Did anyone else see that there were 91,000 tons of ice cubes that was intended to cool food, medicine and sweltering victims of Katrina was hustled all over the southern states with the truck drivers being directed from one place to another and unable to unload the ice where the victims could use it.
About a week after Katrina, FEMA ordered 211 million pounds of ice. Officials eventually realized that much ice was overkill and managed to cancel some of the orders. Still the 182 million pounds actually supplied turned out to be far more than could be delivered to victims.
A lot of this ice overkill sat in trucks for over a week after being directed from one place to another with the drivers getting double pay. Finally out of about 150 trucks, three of them were sent to North Carolina. Even though they were making big bucks, the truckers were perplexed by the government’s apparent bungling.
On September 17, some of the trucks were directed to unload the ice into a government rented storage freezer in Nebraska. Others unloaded in other states. Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine expressed astonishment that many truckloads of ice had ended up in her state, 1,600 miles from the Hurricane Katrina damage zone.
All the time the truckers were hauling this ice back and forth, their coolers were running 24/7 to keep the ice from melting. This was at a cost of thousands of dollars which was passed on to all of us.
“I don’t think that’s a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh” said Mike Brown, former FEMA director.
It is estimated that there were 4,000 trucks involved in this movement of ice cubes. This ice (non) delivery costs you an me $100 million.
I think it would be nice if sometimes a person in charge would spend the publics money as if it was his own.
The California Curmudgeon
Sunday, October 02, 2005
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