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Edited on Sat Sep-03-05 10:47 AM by dragndust
I first posted this back in July. I was met with ridicule, and posted no more. My post was hijacked to another blog, and what I posted here was confirmed. I've spent the morning sending these snippets to anyone, and everyone.....
I've been especially anguished over the plight of NO given the below information I received in July during Hurricane Emily.
Beginning on Saturday July 16th I began to receive cellphone calls from my truckdriver boyfriend.
He told me he had dropped his trailer at the company terminal in CA, and bobtailed to an abandoned military base near Ft Worth. There were 300 trucks from his company, as well as 200+ from others. They were locked inside the installation, and a government truck brought them meals three times a day.
In a later call he told me busses came regularly to take the drivers to a truckstop near Weatherford (an hour away) for showers. At that time he had no idea why he was there. He called the next day to say the drivers surmised they were waiting to haul relief supplies to south Texas incase the hurricane hit there.
I became increasingly skeptical as the days went by, and landfall passed. Around day four FEMA made their presense known, and my boyfriend called to tell me, "FEMA took a bunch of flack last year from the Press in Texas, when they buried all the leftover hurricane supplies in a landfill at the end of the season. FEMA is trying to find storage for excess ice, bottled water, rations etc. for next year."
If this were true, I wondered why they didn't use the past year to find storage. He told me, "What do you expect? It's a government operation." I then realized hurricane season wasn't even over, and wondered where the supplies were stored between hurricanes. He replied, "I don't ask questions, all I know is I'm making $200 per day to sit and do nothing."
I later confirmed through eyewitnesses that a similar operations were occurring in San Antonio, and Austin. Here are some of the reports from bloggers in Texas:
I was at Fort Sam Houston for a medical appointment today, and read their base paper dated 20 Jul, which had an article about "200 trucks which stood by for Emily", and used space on post to do so, but have since dispersed without being used. FEMA was mentioned as managing the effort.
Also:
"While the South Padre Islands still took a beating with high winds and heavy rain, it was not enough of a blow for any of the 126 supply-laden trucks poised at a staging area at Fort Sam Houston to pull out and head
south. The trucks, loaded with everything from water and food to cots and generators, packed the field on Wilson Street Sunday night as part of a joint hurricane support effort between Fort Sam Houston, the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."
Fort Sam Houston is in the northeast suburbs of San Antonio...quite a ways from Ft.Worth.... Article mentions contracted drivers.
And another referring to the 21st:
Okay, Elaine wins it this time. All the Red Cross trucks in Austin left on Thursday afternoon.
Friday the 22nd:
This afternoon did errands near Fed Center - FEMA base @ Felix & I-35 in se Ft Worth. Big facility w/ warehouses + loading docs and much open area, over 250 acres, + a public overpass that goes over the middle of it.
Hundreds of unattached semi-trailers are parked in groupings all over the property. No way to tell if these are loaded or not. These semi-trailers are in addition to the usual rows of white mobile home (trailer houses) and small camping trailer units kept on standby for
disasters.
From rough count of rows visible from streets, there were over 250 unhitched semi-trailers and at least 100 or so complete trucks (semi-trailers with truck cabs attached).
Most of the attached semi's were pulled into small "camps" close together and these groups were more in core of the facility grounds less visible. The unhitched trailers were stationed in groupings all along the periphery. In camp areas w/ trailers attached to cabs, many trucks had curtains pulled across windshields like they were occupied.
There were mainly 3 brand names on the semi-trailers in rows: Landstar, X-tra Lease, and US Express Enterprises. Most diesel cabs painted red but also other colors.
Dozens of porta-potties are spaced out along periphery fences every block or so + set up near the camps in "centers" for drivers. These centers also had shade tents & maybe picnic tables? Also big white RV trailers with satellite dishes mounted on top parked near camp centers
3D TV or phones or command centers? Also several big movable floodlight towers with generator bases set up all around. Some truck drivers were walking to potties or sitting in lawn chairs under the shade tents.
There was a large tour bus parked near main guard entrance. Maybe for transport drivers to Truckstop for showers (& meals?) as reported? Perhaps Petro Truckstop has contract w/ FEMA to provide services to
truckers and that is why having to go on bus to Weatherford? I-20 is few blocks south of property & would be straight shot back & forth, + about an hour on a bus each way.
In grocery store parking lot east of complex at Felix & I-35 were 4-5 of the 18-wheeler trucks w/ trailers intact, parked, with drivers in store(?). Each truck had special sign in front windshield saying FEMA DISASTER SERVICES and one also had another 2nd sign that said "H2O" in big letters.
Today, obvious that there are still over a hundred 18-wheeler trucks (+ drivers?) at this staging area along with many rows of unattached trailers. Hurricane Emily came on shore in ne Mexico on July 20th, 3 days ago, and didn't cause signficant damage or flooding in southern Texas. And dragndust has posted latest report that the truck drivers are waiting to be sent to storage facilities to offload their supplies.
*On Sunday the 24th, he called to tell me all the trucks had been released except for those from LandStar Trucking. He alone had made $1,800.
I am outraged in light of what is happening right now! Food, water, porta potties, showers....a HUGE truckdriver vacation. Operations ending from south to north after landfall, with the biggest operation wasting money until the very end? Also, what happened to these supplies?
*On Edit: I am not outraged at DU, I am outraged at the contrast in gov't response.
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