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I just spent 10 minutes looking for this, it’s Michael Brown’s Congressional testimony regarding ice. He was just absurd, saying that the federal government did not need to be in the “ice business,” just so people could keep their beer and diet Cokes cool.
Some congressman went nuts on him, although it doesn’t really come through fully in the transcript:
BROWN: ... And I think it's wrong for the federal government to be in the ice business, providing ice so I can keep my beer and Diet Coke cool.
(UNKNOWN): How about the need to keep bodies from rotting in the sun?
Had you visited Hancock County, which you didn't, you would have met a gentleman named Edmund Faise (ph). He was given the grisly task of trying to preserve the bodies. They were stacked up at his local mortuary. He had no power. And he literally came to me, tears in his eyes and said, You have got to find me a freezer truck because these bodies are rotting in my driveway.
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Again, Mr. Brown, the more I listen to you, I'm thinking you're probably a great attorney, but you were way over your head in your capacity at FEMA.
The ice is also used not for the dead, but to keep people from dying. In nursing homes, one of the major reasons that old people just suffered and died is because there was no ice, there was no way for them to refresh themselves and the heat was suffocating.
It's awfully hot down there, as you know, and it just wasn't there. And for other people who are out of the sun all day, the Superdome was hot (inaudible) people came outside, and it was still hot there.
Absolute critical need for people to stay alive as much as it was for anything else. And so it wasn't a luxury to preserve hamburger meat. It was really a necessity
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