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On 10 September 2017, a now-viral video posted to Facebook by Wendy Wilkerson Underwood contained claims that the Red Cross in Houston, Texas was instructed to throw out a significant quantity of food and supplies donated by the public in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey: In the video, the camera pans over a pile of food, bags, and crates in what appears to be a garage, while the woman narrating it reiterates that it consisted of donations to the organization that had been discarded. No additional information is given. According to the person who narrated the video, the director of the Red Cross in Houston said this was done because they can get more for Florida. The narrator also says that that the items shown in the video include 600 brand new, donated blankets and 500 pounds of dog food. But Red Cross spokesperson Elizabeth Penniman denied in a statement that any such order had been given: Penniman added that the organization had attempted to contact Underwood: The Red Cross also released a lengthy statement about the matter (although without directly addressing these specific claims): The organization does sometimes discard items that have been donated, but there is no evidence that it does so indiscriminately or on a large scale, and it only throws out supplies that are unusable for one reason or another, according to Penniman: While it remains unclear whether these were actually discarded donations or just a pile of somebody's storm-damaged possessions in a garage, a 2016 CBS report highlights the fact that many well-intentioned charitable contributions are of no use to disaster relief efforts and are often thrown away as a result:
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