FEMA Job Fair for Katrina Evacuees
Netlore Archive: Forwarded email claims that a fleet of buses arranged to transport unemployed Hurricane Katrina evacuees to a job fair in Austin, Texas went unused except for a single rider
Description: Email rumor
Circulating since: March 2006
Status: Misrepresents the facts
Variant #1:
Email text contributed by Sunday Storyteller, 31 March 2006:
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SO, THEY THREW THIS JOB FAIR ... AND NOBODY CAME This information was sent to me by a listener in Austin, Texas. I worked long and hard last night trying to verify it ... no luck. I'll post it here to see if any of you can verify or debunk! What do I think? I think it's probably true. This is the nature of those Katrina "evacuees" still living off the taxpayer's teat. They merely moved their dependent lifestyle to other locales. Here's the text of the email I received: Last weekend FEMA, the City of Austin, and the Texas Workforce Commission set up a job training/hiring, interview job fair for Katrina evacuees to be held at the ACC campus on Webberville Rd. in East Austin. Evacuees complained that they did not have transportation so the city of Austin and FEMA provided transportation. Nine buses and vans ran from four locations in Round Rock and five locations in Austin. The vehicles were brought to their residents. Drivers knocked on their doors and did everything possible to reach potential job seekers. At the end of the day, the nine vans and buses transported a total of one person. Not one person per bus --- one person. The cost to FEMA was $7800.00. Sounds all-too plausible. |
Variant #2:
Email text contributed by B. Peters, 25 April 2006:
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Subject: Katrina FEMA evacuees
This past weekend FEMA and the City of Austin, along with the Texas Workforce Commission setup a job training/hiring/interview/job fair for all the Katrina FEMA evacuees in the Austin area to be held at the ACC campus on Webberville Road in East Austin . Several of the evacuees said they had no transportation to get from the apartment complexes. So the city of Austin/FEMA/TWC set up transportation for each of them to ensure they would be able to partake of the benefit of job searching. The transportation consisted of nine buses and vans, to run from four locations in Round Rock, and five locations in Austin, in continuing shuttles back and forth to the campus to ensure that the hundreds of people looking for jobs would be transported in comfort. The vehicles were brought to their residences; drivers knocked on the doors; and every effort was made. At the end of the day, the nine vans and buses transported a total of one person. Not one person per bus - one person total. At the end of the day, none of the Katrina Evacuees applied for any of the jobs. Not one person took employment - NONE total. The bill to FEMA was $7800. And yet they still get on TV claiming that the United States Government "OWES THEM", I say we don't owe them anything and if anything, they OWE us - the Tax Payers that are "WORKING PEOPLE". They owe what they have been mooching off of the Tax Payers for almost a year now. It is obvious that they don't intend to work as long as they can sponge off of the system. It is time to cut them loose and tell them the free ride is over! PS - Pass this along to everyone you can if you agree that we don't owe them ANYTHING! |
Comments: Once again, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina are under attack by malicious rumormongers. While there is a grain of truth to the above story, the facts are misrepresented and a false conclusion is drawn.
Here are the facts, according to reportage by the Austin American-Statesman:
- TRUE: A job fair for Katrina evacuees was held in Austin, Texas on February 18, 2006.
- TRUE: Twelve shuttle buses were arranged for evacuees who lived outside the metropolitan area.
- TRUE: Only one person rode any of the buses to the job fair.
- TRUE: The bill for the shuttle buses totalled just over $7,000.
- FALSE: Ridership was so low because Katrina evacuees are more interested in receiving handouts than getting a job.
- FALSE: Not one person applied for employment at the job fair.
The job fair was actually well attended, according to the American-Statesman, which noted that "more than 200 people showed on a rainy, 30-degree day, many commenting on how helpful the resource agencies were."
The real reason no one took advantage of the free transportation, city officials were quoted as saying, was inadequate publicity. Due to a bureaucratic SNAFU involving miscommunications between FEMA and the city of Austin, confirmation that the federal agency would reimburse the cost of the shuttles came at the eleventh hour, so arrangements weren't finalized until the day before the event was to take place. Most of the people who could have used the transportation weren't even aware it was available.
Sources and further reading:
Critical Email on Evacuee Job Fair Mostly Debunked
Austin American-Statesman, 31 March 2006
Last updated: 04/26/06
