HOUSTON -- On one side of Houston, cars lined up around the block hours before a relief site was even open. On the other side of town, semi-trucks loaded with ice and water sat in a staging area across from Reliant Stadium waiting to be told where to go.

“It's ridiculous, us waiting here seven hours for two bags of ice and water. But we don't have no choice,” said Delia Lesesma as she waited for the relief trucks to arrive.

She isn't the only person frustrated about sitting and waiting.

“I've been here since Friday and they haven't said a thing about moving yet,” said Donald Batts, a relief supplies truck driver from North Carolina.

“I've been here since Friday. I'm getting no direction. Just sit and wait,” said Georgia truck driver Larry McClain.

Mozetta Mitchel, the American Red Cross' distribution supervisor, said the very thought of loaded trucks with nowhere to go smacks of Hurricane Katrina and the poor response to that disaster.

“These trucks are sitting here a week at a time without any instructions to unload, while the PODs we're trying to supply are without the supplies,” said Mitchel. “(The trucks) are running, burning fuel, getting paid.”

The staging area was set up by FEMA and the state, and its operations were overseen by the national incident management organization.

“We're here to run an LSA and we have to wait for orders from above and we do our best to make sure we take care of any needs we hear of,” said incident commander George Custer. "So, we've probably got an overload of commodities right now."

In other words, they're caught in the middle, and it's up to FEMA and the state to figure out what's left and who still needs it.

In another ironic twist to the story, several of the truck drivers told 11 News they had been ordered to drive their trucks to San Antonio, where they would unload and let the ice they were carrying melt.

That story changed later in the night when one of the truckers said he had been rerouted to Galveston.

County Judge Ed Emmett, who took command of the trucks early on during the Ike relief effort, suggested the trucks may actually be an overflow of supplies, given that there are no longer any PODS open in Harris County after local stores began to open.

"If (FEMA) has ordered too much, I'd rather that than not having enough," Emmett said.

Still, he suggested the trucks would soon be bound for Galveston, which does have a need.

Whatever the case, it appeared to be disorganized.

“I'd be glad to go and deliver it to them. I was a Katrina victim and I got no relief, none at all. So I'd be glad to help somebody with these items,” said McClain.