FEMA engineers financial hit for Mobile

Holiday won't dock in Mobile:

"Removing the ship from the city completely rather than just halting its vacation schedule could mean additional financial losses for the city, Mobile Mayor Mike Dow said Thursday morning.

"'I have no commitment right now to pay for the out-of-pocket costs, much less (the additional revenue),' Dow said Thursday morning. When the Holiday leaves, he said, 'The stevedores are out of work, the people who work the terminal are out of work.'"

The Law of Unintended Consequences has risen up to take a large bite out of Mobile, Alabama's municipal finances. When FEMA announced a deal with Carnival Cruise Lines to lease three of their Gulf-based ships as temporary housing, it was thought they would be used at their home ports: Mobile, New Orleans, and Galveston. Then it appeared that N.O. would not be in condition to supply services (water, sewage, etc.) to its ship very soon so it would go to Galveston. Then FEMA found an embarassing lack of volunteers among evacuees at the Astrodome willing to go live on the water in Galveston. Now the plans are to port the ships in Louisiana and Mississippi.

If, in fact, it will be possible to dock one or more of these ships in N.O., FEMA should consider using them to house workers hired to work on the clean-up. Ideally, FEMA should be recruiting men from N.O. to work on the N.O. cleanup. Idle men in refugee camps is a prescription for disaster, whereas employment would provide the workers and their families with money and dignity and purpose.

UPDATE (at 4:30 AM) - MSNBC is reporting from Houston that FEMA has cancelled plans to use two cruise ships docked at Galveston. No word on the Mobile ship.