SEATTLE — During the pandemic the City of Seattle stocked up on supplies like masks and gowns, but now the city has more than $1 million of PPE sitting in a warehouse. The city is now trying to sell what they can.
A viewer reached out to KING 5, concerned that the city was auctioning off PPE online at very low prices. KING 5 went to city leaders to find out why this was happening.
In the warehouse where the remaining PPE is being kept, 70 pallets are stacked with boxes of mostly surgical masks and isolation gowns. However, during the pandemic, the city said the warehouse was filled with many more boxes.
“You can picture this whole warehouse full; it was up to the ceiling in some spots,” said Mike Ashbrook, the facility operations division director for the City of Seattle’s Department of Finance and Administrative Services.
Ashbrook said of the $15 million the city spent on PPE, they have about $1.2 million worth of supplies still remaining.
“We made the best decisions we could, and our decision was to try to buy these supplies to make sure that we had enough to keep first responders safe, to keep our employees safe, but more importantly, to keep the residents of Seattle safe,” said Ashbrook.
Most of the supplies were for firefighters, as well as testing and vaccination sites.
“It was top dollar and extremely hard to get,” said Ashbrook of buying the PPE during the pandemic.
Now, the city is trying to auction off some of the leftover PPE. However, with the high demand for PPE no longer there, the supplies are only selling for about 10% of what the city bought them for.
“We're not the only city that really stocked up on supplies. They're all trying to sell them at this time,” said Ashbrook.
KING 5 found several cities auctioning off PPE online. One city in Virginia was auctioning off four boxes of N95 masks starting at $20. A county in Kansas is auctioning off nearly 5,000 gowns starting at $200. Even the state of Washington had at least four active auctions of PPE, one starting at $100 for more than 2,500 surgical gowns.
But not everything can be sold. Some supplies in Seattle’s warehouse are expired and have little to no value.
“They were made in 2020 and they expired in 2022,” said Ashbrook of some of the masks in the warehouse. “So, they're already two years past their expiration.”
Ashbrook said the city used the majority of what it purchased and that not everything will go.
“We're also saving some of the harder-to-get things, like N95 masks, in case there's another emergency,” said Ashbrook.
The City of Seattle said it distributed over 4.8 million face masks, 900,000 COVID test swabs, and more than 60,000 COVID test kits during the pandemic.