http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-09-29-malone-katrina_x.htm
The former NBA all-star and a crew from his logging company in Arkansas
spent two weeks in Pascagoula, Miss., hauling away debris left by
Hurricane
Katrina.
"Everything about this just felt right," Malone says. "My mom died two
years
ago, and in our last conversation, she told me that one day I would have
to
step up on a grand scale and help people. I knew this was it."
Malone, whose team cleared 114 lots, said he brought 18 vehicles to
Pascagoula, including a backhoe, three bulldozers and several RVs for him
and his crew.
"We were totally self-contained with our own food and everything," Malone
says. "We didn't want to take even one bottle of water away from these
people. When we told them we were doing this for free, they looked at us
like we were crazy or something."
Malone, 42, an experienced truck driver and logger who was born in
Bernice,
La., spent 12 hours a day behind the wheel of his heavy machinery.
"We started every day at seven in the morning and didn't quit until we got
it done," he says.
When Malone arrived, he says he ran into resistance from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Army Corps of Engineers officials
who
said he wasn't authorized to bring his machinery into the area to clear
private property.
"There was a lot of red tape, and I ain't got time for that," he says. "I
found out that if you're going to do something good, just go ahead and do
it."
Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers, says FEMA and
the
corps by law could only allow approved contractors to clear debris and
that
only government agencies could work on "public rights of way."
Malone says landowners were told that debris had to be moved out to the
street before it could be hauled away. "How is a landowner who just lost
everything going to pay $15,000 or $20,000 to have a lot cleared? I mean,
there were two or three houses on top of one another in some places."
This put Malone in the middle of territorial disputes with private
contractors.
"We had one guy come up to us and tell us to go to another neighborhood
and
that these people could afford to pay," Malone says. "I told him, 'Why
should they pay? They just lost everything.' "
"Once I get in my machine, no one is going to get me out," he says. "We
just
said 'the hell with it.' FEMA didn't approve, but we did it for the
people."
Steve Glenn, a FEMA official in Mississippi, said rules regarding clearing
debris on private property exist to protect individuals' rights: "We can't
just go onto private property on a whim."
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