tagged w/ Fema Trailers
-
Home / News
Victims of Alabama storms struggle with mobile home rules
StoryDiscussionVictims of Alabama storms struggle with mobile home rules
Posted: Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:13 pm | (0) Comments
Font Size:Default font sizeLarger font size.CORDOVA, Ala. - James Ruston's house was knocked off its foundation by tornadoes that barreled through town last month and is still uninhabitable. He thought help had finally arrived when a truck pulled up to his property with a mobile home from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Then he got the call: Single-wide mobile homes, like the FEMA one, are illegal in the city of Cordova.
The city's refusal to let homeless residents occupy temporary housing provided by FEMA has sparked outrage in this central Alabama town of 2,000, with angry citizens filling a meeting last week and circulating petitions to remove the man many blame for the decision, Mayor Jack Scott.
Ruston and many others view the city's decision as heartless, a sign that leaders don't care that some people are barely surviving in the rubble of a blue-collar town.
"People have to live somewhere. What's it matter if it's in a trailer?" asked Felicia Boston, standing on the debris-strewn lot where a friend has lived in a tent since a tornado destroyed his home on April 27.
Scott has heard all the complaints, and he isn't apologizing. He said he doesn't want run-down mobile homes parked all over town years from now.
"I don't feel guilty," he said. "I can look anyone in the eye."
Located about 35 miles northwest of Birmingham, Cordova was hit by a pair of powerful tornadoes on April 27, the day twisters killed more than 300 people across the Southeast. Officials say 238 died in Alabama, the highest death toll for any state in a spring of violent weather.
An EF-3 twister with winds of at least 140 mph slammed into the town around 5:30 a.m., knocking out power and damaging numerous buildings. An EF-4 with winds around 170 mph struck about 12 hours later, killing four people and cutting a path of destruction a half-mile wide through
town.
Scores of homes, businesses and city buildings were destroyed or damaged by the time the winds died down. Nearly every red-brick storefront was whacked along Main Street, which is now deserted and blocked by a chain-link fence.
Residents whose homes were destroyed assumed they would be able to live in one of the hundreds of long, skinny mobile homes that FEMA is providing as temporary housing for tornado victims. After all, the Cordova Police Department, a pharmacy, a bank and City Hall all have moved into similar trailers since the storm.
But the city enacted a law three years ago that bans the type of mobile homes provided by FEMA, called single-wide trailers.
Older single-wide mobile homes were grandfathered in under the law and double-wide mobile homes are still allowed, Scott said, but new single-wides aren't allowed and a tornado isn't any reason to change the law, even temporarily.
The city's stance prompted an outcry that's not getting any quieter, especially with other cities with similar laws granting waivers. About 200 people attended a community meeting last night where some tried to shout down Scott.
"There are trailers all over here but (Scott) wants to clean all the trash out. He doesn't like lower-class people," said Harvey Hastings.
The cotton mill, brick plant and coal mine that once made Cordova prosperous shut down years ago, but native Tony Tidwell said leaders seem to believe residents are flush with cash and can afford to build big, new houses to replace the mobile homes and small frame homes that twisters blew away.
"Let the people have a place to live," he said. To make matters worse, he said, the city is imposing a mean double standard when it refuses to let residents live in FEMA trailers but is using a nearly identical structure for police headquarters.
Scott said the city can use small trailers because it's for the common good.
"It's temporary and we know it's temporary," said the mayor. "We're trying to provide services for everyone."
Storm victims are supposed to live in FEMA housing for no longer than 18 months after a disaster, yet about 260 campers are still occupied by survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the Gulf Coast last more than five years after those storms. The same thing could happen in Cordova if the city bends it rules to help tornado victims, Scott said.
Officials with FEMA have said it's a local issue and they remain ready to offer help to storm victims.
"We have several options available, and work with each community, to provide the best alternative possible for those who need housing assistance," Michael Byrne, FEMA's federal coordinating officer for Alabama, said in a statement. "We stand ready to help."
Ruston said he doesn't want to live in a mobile home forever, and he didn't want to leave Cordova to move in with a relative after his FEMA trailer was turned away.
Now, he said, it might not be worth going back.
"If we're going to have a mayor like that I'll just go elsewhere," he said.
Copyright 2011 The Post-Star. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
.Posted in News on Sunday, May 29, 2011 10:13 pm
.Share This Story
Print Email ShareThisHome / News
Victims of Alabama storms struggle with mobile home rules... more
-
-
The collapse of American society occurs in early 2011. The system was fundamentally headed toward this stunning unraveling for decades, but it took a multi-city nuclear "terror" attack on American soil to plunge the system into chaos.
Food, fuel, and medicine supply lines disappeared overnight and money quickly became useless. It was every man for himself and there was little the government could do to stem the flow of anarchy and looting in the streets.
Roving gangs of armed thugs began to stalk suburban streets, ransacking homes for rations. It is a time where everyone is gripped by fear and uncertainty. Communications are temporarily jammed, forcing those with electricity or battery radios to be glued to emergency broadcast signals. Reports of more bombs and street violence fill the airwaves.
You've just finished the last of your canned goods, water is no longer coming out of your tap, and the batteries are getting low in your car as you huddle to listen to the radio, refusing to turn it off for fear of missing important instructions. You gaze into your family's terrified eyes and contemplate your dismal options.
The government announces one-time sweeps of neighborhoods to "rescue" desperate citizens from the anarchy and bring them to gathering centers or camps where they will be guaranteed food and security. You've read articles and have seen movies about the nefarious nature of FEMA camps being described as prison internment camps -- and you remember post-Katrina New Orleans -- but what choice do you have?
You've exhausted your supplies, most of your neighbors already ran for the hills to stay with their extended family. Now, you begin to hear the rumbling patrols of bandits coming up your street smashing into your neighbors' homes. Just then you hear a government chopper marking its landing. The bandits duck and hide when they hear the helicopter, and the National Guard soldiers call out for survivors over the loudspeaker . . . .
READ MORE: http://globalpoliticalawakening.blogspot.com/2010/11/when-collapse-comes-will-fema-camps.htmlThe collapse of American society occurs in early 2011. The system was fundamentally... more
-
-
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the 120,000 or so trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people who had lost their homes became a symbol of the government’s inept response to that disaster.
The trailers were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again.
But the New York Times reports that some of those trailers are now getting a second life amid the latest disaster to hit the Gulf states— as living quarters for workers involved with the cleanup of BP’s oil spill.In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the 120,000 or so trailers provided by the Federal... more
-
-
For the first time since Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands of families living in FEMA trailers, a federal jury heard allegations Monday that the government-issued shelters exposed Gulf Coast storm victims to hazardous formaldehyde fumes.
A New Orleans woman suing trailer maker Gulf Stream Coach Inc. and government contractor Fluor Enterprises Inc. claims her son's asthma was aggravated by elevated levels of formaldehyde in their trailer provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Gulf Stream's own tests found elevated levels of formaldehyde in its trailers in early 2006For the first time since Hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands of families living... more
-
-
The FEMA trailers that came to Galveston County after Hurricane Ike are beginning to leave. As residents move back into their houses, the trailers that provided temporary housing are being hauled away.
Since the trailers were used for such a short time, there’s plenty of useful life left in them, but where and how?
A team of visual artists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent a year developing a sustainable agriculture vehicle from a used FEMA trailer. It will be in Houston on Thursday to demonstrate how to turn a symbol of disaster into something more positive and future-oriented.
“Leave it to artists to make something unexpected out of this,” Jon Lapointe, director of Side Street Projects, said.
Side Street Projects, an artist-run nonprofit in California, was selected by MIT to receive the FEMA trailer, based on their years of experience at mobile art projects. The trailer, dubbed the Armadillo because of its retractable ribbed rear section, will be used to bring arts education and horticulture project to neighborhoods with little other access to such endeavors.
The Armadillo grows vegetables and herbs in vertically arranged planters made of recycled materials. The self-watering planters are made from plastic bottles.
“On our tour, we’re showing people how to make hanging and vertical planters,” Lapointe said. “It’s easy enough that kids can do it, but grownups love making them just as much as the kids do.”
The Armadillo’s sloped rear section holds two large composting bins and also will serve as greenhouse.
“We’ll be able to start plants from seeds in here,” Side Street’s education director Emily Hopkins said.
The former living area of the FEMA trailer has been converted into education space.
snip
The Armadillo’s stop at Houston’s Discovery Green on Thursday, scheduled for 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., follows tour stops in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., where the Armadillo made a big impression on the National Mall just in front of the U.S. Capitol.
“We were visited by Smithsonian horticulturalists, staffers from the Congressional Budget Office and lots of tourists,” Lapointe said.
“Artists can bring unique things to the table. I believe the role of an artist in the 21st century is to be a collaborator, and the connections between art and horticulture are terrific.”The FEMA trailers that came to Galveston County after Hurricane Ike are beginning to... more
-
-
More than 32,000 FEMA trailers go unused and many can't be used and should have been disposed of a long time ago.More than 32,000 FEMA trailers go unused and many can't be used and should have... more
-
