New Orleans Still Half, Deadly FEMA Trailers

I thought this article was interesting talking about what New Orleans is planning for Hurricane Season 2007, which is, essentially, "everybody get the heck out." There will be no shelters this time, to encourage people to leave the city.

The article stated that only 255,000 people have returned to the city which held 480,000 before Hurricane Katrina. That means that about half (technically, 53%) still live or have returned there. That's got to be the biggest effect that a storm has had on a city in the U.S. in modern history.

Meanwhile, the FEMA trailers (that 85,000 victims of the 2005 hurricanes are still living in) have been found to contain high levels of formaldehyde. This article says: "According to the CBS report, an internal FEMA document cites cancer as a potential job hazard for people whose only contact is inspecting the trailers."

Hmmm... that sounds like a problem which probably should have been brought up sooner... not to mention the fact that these trailers won't withstand the winds of any of the tropical tempests this summer, which no one is really talking about.

P.S.: I guess we know now why FEMA was auctioning off those trailers at such low prices back in March:

Some of about 20,000 mobile homes and travel trailers owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency sit at the Hope Municipal Airport near Hope, Ark., Friday, March 2, 2007. A year and a half after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA is auctioning off at fire-sale prices thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile-home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston)