Area legislators: House Katrina evacuees at fort

Holt, Pallone urge Rumsfeld, FEMA to put up to 400 victims at base

BY SUE MORGAN Staff Writer

BY SUE MORGAN
Staff Writer

EATONTOWN — With their constituents offering to take in evacuees who lost their homes when Hurricane Katrina roared through the Gulf States, two area legislators are pressing Bush Administration officials to shelter up to 400 of those left homeless at Fort Monmouth.

In a letter sent last Thursday to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone (D-6) and Rush Holt (D-12) detailed how about 130 units of Fort Monmouth’s vacant military housing could provide temporary housing relief for displaced families and individuals who remain in shelters in the areas hit by Katrina late last month.

“Many of our constituents have expressed a willingness to take in families that have been displaced because of Hurricane Katrina,” Pallone and Holt wrote. “We encourage you to take advantage of this offer and allow 130 families to be relocated to Fort Monmouth.”

Between 350 to 400 persons could be temporarily sheltered at Fort Monmouth, the legislators said.

The Defense Department, which last month received authorization from the federal Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission to shutter Fort Monmouth within six years as a cost-cutting measure, reached out to the local base and other military installations last week as a means of securing emergency quarters for Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

The 1,100-acre base, situated in sections of Eatontown, Oceanport and Tinton Falls, “has tremendous infrastructure and support systems that stand at the ready to help victims of Hurricane Katrina,” Holt and Pallone wrote in their letter which was detailed in a press release.

The two lawmakers have been leading a contingent of local political, business, union and community leaders attempting to spare Fort Monmouth from permanent closure under the BRAC process.

Two court challenges, filed earlier this month in federal court and subsequently in an appeals court, were both dismissed last week.

The U.S. Supreme Court also declined last Thursday to hear the case put forth by the two lawmakers as well as U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), other legislators, and members of the Save Our Fort Committee and Patriots’ Alliance, two local Fort Monmouth advocacy groups.

Even with most of their legal options exhausted, Holt and Pallone are nonetheless touting Fort Monmouth’s vacated housing as a means of coping with homelessness that has befallen thousands of Louisiana and Mississippi residents displaced by the hurricane.

“Finding temporary housing and living arrangements for evacuees is going to be one of the toughest logistical challenges we will face,” Holt and Pallone wrote. “It is important that the Department of Defense use all resources available to do whatever is needed of them.”

Besides housing, other facilities present on the base include a hospital, stores, banks, a post office, a fire department and other emergency services.