Some Residents Worry About a FEMA Camp Being Set Up in Linden
Whatever it is, if you drive on Routes 1 & 9 north, you can’t miss it.
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Anyone who travelled north on Routes 1 and 9 from Woodbridge to Linden remembers Linden Airport, and the General Motors plant right across the narrow lanes of the highway.
That plant was torn down in 2008 to make way for a building
renaissance that so far hasn’t happened. But in the past few days what
has arisen aren’t structures of steel and concrete, but an encampment
comprised of wooden poles and white tent bunting.
An enormous tent city, complete with guards, fencing, and gates, is
now housed at the old GM plant site. There are water trucks, vehicles
for taking showers, and what looks like a ton of raw materials for more
building.
Trying to find out what it’s for, though, is another story.
A nearby resident of the plant had spoken to several of the guards, who swore it was a project of FEMA – the acronym for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
But FEMA spokesman Scott Sanders at first denied that his agency had anything to do with the white tent city.
“We might provide provisions, but we don’t run shelters,” Sanders
said when asked if the tents were to be used for people displaced by
Hurricane Sandy. Across the Arthur Kill from Woodbridge, Staten Island
residents who were devastated by last week’s hurricane and storm surge
are still homeless.
Officials in Staten Island have been looking at several possible sites to house Sandy victims, including reopening an old prison facility, according to the Staten Island Advance.
Sanders pointed to the Red Cross as a source for finding out what
the tent city is for; the Red Cross did not return repeated phone calls.
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