Tag: Trump FEMA

FEMA Sends Faulty Protective Gear to Nursing Homes Battling Virus

New York Times logoThe controversy over inadequate protective equipment has come to embody what critics describe as a haphazard federal effort to protect the 1.5 million Americans who live in nursing homes.

Expired surgical masks. Isolation gowns that resemble oversize trash bags. Extra-small gloves that are all but useless for the typical health worker’s hands.

Nursing home employees across the country have been dismayed by what they’ve found when they’ve opened boxes of protective medical gear sent by the federal government, part of a $134 million effort to provide facilities a 14-day supply of equipment considered critical for shielding their vulnerable residents from the coronavirus.

The shipments have included loose gloves of unknown provenance stuffed into unmarked Ziploc bags, surgical masks crafted from underwear fabric and plastic isolation gowns without openings for hands that require users to punch their fists through the closed sleeves. Adhesive tape must be used to secure them. Continue reading.

Internal document reveals federal plan to ask nurses to reuse masks

Protective supplies still limited, months into the pandemic

Internal Federal Emergency Management Agency data show that the government’s supply of surgical gowns has not meaningfully increased since photos first emerged in March of nurses wearing trash bags for protection.

“The demand for gowns outpaces current U.S. manufacturing capabilities,” a document released Tuesday says.

The document confirms the fears of nurses and other health care providers. After months of pressure on federal officials to use wartime powers to mobilize U.S. plants, the document’s slides show that domestic manufacturing of gowns and surgical masks has ticked up by a few thousand per month since the pandemic hit, falling far short of need. The United States still does not manufacture any nitrile rubber gloves. Continue reading.

FEMA Reportedly Took The 5 Million Masks Ordered For Veterans To Send To Stockpile

“I couldn’t tell you when my next delivery was coming in,” Veterans Health Administration manager complained to The Washington Post.

Five million face masks ordered by the Veterans Health Administration to protect staff at the department’s hospitals and clinics were taken by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the Strategic National Stockpile, a top official told The Washington Post.

“I had 5 million masks incoming that disappeared,” said Dr. Richard Stone, the executive in charge of managing the nation’s largest health care system with 1,255 facilities that serve more than 9 million veterans. He told the Post that FEMA instructed vendors with protective equipment ordered by the Veterans Administration to send the shipments instead to the stockpile.

“The supply system was responding to FEMA,” Stone, a former Army deputy surgeon general, told the Post. “I couldn’t tell you when my next delivery was coming in.” Veterans health care facilities were going through about 200,000 masks a day, according to Stone. Continue reading.

FEMA finds itself in uncharted waters with coronavirus

The Hill logoWhen a staffer working at Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) headquarters tested positive for the coronavirus late last month, agency leadership set about informing those who may have been exposed.

FEMA leaders gathered others working on the same floor as the infected individual and put them in a room standing “shoulder to shoulder,” according to an official familiar with the episode, exasperating some who worried about crowding people together when the government was urging the public to practice social distancing.

The handling of the positive test underscores the unusual position FEMA finds itself in as the lead agency in responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Continue reading.

FEMA ‘major privacy incident’ reveals data from 2.5 million disaster survivors

The Federal Emergency Management Agency shared personal addresses and banking information of more than 2 million U.S. disaster survivors in what the agency acknowledged Friday was a “major privacy incident.”

The data mishap, discovered recently and the subject of a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, occurred when the agency shared sensitive, personally identifiable information of disaster survivors who used FEMA’S Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, according to officials at FEMA. Those affected included the victims of California wildfires in 2017 and Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the report said.

In a statement, Lizzie Litzow, FEMA’s press secretary, said, “FEMA provided more information than was necessary” while transferring disaster survivor information to a contractor.

View the complete March 22 article by Joel Achenbach, William Wan and Tony Romm on The Washington Post website here.

As Florence arrives, FEMA and its administrator face mounting scrutiny

FEMA chief Brock Long responded on Sept. 13 to reports of the inspector general’s investigation of whether he used government vehicles for personal use. (Reuters)

As the Federal Emergency Management Agency scrambled Thursday to prepare for Hurricane Florence, the agency’s top official was battling allegations of misconduct and President Trump revived a controversy over FEMA’s response to the deadly storm that devastated Puerto Rico a year ago.

FEMA has faced increasing criticism in recent days for its response to Hurricane Maria following the release of two federal reports detailing how the agency was stretched thin, overwhelmed and lacking in trained personnel, and a university study that raised the death toll in Puerto Rico to nearly 3,000. Meanwhile, FEMA administrator William “Brock” Long spent part of Thursday deflecting questions about an internal investigation into his use of government vehicles and allegations that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen attempted to force his resignation .

The day began with tweets from the president falsely claiming that the number of deaths attributable to Maria had been inflated by Democrats to “make me look as bad as possible.” Long said that despite the distractions, he and his agency are “100 percent” focused on the hurricane. “That’s exactly where our attention needs to be from the standpoint of the life safety mission,” he said at a media briefing.

View the complete September 13 article by William Wan and Nick Miroff on the Washington Post website here.