Despite its criticized response, FEMA now has too many trucks

[maddezmom]

Source: Houston Chronicle

Despite its criticized response, FEMA now has too many trucks
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 20, 2008, 10:50PM


Herman Hall arrived at the Hurricane Ike staging area at Reliant Park on Thursday, his tractor trailer filled with half-liter containers of water.

He expected to drop off the load he had driven from Fort Worth and repeat the trip. Instead, he remained parked in a lot on Saturday, still waiting.

Hall is among the hundreds of truckers parked at Reliant, waiting to be told where to take their loads. Hurricane supplies are being held there after the number of PODs, or points of distribution, in Houston and Harris County has been greatly reduced.

At $200 per day — $50 per day higher than his usual pay — Hall is happy to sit and wait. He has been watching television in the cab of his truck and enjoying three free meals daily provided by a catering company contracted by FEMA.

"The money makes it all OK," he laughed.

John Herring, who works for a trucking company, said some independent contractors are commanding more than $1,000 per day from FEMA as they wait in the Reliant lot.

"It's taxpayer money that's being wasted, and I'm upset with FEMA," said one trucker, Bud Jackson, of Tennessee.



Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/6013641.html

[whistle]

1. FEMA like all republican actions over the last eight years is completely

...obstructionist, created chaos and confusion and waste. It is by now very clear that this is part of the plan to subvert and bring down the U.S.

[Doctor_J]

2. They can sell the excess trucks on e-bay

oh wait...

[Igel]

3. Even as I read about how FEMA had trucks waiting,

or had no supplies in Houston, traffic around the Reliant Center parking lots was sometimes nightmarish.

Some traffic signals out, come flashing red, some working ... but at any time a state trooper car could block Main, to allow a convoy of a few trucks to many dozens to arrive or leave. And then, because of overflow or whatever, they'd have the right one or two lanes blocked off.

Always fun when one convoy arrives as another's just finished leaving, so a second trooper pulls in front of traffic to allow *his* convoy to turn. On Friday I got hit by a triple.

(And it's an awesome sight, hundreds of big rigs all lined up and parked, covering a huge parking area, some unloaded, some waiting to be unloaded.)