FEMA Contract Called for 30 Million Meals for Puerto Ricans. 50,000 Were Delivered.

[Tennis]

The mission for the Federal Emergency Management Agency was clear: Hurricane Maria had torn through Puerto Rico, and hungry people needed food. Thirty million meals needed to be delivered as soon as possible.

For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

Ms. Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA’s solicitation required “self-heating meals.”

“Do not ship another meal. Your contract is terminated,” Carolyn Ward, the FEMA contracting officer who handled Tribute’s agreement, wrote to Ms. Brown in an email dated Oct. 19 that Ms. Brown provided to The New York Times. “This is a logistical nightmare.”

Four months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a picture is emerging of the contracts awarded in the earliest days of the crisis. And examples like the Tribute contract are causing lawmakers to raise questions about FEMA’s handling of the disaster and whether the agency was adequately prepared to respond.

On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which has been investigating the contract, asked Representative Trey Gowdy, the committee chairman, to subpoena FEMA for all documents relating to the agreement. Lawmakers fear the agency is not lining up potential contractors in advance of natural disasters, leading it to scramble to award multimillion-dollar agreements in the middle of a crisis.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a bipartisan congressional investigation found that a failure to secure advance contracts led to chaos and potential for waste and fraud. Democrats asserted that FEMA was similarly inept preparing for this storm.

“It appears that the Trump Administration’s response to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico in 2017 suffered from the same flaws as the Bush Administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” wrote Representatives Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland and Stacey E. Plaskett, the nonvoting delegate from the United States Virgin Islands.

In November, The Associated Press found that after Hurricane Maria, FEMA awarded more than $30 million in contracts for emergency tarps and plastic sheeting to a company that never delivered the needed supplies.

FEMA insists no Puerto Ricans missed a meal as a result of the failed agreement with Tribute. FEMA relied on other suppliers that provided “ample” food and water for distribution, said William Booher, an agency spokesman.

But there is little doubt that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans struggled with access to food. The storm shut down ports on an island that imports about 85 percent of its food supply. Farms were flattened. Supermarkets lost electricity and could not find diesel to run their generators. The stores that opened using generator power could not offer much from their understocked shelves.

Puerto Ricans depended heavily on emergency aid dispatched by FEMA. The Department of Homeland Security has doled out more than $1 billion in contracts related to Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20.

On Oct. 3, FEMA awarded one of its largest food contracts to Tribute. For $5.10 each, the company agreed to provide 30 million ready-to-eat meals by Oct.

Ms. Brown described herself in an interview as a government contractor — “almost like a broker,” she said — who does not keep employees or specialize in any field but is able to procure subcontracted work as needed, and get a cut of the money along the way. She claims a fashion line and has several self-published books, and describes herself on Twitter as “A Diva, Mogul, Author, Idealist with scars to prove it.”

After Tribute’s failure to provide the meals became clear, FEMA formally terminated the contract for cause, citing Tribute’s late delivery of approved meals. Ms. Brown is disputing the termination. On Dec. 22, she filed an appeal, arguing that the real reason FEMA canceled her contract was because the meals were packed separately from the heating pouches, not because of their late delivery. Ms. Brown claims the agency did not specify that the meals and heaters had to be together.

She is seeking a settlement of at least $70 million. Her subcontractors, Cooking With A Star LLC, and Breedlove Foods Inc., have threatened to sue her for breach of contract, Ms. Brown said. Kendra Robinson, the caterer who runs Cooking With A Star, said she has about 75,000 meals her company prepared for FEMA sitting in an Atlanta warehouse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/u...erto-rico.html

Absolutely terrible. Our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters deserve better.
The government needs to be ready to act when disaster strikes. This is not acceptable.

[sarahtasher]

Oh my god, my Jedi powers that I got with this online course are really working ! Once again, I have vision of things that were and thing that are to be !''

'Links of a dubious nature between the contractor and the Republicans we will find''

[Deleted]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/u...erto-rico.html

Absolutely terrible. Our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters deserve better.
The government needs to be ready to act when disaster strikes. This is not acceptable.

Isn't this the socialism everyone wants?

[TheTaurenOrc]

But they'll lose weight so its ok; right Tennis?

[RayenDark]

Ms. Brown claims the agency did not specify that the meals and heaters had to be together.

My god what happened to common sense...

[Rustedsaint]

Who gave a company of 1 person a 116m contact and expected them to deliver 30 million meals. From what I read she got the contact then hired other people to do the task, not to mention she already had 5 canceled contacts from the government already.
Honestly I hope the person who hired her gets fired

[Resurgo]

Not terribly surprising considering this is what was supposed to restore their power grid...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...=.8f0602c9c395

[Narwal]

Just yet another reason why the USA "for profit" system is a total mess.
Disaster relief and assisting others in an emergency shouldn't be outsourced and up for a contract bid, but handled by agencies. This is what taxpayer money is for, not to offload on some dickhead with no common sense or logistics experience so they can make extra money, and because they can navigate their way through a bureaucracy.

FEMA doesn't have an industrial sized kitchen setup for producing millions of meals for disaster relief, nor do they have a fleet of vehicles to deliver them. The government uses contractors for EVERYTHING. The government is literally just a bunch of bureaucrats in an office telling everyone else what they want done. The problem here isn't looking for contractors, the problem here is not vetting contractors and/or not communicating with them enough to understand the progress of the job. Handing over tens of millions of dollars to an individual, and then not following up seems ridiculous.

What you usually do when you hire out a contractor is:

a) Fully fact check the bid and history of contractor, this includes checking references
b) Inspect the facilities that will be used to meet the contract, see with your own eyes the scale, scope, and capabilities of the contractor. If subcontracting, those should also have step A applied.
c) Setup a plan that includes milestones and a communication cadence to measure progress and judge success.

[Risale]

Isn't this the socialism everyone wants?

Under Soviet style socialism the people would have been fed and Tiffany Brown would have received a bullet to the back of the head for failure.
Under EU socialism the people would have been fed and Tiffany Brown would be heading to jail, the idiots at FEMA would have been out of a job or reasigned to a shit assignment.

Also WTF didn't anyone think of buying and sending MRE's to PR?
A standard box with 12 full meals cost $99 on ebay times 30mil comes to $247mil at civilian prices so FEMA could easily get the required meals for under $156mil they would only have to ship the stuff.

[sarahtasher]

FEMA doesn't have an industrial sized kitchen setup for producing millions of meals for disaster relief, nor do they have a fleet of vehicles to deliver them. The government uses contractors for EVERYTHING. The government is literally just a bunch of bureaucrats in an office telling everyone else what they want done. The problem here isn't looking for contractors, the problem here is not vetting contractors and/or not communicating with them enough to understand the progress of the job. Handing over tens of millions of dollars to an individual, and then not following up seems ridiculous.

What you usually do when you hire out a contractor is:

a) Fully fact check the bid and history of contractor, this includes checking references
b) Inspect the facilities that will be used to meet the contract, see with your own eyes the scale, scope, and capabilities of the contractor. If subcontracting, those should also have step A applied.
c) Setup a plan that includes milestones and a communication cadence to measure progress and judge success.

In Canada, disease relief of this kind would have implicating delivering food taken from army stores/prepared by the army. I overheard that in the USA, you have a couple of such guys (While the armed forces should not do disease relief full time, they do have emergency meals...)

[Daedius]

Whole levels of incompetence and greed all around... colour me shocked!

[Independent voter]

Real Canadians don't attack other nations OP.

[araine]

Isn't this the socialism everyone wants?

More like the totally inability to do anything right by the donny administration. you know how much the right wingers been screaming if Obama or Hillary was running a shitshow like this

[oplawlz]

In Canada, disease relief of this kind would have implicating delivering food taken from army stores/prepared by the army. I overheard that in the USA, you have a couple of such guys (While the armed forces should not do disease relief full time, they do have emergency meals...)

Canada has a population of like 20 people. No country has anywhere near the reserves of ready-made food to cover the natural disasters that the U.S. dealt with last year.

That being said, FEMA was plainly completely unprepared to deal with an overseas crisis, which is something that will be corrected going forward, as their shit tier handling of katrina resulted in the correction of much of the domestic issues previously.

[Santti]

Isn't this the socialism everyone wants?

People have been wanting for better education, because the current one produces comments like this.

[Deleted]

Absolutely terrible. Our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters deserve better.

Et tu, Tennis? Singling out only two genders deeply disturbs me. This is a black day for peoplekind.

[Deleted]

Under Soviet style socialism the people would have been fed and Tiffany Brown would have received a bullet to the back of the head for failure.
Under EU socialism the people would have been fed and Tiffany Brown would be heading to jail, the idiots at FEMA would have been out of a job or reasigned to a shit assignment.

Are volkswagen staff put in jail, or the horsemeat traders or British BSE beef producers. They weren't were they?

Also WTF didn't anyone think of buying and sending MRE's to PR?
A standard box with 12 full meals cost $99 on ebay times 30mil comes to $247mil at civilian prices so FEMA could easily get the required meals for under $156mil they would only have to ship the stuff.

I wonder what the long term effects of eating MRE packets instead of normal meals would have.

[Jotaux]

I would be interested to know how she was selected for the contract.

[Deleted]

People have been wanting for better brainwashing, because the current one produces comments like this.

I fixed your quote, it now makes sense.

[Risale]

Huh. And here I thought the soviets purged millions and still couldn’t deliver healthy foods because of corruption. The more you know. I bet Venezuela is a paradise too.

Purges in the USSR were mostly pre WW2 and shortly thereafter and more or less ended after Stalin died.
The USSR were more successful in agriculture and other areas during the Khrushchev era agriculture and other areas were compared the failures of the West but there was a massive era of failure during the early 80's under Brezhnev which started the begining of the end.
Now as to food in the USSR it was adequate to meet nutritional levels during the 80s based on a CIA report that can be found if you google it, they lacked however great variety or greater quality of foods like there was/is in the wester world.

Now I never said that either system was paradise thank you very much.

Are volkswagen staff put in jail, or the horsemeat traders or British BSE beef producers. They weren't were they?

I wonder what the long term effects of eating MRE packets instead of normal meals would have.

2 VW executives were jailed so far and no end in sight yet.
As for BSE I need to look that up as that was over 25 years ago.
And with regards to long term effects of eating MRE packets it must be safe or not a single soldier would touch the damn stuff, they have been eating that stuff for decades.