Send FEMA trailers to California
With thousands of people left homeless by the ravaging wildfires that torched California, it will be interesting to see how FEMA responds to this latest tragedy.
Sitting in storage sites along the Gulf Coast are hundreds, if not thousands, of quality temporary shelters produced by the RV industry in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina. Many have never been lived in. But all can be shipped to California by Monday, with a little coordination and planning on behalf of our federal emergency response agency.
We’ll see if FEMA has the guts to do the right thing and send those units to California, or if they will side with the Sierra Club and keep the units locked up tight over fears they’ll “poison” people because of so-called toxic levels of formaldehyde.
By the way, neither FEMA nor the Sierra Club have been able to come through with my offer to spend a week in a FEMA trailer to prove the alleged toxic effects of our products are nothing more than environmentalist whacko hot air.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:27 am
How can you even equate what happened in California to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina? Could you possibly be that ignorate? Obviously, you have never been to the area of the Gulf coast effected by Katrina. We’re talking 300,000 homes effected. Most of them either completely gone or totally uninhabitable. And these people not only lost their homes but also their families and their loved ones. How many people exactly died in California from the fires? They will never have an exact count from Katrina. Many of these people also lost their livelihoods. Their places of employment were also completely gone, never to return. But not to worry, because in Biloxi the casinos are back bigger and better than ever! Unfortunately, the people hired to build them were not the locals. Instead, those well paying jobs were given to outsiders (or as the locals say, “carpetbaggers”) who will take the jobs and their money and leave. In the meantime, the locals, many of whom have lived here all the lives, and whose families have been here for generations are being forced out due to a lack of affordable housing. The locals may work at the casinos but are not paid enough to live in their own hometown. Maybe that’s what the government wanted. Clear out the riffraff. Well, it’s working. Only we’re not talking about riffraff. In most cases we’re talking about hardworking people just trying to feed their families. Forgive me for not shedding any tears for the Californians who have lost their million dollar homes as I do my volunteer work in Mississippi just trying to get people into a safe habitat after more than 2 years. Don’t bother asking why they still aren’t back in their homes, it’s a concept that is obviously foreign to you. Perhaps you could come down here and learn for yourself! But a word of warning, you will have to look a block or two behind the beautiful casinos, and what you see will not be pretty.
October 29th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Did anybody else happen to notice how efficiently those affected by the tragic fires were processed into, and out of, the San Diego stadium without incident? And, by the way, the stadium was useable th enext day and did not require a year to restore it for its intended use.
Did you also notice that Californians took care of their problems before, during, and after the tragedy - without sitting back and waiting for the FEMA to do something or asking for more federal handouts to solve their problems.
Perhaps the Mayor of New Orleans and the Governor of Louisiana could learn something from this emergency - if they would just take time to do something on their own for a change.
As for the FEMA trailers and FEMA administration, please don’t insult the intelligence, integrity, and determination of the residetns of California by getting involved in the clean-up and restoration of the affected areas.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm
In talking to friends from the areas hit hard by the recent wild fires I dont think FEMA can react fast enough to have anyone actually have to use one of the units as temporary housing. The people not hit by the fires have done a remarkable job of pulling together ahd helping all the victim’s with their temporary housing needs. All is well in Southern California and they will rebuild with precautions built in their houses androunding areas to insure this never happens again and they will do it in record time if the government will simply leave them alone.