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FEMA trailers: Shelter, class-action lawsuit

Jimmie E. Gates
The Clarion-Ledger

For several years after Hurricane Katrina, ads selling FEMA trailers were on the Internet and in publications.

Thousands of FEMA trailers covered the landscape near I-59 in Purvis in March 2007.

At its peak, there were more than 45,000 temporary housing units provided to disaster survivors in Mississippi after Katrina, said Mary Langenbacker, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s recovery office on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

“In response to Hurricane Katrina, FEMA conducted the largest housing operation in our country’s history,” Langenbacker said. “A mission of that scope and magnitude required a collaborative effort between FEMA, state emergency management offices including the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, HUD and the assistance from volunteer agencies across the United States to serve as caseworkers and assist families in creating recovery plans.”

FEMA’s Katrina temporary housing mission ended in February 2012.

“One hundred percent of the housing units have been deactivated, and those households have moved on to more permanent housing,” Langenbacker said. “In addition to utilizing temporary housing units, FEMA worked with local housing authorities and public sector property management offices to locate rental resources including apartments, condominiums, rental houses and privately owned mobile home parks.”

The government-issued trailers, brought to help the thousands left homeless by the storm, came with problems, however.

They were found to have elevated levels of formaldehyde. Classified as a carcinogen, formaldehyde can cause breathing problems.

Still, Shirley Acker of Pearlington said her family’s FEMA trailer was a “godsend.”

“The FEMA trailers were a blessing, even though we later found out about the formaldehyde,” Acker said. “They were convenient and comfortable. They were just somewhere to live comfortable until we got everything back into order ... I had no problem with them. A lot of people said their eyes were burning, and they didn’t know what was going on. We were able to stay in them until we got our homes back going or we got new homes.”

The formaldehyde in the trailers led to lawsuits from some Katrina victims and a class-action settlement with manufacturers and some contractors who installed or maintained the trailers. Twenty-one FEMA trailer manufacturers agreed to pay a total of $14.8 million to resolve claims.

Kim King, who lived in a FEMA trailer for over two years in Waveland, said FEMA asked if she wanted to buy the trailer.

“Two years were enough for me,” King said. “I was happy to turn it back in.”

King said living in a FEMA trailer was difficult, but it was helpful to have one. “I mean the alternative was sleeping out in the elements.”

King said a FEMA trailer needed to be viewed as emergency shelter. “It was always wild that some people complained as if it was meant as a long-term means of lodging,” she said. “Our trailer had a full-size toilet, a tub, full refrigerator and was fine for us. As we lost everything, we had lots of room.

“We did have the wall fall on us one day as they had been built in a hurry, and we could see where they glued the wall on the frame,” King said.

“It was very small, but at times I had up to 10 people in there with us. That’s because many of the volunteers who came to help wanted to say they stayed in an actual FEMA trailer,” King said.

King said the trailers were “inspected” monthly, which was really a joke since no one really “inspected” anything. “Instead they would just ask for a signature, although one girl told me she knew that the space shuttle had punched holes in the atmosphere and let all the heat pour in. She said that is why we had such a bad storm. She was a FEMA inspector.”

In 2009, FEMA began disposing of the trailers brought to Mississippi with the General Service Administration acting as the sales agent.

GSA conducted Internet auctions throughout the United States.

The goal was to reduce the size of the inventory and thus significantly reduce the annual cost of approximately $133 million being incurred from storing 120,000 excess mobile homes, park models and travel trailers.

In February 2009 GSA sold several bulk lots of the Katrina units — 101,802 units on 11 Internet auctions. The units were sold under normal sales terms and conditions with the exception that larger lots had extended removal times.

Over time, the average amount of proceeds per unit decreased from approximately $2,000 to approximately $1,500 per unit. A portion of the proceeds were to returned to FEMA to offset the cost of purchasing and maintaining them.

Contact Jimmie E. Gates at (601) 961-7212 or jgates@ jackson.gannett.com. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter