FEMA under fire after botched contract for Puerto Rico food 30 million meals were promised for Puerto Rico, only 50,000 delivered

Residents of San Isidro, Puerto Rico, wait in line for food 12 days after Hurricane Maria hit. Congress is asking questions after FEMA terminated a big meal contract with a tiny vendor. Residents of San Isidro, Puerto Rico, wait in line for food 12 days after Hurricane Maria hit. Congress is asking questions after FEMA terminated a big meal contract with a tiny vendor. Photo: ERIKA P. RODRIGUEZ, STR Photo: ERIKA P. RODRIGUEZ, STR Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close FEMA under fire after botched contract for Puerto Rico food 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

The mission for the Federal Emergency Management Agency was clear: Hurricane Maria had torn through Puerto Rico, and hungry people needed food. Thirty million meals needed to be delivered as soon as possible.

For this huge task, FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.

'Your contract is terminated'

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000. And FEMA inspectors discovered a problem: The food had been packaged separately from the pouches used to heat them. FEMA's solicitation required "self-heating meals."

"Do not ship another meal. Your contract is terminated," Carolyn Ward, the FEMA contracting officer who handled Tribute's agreement, wrote to Brown in an email dated Oct. 19 that Brown provided to The New York Times. "This is a logistical nightmare."

Four months after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, a picture is emerging of the contracts awarded in the earliest days of the crisis. And examples like the Tribute contract are causing lawmakers to raise questions about FEMA's handling of the disaster and whether the agency was adequately prepared to respond.

On Tuesday, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which has been investigating the contract, asked Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the committee chairman, to subpoena FEMA for all documents relating to the agreement. Lawmakers fear the agency is not lining up potential contractors in advance of natural disasters, leading it to scramble to award multimillion-dollar agreements in the middle of a crisis.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, a bipartisan congressional investigation found that a failure to secure advance contracts led to chaos and potential for waste and fraud. Democrats asserted that FEMA was similarly inept preparing for this storm.

"It appears that the Trump Administration's response to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico in 2017 suffered from the same flaws as the Bush Administration's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005," wrote Reps. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., and Stacey E. Plaskett, the nonvoting Democratic delegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands.

In November, the Associated Press found that after Hurricane Maria, FEMA awarded more than $30 million in contracts for emergency tarps and plastic sheeting to a company that never delivered the needed supplies.

FEMA insists no Puerto Ricans missed a meal as a result of the failed agreement with Tribute. FEMA relied on other suppliers that provided "ample" food and water for distribution, said William Booher, an agency spokesman.

But there is little doubt that in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans struggled with access to food. The storm shut down ports on an island that imports about 85 percent of its food supply. Farms were flattened. Supermarkets lost electricity and could not find diesel to run their generators.

Puerto Ricans depended heavily on emergency aid dispatched by FEMA. The Department of Homeland Security has doled out more than $1 billion in contracts related to Hurricane Maria, which made landfall in Puerto Rico on Sept. 20.

Tribute has been awarded dozens of government contracts since 2013, including one in 2015 for $1.2 million in mattresses for the Defense Logistics Agency, which supports military combat troops, federal spending databases show. Tribute delivered the mattresses, according to the agency. The databases offer only a fragmented picture of federal contracts.

The government has also canceled Tribute contracts on at least five occasions.

Four cancellations involved the federal prison system, which found that Tribute failed to deliver meat, bakery, cereal and other food products to various correctional institutions. A fifth termination involved the Government Publishing Office, which terminated a contract for 3,000 tote bags after Tribute failed to print the Marine Corps logo on both sides of the bags.

Lawmakers are perplexed

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee say Tribute's contract history should have given FEMA serious pause about awarding the company a huge food contract.

"Clearly, Tribute did not have sufficient financial resources of its own to support this contract," they wrote. "Based on Tribute's lack of experience in large-scale disaster relief and its limited financial capacity, FEMA should have raised serious questions about whether the company could meet the contract terms - especially since the contract concerned such a critical need."

Brown said she had no doubt she could have provided the 30 million meals, though she estimated she would have needed until at least Nov. 7 - two weeks past FEMA's deadline.

"They probably should have gone with someone else, but I'm assuming they did not because this was the third hurricane" after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, Brown said.

"They were trying to fill the orders the best they could."