FEMA Trailers (con't)

Following up NPR's first-in-a-series reports on FEMA's statewide plans to move hurricane victims into mobile home parks, Friday's Pensacola News Journal affirms that FEMA is setting up full-sized mobile homes in the Pensacola area.

Derek Pivnick reports:

In the coming days and weeks, several hundred families displaced by Hurricane Ivan on Sept. 16 will move into the mobile homes provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"We've got a lot of them coming on line real quickly," said Brad Gair, deputy federal coordinating officer for recovery, who oversees FEMA's emergency temporary housing in Florida.

FEMA reports 2,029 families in Escambia County and 1,177 families in Santa Rosa County are in temporary housing, mostly travel trailers.

Now the agency is working to place more people in mobile homes, Gair said.

The travel trailers were offered as short-term emergency housing for as long as 90 days. Mobile homes will accommodate families for as long as 18 months.

"FEMA mobile homes," Pivnick adds, "are being set up on existing slabs as much as possible."

Utilities will be set up before move-in but residents will be responsible for paying the utility bills.