Ice for the Big Easy goes a long way

GLOUCESTER -- First, the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent them to the Gulf Coast, a rumbling, rolling convoy of tractor-trailers hauling 170 million pounds of ice bound for victims of Hurricane Katrina, whose food and medicine supplies were rapidly spoiling in the relentless sun.

No sooner had they arrived, when FEMA handed down another order: Never mind. It turns out that most of the victims had already been brought to shelters in Texas and other states with working refrigerators and freezers.

Now, 114 of the big rigs have ended up here, 1,000 miles north of the hurricane zone, on the briny, ocean-cooled shores of Cape Ann in Gloucester.

In a town proud of its 157-year-old plant capable of churning out 350 tons of ice in a day, the arrival of mountains more of the stuff has caused some head scratching and frowning Yankee disapproval of Washington's freespending ways.

''With the limited information I have, it doesn't add up," said Mayor John Bell of Gloucester.

A FEMA spokesman acknowledged yesterday that the agency does not know how much it may cost taxpayers to keep the ice frozen or when the government might need it next. But the agency decided it was better to save the stuff, which is now being offloaded to cold storage facilities in Portland, Maine, Salem, Ore.; and here in Gloucester, home to Cape Pond Ice.

''The idea behind trucking the ice was the government had paid for it and the only other option was to let it melt," said Rob Holland, spokesman for the US Army Corp of Engineers.

Scott Memhard, president of Cape Pond Ice, watched the big rigs roll down Rogers Street and into the loading docks at AmeriCold Logistics, on Monday, he said.

''It was a big lineup of ice trailers, with some drivers just sitting around enjoying some good Gloucester clam rolls and lobster rolls," he said. ''They each had a placard in the window that said they were carrying ice for Katrina, and they were just lined up: ice, ice, ice, ice, ice."

Barry Pett, chairman of the Gloucester Redevelopment Authority, said the shipments appeared to be a case of government conservation turned into government waste. ''It obviously shows that sometimes the cost of bureaucracy is not necessarily pleasant to our eyes and ears and our wallets," he said.

Bell helped find parking for the trucks while they offloaded ice in the city. AmeriCold Logistics confirmed they had received ice shipments from the trucks, but would not comment further.

FEMA, faced with tons of ice and nowhere to go, opted to store the ice across the country, rather than let it melt, said Debbie Wing, an agency spokeswoman. ''We don't waste commodities," she said. ''We store it for future needs for future disasters."

FEMA had ordered the ice after the storm knocked out power, anticipating that hurricane victims would still be in their homes in the Gulf Coast, federal officials said. They had not anticipated the massive evacuations from New Orleans and other flooded areas, said Holland from the Army Corps of Engineers, which is coordinating the ice operation.

''There's going to be a lot of Monday-morning quarterbacking about whether this was the right thing to do," Holland said. ''It appeared to be the better part of valor to have that ice on hand, because you have these monster storms that are creating victims and you don't know how much you might need.

''It's better to have too much than not enough."

Some truck drivers in Gloucester said they were making $900 a day and had been on the road for nearly two weeks.

''I picked it up in Syracuse, N.Y., and then I drove it down to Montgomery, Ala.," trucker Pete Valdes told WCVB-TV. ''I stayed out there for about eight days. They called us up, and they told us to move it up here to this facility."

''I thought that they are crazy," he added.

Another trucker said he was happy to have hauled his shipment from New Jersey to Alabama and then to Gloucester, over the course of 10 days.

''Government does stupid things," said the trucker, who did not want his name printed. ''I got paid."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.