On September 7, FEMA hired a private disaster relief management company, "Kenyon International", to collect bodies. Based in Houston, Texas, Kenyon International specializes in disaster relief and had provided services in previous major disasters worldwide. Kenyon was the only disaster management company capable of handling this kind of large-scale event. Shortly after being hired by FEMA, the State of Louisiana requested Kenyon to work directly for them to complete the work. In 2005, Kenyon International was still a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI). Kenyon received the government contract due to the nature of the incident and their extensive knowledge and previous experience of working mass fatality events. The federal government has been highly criticized for the hiring of Kenyon for several reasons, including the availability of volunteer morticians from in and around New Orleans, the questionable usage of federal funding, the ineffectiveness of the organization in carrying out is duties leaving bodies to be found up to a year after Katrina made landfall, an extensively checkered past that the Bush Administration was aware of and accused of covering-up, and the length of time it took to identify victims once their bodies were recovered.