feeling of the Puerto Rican people that FEMA did not do their job.”
Puerto Ricans are now preparing for their second holiday season post-Maria. They continue to struggle with the island’s crippling debt and poverty, a mass exodus of residents, school closings, and the physical and mental trauma caused by the hurricane. It’s hard to imagine that these meals wouldn’t have been needed by needy Puerto Ricans—either in the ongoing recovery or as prep for the coming months.
But, FEMA’s response on the island has always been shortsighted and inadequate and the local government continues to be chaotic and a complete disaster. So these meals will now go somewhere else, Puerto Ricans will continue to have a well-founded mistrust in the local and federal government and taxpayers will see their money wasted. Nearly a year and a half after Hurricane Maria made landfall, FEMA is still not doing its job in Puerto Rico. It seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same.
