Deborah Koff Ross: “on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed the gulf coast as a category 4 storm. Due to the massive damage caused by…”

“on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed the gulf coast as a category 4 storm. Due to the massive damage caused by one of the most costly natural disasters in our Nation's history, thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi residents whose homes were destroyed were forced to relocate to areas such as my home State of Arkansas. Many are still there today. As a result of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, commonly referred to as FEMA, purchased at least 20,000 brand- new manufactured homes; and thousands of these homes, nearly 4 months later, have not reached those who need them, citizens of this country who lost their homes and everything that they owned on August 29, 2005. Instead, these homes are being stored by FEMA in five different so- called staging areas, including staging areas in my congressional district near my hometown at the Hope Municipal Airport in Hope, Arkansas, at Red River Army Depot and Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant near Texarkana, all of these staging areas some 450 miles from where the eye of the storm hit the gulf coast. Due to the inability of FEMA to provide displaced families with manufactured homes in a timely manner, staging areas are overflowing. For instance, at Hope Airport, the inactive runways and tarmacs are overloaded with manufactured homes, forcing the excess homes to be placed in the surrounding fields and pastures.…”