That's the long, lonely road that takes you out to a FEMA-run trailer
camp in Baker, Louisiana. When I visited the Baker camp back on
October 3, 2005, a contractor called the Shaw Group was just putting
the finishing touches on the installation of 573 trailers, and a
thousand or so Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in shelters or
bunking with friends or relatives were preparing to move in.
The Baker camp is some 10 miles outside of Baton Rouge and about
95 miles northwest of New Orleans. When I visited in late 2005,
no bus or other mode of public transportation served the Baker trailer
camp, and area commerce consisted of a convenience store attached
to a gas station. The camp's immediate surroundings were the sort
of remote, open space where you might think to build a prison. In
fact, the nearest building of any real size was a juvenile detention
center.
Perhaps not the best of settings for housing evacuees from New
Orleans, a densely-packed urban environment teeming with life. But
these were emergency measures. This was short-term solution. It
was temporary.
Today, some 442 days later, I open up the New York Times
and read this*:
BAKER, La. -- There are hundreds of children in the trailer camp that is run by FEMA and known as Renaissance Village, but they won’t be having much of a Christmas. They’re trapped here in a demoralizing, overcrowded environment with adults who are mostly broke, jobless and at the end of their emotional tethers. Many of the kids aren’t even going to school.
...
The enormity of the continuing tragedy is breathtaking. Thousands upon thousands of people are still suffering. And yet the way the poorest and most vulnerable victims have been treated so far by government officials at every level has been disgraceful.
More than a third of the 1,200 people in this sprawling camp are children. Only about half of the school-age youngsters are even registered for school; of those, roughly half actually go to school on any given day. The authorities can’t account for the rest.
A number of officials who asked not to be identified told me they are concerned that large numbers of children are remaining isolated at Renaissance Village, holed up in the trailers day in and day out, falling further and further behind educationally, and deteriorating emotionally.
Four hundred and forty two days. Living in vacation-sized trailers, in what amounts to a gravel pit wrapped by a wire fence:
*Times Select link
