News Intelligence Analysis
From the Press Atlantic
Trailer town opens for Katrina victims
By KEVIN McGILL, Associated Press Writer
Published: Thursday, October 6, 2005
Updated: Thursday, October 6, 2005
BAKER, La. (AP) - What was to be Louisiana's first great stride in providing temporary housing for Hurricane Katrina victims turned out to be more of a stutter step Thursday, with only about 50 new residents arriving to fill a trailer community built for upward of 2,000.
Reporters were told Thursday morning that busloads of evacuees from area shelters would be arriving throughout the day. But evacuees only trickled in, most in their own cars. Others stepped off large buses in small groups - one huge tour bus roared up to a registration tent with only three people aboard.
Federal Emergency Management Agency officials and contractors on site would not give a reason for the latest delay in populating the trailer community. That it took more than five weeks after Katrina struck to get the site ready was blamed officially on a second storm, Hurricane Rita, and unofficially on bureaucratic disorganization and trouble getting the park's tap water certified as safe to drink.
New resident Yolanda Vaughn said there were communication problems: She was never officially told the trailer she and her husband Dwain would share was ready Thursday. A fellow resident at a nearby Red Cross-run evacuation shelter in Baker alerted them that she had seen their name on a list.
"It's just miscommunication," Yolanda Vaughn said, happy to be in their small, but private home instead of a shelter. "It's not anybody's fault."
The park - the first major hurricane trailer town in the New Orleans area - is expected to hold between three and four people per trailer, which could put the population at more than 2,000.
Among the first shown her new home was Izella Crayton and her two young children, forced out of their home in a New Orleans suburb by Katrina's wind and rain.
FEMA is overseeing and funding the park. Staffers had trouble unlocking the door of Crayton's two-bedroom trailer, but when it opened and she stepped in, she was bowled over.
"Oh, look how beautiful!" she shouted. A quick tour of the compact living space revealed a three-bed vacation-style trailer, outfitted with basics like bed sheets by government contractors.
Most of the trailers have 200 to 300 square feet of living space, some with pop-out sections. The park is plotted like a town, with still-unnamed gravel streets. There are plans for postal service and bus connections for the mile and a half trek into Baker, just north of Baton Rouge, but they have not yet been completed.
The typical maximum stay in FEMA housing is 18 months. Crayton said she expects to be there about a year. She hopes to find work similar to what she did in Gretna - housekeeping and cooking for a nursing home.
The accommodations will be cramped for Gregory and Clara Fobbs, who evacuated their apartment in Harvey, a New Orleans suburb, when Katrina struck. They will share the trailer with their three children, ages 12, 16 and 17.
How long will they stay? "I'd say three to six months," said Clara Fobbs, who says her job as a dental assistant is waiting for her if she can find a place to live.
Those moving into trailers were picked by FEMA based on applications. Many have been stuck unhappily in shelters for more than a month, sleeping on cots in convention centers and gymnasiums with hundreds of other people.
Dozens living in the River Center in Baton Rouge loudly complained to Bill Clinton earlier this week, when the former president visited. He was told the massive convention center lacked adequate showers and privacy, enforced an unfair 10 p.m. curfew and was increasingly smelly because people couldn't bathe often enough and hadn't had a change of clothes for weeks.
But Charles Kielkopf, on loan in Baker from the Transportation Security Administration, said a month was not long to transform a pasture into an occupied trailer park.
"It happened fast here, when you consider what this formerly was," he said. "But it can never happen too fast when you're in a shelter."
Associated Press Writer Doug Simpson in Baton Rouge contributed to this report.
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