Ike FEMA Trailers on Texas Coast to Stay Extra Year

Received by Newsfinder from AP

Nov 12 2010, 09:39 Eastern Time

Editors Note Adds more background and details on planned housing updates.

GALVESTON, Texas (AP) _ More than a dozen families in Galveston still living in government trailers provided after 2008’s Hurricane Ike will not have to move until at least 2012.

The Galveston City Council voted Thursday to extend the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Jan. 7, 2011, floodplain elevation deadline for a year.

The Galveston County Daily News reports the action was taken after the agency’s local assistance director, Tracey McCauley, reported it could be done if the trailers were handed to a private nonprofit organization.

The nonprofit will be given ownership of the trailers as long as it agrees to remove them no later than Jan. 7, 2012, said McCauley. The nonprofit will be responsible for maintaining the mobile homes and for “deactivating” them at the end of the contract.

Galveston awaits Community Development Block Grant money to pay for permanent elevated homes for the trailer residents.

Ike slammed the Galveston area on Sept. 13, 2008, in what state officials later described as the costliest natural disaster in state history. Overall damage topped $29 billion. More than three dozen people died.

About 3,700 FEMA-provided mobile homes were in use immediately following Ike.