Trailer homes for residents displaced by California fires
Los Angeles: Residents of Northern California’s wine country left homeless by the state’s deadliestever wildfires could be temporarily housed in government trailers, officials said, as the death toll from the blazes rose to 42.
Since erupting on Oct 8 and 9, the blazes have blackened more than 86,200 ha and destroyed an estimated 4,600 homes along with wineries and commercial buildings.
Thousands of survivors, forced to flee the flames with little warning, remain displaced. Many are returning to find nothing left, forcing them to seek housing in emergency shelters or with family and friends.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has called trailers a solution of last resort for housing the displaced.
But local officials said they had few other options because of a lack of hotels and rental housing, especially around Santa Rosa – the urban hub of the region’s wine country – which had nearly 5% of its homes destroyed.
“We have talked to Fema about trailers, we’re not sure what the availability is, how soon we could get them here, but we are looking at every option,” Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said.
“I don’t relish having people living in Fema trailers, but it’s a hell of a lot better than sleeping out under the stars,” he said.
Fema deployed trailers to house thousands of people displaced by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina along the US Gulf Coast, triggering lawsuits by people who contended they were exposed to formaldehyde in the governmentissued housing.
A judge in 2012 approved a settlement requiring builders of the trail ers to pay a settlement of nearly US$40mil (RM169mil).
FEMA’s latest trailers, which it calls manufactured or temporary housing units, have new safety features and are built to high standards, the agency said in a blog post last year.
The agency is only at the beginning stage of determining which options to employ, in consultation with local officials, to house people displaced by the fires, Fema spokesman Victor Inge said.
“A temporary housing unit is an absolute last resort, they’re expensive and they take a long time to get set up,” Inge said.
Margaret Van Vliet, executive director of the Sonoma County Community Development Commission, said: “We know we’re probably going to need Fema trailers.” — Reuters