AP: FEMA trailers in storage getting tested
Source: Associated Press
Your tax dollars at work in Hope, Arkansas, where FEMA trailers go to die:
The roughly 600-acre site used by FEMA at the airport remains closed to the public and under watch by armed security guards. Tuesday, FEMA officials allowed an Associated Press reporter and photographer to tour the site and examine parts of the testing process.
More than 7,500 mobile homes and 11,800 travel trailers sit within feet of each other at the site, often backed in at an angle. Many have white vinyl siding, unadorned windows and single front doors. Some show the signs of their age, with gray weathering darkening their vinyl or gray shingles out of place on their roofs.
Inside, chairs for a dining room sit stacked on one another. Microwaves and stoves have a light layer of dust. Cloth and naugahyde couches sit unused on wall-to-wall linoleum flooring.
"One, it's easier to clean," site manager Ed Mitura of the flooring. "Two, you don't have to worry about colors."
In the rush after the 2005 storms, FEMA bought the mobile homes and travel trailers both direct from the manufacturers as well as off lots around the country. One trailer beckoned passers-by with a yellow-and-white lettered come-on: "Great Floor Plan Great Price!"
"Katrina was such a huge disaster, they were buying everything they could," Mitura said.
And what our government bought, in its infinite wisdom, was crap. And now they have to test all that crap to determine if it can kill you.
Someday, someone will stand trial for this insanity, I just know it. They have to, or I'm going to lost a lot of faith in our justice system.
