Katrina, Ice Trucks, 85M Pounds, $12.5 Million & Poof! All Gone!

[orleans]

just in case you missed this story:

85M Pounds of Ice Going Down the Drain
Officials Melting Shipment Not Used After Hurricane Katrina Responders Overestimated Need
By JOHN COCHRAN
WASHINGTON, July 15, 2007 —


After Katrina hit, victims needed everything, including ice. The hurricane knocked out electricity, and ice was needed to preserve perishable food.


After a slow start, FEMA trucked in more than 200 million pounds -- way too much, as it turned out.


Stuck with the unused ice, FEMA put it back on trucks and sent it to storage centers all over the country -- even to far away Portland, Maine -- and paid storage costs, hoping to use it in a future disaster.


Now, two years later, FEMA has decided it may be contaminated, and will finally dump it.


"Their own regulations required that they dispose of the ice after three months," said Ryan Alexander of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a longtime critic of FEMA. "They could've tried to sell it on the open market. But to ship it around the country and spend money, the taxpayers' money, on two years of storage fees seems like the epitome of mismanagement and waste."


We're talking big ice here -- 85 million pounds. How many gin and tonics could you ice with that? And how many people could you cool off who are pretty steamed about the waste?


On Sunday in New Orleans, Lauren Michele Fields told ABC News, "The ice story, it's infuriating but completely believable and obvious that it happened."


"It's been $12.5 million to store this ice for two years," said Beth Normile, "and I think people will be outraged and frustrated."

A man who did not want to be identified agreed.


"You would have thought after three months they would have thrown it away and let it melt," he said. "And yet, they're going to pay people money to store it. That's crazy."


Now, the ice is melting, going down the drain. And so is more than $12 million of your money.


Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3379974

[whistle]

1. Not really gone just redistributed to the rich owners of cold storage

...keeping a refrigerated ice storage facility cold is a highly profitable endeavor when the place is packed to the rafters with ice!

[soothsayer]

2. one trucker dropped his ice off for the polar bears in a zoo in a warm clime (AZ, NM)

[partylessinOhio]

4. Great idea!

:thumbsup:

[partylessinOhio]

3. Instead of putting the melted ice down the drain,

why not use it to irrigate fields that are suffering from the drought.

Since this water is stored all over the US - just move it to the nearest area that needs water. FEMA wasted these millions to store it for two years, I say spend a little more to truck it to farms for irrigation and to water animals.

Doesn't anyone in government have a brain?

[Javaman]

5. I warned you once before! Will you stop making sense? jeeez...nt

[aikoaiko]

6. There was some mention of contimination.

It might not have been appropriate to spread it into the food supply. But otherwise a good idea.

[orleans]

7. the contamination probably came from all the exhaust fumes

that the ice was surrounded by for the past TWO YEARS (they had to keep those trucks running, you know.)

so much for those of us who are concerned about car/truck exhaust and the environment.