Trailer Park

RIEGELWOOD, N.C. -- A tornado ripped through this Cape Fear River crossroads at dawn yesterday, killing at least seven residents and crushing more than 30 trailers and brick homes as residents were waking for jobs and school. More than 20 people were hospitalized, officials said, four of them children. A dark brown funnel cloud roared past the white double-wide trailer of Cissy Kennedy as she brushed her teeth at daybreak. She watched as the twister flattened two double-wide trailers and a single-width trailer next door, killing five of her neighbors but leaving her trailer untouched.

New zoning displacing trailer park residents The roughly 180 families living in the Aladdin Village Mobile Home Park in Elkridge must move within one year -- another step in the redevelopment of the U.S. 1 corridor. Aladdin, with capacity for 241 families, is the latest and largest example of how rising land values and large-scale rezoning by Howard County is prompting major changes along the old industrial corridor. It is a change county officials welcome, but the price is high -- the loss of hundreds of affordable homes for lower- and moderate-income people.

Water from a well serving about 40 homes in a Finksburg trailer park has tested positive for contamination from the gasoline additive MTBE, according to the Carroll County Health Department. Officials from the county and Maryland Department of the Environment are uncertain of the contaminant's source, said Brian Flynn, water quality supervisor for the Health Department. Preliminary tests at area gas stations and an auto-parts junkyard near Sullivan's Trailer Park along Old Westminster Pike yielded negative results, Flynn said.

EVANSVILLE, Ind. -- Hearing the winds whip outside his mobile home and the sound of breaking glass, Dustin Watts ordered his wife to get in the bathtub and then went to get his sons, ages 5 and 2. Watts, 28, doesn't know what happened next. But he thinks the tornado that killed at least 22 people when it struck northern Kentucky and southern Indiana early yesterday tossed his home into the air. "I don't know if it flipped over, but it felt like it did," Watts said as he sat on concrete steps that used to lead to his trailer but connected to nothing yesterday afternoon.

A ray of legal hope is lifting spirits among the small band of holdouts living in the closed Ev-Mar Mobile Home Park in Savage after a Howard County District Court ruling this week that pulled them back from the precipice of eviction. Judge Neil Edward Axel ruled that the remaining nine families have a right to a Circuit Court jury trial, frustrating for the second time in two months attempts by lawyers for the absentee owners -- heirs of the late Henry and Evelyn Meyn -- to regain possession of the 6.8-acre plot on Gorman Road.

The last days of Savage's Ev-Mar Mobile Home Park are fast approaching, but the handful of residents left in the rubble-strewn, weedy refuge are fighting eviction and hoping to reverse their fortunes with an 11th-hour lawsuit. Six of the last 10 families at the park filed suit in Howard County Circuit Court, naming the park's owners and Eastern Homes, the firm that sold several double-wide homes to residents shortly before they learned about plans to close and redevelop the 6.8-acre park on Gorman Road.

Baltimore Neighborhoods Inc., a fair-housing advocacy group, has filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that three of its African-American testers were rebuffed this year when they asked about trailers for sale or rent at a Finksburg mobile-home park while white testers were told of available slots. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore last week seeks a court order forbidding racial discrimination and unspecified money damages against Todd Village LLC, with a corporate address at 10706 Beaver Dam Road in Cockeysville.

As residents of the Ev-Mar Mobile Home Park in Savage continue their fight against eviction, a Howard County councilman has prepared legislation to allow creation of temporary trailer parks as a transitional haven for displaced people. The bill, subject first to county Planning Board scrutiny, would change zoning laws to allow new parks within 50 feet of an existing one - but only for 15 years, with residents' stays limited to a five-year maximum. State Sen. Sandra B. Schrader, a Howard County Republican, said she is is researching a possible General Assembly bill that could give mobile-home park residents first option on the park's land if an owner decided to sell.

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. -- She knew Hurricane Charley had devastated her neighborhood and that the two trailers she owned were probably destroyed, but Cindy Vallier wasn't prepared for the shocking sight in her yard when she returned home late Friday. Two elderly neighbors were dead in her front yard, lying swaddled in blankets amid a twisted mix of metal and wood. "There they were, covered in blankets in my yard by the time police let me back to my house," Vallier said. "She was up against a truck, and he was up against his wheelchair.