Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast—black and white, rich and poor, young and old—deserve far better from their national government." However, Landrieu's overflight was of the end of the single-lane roadway being built toward the breach. The "single, lonely piece of equipment" was one power shovel, a bulldozer, and two dump trucks. Video did not show the work area a few hundred feet away at the start of the roadway. USACE photos show a variety of equipment at that site the following day. The New York Times reported that 91,000 tons of ice ordered by FEMA at a cost of over $100 million and intended for hospitals and food storage for relief efforts never made it to the disaster area. Federally contracted truck drivers instead received orders from FEMA to deliver the ice to government rented storage facilities around the country, as far north as Maine. In testimony to a House panel, FEMA director Michael D. Brown stated that "I don't think that's a federal government responsibility to provide ice to keep my hamburger meat in my freezer or refrigerator fresh." In a September 15, 2005 "New York Times" opinion column about the privately owned Methodist Hospital in New Orleans, Bob Herbert wrote, "Incredibly, when the out-of-state corporate owners of the hospital responded to the flooding by sending emergency relief supplies, they were confiscated at the airport by FEMA." A September 16, 2005 CNN article about Chalmette Medical Center stated, "Doctors eager to help sick and injured evacuees were handed mops by federal officials who expressed concern about legal liability ... And so they mopped, while people died around them." FEMA Director, Michael Brown, was criticized when he stated that he was not aware there were refugees in the Convention Center until September 1, three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, when Brian Williams, of NBC Nightly News, asked Mr. Brown a question about them live on the Nightly News. On September 2, CNN's Soledad O'Brien asked FEMA Director Mike Brown, "How is it possible that we're getting better info than you were getting ... we were showing live pictures of the people outside the Convention Center ... also we'd been reporting that officials had been telling people to go to the Convention Center ...