Thousands of FEMA homes sitting empty in Arkansas

by purplesofa 4 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  purplesofa

  http://www.wmcstations.com/global/story.asp?s=4227761&ClientType=Printable

  Arkansas housing thousands of empty FEMA trailers

  LITTLE ROCK

  New stats from FEMA show that thousands of empty mobile homes the agency ordered to house refugees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina now sit empty at sites near Texarkana and Hope.

  In total, FEMA ordered 20 thousand mobile homes after Katrina for displaced families. The cost was more than 500 (m) million dollars. But as of last week only 889 were occupied and more than 10,000 were empty with about half of those near Arkansas cities.

  Specifically, trailers were housed since the order went through at the Red River Army Depot and Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant west of Texarkana and in early October FEMA started storing the trailers at the Hope Municipal Airport _ where the agency is paying 25 thousands dollars a month for the storage space.

  James McIntyre, a FEMA spokesman, said five thousand 840 mobile homes and 80 travel trailers are at Hope and the Texarkana sites.

  Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

  In October, I was travelling west from Nashville and three FEMA homes were travelling. One passed me and almost ran me off the road!!! I thought, strange, but they are in a hurry to get homes to Louisiana. How disheartening to read an article such as this. FOX news has been reporting and showing ariel shots of the homes parked EMPTY at an airport in Arkansas.

  Did anyone else see this?

  How crazy is this?

  OK............VENTING

  I really feel sorry for these people that have lived in hotels for so long.........It must really be depressing for them. Hopefully the attention focused on these places being "in storage" and btw......furnished.........will get the government to send them to the people that need them.

  purps
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  Rig Boy

  FEMA are the criminals running the concentration camps in the US and Canada....empty detention facilities just sitting their waiting for the New World Order to final establish a one world government dictatorship and throw all resisters into camps. Just like the CHEKA (NKVD,KGB) in the Soviet Union under Stalin and Lenin.
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  moshe

  The people who need the trailers probably do not have the money to set them up and do the hook-ups. Some of the areas do not even have utilites back in service. The flood wiped out the electric service,so the homeowner will need to hire an electrical contractor to install a temporay pole service at a minimum of $1000. Hire a plumber to install a temporary sewer line- another $1000. These trailers are for temporary use while the homeowner awaits repairs- does he have a viable plan to repair his home/ can he pay for repairs and meet all codes? Has his home already been condemned? Is he is default of his mortgage? Did he have flood insurance? Fema has so many hoops to jump through that I am not surprised in the small number who have received trailers.

  You can see this begins to become a slippery slope that few can navigate.

  peace,

  Moshe
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  truth_about_the_truth

  Editors note: It breaks the heart that so many cannot see what's happening to this once great country (the U.S.). For the most part it also seems nobody cares. Give us our pablum and tuck us to sleep for tomorrow our end will come.

  Customs `camps' cause for concern

  By Tom Hennessy, Press-Telegram Columnist Maybe a lifetime in the news business makes one paranoid. Or maybe it was just a matter of timing.

  The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

  Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."

  Jamie Zuieback, an official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), explained such an emergency like this: "If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that's the type of situation that the contract would address."

  That sounds a tad fuzzy, but let's concede that the camps do have something to do with immigration, illegal or not. In fact, there already are thousands of beds in place at various U.S. locations for the purpose of housing illegal immigrants.

  But for anyone familiar with history U.S. or European the construction of detention camps for whatever purpose should prompt a chilling scenario.

  Same folks

  The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.

  Halliburton was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995 to 2000. Democrats in Congress have accused the administration of favoring the company via no-bid contracts. But KBR says the detention contract was competitive.

  Tuesday's story also said the contract was awarded by the Army Corps of Engineers. However, Halliburton says it was awarded by the Department of Homeland Security in support of ICE.

  The contract is for a year, but includes four one-year options. It is a renewal of an existing ICE contract, notes Halliburton.

  KBR, in fact, had the $9.7 million contract to build the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. This facility, popularly dubbed "Gitmo," holds 660 prisoners classified by the government as "enemy combatants."

  Anyone care?

  This column is written with the distinct feeling that not many people will give a hoot about any or all of this. But as already noted, a news story about construction of government detention centers should give us all pause.

  Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.

  Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.

  This is an instance in which we could be well served by our representatives in Congress. They need to look at this and give constituents a better picture of what is going on.

  Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.

  Tom Hennessy's viewpoint appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.

  Copyright © 2006 Los Angeles Newspaper Group

  http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/lead-story115.htm
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  purplesofa

  Thanks for your comments..........I cant find it right now............but FEMA has spent over 1/2 BILLION dollars to place people in hotels since Katrina.

  I know that a disaster on this scale is never prepared for, but I sure hope we are learning alot from this.............

  1/2 Billion dollars could house alot of people.

  It is very scary how unorganised and hapharzardly (is that a word?) WE do things. Of course, we all know that.

  purps