Leftover ice from Katrina relief is headed for a thaw
Millions of dollars worth of ice purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for its Hurricane Katrina relief efforts is being melted across the nation, including up to 336,000 pounds that was stored in Gloucester, agency officials said.
FEMA, which came under criticism for its poor handling of relief efforts after Katrina slammed ashore Aug. 29, 2005, had miscalculated how much ice it would need for the hurricane-stricken Gulf Coast and bought too much, said Alexandra Kirin , an agency spokeswoman.
The agency then kept the leftover ice for almost two years, paying a contractor $12.5 million to store it at 22 facilities across the nation, including one in Gloucester, Kirin said.
Kirin said that when Katrina hit, FEMA purchased 224.3 million pounds of ice from the US Army Corps of Engineers for 28 cents a pound, a total cost of $62.8 million. But the agency used only 139.4 million pounds during the 2005 hurricane season, and hired AmeriCold Logistics, an Atlanta-based contractor, to store the 84.9 million pounds of excess ice, worth about $23.8 million.
"We decided that we would keep that, and put it in storage, and have it to be able to respond" to the 2006 hurricane season, Kirin said.
Some of the ice was stored at the AmeriCold Logistics facility in Gloucester, said Marty Bahamonde , a FEMA spokesman in Massachusetts.
Bahamonde said he did not know how much ice was stored at the facility; the Gloucester Daily Times reported the storage held four truckloads of ice, or between 160,000 and 336,000 pounds.
Andrew Pendergrass , general manager of the Gloucester facility, declined to comment.
But 2006 came and went and FEMA did not need the ice. Kirin said FEMA tried, and failed, to donate the ice to charitable organizations.
"Any ice we purchase, once we have no need for it, we'd try to give away to someone who'd take it," said Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA spokesman in Massachusetts. "We look for nonprofit groups that have need for ice. There aren't a lot of takers."
"They wasted millions of taxpayers' dollars; it's a disgrace," said Mary Tysver , who works at the Gloucester Fire Department.
Concerned that the ice was no longer safe for human consumption, the agency decided to get rid of it. Although ice does not have an official shelf life, "we didn't want to take any chances, having kept the ice two years," said Kirin.
Melting the ice, the agency decided, was "most cost-effective," she said. Kirin said AmeriCold has agreed to do it for free.
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