Wednesday, February 15, 2006

 

Not In My Flood Plain, Buddy


Regular readers will remember all those hotel room extensions Howey the New York Lawyer convinced Judge Woody to grant. See the detail on the January 14 post. We figured that the hotel residents had it made until February 27 (or maybe forever), since all they had to do is call FEMA for a number, after which they were good until they got a mobile home or an apartment. Turns out that 12,000 FEMA was paying for never called, so the money for those stopped flowing to the hotels February 7. Howey went to court again, but this time the judge didn't go along. Seems like we ought to be able to tell if 12,000 families were wandering around on the street, but so far very few reports.

There is more work to do for Howey and Judge Woody, so we hope they are not discouraged. There is the mobile home vs. travel trailer issue. FEMA purchased 25,000 mobile homes that ran about $34,000 each, and about 100,000 travel trailers, a bargain at $10,000. We couldn't quite get the math straight on our February 9 post because we hadn't focused on the difference. One main difference is that FEMA policy prohibits installing mobile homes in a flood prone area. I think you can see how that could create a problem in this situation. Anyway, only 2,700 of the mobile homes have been installed, and the rest are stored, apparently in a flood plain. Richard L. Skinner ("Skinny"), the Homeland Security Inspector General, told a Senate panel that many would have to be sold as surplus, stored for some future disaster (that didn't involve flooding, one assumes), or given to some other federal agency. Asked for their value as surplus, he responded "It's certainly not going to be very high, given the way they were being stored at a spot where some are sinking into the mud. Some of the trailers that we inspected are actually warping, have lost wheels, and some have been cannibalized, parts taken out, and we don't even know where the parts are right now. So their value is going to decrease tremendously."

The situation is a lot better on the 100,000 travel trailers, of which 72,000 have been installed. Apparently you can install these in a flood prone area, because in case of a flood you just hitch up and move. The highways were a little crowded in the Katrina evacuation, so you might want to allow a few extra days, but other than that, it seems pretty clever. FEMA is ordering more travel trailers, so these will be just in time to replace the 28,000 currently in storage, that is, if Judge Woody will order those distributed to evacuees. One caution, Judge. It would be better if you didn't make people call in for a number.

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