Toxic Tin Shacks: Banned Katrina Trailers Return for Latest Gulf Disaster

07-01-2010 • NYtimes.com/

The trailers were discovered to have such high levels of formaldehyde that the government banned them from ever being used for long-term housing again. Some of the trailers, though, are getting a second life amid the latest disaster here — as living quarters for workers involved with the cleanup of the oil spill. They have been showing up in mobile-home parks, open fields and local boatyards as thousands of cleanup workers have scrambled to find housing. Ron Mason, owner of a disaster contracting firm, Alpha 1, said that in the past two weeks he had sold more than 20 of the trailers to cleanup workers and the companies that employ them in Venice and Grand Isle, La.