Report: Red Cross was totally unprepared for Hurricane Sandy relief
Official: Up to 40 percent of emergency vehicles were used as media backdrops
Two years after Superstorm Sandy, a former American Red Cross official says "as many as 40 percent" of the relief organization's emergency vehicles were used as backdrops for press conferences during the group's response to the storm, a new report by ProPublica and NPR finds.
According to interviews with Red Cross officials and internal documents obtained by the two organizations, disaster relief managers said they were ill-prepared to deal with the scope of the 2012 megastorm and Hurricane Isaac the year before.
Among their findings:
• Distribution of relief was "politically driven instead of [Red Cross] planned."
• Food waste was "excessive," due to factors including inexperienced staff, poor communication and "political pressures."
• In one shelter, sex offenders were placed in a special area of the dorm, but according to a confidential "lessons learned" memo, they ended up in many areas of the shelter, including a children's area for playing.
• The Red Cross national headquarters in Washington "diverted assets for public relations purposes." A former Red Cross official managing the Sandy effort says 40 percent of available trucks were assigned to serve as backdrops for news conferences.
The documents and interviews "depict an organization so consumed with public relations that it hindered the charity's ability to provide disaster services," the report concludes.
In a statement, the Red Cross defended its response:
Every disaster provides the opportunity to take a hard look at how we can continuously improve our service delivery. [The documents contain] observations and recommendations several months after the fact by our staff and volunteers on the ground. Some of the issues were corrected immediately during the response, others we are taking additional steps to improve, and some deal with problems in shelters or facilities that may not have been ours. We take each issue seriously, we have in place established policies to address them and we train our people in those procedures. For example, we work with law enforcement to protect the safety of shelter residents, and we work closely with disability groups on serving people with functional needs. While it's impossible to meet every need in the first chaotic hours and days of a disaster, we are proud that we were able to provide millions of people with hot meals, shelter, relief supplies and financial support during the 2012 hurricanes.
Trevor Riggen, a vice president at the Red Cross, also disputed the claims that resources were used as PR props during the response to Sandy.
"I don't believe that's the way our leadership has used resources on the ground or that that was a driving factor in their decisions," Riggen told NPR.
According to Riggen, the Red Cross served 17 million meals and housed tens of thousands of people in its shelters.
"I'm very proud of the services we provided," he added. "I think the volume of services and the speed at which we provided it speaks to the quality of service of the volunteers and staff on the ground."
