Banned trailers return for latest Gulf disaster

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, they became a symbol of the government's inept response to that disaster: the 120,000 or so trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to people who had lost their homes. 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.