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Marmaduke - Mobile homes being stored in Hope will soon move to Marmaduke to help tornado victims.
Beginning Monday, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will start moving about 100 of the homes and distributing them to families who lost theirs in the storms earlier this month.
The units were originally intended for survivors of Katrina and Rita, but have been stored at the Hope Airport since the hurricanes hit last summer
I wonder why this was accomplished so easily ???
Darwins Friend said:LOL! Reference and NPR story on how long those trailers have been there and the $18000 a month the government's been paying for tarmac space rental!!
Darwins Friend said:
FEMA says it has been stymied by federal regulations, such as one forbidding trailers to be positioned in flood plains - which rules out much of the area hit by Katrina - and by officials in Louisiana, where the need is greatest
Darwins Friend said:Youre missing the point! Couldnt the president use his emergency powers to over-ride such things? Or is that asking him to think for himself and show some balls?
From CNN archive:
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: So what in the world is the real story on those FEMA trailers, thousands of them, sitting in the mud in Arkansas? Are they all destined to become trailer trash as has been suggested? Or are they OK where they sit for years to come? And either way, why aren't they headed where they are needed? Places like New Orleans, where people are without homes.
We posed some of those questions to the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner just a little while ago.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RICHARD SKINNER, DHS INSPECTOR GENERAL: We are now in a process of reviewing the housing program for the Katrina evacuees. We had the opportunity to visit Hope, Arkansas, at least on two occasions, most recently on January 23rd. When we visited then, our inspectors found that these homes were being parked in rain-soaked fields, and in fact many of the homes were beginning to sink into the mud, or I should say the trailer riches where the platforms on which they sat were beginning to sink in the mud. FEMA has since committed to lay down gravel at an expense of about $6 million to $8 million to mitigate this problem. We also found trailers that were buckling or warping because they didn't have the proper support.
Now as I understand it, FEMA has addressed this proper by putting in jacks to mitigate, again, this problem. And we also found some homes that were damaged during delivery. The roofs were slightly damaged. But we never did say that these homes were damaged to such an extent that they had to be trashed.
O'BRIEN: OK, well, I'm glad you got that out there. Thank you for clarifying that point.
I find it ironic and kind of sad that FEMA -- the reaction is to try to do the best they can to make those trailers sit a little more pretty, if you will, in Hope, Arkansas, as opposed to transporting them to a place where they would be needed. Six million to $8 million for gravel? Why don't they hitch them up and take them to New Orleans?
SKINNER: That is most disturbing, and I agree. FEMA ordered these homes long before they had plans -- or they did not have plans in place to identify where the homes would go, when they would be deployed, or who is in fact was going to live in the homes. As a result, we may have bought too many. And consequently, we are now in the modular-home storage business, which in itself is very expensive. And our concern is if we're going to continue to store these homes for long periods of time, we need to do it properly.
O'BRIEN: Wow, lots of issues here. I want to ask about this one thing, though, which just amazes me. It's right out of Joseph Keller, "Catch-22." The particular modular homes, the trailers, whatever you want to call them, are not by federal law allowed to be placed in a floodplain.
