A House committee is demanding information about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s distribution of emergency housing trailers, one of which overheated and caused the death of one man.
In a letter to FEMA Acting Administrator Robert Fenton Jr., Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, asked for documents related to FEMA’s handling of requests and distribution of Manufactured Housing Units, which are intended for people left homeless after natural disasters.
During a February Oversight Committee staff visit, Chaffetz wrote to Fenton that, “committee staff discovered scores of unoccupied units sitting on a staging lot.”
During an initial staff visit three weeks after the August flooding, only one MHU had been delivered, while another 110 units sat empty on a local lot and an additional 1,300 were available overall in FEMA’s inventory, Chaffetz wrote.
In another instance, an elderly man was discovered dead in an overheated unit that inspectors said had been warmed to more than 137 degrees by a faulty heater that could not be turned off.
FEMA did not inquire about whether the faulty heater caused the man’s death, despite reports that the agency had begun replacing faulty heaters and air conditioners in the housing units. Instead, FEMA told the Oversight panel, “there had been no deaths due to faulty MHUs or any efforts to replace a pattern of defective parts.”
Chaffetz also asked FEMA to provide a list of policies and procedures about work quality oversight for the agency’s Shelter at Home program. The program provides up to $15,000 in post-disaster repairs in order to allow people to remain in their homes.
Chaffetz said the program is plagued with “high administrative overhead costs,” shoddy repairs and dissatisfaction among those enrolled in the program. He said a state survey found nearly 20 percent of those enrolled in Shelter at Home had not returned to their homes even though the repairs were made.
