{"id":179854,"date":"2017-10-05T19:19:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/05\/once-again-let-me-say-do-not-give-to-the-american-red-cross\/"},"modified":"2017-10-05T19:19:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T00:19:00","slug":"once-again-let-me-say-do-not-give-to-the-american-red-cross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/10\/05\/once-again-let-me-say-do-not-give-to-the-american-red-cross\/","title":{"rendered":"Once Again, Let Me Say, “Do Not Give to the American Red Cross”"},"content":{"rendered":"
This time, it’s the Red Cross screwing the pooch after hurricane Harvey hit Texas<\/a>:<\/div>\n

The Red Cross\u2019 anemic response to Hurricane Harvey left officials in several Texas counties seething, emails obtained by ProPublica show. In some cases, the Red Cross simply failed to show up as it promised it would. <\/p>\n

In DeWitt<\/a>, a county of 20,000 where Harvey ripped<\/a> apart<\/a> the roof of a hotel, Emergency Management Coordinator Cyndi Smith upbraided a Red Cross official in a Sept. 9 email: <\/p>\n

\u201cRed Cross was not there<\/a> as they were suppose[d] to be with the shelter and again no communication to what this is actually about and that you have been in DeWitt County doing anything.\u201d <\/p>\n

With fewer than 24 hours\u2019 notice, Micah Dyer, a school superintendent in DeWitt County, was forced to run a shelter on his own in an unused district building that would eventually house 400 people. For the first three days the shelter was opened, only two Red Cross volunteers were there \u2014 neither had any experience running a shelter, Dyer said in an interview. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery hot meal came from us,\u201d Dyer said. \u201c[School district employees] had to go to our pantries and walk-in coolers and get whatever we could get so people would have food.\u201d Dyer says the Red Cross didn\u2019t appear with supplies until the fourth day of the storm, and didn\u2019t bring enough cots or food for those housed in the shelter, he said. A significant portion of the Meals-Ready-to-Eat the charity did bring had gone bad, he said. <\/p>\n

The charity contested his account, saying in a statement that it maintained two shelters in DeWitt County \u2014 including the one Dyer ran \u2014 \u201cand recorded a total of 1,599 overnight stays.\u201d <\/p>\n

We have only a partial picture of the Red Cross\u2019 response to the massive storm. ProPublica received emails through public records requests from several counties, large and small. But they don\u2019t cover the full swath of the state affected by the storm. <\/p>\n

Still, the frustration many authorities felt with the Red Cross was striking. Officials in Jefferson County<\/a>, which contains Beaumont, were so fed up with the Red Cross that they kicked out<\/a> a charity employee assigned to work with government officials from the headquarters for the storm response.
\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Many others singled out the Red Cross for criticism. At a public meeting earlier this month, Houston City Councilman Dave Martin let loose<\/a> on the charity for being the \u201cmost inept, unorganized organization I’ve ever experienced.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

In an interview with ProPublica, Martin said he ran into Gail McGovern, the charity\u2019s CEO, in a parking lot several days after Harvey hit. When he raised his concerns to her, Martin said she responded: \u201cDo you know how much we raised with Katrina? $2 billion. We won\u2019t even raise hundreds of millions here.\u2019 I just thought, \u2018Really, Gail? That\u2019s your response to me?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s clear that Ms. McGovern, a former senior executive at AT&T and Fidelity, wants to run the charity like a business.<\/p>\n

She wants to burn it down for the insurance money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This time, it’s the Red Cross screwing the pooch after hurricane Harvey hit Texas: The Red Cross\u2019 anemic response to Hurricane Harvey left officials in several Texas counties seething, emails obtained by ProPublica show. In some cases, the Red Cross simply failed to show up as it promised it would. In DeWitt, a county of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[599,368,578],"class_list":["post-179854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-charity","tag-corruption","tag-incompetence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}