Trailers

Re "A Deadly Collision" (Aug. 1): Another precious life is crushed by a tractor-trailer, this time in Orange. Every day in the news we hear of an overturned truck, a diesel spill, jackknife or burning semi. A motorist colliding with a big rig (which can weigh up to 80,000 pounds) doesn't have a chance. Fatal crashes due to trucks continue to be much more frequent than that of passenger cars when mileage is taken into account. The expansion and development of Orange County creates an alarming problem which concerns everyone.

After a long debate, the City Council told a preschool owner that the truck trailer she has been using to block the wind must be removed. Seretta Fielding said she parked the trailer at the back of her Seal Beach Boulevard property six years ago as a temporary way to cope with high winds. Fielding is also using the trailer to provide privacy for the preschool, which backs onto an alley.

A day after hearing testimony about health problems from Hurricane Katrina victims who had lived in government-supplied trailers, members of Congress on Friday questioned why a federal agency was auctioning many of those trailers to dealers and individuals across the country. "I understand the need to not lose money, but if the trailers are going to make people sick, maybe we should consider cutting our losses," said Rep. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.).

Every Thursday, a handful of UC Irvine students troop through campus, waving signs and chanting slogans in hopes of persuading the administration to reverse its decision to demolish their homes: a trailer park that is to be turned into a parking lot this summer. To dramatize their cause last month, nine students blocked a crew from drilling holes for soil testing. They had expected to be arrested, and they were.

The online video touted an epic unveiling from one of Hollywood's most revered filmmakers: "In three days, Ridley Scott returns to the genre he redefined.... " For the next two days, subsequent videos ratcheted up the excitement for the new project from the director of "Alien. " Then, finally, it arrived: not the movie, not even the full-length trailer, but the one-minute "teaser" for Scott's upcoming 20th Century Fox release "Prometheus. " "We teased the teaser," Fox Chief Marketing Officer Oren Aviv said.

To the staff of the Mid-Valley Comprehensive Health Center, trailers never looked more stately and hospitable than when a caravan of them rolled into the facility's Van Nuys parking lot last month. The county-run facility had been operating out of tents beside its building on 7515 Van Nuys Blvd.--belatedly condemned two months after the Northridge earthquake--when the mobile units arrived, bringing a sturdy roof and running water, if nothing more, to a makeshift operation.

Violent rainstorms sent waves of water and mud crashing down an Alpine mountain into a campground filled with Bastille Day vacationers, and 50 people were feared dead, authorities said today. Witnesses said the torrent smashed into tents, trailers and recreation vehicles so suddenly that many of the victims were unable to escape.

The culprits who stole a $45,000 tractor-trailer that had been detached from the cab of a big rig proved that they are not above smaller temptations as well by grabbing a handful of snack food worth about $5 from another trailer parked nearby. The thieves broke into a locked trailer containing about 20,000 pounds of fruit roll-ups, but apparently didn't think the entire cargo was valuable enough to steal, authorities said.

In the early hours of Aug. 6, Eva Berg Shoen, 44, was shot to death with a .25-caliber pistol as she slept in her deluxe log home, set amid aspen and spruce trees outside the rustic, 1880s-vintage ski town of Telluride. Investigators were stumped. The shooting smacked of a professional hit. But why, nervous townspeople wondered, would anyone kill this pleasant, blonde, Norwegian-born woman who had moved with her family to the area for its small-town atmosphere?

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.