FEMA's Ice for Katrina Victims Now Melting in PA Parking Lot

[JPZenger]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20086590/

If you remember when Katrina hit, FEMA bought millions of dollars of ice because the residents were boiling in the August heat with no electricity and useless refrigerators. Many of the tractor trailers were then turned around before they got to the Gulf, and some were sent all the way to Maine to wait until they were needed.

Now here's an update - some of those ice is now melting in a parking lot in eastern Pa. Here's the news story:

WCAU-TV
August 2, 2007

"Neighbors in one Lehigh County, PA community knew something wasn't quite right when they saw plastic bags blowing all over the road near a cold storage plant. Then, they saw the mountains of ice sitting in the scorching summer sun, melting away on the company's pavement.

NBC 10 learned that the company, AmeriCold, was storing the ice for the federal government after FEMA bought it to help Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans two years ago and did not use it.

The ice melting away in Lehigh County is some of the 224 million pounds the government bought after the disaster and paid nearly $13 million to store at 22 AmeriCold plants around the country since. "

[porphyrian]

1. How the fuck are they not fired? - n/t

[soothsayer]

2. smarter truckers have delivered their FEMA ice to zoos for the polar bears

[Richard Steele]

3. Fucking looters.

[onethatcares]

4. I can't find who owns the company

my search ends with a vice president with no last name. A james h in alabama.

[Dhalgren]

5. Why didn't they just give free ice away to anyone who wanted it?

I mean we had already paid for it, right? It was our ice, right? If it didn't go to whom it was intended, then why not just hand it out for anyone to use, rather than just let it melt and go wasted? This is just typical...just typical...

[JPZenger]

7. I Imagine Was Thrown Out for Health Reasons

I imagine the ice had to be disposed of for health reasons. They probably only are allowed to keep ice for human consumption for 2 years. However, with so many areas of Louisiana and Mississippi that did not have power for many months, why wasn't it sent to them much earlier?

[Frustratedlady]

6. I, for one, would like to see an accounting of the million$ that have been spent

on fiascos like this ice story tells us about. The trailers being stored in Arkansas, how many $ did they spend on gravel to keep them from sinking in the cow pasture? The MREs they had to destroy after being stored in semi trailers in the heat for months and months. There have been SO MANY stories come out, little by little, of the waste and fraud of Katrina.

Think of the new schools, hospitals, BRIDGES in Minnesota, for that matter, that could be built with that waste. It just makes me sick.

Just how rich is America?

[Dhalgren]

8. Which America?

[Frustratedlady]

10. The U.S. of America. The violated one.

The little bit of what's left of the one we knew. Land of the free. Remember that baby from 6 years ago?

[malaise]

9. Heck of a job Brownie

:puke:

[JPZenger]

11. Truckdrivers strained themselves to get ice and trailers to victims and then...

After Katrina hit, a large number of truck drivers strained themselves to try to ice and trailers to victims of the disaster as quickly as possible. Many states loosened their regulations to make it easier for the truckers to get large supplies through quickly. Then the drivers of the trucks filled with ice were told to turn around, and the drivers with the trailers were told to ditch them at an airport in Arkansas - where thousands still sit deteriorating.

Then, after FEMA is notified that the trailers that people have been living in for 2 years have toxic interiors, the FEMA attorneys order that no more air quality tests be done - because if they know there is a problem, they would have to do something about it. That, my friends, should be criminal.

A news article a few days ago said that many contractors who did clean up and reconstruction work from Katrina have not been paid - many months after their work was completed. Many said they will never take another Katrina contract again because of it. The end result will be higher costs, because there will be less competition for the work.