Trailer Trash

Some updates today on the more bizarre aspects of Hurricane Katrina, about two years after the storm past. The first is about those FEMA trailers the U.S. government gave to people to use after their homes were badly damaged or destroyed. Well, mostly of the trailers have been returned as people either were evicted form them or gave them back to return home or move elsewhere. We still have several thousand in use, though most people have been given free vouchers for rental assistance to get them out. A trailer is not a fun place in which to live, so most want to get out as soon as possible, either through their own financial means or for those unable to support themselves after the storm, through government help.
Now for the trailer update...It seems that almost 1 in 10 of the trailers that were loaned to Katrina victims and now returned have been trashed by the ungrateful creatures who wee l allowed to use them. They often have been deliberately destroyed and in some case stripped of everything by the thieves who use them. They have taken furniture, refrigerators and ovens, air conditioning, pluming fixtures....everything. For those wretched trailer trash types who aren't interested in theft, they simply are breaking everything in the trailers they can before returning them. Can you believe it! One in ten user is doing this.
And how many have been arrested and charged with crimes for their deeds? Not a single one. The dysfunctional Bush administration policy is to not attempt to prosecute or collect damages from the abusers, and this has New Orleanians outraged. At a cost of anywhere from $20,000- $50,000 each it is an expensive loss to taxpayers and an outrage for the government to allow people it helped to brazenly abuse the helper in this way.
The Bush administration says "it would cost too much to arrest and prosecute" the criminals who are doing this, and instead is selling the damaged trailers on line for whatever it can obtain. Word is out among trailer recipients that they need not be responsible in caring for the property loaned to them in a time of need, and as a result the acts of vandalism against those trailers are increasing One is not sure whether the criminals who destroy the trailers are worse than the Bush administration which allows them to do it. Both present another blot in the face of decency here.
Update number two is the body report. Yep! The status of the dead bodies pulled from homes after the storm. Though most have been buried the New Orleans coroner is holding exactly 100 unclaimed bodies in a make-shift morgue near the famous Superdome stadium (the world's largest indoor stadium). Of that total about 30 have yet to be identified and the remaining 70 are unclaimed by next of kin due to a financial inability to bury them or a lack of desire to do so ("I hated Uncle Harry. Why should I bury him").
The coroner says he won't bury them himself because he wants a central site constructed to honor the other dead from the storm, a memorial cemetery for them. But many people here say it is time to bury the last of the dead, as a symbol that the hurricane is over and can be pushed to the back of the city's agenda. Still others claim that the inability to even bury the dead two years after the storm is a symbol of how "dead" this city is. Hehe Sounds like fun living here, huh?
There is more, a rampant crime problem ; hordes of illegal hispanic "workers" who have settled here, many to commit crimes; an uncaring president and administration who give lip service to helping the city recover but little actual help; dishonest and incompetent local and state government leaders who have enriched themselves, family and friends off government hurricane relief and reconstruction contracts; a lack of citizens in the city to pay taxes and help rebuild it; a continuing mass exodus of physicians seeking an area in which to practice where patients pay their medical bills, and.....nevermind. the list goes on and on and becomes a blur. Haha The god thing is that if you want to buy one of those trailers you can probably get it cheap now. Have fun bidding for one.