FEMA Trailer -- Not A Movie

Lives Crammed Into 240 Square Feet - New York Times:

FEMA trailer. The phrase has nearly lost meaning, so embedded is it in the national memory of last year's crushing hurricanes, Katrina and Rita. The Federal Emergency Management Agency provided trailers to people whose homes were damaged or destroyed; got it.

But tens of thousands of people continue to live crammed in FEMA trailers, greeting this year's hurricane season the same way they said goodbye to the last one: in light-metal boxes that even a tropical storm could flip like playing cards and which seem so vulnerable alongside the brush fires crackling through some stretches of the Gulf Coast.

Up here in the Northeast, we don't get a clear picture of what's happening (and NOT happening) down in the Gulf any more than we have a clear picture of what's happening in the other Gulf. Are we just kidding ourselves that any real solutions to the problems of either Gulf are going to come from this administration or even from the next (it takes time to really change direction in Washington, since it takes time to get enough voters across the country on the same page if not the same book)? God help us all.