Relief trucks sit idle while FEMA pays - Over 100 trucks at $600 per day

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050915/NEWS05/509150304

More than 100 tractor-trailers packed with water, ice and other critical hurricane-relief supplies have been sitting at an Air Force base in Montgomery, Ala., for nearly a week while the federal government pays $600 a day for each truck.

The idle trucks, called up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver supplies, are just the latest example of the waste, bureaucratic errors and miscommunication that continue to foul Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

"When somebody gets paid 600 bucks to sit and not burn fuel, that's a pretty good profit margin," said Alabama Food Services President Buck Hamilton, who is being paid by FEMA for about six truckloads of ice.

His shipments waited at similar truck staging areas in Mississippi. "Would you like to get paid $600 a day to sit and do nothing?" he said. "It's hard to criticize."

[underpants]

1. Those are fancy names for THEFT and FRAUD

Hmm get paid $600 per day now if I do anything that will cut into that so I won't do anything and it is all PURE PROFIT for me.

Sick.

[Sydnie]

2. Wasn't there a post not too long ago about trucks sitting at a base for

days and not moving, yet they bused the drivers 200 miles to a truck stop for showers? What ever came of that story? This sure sounds like the same type of situation as that one was.