In
Less Than 3 Hours,
FEMA Division Installs 48 Slightly Used Homes
in South Minneapolis...
By Mistake.
April
1, 2006
Minneapolis, MN
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Before: Riverview
Road in January, 2005. Looking south from East 53rd Street. Photo
by fdw/NENA.
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At
exactly 6 PM on Thursday, March 30, Juan and Maria
Guerra were just sitting down to dinner in the tidy
little kitchen of their South Minneapolis home. They
looked at each other with curiosity as the sound of
diesel truck engines and air brakes drowned out the
local news on their small TV. Juan immediately
knew this was too many trucks for normal traffic
along the adjacent Highway 55. When
they went to their front window, they were startled
to see a convoy of heavy trucks pulling mobile homes
stretched down their street, around the corner, and
out onto the highway as far as they could see.
At
the same moment, Greg Larson was heading home from
work on
the northbound Hiawatha LRT as it began its
climb over the Crosstown 62/Highway 55 exchange. When
he glanced out the window, he was amazed to see
a line of semi's pulling identical white payloads
stretching east across the Mendota Bridge
and past Pilot Knob on the other side of the river.
Larson's cell phone rang just as the train pulled
into his VA Station stop, but he could not understand
his wife over the background racket in the phone.
She was telling him to run to their house as soon as
he stepped off the train.
Along
Riverview Road, an otherwise peaceful, block-long,
residential street at the most southeastern corner
of Minneapolis, residents watched with growing concern.
A dozen full-dress Crown Vics with uniformed officers
quickly deployed up and down the block. Guerra
went up to one of the officers and demanded to know
what was going on. The officer showed him a Federal
Homeland Security Police badge and politely explained
that this was a classified operation and asked
him to wait inside his house. All would be explained
in due time, he said. Guerra instead pulled out his
cell phone and dialed 911.
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Within
minutes, several Minneapolis Police squads converged
on the scene where they were met by the Federal
officers. Paperwork was examined, radios pulled out,
and an obviously heated exchange of words ensued between
the jurisdictions. MPD Officers learned that the
convoy was part of a rapid deployment group operated by
the National Emergency Housing Agency (NEHA), a newly
formed division of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA).
Police
were frustrated when several attempts to call the
NEHA emergency number in Washington DC resulted
in a recorded message advising, "We're sorry, our offices
are closed for the day. Please call back during regular
business hours. Have a nice day."
Meanwhile, men in camouflage fatigues started pouring
out of chartered tour buses while others began shouting
orders through megaphones. With military precision,
the trucks backed the manufactured homes onto the front
and side lots of residences, two to each 40 foot-wide
lot. Front-loaders appeared with palettes of supplies
and massive hydraulic jacks. A team of workers quickly
assembled around each home and positioned the jacks
to lift and disconnect them from the trucks. Cement
blocks were used to level the homes before the jacks
were removed. The same workers chocked the wheels and
lowered septic tanks before attaching metal skirts
around each home.
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Nestled
up against the Highway 55 sound wall, Riverview
Road plays brief host to 48
mobile homes mistakenly installed by a rapid deployment
group under orders of the National Emergency
Housing Agency, a division of FEMA. The
homes were to be removed by April 1st. Photo
looks north from 54th Street and Highway
55. Photo by fdw/NENA.
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Other
teams erected utility poles, strung wires and tapped
into existing transformers.
A network of freshwater hose was rolled out and connections
made between the homes and fire hydrants.
By
8:30 PM, the workers were packing up their equipment
and re-boarding their buses. One last truck drove
down the street with workers unloading and positioning
portable mailboxes in front of each unit. By 9:00
PM, only a single MPD squad car remained inside the
cordoned-off area.
On
Friday, subsequent calls to Jenna Busch, Director
of the National Emergency
Housing Agency, confirmed that the location
for this particular operation was "Likely a
mistake." She explained that these post-Katrina
homes were supposed to be redeployed from Gulf Shores,
Mississippi to Harwood, North Dakota before
a predicted flood crest along the Red River. She blamed the mistake on driver
error, and promised swift corrective action to guard
against any further low-level employee errors.
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Hundreds of unused
post-Katrina mobile homes and recreation trailers are lined up on
the tarmac at the Air Guard base. Many are already showing signs
of rust and mildew from the humid, salt air climate of the Gulf Coast. Photo
courtesy of FEMA.
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However,
subsequent discussion with several drivers and a close examination of their
photocopied MapQuest.com routing sheets showed another possibility. The routing
instructions unexpectedly end at Highway 55 in
Minneapolis. That page is numbered 12 of 17. Francis "Buck" Peavey, a driver
from Arlo Mississippi, offered this explanation,
"Shoot, we've all seen this happen before. Some Pencil neck's printer
runs out of paper, and that's where y'all stop."
Director
Busch promised to have the homes removed by sundown, April 1st. "Like,
I can't believe this happened... again. But you have to
remember, patience is a virtue. Besides, this is about making our homeland
safer during national emergencies and stuff," Busch said. She also stated
that a planned inspection and dedication by former Presidents Bill Clinton
and George Bush had been canceled, "In the nick of time, too."
For the
time being, these homes, along with 140 similar models and 70 unused recreation
trailers will be stored on the tarmac of the Air Guard base
near 34th Avenue and Crosstown 62.
Any
resemblance in the above story to actual fact
may be coincidental and could be disregarded, depending
on your mindset.
More News from the Bottom Up and other stories that you may not have seen yet. 
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