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In the wake of the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in late August 2017, many began donating to the Red Cross to support their disaster relief efforts. This, in turn, has allowed old rumors that the American Red Cross charges for disaster relief services to resurface — a false claim which we have already analyzed, and which is rooted in the fact that the Red Cross did, at one time, charge WWII soldiers for off-base food and lodging. Just to make sure their policy regarding disaster assistance has not changed since the last time these claims surfaced, we reached out to the Red Cross to ask if they charged for any disaster relief related services in the wake of Harvey. A media representative assured us that all Red Cross disaster assistance is provided free of charge. The rumors, this time, seem to have spread most rapidly from a 28 August 2017 post (Why You Shouldn’t Donate To The Red Cross To Help Hurricane Victims) by Affinity Magazine, which makes the statement that some disaster victims never received money collected by the organization that was ostensibly there to help them: The specific claim of charging rescue workers for food and drinks, according to links within the Affinity Magazine post, stems from a 2005 Huffington Post article written by Richard Walden, president of the disaster relief charity Operation USA. In that piece, he states that the Red Cross was accused of that activity — which he told us via e-mail was widely-known — but of which we can find no direct evidence: What is certainly true, however, is that the Red Cross has a controversial history with disaster relief, and that it has been the focus of numerous unflattering investigations about the use of the funds raised in these times of crisis. After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Red Cross caused major controversy by initially announcing that not all of the funds raised for those relief efforts would go to 9/11 related activities, as reported by the New York Times in 2002: Their response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, similarly, raised questions about what the Red Cross does — and is actually able to do — with funds raised in the wake of humanitarian crises and disasters. A ProPublica and NPR investigation released in 2014 alleged widespread failure to meet the needs of both Hurricane Isaac and Sandy, which both occurred in 2012: Most infamous, perhaps, was the Red Cross response to the Earthquake in Haiti, which — as ProPublica and NPR also reported — alleged that the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars for Haiti and Built Six Homes. Their main problem, as alleged in this report, was that the Red Cross did not know how to handle the massive funds they were given: On 31 August 2017, the Red Cross detailed how it would be spending its funds for Harvey, introducing that documentation with this statement: Past controversies aside, there is no evidence that the Red Cross is charging Hurricane Harvey victims for disaster relief services and the Red Cross explicitly states it does not charge for these services. As such, we rank this specific claim false.
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