FEMA Presents: Mismanagement on Ice!
Media outlets around the country are reporting that trucks loaded with millions of pounds of ice meant for the Gulf region are popping up nationwide. FEMA redirected the trucks away from the South after realizing they had ordered too much ice, but the agency is paying truckers up to $900 a day to sit idly in their trucks far away from the affected areas.
“The $9,000 they’re paying me to move this load should have gone to some family down there,†one disgruntled trucker said. “There is definitely millions being wasted that could go to people who need it.â€
Here’s where the FEMA “Icecapades†tour has been so far:
Look for it in a town near you!
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28 Responses to “FEMA Presents: Mismanagement on Ice!”
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Might the trucks be getting anywhere near the Texas coast? Seems they will be needed. Time the send the trucks off to Oregon!
September 21st, 2005 at 1:03 pmFEMA — the newest “poster boy” for SNAFU. Can they f**k up anything any more?
September 21st, 2005 at 1:06 pmYes, send the ice to Texas and we can freeze that damn Rita.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:07 pmSend some to Atlanta! We’re having a dry spell, it hasn’t rained in weeks! I declare an emergency! Where’s my Free Money FEMA???
September 21st, 2005 at 1:13 pmWhat do you expect from FEMA. They are incompetent morons. My heart and prays goes out to all the people that needs help. This is getting out of hand. The Dems need to step up to the plate. This can not go on much longer. All they do is waste our taxpayers money.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:19 pmThis has to stop soon.
The “Ice Tour” made it as far west as Tucson, Arizona last week…and they ended up dumping the ice at the zoo for the polar bears.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:25 pmDon’t forget that it has to be the fault of liberals
September 21st, 2005 at 1:30 pmsomehow….or the left-wing media… wait, there is
no left-wing media… it must be Clinton’s fault…
or maybe Hillary?
I know, make ice a top-secret military “cooling compound” and don’t let anyone report on it!
As my old man is fond of saying - Dubya’s FEMA couldn’t run a bath.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:38 pmDumb Fox, I love your old man’s saying. It’s always refreshing to hear our elders point of view. I sure wish Bush thought that way. It’s Rove or bust for Bush; he lives in a vaccuum. He wouldn’t even listen to Colin Powell. Powell v. Rove??? And he chooses this creep who his dad fired. I think that says it all.
September 21st, 2005 at 1:54 pmFEMA? Just call it FUBAR and get it over with.
September 21st, 2005 at 2:03 pmActually, Chimpy’s admin did run a bath, a BIG one called New Orleans.
September 21st, 2005 at 2:03 pm” Good Morning America, how are Ya”. Is he still in office.? Damn guess the truck’s are still waiting for the latest witches brew from bush to add the ice to. Diffrent day …Same old S***. Wonder how all that ice would look on the white house lawn. Doe’s any one here remember the brochley incident.? Please forgive the spelling and sentance structures. Never did get that down….Blessings
September 21st, 2005 at 2:07 pmJoJ - Fair point. And one I made to the old man. His response…
“They took a week to realize they had a f*cking bath”
September 21st, 2005 at 2:33 pmDF - your old man ’speaketh sooth’
September 21st, 2005 at 2:54 pmIcee anyone? Why can’t FEMA ever get anything right when it’s so simple to do. Joe Sixpack knows better than to order too much ice of his six beers. Why don’t we just hire him to run FEMA, he might order too much beer, but he’ll never order too much ice. What are they going to do with all of that ice. I say let’s order a bunch of beer and put it on ice and watch College Football on a jumbo Tron Screen.
Maybe we can invited some of them politicians and they can go around glad handing while we get wasted. I’ll bet they get that part right. Oh and we need a bunch of ribs, chicken, and brats too. A gaint tailgate party wouldn’t be right without food. Oh yeah I guess we should invite the victims of Katrina along since the ice was originally intended for them. Also they could probably use a good meal while we are at it.
Yeah, that’s it, the politician can kiss there A__es while they make promises they don’t intend to keep. At least FEMA can claim the ice didn’t go to waste, and you know who can say FEMA is doing a “fine job”.
September 21st, 2005 at 3:28 pmWhy aren’t the mess ups of the Department of Homeland Security given the same run down? Isn’t it amazing how people can spend 5 times as much on a completely useless piece of pork like D.o.H.S. but balk when it comes to feeding the bitterly impoverished or funding schools?
September 21st, 2005 at 3:36 pmAs said before this is almost by-the-numbers what would happen if a dirty bomb went off? And where was that Department? Certainly not securing the fatherland, oops I mean homeland.
Here Comes Rita. And She Appears to be Angry.
This is a huge storm. And it’s a huge part of our on-air coverage today AND our blog takes note of it, too.
September 21st, 2005 at 3:40 pmFOR SALE CHEAP - 100 semi-trucks full of ice. State Of Maine doesn’t want them, as in about,3 months we will have all the ice and snow we need. We will, keep the water though, as not all our wells have filled, since the last couple of dry seasons. Besides, we need the money to put back into the state coffers, to replace the money Bush has already cut from our state’s funding.
September 21st, 2005 at 6:07 pmMaybe we need to send all that ice to D.C., tell Bush, ‘hell has finally frozen over!’ and he’s about to be impeached. Yeh!!!!!!
America has fallen and it can’t get up.
September 21st, 2005 at 7:48 pmYour tax dollars at work, idiot
Think Progress » FEMA Presents: Mismanagement on Ice!
September 21st, 2005 at 8:30 pmMedia outlets around the country are reporting that trucks loaded with millions of pounds of ice meant for the Gulf region are popping up nationwide. FEMA redirected the trucks away from the Sout…
Wish you’d spell Gloucester correctly…
September 21st, 2005 at 10:05 pmThe FEMA Ice Follies — “Millions of Dollars are Being Wastedâ€
Friday, September 16th, 2005
FEMA… the government agency synonymous with the F word (in reference to their treatment of the American people in the Gulf). Nothing much seems to have changed since Brownie was replaced and the duct tape man cometh and it appears that FEMA can’t seem to coordinate the ice man cometh, either…
Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit, have done what journalists do when they are doing their jobs and have investigated why it’s such a problem for FEMA to bring ice to the ravaged Gulf Coast.
Friday, NBC News located hundreds of trucks full of ice sitting around the country: in Maryland, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana. Some had been on trips to nowhere for the past two weeks.
Elizabeth Palmer is a truck driver in Carthage, Mo.
“We really don’t understand,†said Palmer, “why FEMA is sending to all these different locations and just putting us in cold storage.â€
Dan Wessels’ Cool Express ice company has worked with FEMA for years. He says he’s never seen anything like it — only one-third of his trucks have actually unloaded the ice that FEMA ordered.
“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing,†said Wessels. “The right hand is telling us to go to the left hand. We get to the left hand, they tell us to go back.â€
The misrouting of truck of ice is racking up a hefty bill at taxpayers expense, to the tune of millions of dollars…
For example, one truck of ice left Oshkosh, Wis., on Sept. 6, and went to Louisiana. Then it was sent by FEMA to Georgia but was rerouted before it arrived to South Carolina, then to Cumberland, Md., where it has been sitting for three days at an added cost to taxpayers so far of $9,000.
Multiplied by hundreds of trucks, this sort of dispatching could mean millions of dollars are being wasted.
“From a trucking aspect, I’m happy. Keep it coming,†said Wessels. “From a taxpayer aspect, it’s sick.â€
Typically a FEMA official makes a ridiculous claim…
A FEMA official says, in the rush to respond to Katrina, the agency ordered too much ice. Rather than let it melt, they sent it to other parts of the country to be ready for the next hurricane.
Meanwhile, the mis-management, re-routing of trucks and waste of taxpayer’s money continues…
But Wessels says FEMA just ordered more ice and re-routed some of his trucks again — to Idaho.
http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=584
September 21st, 2005 at 10:32 pmIf they ordered too much ice - fine. But to send it to Idaho and Maryland is pure idiocy.
The problem was Louisiana. So why not send the trucks just a few hunderd miles away, not clear across the continent?
The answer to the problem is so simple that a simpleton like those people in FEMA could nog grasp it.
September 22nd, 2005 at 1:33 pm[…] source […]
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:28 pmok, instead of dumping it or melting it..lets have a big party..get some nightclubs involved some event planners..lets get these trucks to these people …have a fundraiser…with fema ice let us make Rita and Katrina cocktails and with every drink bought money for hurricane relief..you wouldn’t even have to use alcohol you can buy coke and pepsi with fema ice..what do you think…why not..
October 11th, 2005 at 8:15 pmI work for a logistics company that was contracted to move these loads. We handled roughly 500 loads of ice and around 25% of the loads were delivered into the disaster area. Carriers were being paid $4 a mile to drive around the country, $700 per day for detention. We had many instances of 15k bills for trucks who ended up taking the ice 1,000 miles further from the disaster area. Drivers reported sitting on air force base tarmacs along with hundreds of trucks and no one new what to do with them. What is even more hilarious is the capitalism that emerged on these bases where a cup of Folgers was sold for $1 a cup to the drivers. Perhaps the government planned on subsidizing the cost through the Starbucks model as they had a captive audience. This freight caused a spike in transportation costs to other commodity shippers across the board. The ripple effect on transportation costs associated with the high $ ice loads surely has been felt by all shippers unrelated to the FEMA efforts. We’ll be paying this cost not only through taxes but also in the grocery store.
October 27th, 2005 at 7:43 pmI recently began working for the PR firm representing a new ice vending company out of North Florida, called Ice House America. The newly patented system of vending ice, devised by its founding president Bob Alligood, solves almost every problem encountered by FEMA in its earlier distribution efforts. Two of these machines were donated to the Houston Astrodome for relief support, and plans are currently in the works between FEMA and Ice House America to make the machines available to communities without power or running water in times of disaster, by retrofitting them for hook up to generators and alternative water sources. Check out Ice House America’s website: http://www.icehouseamerica.com.
November 10th, 2005 at 3:06 pmi think you people are going the wrong way with this ,you need to look at what fema did and how they help alot of people ,i drove the trailers down there and they been down there for a long time and there new trailers are still coming in from all over so for the ones that they know it all ,, tell me this what about the mayor and the gov of new orleans you telling me that it’s ok for them to make lots of money and not take care of there people when they had a 13 day meeting in wash dc , about it come on people wake up
December 6th, 2005 at 3:29 pm