FEMA sold disaster shelters as 'Frankenstorm' gathered strength
See, you just can't trust liberals with anything that's really important.
November 14, 2012 | 6:15 pm
176Comments
FEMA trailers at a staging area in Coblesville, N.Y., from which numerous trailers were auctioned off as "excess" earlier this year. (Photo: Schoharie County, N.Y., Sheriff's Department)
Federal officials sold hundreds of emergency trailers for disaster victims at fire-sale prices in the months before Hurricane Sandy churned toward the United States, The Washington Examiner has learned.
They knew it was coming. They just had to watch TV. But they sold the trailers off anyway.
Now, with thousands of families left homeless in New York and New Jersey by the hurricane, those same federal officials are poised to spend more taxpayer dollars to buy brand-new trailers.
And liberals think this is good management.
....
The agency even sold two trailers on Oct. 22, the same day the National Weather Service upgraded a tropical depression and christened it Sandy. Forecasters began warning the same day of a possible super-storm making landfall somewhere in North Carolina or further north in heavily populated areas of the Eastern Seaboard as far as Maine.
....
Robert Latham, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, told The Examiner more units will likely be needed:
"I don't know what was the driving force behind auctioning off or selling these units at a significantly reduced rate. But I can tell you temporary housing is going to be a critical issue in New Jersey and New York as they try to recover."
Forty-six 2008 and 2009-model trailers were sold earlier this year at three separate auctions from a FEMA staging area in Cobleskill, N.Y., a small town roughly three and a half hours' drive from New York City.
.....
The trailers were sold for a fraction of the original $25,000 price the government paid for each of them. The General Services Administration, which handled the auctions for FEMA, sold some for as little as $3,800.
"Time is running out for interested members of the public to bid on the current round of excess Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) manufacturing housing units now up for auction," FEMA said in a June 18 news release concerning the auctions.
The trailers are similar to single-wide mobile homes and feature one to three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and bath. They are supposed to provide durable housing for disaster victims while their homes are being rebuilt. FEMA offers the homes to eligible residents for up to 18 months.
........
However, some of the trailers that were sold had never been used, said Edward Munger Jr., a Schenectady Daily Gazette reporter who covered the auction.
One purchaser "got a brand new one that was never used," Munger told The Examiner. "They looked fine to me."
More than 200 of its 2009-model trailers were auctioned by FEMA in 2009, The Examiner found.
"It didn't take too much to clean them up," said Haresh Bhatia, who bought two of the two-bedroom units in June at Cobleskill. Bhatia said he only had to clean the oven and fix several shelves.
Another man bought a FEMA unit from Cobleskill for about $7,000 and hoped to resell it on Craigslist at the then-prevailing price of $15,000, according to Munger.
The agency also donated two trailers to Desmond's department and to the local fire coordinator. Desmond said it was a "nice trailer."
http://washingtonexaminer.com/fema-sold-shelters-as-frankenstorm-gathered-strength/article/2513508 |
