Red Cross paid for rooms never used

The American Red Cross acknowledged that it lacks safeguards against paying for unused hotel rooms during natural disasters, a gap that may have cost it tens of thousands of dollars during Southern California's wildfires last year. AP iin the Daily News.

The acknowledgment Friday came a day after the charity disclosed that blocks of rooms booked to accommodate volunteers in San Diego County went empty.

"Our job was to be reviewing who we had in hotels every night and making sure the reservations matched who was coming and who was going," said Joe Becker, who oversees disaster services. "We had instances where we did not do that."