JOPLIN, Mo. —
Amber Flowers and her three daughters on Saturday moved into their mobile home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Officer Jeff Taylor Memorial Park.
“They’ve done a really nice thing here,” Flowers said about FEMA.
She and her daughters were among 36 families that moved into the FEMA mobile homes over the weekend.
John Mills, a FEMA spokesman, said finding housing for families with school-age children before school starts is the agency’s priority.
He said that when they are complete, Officer Jeff Taylor Memorial Park and Hope Haven Park, both across Highway 171 from the Joplin Regional Airport, will have housing to accommodate 346 families. He said an additional 140 families are being housed in FEMA mobile homes at commercial mobile home parks.
When the tornado struck on May 22, Flowers took cover in a cooler at Dillons grocery store while her mother and daughters took cover in her closet at Oak Meadows Apartments. Since then, they had been living in a motel and a dilapidated mobile home.
She said she likes the new place. She plans to move back to Oak Meadows when it is rebuilt.
Mike and Kay Johnson on Monday said they are more than happy with their FEMA trailer.
“We’re thrilled,” Kay Johnson said.
“We’re really thrilled,” added Mike Johnson
Living with the Johnsons in the three-bedroom mobile home are Mike Johnson’s mother, Lois Johnson, and a family friend.
After the tornado, they spent several weeks with a daughter, Katy Kelley, in Joplin, and several weeks with another daughter, Michelle Hoag, in Iowa.
Their house in the 2800 block of Indiana Avenue was heavily damaged in the tornado, and they are unable to live there until repairs are made.
Kay Johnson said she hopes to get to know her neighbors in the coming weeks.
“We’re a community,” she said.
Mills, with FEMA, said the agency plans to create Hope Haven II near the airport, with housing for an additional 95 families. Expansion at existing commercial mobile home parks will create housing for 53 more families. The total FEMA housing, when complete, would accommodate 634 families. No rental fee is assessed, and utilities, for the most part, are paid by the government.
“FEMA will do everything possible to meet the needs of the community,” Mills said.
Officer Jeff Taylor Memorial Park is named for a 31-year-old policeman from the Kansas City suburb of Riverside who volunteered to work in Joplin after the tornado. He was struck by lightning May 23 while directing traffic on Range Line Road and died June 3. He was a former Webb City police officer.
18 months
THOSE WHO MOVE into the temporary FEMA housing will have until Nov. 7, 2012, to find permanent housing. The date is 18 months after a May 9 disaster declaration in Missouri.
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