Residents in New Orleans East are frustrated by the wait for FEMA trailers. Each night as many as a hundred members of the Vietnamese community in New Orleans East are huddled into a tent city at Mary Queen of Vietname Church. Father Vient Nguyen says FEMA approved the church request for 200 trailers two months ago, but the mayor hasn't signed the necessary paperwork.
"I normally don't want to mess around with the race card, but at this point I'm wondering. I'm wondering why in this Vietnamese community, our needs haven't been responded to by the city government," says Nguyen.
An internal fight between the mayor and the city council over control of where FEMA trailer parks will be came to a head last week when the council over-rode the mayor's veto of an ordinance giving council members the final say on sites.