$85M in Katrina Supplies Never Got to Victims

Household and cleaning supplies worth $85 million never reached Hurricane Katrina victims because FEMA kept them in storage for 2 years, CNN reports. Louisiana didn't ask for them, the federal agency says, so coffee makers, dinnerware sets, clothes, and other items went to Mississippi and 15 other states—which doled them out to prisons and other state workers.

Aid groups are fuming. "You would have to be living under a rock not to know there is still a need" among Katrina victims, one advocate said. But FEMA said aid groups in Mississippi failed to register with the agency. CNN's investigation has sparked an internal FEMA probe into the supplies, which were costing $1 million a year to store. (More FEMA stories.)