Trailers

Spencer morrison was a stickler for safety. The middle-school teacher had precious cargo to protect -- his 4-year-old triplets, Ethan, Garret and Alaina. Only the best minivan and top-of-the-line car seats would do. None of that mattered when a trailer -- a 3-ton wood-chipper on wheels -- broke loose from a truck and careened into oncoming traffic like an unguided missile on April 13, 2006. It smashed into the minivan and "just blew the vehicle apart," the local police chief, T.

When a New York designer came up with a plan for a tiny cottage that could offer permanent shelter for Gulf Coast residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi officials pressed hard for federal funding. Why build a flimsy government trailer, they asked, when it was possible to build a sturdy, long-lasting cottage -- especially one as charming as the "Katrina cottage," designed in a Southern vernacular style, with a steep metal roof and a deep front porch?

Across from the gated entrance to Paradise Cove, a private beach in Malibu, there sits a silver Airstream mobile home that catches the sunlight and reflects it right up the bluff to the spindly green and silver trees overlooking the ocean. The Airstream is perhaps 15 feet long and sealed up as tight as an unopened pack of cigarettes.

Belinda Jenkins was picking up her diabetes medication Tuesday afternoon, and worrying about being away from the trailer she has lived in since Hurricane Katrina trashed her house. Jenkins, a disabled 53-year-old, is afraid the Federal Emergency Management Agency is scheming to take the flimsy box away. So she keeps a handwritten note taped to the door, asking officials to at least call her cellphone so she can come back and get her stuff. "Thank you," the note reads. "Have a bless day."

At Uncle Henry's Smokehouse Bar B Que in Hope, Ark., the lunchtime crowd filled every table Thursday -- all 10 of them. At City Hall, the phones were ringing off the hook. And out at the airport, a private pilot who just turned 45 said she didn't expect to live long enough to see things get back to normal. All because of the latest example of how federal, state and local officials have responded to Hurricane Katrina. Time was, Hope was known primarily as the childhood home of President Clinton.

Tailgating isn't just for tailgates anymore. What used to be a simple pregame picnic lunch served out of the back of a pickup truck or station wagon has become a multibillion-dollar business that, to some fans, is more important than the game itself. And few people know that better than Jeff Campbell, owner and, until recently, sole employee of Gameday Customs of Long Beach. Campbell outfits trailers designed specifically for the care and feeding of tailgaters.

On the surface, this was a pretty solid year for the movie business. But beneath the surface, things don't look so good. Hollywood is increasingly relying on steadily increasing domestic ticket prices to boost revenues. Fewer people went to see movies in the United States than they did three years ago; those who did go simply paid more. And lots of movies that did well overseas actually fared poorly when released in the United States. What accounts for this? The low quality of movies is a factor, but that alone does not explain the listless mood of the moviegoing public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to act for at least a year on warnings that trailers housing refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde, according to a House subcommittee report released Monday. Instead, the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry demoted the scientist who questioned its initial assessment that the trailers were safe as long as residents opened a window or another vent, the report said.

A year and a half after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is auctioning off -- at fire-sale prices -- thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices. Mobile home dealers are finding that some potential customers would rather wait to make a deal on a used FEMA trailer than spend $25,000 to $40,000 for a new one.

A tractor-trailer stolen in Northridge on Sunday with 45,000 pounds of frozen halibut was recovered empty Tuesday, police said. "All the cargo was gone," said Det. Marc Zavala of the Los Angeles Police Department. "The tractor and trailer appeared to be OK, but the fish was all taken." The halibut was estimated to be worth $138,000, Zavala said. The truck had transported the fish from Seattle and was parked Sunday night in the gated grounds of a small trucking company, J.S.

On the surface, this was a pretty solid year for the movie business. But beneath the surface, things don't look so good. Hollywood is increasingly relying on steadily increasing domestic ticket prices to boost revenues. Fewer people went to see movies in the United States than they did three years ago; those who did go simply paid more. And lots of movies that did well overseas actually fared poorly when released in the United States. What accounts for this? The low quality of movies is a factor, but that alone does not explain the listless mood of the moviegoing public.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency took too long to respond to reports of dangerous levels of formaldehyde in trailers delivered to victims of 2005 Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, exposing people along the Gulf Coast to possible health risks, the Homeland Security Department inspector general reported. The report marked a stinging reprimand of FEMA and its slow response to reports in 2006 that air in some trailers registered dangerously high levels of formaldehyde, which can cause cancer and respiratory illness.

Elizabeth Marie Grube, 70, and her sister, Elaine Volkert, 65, seemed to be typical women of their age, living modest lives in their mobile home park outside Stroudsburg, Pa. But last month, authorities arrested and charged them with dealing heroin -- about $10,000 worth apiece per week -- from their trailers. Investigators said Julio Cesar Checo, 28, who also was arrested and charged, was suspected of recruiting the women. Monroe County Dist. Atty. E. David Christine Jr. said the arrests should shatter most people's stereotypes of what a drug dealer looks like.

Belinda Jenkins was picking up her diabetes medication Tuesday afternoon, and worrying about being away from the trailer she has lived in since Hurricane Katrina trashed her house. Jenkins, a disabled 53-year-old, is afraid the Federal Emergency Management Agency is scheming to take the flimsy box away. So she keeps a handwritten note taped to the door, asking officials to at least call her cellphone so she can come back and get her stuff. "Thank you," the note reads. "Have a bless day."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention failed to act for at least a year on warnings that trailers housing refugees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contained dangerous levels of formaldehyde, according to a House subcommittee report released Monday. Instead, the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry demoted the scientist who questioned its initial assessment that the trailers were safe as long as residents opened a window or another vent, the report said.

The federal government is not immune from lawsuits claiming many Gulf Coast hurricane victims were exposed to potentially dangerous fumes while living in trailers it provided, a federal judge ruled in New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt cited evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency delayed investigating complaints about formaldehyde levels in its trailers because it might be held legally responsible. The preservative can cause breathing problems and is classified as a carcinogen.

IN THE last couple of years, whenever I've asked studio marketing chiefs to send me trailers to show to my Summer Movie Posse (a group of teenagers who rate the summer flicks after watching their trailers), the smart marketers now say: Can we send you our red-band trailer? Always the last ones on the block to figure out the amazing viral energy of the Internet, studio marketers have finally realized that there's a huge Web audience for red-band trailers -- i.e. trailers that offer unrestricted content, meaning all the gore, drug references, bare breasts and foul language that have to be edited out of the typical trailers shown in theaters or cut down for 30-second TV spots.

Thor Industries Inc. and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. said a supplier was recalling on-board refrigerators in 231,351 motor homes and trailers to fix a possible fire hazard. The affected RVs have refrigerators made by Dometic Corp., Fleetwood and a Thor unit wrote in letters to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fires in at least eight trailers built by Thor's Keystone RV "appear to be related" to coolant leaked from cracked refrigerator tubing, Keystone told the agency.

Some of the thousands of trailers sitting unused since they were purchased by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2005 for Gulf Coast hurricane victims may finally be put to use -- to help victims of last week's tornadoes. Some members of Congress have accused FEMA of playing down the danger of possible formaldehyde contamination in the trailers -- more than 6,300 of them stored at the Hope airport -- but an agency spokesman said that the trailers were safe. The decision to use some of the trailers for Arkansas and Tennessee twister victims comes after requests by state officials and members of Arkansas' congressional delegation, who have criticized the trailers in the past as a sign of federal ineptitude after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Tailgating isn't just for tailgates anymore. What used to be a simple pregame picnic lunch served out of the back of a pickup truck or station wagon has become a multibillion-dollar business that, to some fans, is more important than the game itself. And few people know that better than Jeff Campbell, owner and, until recently, sole employee of Gameday Customs of Long Beach. Campbell outfits trailers designed specifically for the care and feeding of tailgaters.