Mobile Home Listings & News

Mobile homes arrive in Holly

By ANTHONY A. MESTAS
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
HOLLY - Travel trailers, supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, began arriving in tornado-torn Holly on Thursday.

The temporary housing units will provide shelter to families who lost their homes in last month’s deadly tornado.

Colorado state officials reached an agreement with FEMA last week to provide 50 mobile homes and trailers to the town.

Homes in this town of about 1,000 people were reduced to splintered wood and piles of bricks as a 600-foot-wide tornado ripped its way through Holly on March 28. The storm killed 29-year-old Rosemary Rosales, severely injured seven other people, and destroyed or damaged 164 houses leaving residents homeless.

The housing units include 30 travel trailers and 20 mobile homes. The cost of transport - being paid for by the state - is $5,000 per mobile home and $1,500 per travel trailer, for a total of $145,000.

Polly White, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Division of Emergency Management, said several travel trailers arrived in Holly Thursday.

"The mobile homes have not arrived yet, but they will soon. The travel trailers are coming in first. The units will trickle in over the next few days," White said.

The trailers, which started rolling in at 7:30 a.m. Thursday, came 750 miles from Hope, Ark., to Holly and have been declared surplus by FEMA.
Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, who toured the town the day after the tornado cut a 2-mile swath through it, said FEMA has been extremely responsive.

“These housing units will help provide some stability to those families in Holly whose homes were destroyed. They also will be invaluable as plans for rebuilding Holly move forward,” Ritter said.

Ritter, who has earmarked $1 million to pay for disaster recovery in Holly, is tentatively scheduled to visit the town again on April 28 with former Colorado Gov. Roy Romer, who grew up in Holly.

Marsha Willhite, town administrator, said the town is delighted to have the homes.

"I think it's a novel idea that FEMA and the state of Colorado came to an agreement where we can have use of these homes," Willhite said.

Some of the housing units have never been used, but most were previously lived in by Katrina and Rita hurricane victims. All units have been refurbished and are fully furnished. The units are valued at more than $1 million and will now be the property of Colorado.

State officials say they are going to try to set the units up as closely as possible to the home sites of the people who lost their houses.

Holly officials will assign the units to residents.

Willhite said the town will need to take inventory of the trailers before people are assigned to them.

"We also need to prepare the property where the trailers will fit. We can't put them down until that is ready," Willhite said.

The ground in Holly has become very saturated because of snow and rainstorms that hit this week. Willhite says that may delay the process.

Willhite did not want to speculate on when people will move in.

"It won't be very long before we get people in their temporary homes," Willhite said.