As federal officials inaugurate mobile home villages across the Gulf Coast, temporary shelter residents from other storms say they're stuck in a permanent state of emergency | Jamie Dean
PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—On 62 acres of rural farmland in Baker, La., white gravel has replaced green pastures, and 573 trailers sit in neat rows where cows roamed just a few weeks ago. The impromptu trailer park set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is now home to more than 1,500 people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Residents may live in the village rent-free for the next 18 months.
The FEMA village 10 miles north of Baton Rouge is one of four trailer parks the agency has set up in Louisiana and Alabama since Hurricane Katrina destroyed nearly a half million homes along the Gulf Coast in August. Many more villages are in the works: FEMA has ordered some 125,000 mobile homes and campers to shelter evacuees without homes.
Disasters R Us
A history of disaster relief | Marvin Olasky
When Minnesota suffered flooding in 1950, Rep. Harold Hagen asked his congressional colleagues to provide relief for his state. He introduced a bill that became the Disaster Relief Act, the federal government's first means of creating "an orderly and continuing method of rendering assistance to the states and local governments in alleviating suffering and damage." The bill's price tag, only $5 million, was deliberately small.
Some in the Senate had suspicions. Virginia's Absalom Willis Robertson (the father of Pat) asked the bill's floor manager, John McClelland, for more specifics, but the Arkansas senator said merely that the president would be empowered to declare disasters, and "we can certainly rely upon whomever may be the president of the United States having some judgment."
Find out how to get instant access to this article and one month of WORLD for only $5.00! If you are already a subscriber, please log in below.
Receive instant access to this article and the WORLDMag.com Archives
Plus, enjoy 2 issues of WORLD Magazine for only $5.00*
Want a different
type of subscription? Click here for Online-Only
Subscription options. Or
here for Print
Subscription options
(which include online subscription access).
COVER STORY ARTICLE |
Family man
