CNN Special Investigations Unit
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(CNN) -- Federal officials vastly overestimated the value of hurricane relief supplies given away earlier this year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported Monday.
Debra Reed lived in a tent after Katrina and says she needed the supplies given away by FEMA.

The General Services Administration, which manages federal property, over-counted cases of toilet paper, plastic sporks and other cutlery, by mistakenly counting a single item as being worth as much as multiple items contained in a package of goods.

The original GSA estimate of $85 million should have been $18.5 million, according to figures released by GSA and FEMA.

The household goods were supposed to go to people whose homes were destroyed by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. But the items were stored in warehouses in Louisiana, and then Fort Worth, Texas. A recent CNN investigative story exposed that those materials never made it to storm victims.

GSA officials were asked recently to reassess the total cost of donated items in what the agency called a routine audit.

"In doing so, it was determined that some of the unit costs were 'eaches' and others were 'for-case' lots. The final adjustments reveal there was a significant overstatement in the total asset valuation," GSA officials reported to FEMA, which released the findings Monday.

For example, each spork was assigned the value of an entire case, inflating the original estimated value of the supplies a thousandfold to $36 million from $36,000. Packs of toilet paper originally estimated to be worth $1.5 million dropped to about $18,000, and plastic cutlery kits, from $6.3 million to about $25,000.

"The actual total value of the surplus property was determined to be approximately $18.5 [million], and this figure was validated by both FEMA and the GSA Office of Personal Property Management," FEMA told CNN in an e-mail.

GSA spokeswoman Viki Reath said Monday she would investigate whether it is unusual for the agency to make such a large accounting mistake.

The agency told CNN in February that the value of the FEMA items was about $85 million.

FEMA's decision to give the items to states and federal agencies as surplus rankled aid workers and officials in Mississippi and Louisiana. Relief workers in those states are still working to resettle many of people displaced by Katrina.

Members of the House and Senate homeland security committees are scheduled to hold a joint hearing into the give-away Thursday in Washington.

"To hurricane survivors in need, $18.5 million is a huge amount of money," said U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana. "FEMA's mistake in tallying the cost of the household goods it deemed surplus does not change the situation."

A CNN investigation revealed in June that FEMA gave away 121 truckloads of material from the Fort Worth facility. The agency said it was paying about $1 million a year to store the supplies, which were purchased as starter "living kits" for hurricane victims.

Officials in Louisiana originally declined the supplies when FEMA gave them away; the state's surplus property agency told CNN it was unaware of the need. Mississippi distributed items it received to prisons, fire departments, colleges and even the agency that regulates the state's casino industry.

In the wake of the CNN investigation, Landrieu was able to get several truckloads of the surplus property returned to Louisiana, where nonprofit groups will distribute it to Katrina victims.
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That (*)(*)(*)(*) George Bush .... this is all his fault. Not only can he not conduct a war without winning it, he can't even count pallets of forks, for God's sake!

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Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

---- Ronald Reagan

Has nothing to do with George Bush, and you know it.

This is government at work.

This is the same government you democrats so eagerly want to hand your personal health to, and just pray they don't screw it up.

Just another example of how there's absolutely, positively NOTHING that the government does, that private enterprise can't do better, and more efficiently, tenfold.

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"It's the rich people's fault they earn more." - Makedde

government does not have to necessarily be bad. it can be quite effective if properly managed. unfortunately the dicknbush regime has named political appointees to oversee the federal agencies who have no qualifications for their positions of authority. brownie at fema is one such example, bremer in iraq is another.
we have a great military, which is part of government as they are paid by the public; however, the leadership positions in the military are exempt from political patronage until one reaches the highest ranks.
the point being, we have a wonderful government full of careerists ... who only need to have good managers allow them to achieve positive results

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“Mayor Palin fails to have a firm grasp of something very simple: the truth.”

[Frontiersman editorial, 2/7/97]

This is one real ignorant statment " Just another example of how there's absolutely, positively NOTHING that the government does, that private enterprise can't do better, and more efficiently, tenfold. "

We cannot let the private sector perform public safety, national defense, the Judicial process, and a host of oher things. And what do you mean that The Shrub is not to blame. Didn't he appoint that Chortoff guy and how about "you're goin a great job Brownie".

The Shrub is responsible for the culture of screw-upism from Iraq to Katrina. He set the tone for :let's see how bad we can fornicate this up"......

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"I will not take the low road to the highest office in the land" - Guess Who? You go it !

This is just one of the many many many examples of Bush's style of Government at work. Work, it doesn't.

...Meanwhile, the radical fringe of the left continues to give free passes to Mayor "Chocolate City" and Kathleen Blanco. How horrible it must be for some folks, to go through life waking up every day, wondering "what they can squeeze out of the government today."

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"It's the rich people's fault they earn more." - Makedde

Cheney does that every morning. So does Wolfowitz. Bush's bud Jack Abramoff used to wake up like that everyday. Wall Street? They know the federal government is good for it. So do the airlines? The banks? You betcha. Certainly Big Pharma is making a killing off of the federal government, as is Big Oil. Haliburton just can't (*)(*)(*)(*) the federal government enough, and they keep on getting no bid contracts! Blackwater too? Yep.

The subtle racist remark aside, New Orleans was only part of what was destroyed by Katrina. The Mississippi coast was devastated. All of the that and as bad as it was mishandled at federal, state and local levels can't hold a candle to the money "big bidness" squeezed out of the federal government in Iraq. Oh, and those people, the people scamming billions from Uncle Sam, are white as long as you are keeping a tally of such things Sue.

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You, you, and you, panic. The rest of you follow me.

Last book read: "Child 44"
Now reading: "Tree of Smoke"

Wow...talk about wildly swerving off topic.

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"It's the rich people's fault they earn more." - Makedde

And for those you who Katrina survivor bashing yellow ribbon magnet Support Our Troops Republicans (all that is a tad redundant is it not?), here's how US brass travels and the troops don't. Nothing like a good war for the fatassed brass.

The rest and pictures here.

And how did Laura Bush fly over to see Bush's War? In Airstream fitted for air travel. No kidding.

__________________
You, you, and you, panic. The rest of you follow me.

Last book read: "Child 44"
Now reading: "Tree of Smoke"

We can't? We do!

Those "wonderful careerists" -- surely, you jest... or, you've never worked with the government.

__________________
Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

---- Ronald Reagan