FEMA Trailers, Some Dangerous, Used in Wake of Katrina Now Resold Across the Country

[babylonsister]

The Long Journey of the Katrina Trailers
FEMA Trailers, Some Dangerous, Used in Wake of Katrina Now Resold Across the Country
By Annie Lowrey 9/2/10 6:00 AM


FEMA trailers being shipped to New Orleans. (Flickr/factoryseashell)

This week, The Washington Independent is featuring a series of investigative stories on the rebuilding of New Orleans, five years after Hurricane Katrina. Find all of them here.


A few weeks ago, in Henry County, Ga., a woman named Angela Wilson led a local television anchor into her camping trailer, a standard white-clad box on wheels, ready to be pulled into the woods by an RV or a truck. She described how her eyes started to tear up after standing in it a few minutes – not due to emotion, but due to the chemical preservative, irritant and carcinogen formaldehyde.

Unknowingly, Wilson bought one of the 145,000 infamous Katrina trailers – the mobile camping and housing units the Federal Emergency Management Agency bought to house the hundreds of thousands of New Orleanians displaced by the devastation wreaked by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. “We were told that this trailer was in no way related to Katrina, that this trailer came from North Dakota,” Wilson told the camera. She said the out-of-state dealer assured her that chemical contaminants were not an issue. Later, she found a pamphlets from FEMA and state officials in Mississippi tucked away.

Five years after Katrina, the infamous trailers – bought for billions, sold for pennies on the dollar – are still causing trouble. And that trouble and those trailers are now widespread. The campers were once congregated around New Orleans, but now blanket the entire country, uncounted and mislabeled in dealers’ lots, back lawns and sites for oil spill cleanup.

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/96498/the-long-journey-of-the-katrina-trailers

[catgirl]

1. This is unbelievable

These trailers need to be tracked down and destroyed. The health problems they will cause are serious.

[david13]

2. What contamants are in the trailers. Usually the issue is formaldehyde

which is used in the construction of the trailers. They basically are no different from any other generic travel trailer.
Anyone who has used one or lived in one knows not everyone can do it. But the formaldehyde issue usually doesn't last as an issue more than the first year. It dissipates.
Any knew construction can cause problems, which frequently dissipate within the first year.
But some people will always be allergic or sensitive to materials used in any product.
The other major problem with any trailer of the travel trailer type is that they have little or no insulation, or sealing around the windows. As a result any dust and dirt if there is wind will blow right into and thru' the trailer. Again, if a person is sensitive to that, they will have problems with it.
Just like some people cannot camp out in a tent.
So I think the issue is overstated here. Just try the trailer before you buy it. There was nothing special or unusual about the Katrina trailers.
dc