Ala. town hit by tornadoes bans FEMA trailers

[spinbaby]

Source: AP

CORDOVA, Ala. – James Ruston's house was knocked off its foundation by tornadoes that barreled through town last month and is still uninhabitable. He thought help had finally arrived when a truck pulled up to his property with a mobile home from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Then he got the call: Single-wide mobile homes, like the FEMA one, are illegal in the city of Cordova.

The city's refusal to let homeless residents occupy temporary housing provided by FEMA has sparked outrage in this central Alabama town of 2,000, with angry citizens filling a meeting last week and circulating petitions to remove the man many blame for the decision, Mayor Jack Scott.

(snip)

"There are trailers all over here but (Scott) wants to clean all the trash out. He doesn't like lower-class people," said Harvey Hastings.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110529/ap_on_re_us/us_fema_trailers_ban

[Jkid]

1. The real question we should be asking the mayor.

Where the hell are we supposed to live? You want us out of the city?

[HopeHoops]

3. Tents would make a statement.

[Maine_Nurse]

2. One of the rare instances where...

I'd support the feds telling the local government to go piss up a rope.

[trud]

4. are those the ones unsafe because of formaldehyde? n/t

[pasto76]

5. possibly, maybe not. A large problem after katrina was folks brought contaminated stuff into them

[pasto76]

6. seriously, when a less then federal government asks for FEMA help, its not a la carte!

the mayor should be fined for this.

[Mojorabbit]

14. I disagree

I was in Ocean Springs after Katrina. They brought out a FEMA trailer for my BIL. We all had been camping in tents in the yard. They left it locked because it would be yet another day before it could be hooked to sewer. We broke in to it because he decided he could not stand another night of 100 degree weather in a tent. The smell of chemicals almost made me faint it was so strong. It was horrible. He spent the night in the tent while trying to air the trailer out and it was monthe before the smell receeded.

[buckrogers1965]

15. The outgassing stopped years ago.

The katrina trailers are perfectly safe now. They only outgas toxins for the first few months after construction.

[iamthebandfanman]

7. headline should be

"ala. town residents screwed after trying to keep poor people out of town."


cause we all know why that ban was put into place.

[madrchsod]

8. the correct headline should be "the mayor" or "the city council".

the "town" did not ban the trailers. i take it ap is still "hiring" interns to write the headlines.

[JoeyT]

17. These kinds of bans are common down here.

And generally the entire town supports it. Or at least the entire town that can afford to not live in a single wide trailer. Can't have poor people bringing down property values.

Well, except the people that actually care about the poor, and they're probably liberals that aren't worth listening to anyway.

The mayor is a dick for enforcing it in the face of a disaster, but I'd be willing to bet the town supported it wholeheartedly before this.

[NashVegas]

20. The "Town" Votes

Voters put these cats in office, they don't get there all by themselves.

[Seedersandleechers]

9. Double Wide's are legal

So just give them each two single wides and a blow torch. :shrug:

[PatSeg]

10. And yet he allowed the police department

and city hall to move into temporary trailers.

[Javaman]

18. It works like this...

if you have a uniform, you aren't homeless!

[toddwv]

11. There's more to this.

Anyone want to bet that he's a Republican?

This guy is a world-class douchebag. His goal appears to be to depopulate the city and turn it over to stripminers. He's obviously answering to higher and RICHER powers.
-------
http://alabamacorruption.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-self-imposed-embarassment-for.html

It's a depressed old town that began its decline half a century ago when its textile mill closed. It suffered worse when U.S. 78 pulled commerce to other parts of Walker County. People drifted away.

Some thought all that was about to change. They saw the building of Corridor X, or Interstate 22, as a chance for salvation. They developed a plan to revitalize and capitalize, to use the interstate as a tool to turn the town into a bedroom community like Calera or Chelsea.

But Scott has not been a champion of those plans. He has, though, supported efforts to allow two big strip mines on the outskirts of town, near the two Cordova exits of I-22.

As one Cordova native put it, "I've never seen a community strip mine itself back to prosperity."

[toddwv]

12. Here's a good article that I ran across

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/08/mining_proposal_splits_an_alab.html

Cordova Mayor Jack Scott worked in coal mines for 22 years and sees a proposal to strip mine a nearby bend in the Mulberry Fork of the Warrior River as an opportunity for his battered town of 2,263 to begin to reverse years of decline.
"We support it. This is Walker County. We are famous for strip mining coal," Scott said. "It'll have no effect but positive for Cordova."
He can't summon any sympathy for pollution concerns of the Birmingham Water Works, which has a water intake just across the river from the proposed mine site. For Scott, the Water Works tap is a raid on a local resource.
"I couldn't care less about Birmingham," he said. "They are going to suck the river dry."

[sulphurdunn]

13. Ok, no FEMA trailers.

What's plan B? There is a plan B, right? Is it casinos? Golf courses? What?

[MadMaddie]

16. I think the city is right in doing this.

If FEMA is using the same Katrina trailers.....then they absolutley are doing the right thing.

The previous administration always wanting to take care of it's cronies gave the trailer contract to a company that did not build trailers......

If you don't know the history of these trailers here ya go



FEMA Trailers for Katrina Victims Tainted by Toxic Chemical

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=4293398

<snip>
Today, the government finally admitted that FEMA trailers, used by Hurricane Katrina survivors, contain a toxic carcinogen, formaldehyde, and now, those hurricane evacuees must leave their trailers.

<snip>

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23168160/ns/us_news-life/t/cdc-tests-confirm-fema-trailers-are-toxic/

<snip>
More than two years after residents of FEMA trailers deployed along the Mississippi Gulf Coast began complaining of breathing difficulties, nosebleeds and persistent headaches, U.S. health officials announced Thursday that long-awaited government tests found potentially hazardous levels of toxic formaldehyde gas in both travel trailers and mobile homes provided by the agency.
<snip>

Did Trailer Makers Know About Toxic Fumes?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/08/cbsnews_investigates/main4243041.shtml

[mikeytherat]

19. This ban has nothing to do with a concern for citizens' health.

Scott has heard all the complaints, and he isn't apologizing. He said he doesn't want run-down mobile homes parked all over town years from now.

"I don't feel guilty," he said. "I can look anyone in the eye."

To make matters worse, the city is imposing a mean double standard when it refuses to let residents live in FEMA trailers but is using a nearly identical structure for police headquarters.

Scott said the city can use small trailers because it's for the common good.

"It's temporary and we know it's temporary," said the mayor.

But the city enacted a law three years ago that bans the type of mobile homes provided by FEMA, called single-wide trailers. Older single-wide mobile homes were grandfathered in under the law and double-wide mobile homes are still allowed, Scott said, but new single-wides aren't allowed and a tornado isn't any reason to change the law, even temporarily.

It's all about the mayor being a complete and utter assh***.

mikey_the_rat

[NashVegas]

21. It's Not About FEMA Cronyism

It's about sending low and moderate wage earners off to live in another town.