xxxNews Of The Weirdxxx
Bizarre but true stories about real people collected by syndicated columnist Chuck Shepherd.
Probably the most notorious example of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s under-preparation for Hurricane Katrina was the over-ordering of 91,000 tons of ice cubes intended to cool the victims and their food and medicine. One now-famous truck, for example, picked up 20 tons of ice in Greenville, Pa., drove to a Carthage, Mo., FEMA facility, then to Montgomery, Ala., for a day and a half, then to Camp Shelby in Mississippi, then to Selma, Ala., then to Emporia, Va. (where it idled for a week to keep the ice frozen), and finally to Fremont, Neb., where the ice was put up for storage. (Update: On the day that Hurricane Wilma hit Florida in October, FEMA acting director David Paulison proudly noted that because of the over-ordering for Katrina, plenty of ice was on hand after Wilma.)
In Homosassa, Fla., near Tampa, Ralph Padgett, 73, was arrested in October and charged with running down (on his riding lawn mower) estranged neighbor David Ervin, who was also on a riding lawn mower.
(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or [email protected] or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.) NEWS OF THE WEIRD
