In what officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency are calling a “glitch,” an automated message system sent out hundreds of e-mails to hotels and motels Friday afternoon telling them every guest who was staying there with rooms paid for by FEMA were no longer part of the emergency housing program.
The messages said Friday night was the last night FEMA would pay for the hotel rooms for those displaced by Hurricane Ike. Well, that caused a lot of confusion.
FEMA has no idea how many of the e-mails went out, but confirmed they only went to the hotels and not those in the rooms. Still, the concern was that motel managers would start kicking people out or making them pay the higher room rates.
“FEMA staff has already notified applicants and told what their individual end dates will be. Plus, thankfully, the e-mail did not go directly to the applicants in the TSA program,” FEMA spokesman Daniel Martinez said.
“However, we do not want hotel managers to make any rash decisions based on the glitch e-mail. Most of all, we want to do everything possible to spare the residents-applicants any undue stress.”
Martinez said any questions about a person’s eligibility to remain in a FEMA-paid hotel room should be confirmed with the agency first. While deadlines for individuals vary, the agency has set a mid-March deadline to end the hotel program altogether.
FEMA estimates about 1,500 Galveston County families are still living in hotels more than five months after Hurricane Ike struck the region.
The “glitch” came from the message system used by the contractor FEMA hired to manage the hotel/motel program.
This is the same contractor who made a blunder in the figures it was reporting on how much was spent by FEMA to house people in hotels since Hurricane Ike struck Sept. 13.
