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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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FEMA told residents and reporters that the people had to be moved for their own protection: The agency feared another power outage, officials said, and the trailer park's sewage system, which sometimes smelled, posed a health hazard.
But at the time of the evacuation, the power was on, the bill paid. State health officials deemed the sewage plant, for which the owners are responsible, free of violations, according to Brian Mistich, who oversees state inspections in the area. Although some complained of the stench from the plant, state officials said some odors from the facility are unavoidable -- and legal.
In an interview Friday, Stark said he made the decision to vacate the park based largely on the possibility of more power outages. Although many residents said they were told they had to leave within 48 hours, Stark said it was not meant as a deadline.
"Could we have done a better job on this? Absolutely," he said. "We just wanted to be out of there."
Nearly all tenants interviewed said there was no reason to have moved, or at least no reason to have moved so suddenly.
Several tenants fought back tears last week as they explained why they would rather be back at Yorkshire. Even those who said the park did at times stink preferred it to their new location.
Shametha LaFrance and her five children were moved from Yorkshire into another FEMA mobile home, where, on the second day, the toilet backed up and the water stopped running.
Darcelin Turner, 49, was relocated to a trailer in Belle Chasse, more than an hour away. She commutes every morning to bring her children to their school in Hammond; she does not want to transfer them again.
Several others who moved to a site near the Hammond airport said that the new park is crime-ridden and that they would prefer to be back at Yorkshire. Out of fear, they said, they venture outside less and keep a close watch on their children.
"They took us from bad to worse," said Lekesha Vernon, 27, a mother of two, one of those moved to the site near the airport. "But when you have no other place to go, you have no choice."
The tenants said the sense of rootlessness that comes with the trailer life is affecting their children.
"I'm tired of tossing my kids around like a bouncing ball," LaFrance said. "And I hate waking up every day wondering what's going to happen next."
When she brought her 5-year-old to school last week, he would not let go of her and began crying.
He asked her: "Mama, are you going to be there when I get home?"
