FEMA Trailers As Far As The Eye Can See!
Feb 6th, 2007 by jindalisbad
I know this post is a little off-topic but I’m going to turn it on-topic if I can. I snapped the following photos on 11-1-05 fresh after Hurricane Katrina. And it was then I was totally amazed at the sheer number of FEMA trailers piled up on North Sherwood Forrest in Baton Rouge, LA. I mean literally hundreds of rows of trailers that are thousands of trailers deep. I would estimate the number in the 30,000 range or so.
Ok so why am I bringing this back up? BECAUSE THEY ARE STILL THERE TODAY!!! I rode by the area this morning and was just amazed they were all still there doing nothing!!! Why??
I don’t even know where to begin to start pointing fingers? Local/State/Federal?
So this post goes out to Mr. Bobby Jindal, our “good person” “helps the state out” “fights for those affected by Katrina”. Now that I’ve pointed out to you where there are thousands of trailers why don’t you go and do something about them! Give them out, sell them, I don’t care they are just wasting away right now.
(I know the pictures are bad but they were snapped with my phone camera)
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I don’t know if you realize this, but Bobby Jindal is not the Governor and that is not his district. That’s Richard Baker’s district and Kathleen Blanco’s the Governor. You might gripe about them instead.
What exactly is your point?
B/c Jindal is neither the Gov. nor the rep. for that district that I can’t ask a man that represents our state in some form or fashion , that I can’t ask a man that wants to be our governor, and that I can’t ask a man that uses Hurrican Katrina for his own self promotion to take a look into something as idiotic as leaving thousands of FEMA trailers sitting for 2 years?
By your point there are only 2 people to ask right?
Louisiana Conservative:
These are “FEMA trailers”. FEMA, by definition, is under the jurisdiction o the Federal Government so I am not exactly sure why you would think we should gripe to the Governor about something that she has no control over.
The fact of the matter is that FEMA has been doing many things wrong (besides their inadequate response in the days following Katrina). Take for example the requirement on people to raise their houses if they received over 50% damage from flooding. In Jefferson Parish, especially in Kenner, there are many houses that did flood to this threshold. However, these houses probably would not have received damages exceeding the threshold had the pumps been turned on. I have not heard Congressman Jindal utter one word about this issue. Why force people to raise their houses because of a human decision? And there are many other decisions that FEMA has made that should have been different.
So here we have Congressman Jindal. He is the person who was supposed to have all this “clout” and all the “smarts” to solve these sorts of problems and help the citizens of the First Congressional District and Louisiana. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that forcing people to raise their houses because of a human decision is wrong. It is also plainly obvious that if Jindal had all this clout that he was supposed to bring to Washington that he would have been able to get “his” coastal bill, as well as many other his bills that stalled in committee, passed.
So when we have another example of failure on the Federal Government, Jindal’s inability to get things done in Washington deserves to be questioned.
FEMA has thousands of unused trailers all over the country, not just in B.R. or LA. They have to be prepared for the next major disaster, which could be anywhere. It’s not like they can just order 30,000 trailers overnight after a disaster. They have to store the trailers somewhere.
When the trailers that are currently in use by storm victims are vacated some of them will be sold, but many of them will be refurbished and stored again for the next disaster. It might be for 2 years, 4 years, or 6 months.
I’m not trying to defend FEMAs post-Katrina/Rita actions, but just pointing out that if those trailers were sold or given away, we’d sure be mad as hell after the next disaster.
Richard: Wouldn’t it make more sense to store them up in Northern Louisiana, where they would be much less likely to be damaged by tropical storm conditions? Wouldn’t it be smarter to store those trailers in some sort of indoor warehouse so they could be protected from the elements? Maybe it is silly of me to ask government to “make sense” but poor decisions need to be questioned, as do the Congressman that provide poor representation to Louisiana. Congressman Jindal is one of those people.
It would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to move all those trailers anywhere. Northern LA wouldn’t be the best place and they could just as easily get bad weather there. Where is there perfect weather?
Unfortunately, I don’t think it would be cost effective to store them an indoor warehouse (how big would that have to be for the estimated 30,000 trailers). It’s a cost/benefit calculation that has too many variables (and very large numbers).
Everything should be questioned, and poor decisions should be brought to light. I do not think that storing the trailers there is a poor decision. Jindal is a Congressman, and he does represent LA, but trying to go from trailers on Sherwood Forrest to Jindal is a bad Congressman is a pretty far stretch in my opinion.
Many of the comments on this forum make sense to bring up (ie, his stance on abortion). Admittedly off-topic, this one just seems a bit much. There are many better people, officials, or agencies to point your finger at.
I think that the further that those trailers are from a place that hurricanes make landfall, the better off the investment to have emergency trailers will pay off. Does that mean that they wont get hit by a tornado? Of course not. Bad weather can hit anywhere. I do think it would have been safer to place them a little further away than what they are now. Is that Jindal’s fault? No. Is it an example of FEMA making a bad decision? Yes. And as a Louisiana congressman, Jindal (as well as the other Louisiana Congressmen) needs to be held accountable for not doing anything about those bad decisions made by FEMA.
DanZ,
Richard is exactly correct. These mobile homes are being stored in several different places to include three different locations in Arkansas. I have personally seen the one in Hope, AR, which probably has as many trailers as BR.
It is ridiculous to think they can all be housed in LA and for expedience, it makes all the sense to have some of them as close as possible to the areas notorious for damage.
For this site to blame Bobby Jindal for what is determined by FEMA and the Governor’s office, is as ridiculous as the name of this blog.
You know what is even more ridiculous? People not reading this post and assuming we are “BLAMING” Jindal.
Just goes to show the competence of some Jindal fans.
Who do you expect people to think you are Blaming? The whole basis of this website is that Bobby Jindal is Bad, which insinuates that the content within is explaining why Bobby Jindal is bad.
You need to stick to your subject.
But you might have served your candidate much better had you decided to promote him instead of bashing Jindal. As one late great Republican once said, “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.”
Again you apparently didn’t read the post. Assumptions make people look ignorant.
I as of yet don’t have a candidate. And this is not bashing Jindal, merely sharing fact.
4unionparish and LAConservative: This thread is not blaming Jindal for the trailers being there. It is asking Jindal to do something about them being there. As a member of congress he is free to put forward a bill that would require some better thinking when it comes to the placement of those trailers.
Nobody is suggesting that all the trailers should be in one location. I pointed out that there should be some better thought about where they are stored. The further they are from a tropical storm impact point, the better. And if you could create a facility to store them, perhaps they wouldn’t be effected by the elements.
It is a shame that people are so blinded by the Jindal spin. I mean really, to say that this thread was “blaming Jindal” for them being there is absurd.
I just heard on the news tonight that FEMA will be selling these trailers way under market value. Maybe they read this post..
As I originally stated, “When the trailers that are currently in use by storm victims are vacated some of them will be sold, but many of them will be refurbished and stored again for the next disaster.”
According to the numbers I’ve read recently, FEMA should be selling more than 30,000 trailers this year. Many of them are from storages from several years ago. The problem is that if they try to sell them all in the same year, it would literally flood the market and further devalue them. They will have to spread out the sale of them over a few years to get any real money for them.
I don’t think they decided to sell them because of reading this post. It has been a standard procedure for them for a number of years.
It was a joke Richard, I know they didn’t read this post.
DanZ-
You said you didn’t blame Jindal on this thread?!
(Sorry about the messed up post above, I misused the blockquote)
DanZ-
You said you didn’t blame Jindal on this thread?!
I’m ok with your opinion of dislike of Bobby Jindal, but please save us the hypocracy of saying this thread isn’t blaming Jindal.
NELAResident: “You said you didn’t blame Jindal on this thread?!”
No, I didn’t say that. I said “This thread is not blaming Jindal for the trailers being there” (and it isn’t.
When I said “So when we have another example of failure on the Federal Government, Jindal’s inability to get things done in Washington deserves to be questioned”… it was clearly after OTHER issues that i view as failures that I DO blame Jindal about for his inaction.
Here is a larger portion of the post you are refering to.
“The fact of the matter is that FEMA has been doing many things wrong (besides their inadequate response in the days following Katrina). Take for example the requirement on people to raise their houses if they received over 50% damage from flooding. In Jefferson Parish, especially in Kenner, there are many houses that did flood to this threshold. However, these houses probably would not have received damages exceeding the threshold had the pumps been turned on. I have not heard Congressman Jindal utter one word about this issue. Why force people to raise their houses because of a human decision? And there are many other decisions that FEMA has made that should have been different.
So here we have Congressman Jindal. He is the person who was supposed to have all this “clout” and all the “smarts” to solve these sorts of problems and help the citizens of the First Congressional District and Louisiana. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that forcing people to raise their houses because of a human decision is wrong. It is also plainly obvious that if Jindal had all this clout that he was supposed to bring to Washington that he would have been able to get “his” coastal bill, as well as many other his bills that stalled in committee, passed.
So when we have another example of failure on the Federal Government, Jindal’s inability to get things done in Washington deserves to be questioned. ”
Clearly the comment about Jindal’s inability to get things done in D.C. is in reference to his failure to have “his” coastal bill passed through Congress as well as his failure to protect homeowners in Jefferson Parish from being forced to raise their houses.
So no, there is no hypocricy here. The thread is not blaming Jindal for the FEMA trailers being there…. it did blame other things on Jindal (and I never claimed that the thread didn’t blame Jindal for other things).
Wow, That is really strange… my post ended up as being included in a block quote.
FYI, Jindal sucks even if he is not responsible for the trailers. The fact is that Jindal is an enabler of those that make things bad. He has placed his party above America by siding with them over the best interest of this nation. I guess some will think that his not getting mad over the trailers rotting in that field while people here waited on them, is no big deal.
Make no mistakes about it, Jindal is a Rovian puppet, and has one thing in mind, Power! Remember that he is one of those family values kinda guys. You know, the same ones that separated families by sending moms and dads to die in Iraq for a lie.
He likes to thump the bible while upholding the killing of people. He wants to speak out against abortion, but he would have no problem with the death of others in war and death penalty cases. Overlooking the very same bible he claims to uphold! We cannot afford to live the version of the bible that Jindal and Bushco relate in the most perverse ways!
Dan Z:
Fair enough. Now that you outlined it, I see your thought a bit clearer. Please forgive my misunderstanding.
I must commend you though, while I don’t necessarily hold the same views as you, you at least have solid, well thought-out reasoning behind the vast majority of your posts, unlike others who tend to err towards “bashing another democrat”, if you will.
Thank you, I appreciate the kind words.