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'We Called It Hurricane FEMA'
Nicole Dumas of FEMA, left, talks with Carolyn Young about where she will live. Fifty-eight families at the Louisiana site were given 48 hours to move.
(By Alex Brandon -- Associated Press)
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The evacuation of Yorkshire March 3-4 had its roots in the three-way political and legal wrangling among the site's owners, local officials and FEMA. That tension is mirrored across Louisiana and Mississippi, where scores of trailer parks have opened since Katrina.
Before it was emptied, 58 families lived at the Yorkshire park. Their trailers were arranged on either side of a gravel road in a rural area about an hour north of New Orleans.
Under a contract initiated the month after Katrina, owners Frank Bonner and Ken Albin were to get $42,700 per month in rent from FEMA.
The residents began arriving about six weeks after the storm.
Eventually, some found jobs as aides for the elderly or the mentally retarded, some as workers at Wal-Mart, and some as housekeepers. Some are disabled. Many are single mothers.
The appearance of such parks in Tangipahoa Parish, as elsewhere, was not entirely welcome. For months, Tangipahoa officials sought to slow the growth of FEMA trailer camps. At one point, parish President Gordon Burgess called on Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) to intervene with FEMA.
Trailers "were moved in the middle of the night," Burgess explained. "People woke up and they'd have a FEMA site next door."
At about the same time FEMA and the property owners were fighting over the terms of the contract, the owners clashed with the parish over approval for their trailer parks.
A newspaper article appears to have precipitated the mass evacuation. Two days before the evacuation, the Daily Star of Hammond published a story about the latest power outage at Yorkshire. It was the third in recent months, the newspaper reported, and it happened because the electric bill had not been paid.
Owners Bonner and Albin, who are responsible for the bill, which ran about $15,000 a month, blamed FEMA for not paying rent on time; FEMA officials have said they paid promptly after they were invoiced.
"Quite frankly, we received press earlier that week that pointed the finger at FEMA for not paying the bills. We were getting beaten up," said Jim Stark, director of FEMA's Louisiana Transitional Recovery Office. "At this point, we said, 'Enough is enough.' "
The park would be evacuated, and quickly, FEMA officials decided. Officials began telling tenants to pack up even before the agency had decided where they would go.
