The Federal Emergency Management Agency has wasted another $3 or $4 million of your dollars on Hurricane Katrina relief that never arrived — and now, never will.

FEMA purchased about 1,800 pre-fabricated modular homes and put them in storage in Texarkana, Ark., without assembling them, because they never actually used them to build housing for hurricane victims. But despite a warning (PDF) from the Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s office, FEMA never bothered to protect the homes from the weather, and as a result, some of them are beyond repair.

While some types of modular homes are not damaged by weather conditions prior to being assembled, two types that FEMA sourced were designed to be assembled as soon as they were purchased, and never to be stored outdoors without being assembled. These homes took significant damage after the tarps covering them deteriorated in the area’s 100 degree plus summer weather, an inspector general’s report (PDF) released last week said.

“The cardboard containers for the components, such as toilets and fittings, have deteriorated in the open weather and some of the framing and wood components of the structures have warped and may not be salvageable,” the report said. “In addition, the contents and components of some of the modular homes were disordered and re-sorting the components to form complete units may be necessary.”

And so that’s what they’re ideally going to do: cannibalize what’s left to recover what they can. And then send some of them to Guam.

Former FEMA officials and lawmakers alike have criticized the agency’s handling of temporary homes, from overpurchasing to poor storage.

“FEMA’s disregard of the inspector general’s earlier recommendations cost the American taxpayers millions,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., House Homeland Security Committee ranking member. “An atmosphere that permits this type of waste, fraud and abuse will not be tolerated in the new Congress.” — Government Executive

Overpurchasing and poor storage sounds just like a government-run operation. This is the same government agency that purchased too much ice and sent truckers hauling it all over the country, even as far as Maine, before finally warehousing it. Nobody who needed it got very much ice.

(And there’s the other problem of buying modular homes from a company whose web site title is “New Page 1.” But I digress.)

And this is yet another example of how they nickel and dime us to death and all we get is sheer incompetence. It’s time for the government to get out of disaster response entirely, and leave that to people who can handle the job — the rest of us.