Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
FEMA trailers see 18 months’ use
of only 1,700 units as an unusually-active hurricane season battered southeast Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands this year.
Federal records show that FEMA has awarded about $278 million in competitivebid contracts to trailer manufacturers even as it has continued to sell off used units. One record showed an expected delivery date of February 2018.
In September, when AP first reported on the auctions, officials said the units sold had all been used to house survivors of the 2016 floods in southern Louisiana, who returned them with damages that made them unfit for redeployment.
More than 100 2017-model trailers were sold in the two days leading up Harvey’s landfall Aug. 25, the AP reported.
On Aug. 28, FEMA ordered the auctions halted “to evaluate the overall condition of recently deactivated units,” said Burke, adding that some were deployed to support disaster response, although none that “required refurbishment.”
“If you’re living in a tent, you really don’t care about the trim,” said Samantha McCrary, the owner of a catering business in Rockport, Texas, who since the storm hit Aug. 25 has allowed people to camp on her 3.5-acre property.
McCrary, her husband and other southeast Texas volunteers have accepted donated used trailers and fixed them up for tent-dwellers.
“They’re rough, but the water and the heat works. They’ve got plywood for a windshield, plywood for doors, and people are thrilled to death to get them,” McCrary said.
Among the beneficiaries was Combs, who said she was denied temporary housing assistance by FEMA.
“Whether you have children or not, living in a tent for any amount of time when you have been turned down by the government is very heartbreaking,” she said.