Collins Asks FEMA Chief About Ice in Portland
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Federal Emergency Management Agency acting director R. David Paulison Thursday that the agency’s policy of diverting truckloads of ice originally meant for Gulf Coast hurricane victims to locations as far away as Portland, Maine, undermines the public’s confidence in FEMA.
The federal government purchased nearly 200 million pounds of ice for more than $100 million, she said, and most of that ice traveled thousands of miles on “circuitous routes” throughout the country but was never delivered to the victims.
“It erodes public confidence in the federal government’s management, and I also think it erodes public support for additional appropriations to help the victims when the public sees this kind of waste in their own backyard,” Collins said at a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee .
Collins, who chairs the committee, which has been investigating FEMA’s preparedness and response to Hurricane Katrina, told Paulison she wrote a letter to FEMA in late September asking why the federal government paid truck drivers to haul ice all over the country.
“We don’t have a good tracking system of where the commodities go,” and that needs to be addressed, Paulison said at the hearing.
In late September, FEMA diverted hundreds of trucks loaded with bagged ice to Portland and other sites around the country after realizing the ice was no longer needed to assist the rescue efforts in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi but might be needed in the future, according to the Associated Press.
After sending her letter, Collins said, FEMA responded that 30 trucks had been diverted to Maine. But Collins said that after seeing the trucks lined up and running in Portland (trucks run all the time to keep the refrigeration going and the ice from melting) she thought there were many more than 30 . FEMA amended the figure to 250 trucks just before the hearing, she said.
One hundred of the refrigerator trucks have since been dispatched from Portland to assist victims of Hurricane Rita and the ice in the other 150 or so trucks has been moved into a refrigerated storage facility in Portland, Collins said.
“Clearly the system by which commodities are ordered, tracked and delivered is deeply flawed,” Collins said.
“It’s not such a bad idea to talk to Wal-Mart,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) advised Paulison, because the huge retail chain tracks a large amount of commodities all over the country on a regular basis.
Paulison, who before coming to the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 was the chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department, said FEMA was not going to get rid of the ice until the end of this hurricane season because it might be needed again.
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