9 Investigates has been pushing for a tour of the Florida Division of Emergency Management’s warehouse, in which the majority of the state’s hurricane supplies are stored.
The State Logistics Response Center is in Orlando and the warehouse holds generators, food, water, and other supplies, including cots that can be used during emergency shelter situations.
The facility costs taxpayers more than $2 million to operate each year, but it’s closed to the public.
9 Investigates made the request to see inside the facility following Hurricanes Irma and Maria because an audit, which was completed months before this hurricane season, found major problems.
Inspectors noted there were no established standards for the types and quantities of supplies and equipment available there, and that the state was using a spreadsheet created in the 1980s to help predict the amount of supplies that would be needed after a storm makes landfall.
An inventory noted in the audit found more than 10,000 cots and pillows were available at the State Logistics Response Center, but a contract to obtain additional cots in a disaster had expired.
Eyewitness News sent multiple requests to see what work was being done inside the State Logistics Response Center to address those issues, since emergency managers indicated they would need until March 2018 to address the problems listed in the audit, but a representative from the state told us no one was available to show 9 Investigates’ Karla Ray around.
Ray sent the Division of Emergency Management detailed questions, asking for information about how the issues in the audit were being addressed and the current status of supplies following the back-to-back hurricanes and the subsequent influx of Puerto Rican evacuees.
She has not received a response.
Cox Media Group
