Walmart and other retailers were forced to throw out food in Puerto Rico even as people stood in line outside stores. | Carolyn Cole/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images Tons of food went to waste in Puerto Rico as stores’ pleas to FEMA went unanswered

Walmart and other supermarkets in Puerto Rico were forced to throw out tons of perishable meat and produce after Hurricane Maria when their pleas for emergency fuel were ignored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to congressional investigators.

The retail giant and others reached out to FEMA officials repeatedly after the storm, seeking fuel to keep food refrigerated. They enlisted the help of Gov. Ricard Rosselló and other island officials, as well as members of Congress, to deliver emails, texts and in-person messages to FEMA. In one instance, a Puerto Rico official received an urgent email from Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) on Sept. 22 while the official was sitting in a meeting with FEMA.


“FYI I’m sitting with the FEMA rep right now so we are taking care of this,” the Puerto Rico official wrote minutes after receiving the Gutierrez email.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) released details of the emails in a letter to the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), on Tuesday. In the letter, they repeated a longstanding request for a subpoena to force the Department of Homeland Security to produce documents related to FEMA’s disaster response.

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“Senior officials at Walmart took extraordinary measures to try to convey their emergency requests to FEMA,” Cummings and Plaskett wrote. “FEMA did not respond to requests for fuel as tons of desperately needed food went bad.”

On Sept. 25, a Walmart official said the company had two days’ worth of generator fuel left at its distribution center on the island.

“It is critical that we keep that going in order to preserve our fresh inventory,” the executive said in a text to a Puerto Rico official. “If that goes down it could take weeks to replenish which would have a big negative impact on the island.”

“Noted,” the official responded. “I do not know what is going on with communication in FEMA right now.”

By Sept. 27, a week after Hurricane Maria made landfall, Rosselló personally intervened, asking FEMA Acting Regional Administrator John Rabin to get generator fuel to grocery stores “immediately.” The fuel never arrived.

Walmart and other retailers were forced to throw out food even as people stood in line outside stores, according to the letter. “It is unclear how many tons of perishable meat, dairy and produce were lost,” the lawmakers wrote.

In an emailed statement, a FEMA spokesman said the agency was aware of the letter and was working with the committee. More than 1,900 generators were installed after the storm, a record, with 850 still in use six months later, according to FEMA data. The agency distributed more than 13 million gallons of fuel in Puerto Rico, and 63 million meals.

In October, Gowdy and Cummings asked DHS and FEMA to produce documents related to the storm response in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The agencies have since been “stonewalling” and have “not produced a single email relating to the hurricanes in Puerto Rico,” Cummings and Plaskett wrote.

“We reiterate our request that you issue a subpoena to compel DHS to produce all of the documents we originally requested,” the lawmakers wrote.

