LUMBERTON, Miss. (AP) - The General Services Administration has put a single lot of 484 FEMA trailers at the Lumberton staging area up for bid. The auction ends on Friday.

Photo: Some of about 20,000 mobile homes and travel trailers owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency sit at the Hope Municipal Airport near Hope, Ark., Friday, March 2, 2007. A year and a half after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, FEMA is auctioning off at fire-sale prices thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile-home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices. (By Danny Johnston, AP)

The trailers were used as temporary housing in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In recent weeks, GSA auctioned 483 trailers from a staging area in Carnes in Forrest County, and another 494 trailers from the Hickory Grove staging area in Lumberton.

Last month, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials estimated that about 30,000 trailers remained at five local staging areas.

The auctions are part of the process to reduce FEMA's inventory of the trailers, which came under scrutiny after high levels of formaldehyde were found in many and storm victims complained the dwellings sickened them.

On the Net: GSA, http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gsaauctions/

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