A beeping from Bobby Parks' moisture meter indicates unseen trouble behind the walls of a FEMA mobile home.
There's moisture behind the walls."And we can go anywhere around these perimeter walls and that's what we're going to see," said Parks, as he moved his moisture meter across the walls, "That means the walls are wet. Moisture is accumulating inside," he said.

The meter stays in the green against an interior wall. But Parks says vinyl walls facing the outdoors are likely to have condensation behind them.

He blames a design defect that makes the vast majority of FEMA mobile homes unsuitable for the hot, humid South.
"Truth be known, it's probably in about 80 to 85 percent of them. There were a small number of them where the manufacturer knew the right way to build them for this climate," said Parks.

He says the colder you set the thermostat, the worse the problem is and sooner it shows up.

"You can see the wall is just buckled out. And this is consistent all around the house," he said, while waving the moisture meter across another home's walls.

Parks showed us a FEMA home where the inside temperature was cold and the problem evident with spots and streaks on the walls.

You may be wondering, as we were, what's Bobby Parks' angle? What's in it for him? While he admits he's a paid consultant for several mobile home manufacturers, he says his sole purpose in this case is public awareness.

Parks says if residents know about the potential moisture problem, and what it may well be doing behind their walls, they'll be less likely to consider buying their FEMA mobile home.

"If you pay five or twenty thousand for the house, it doesn't matter. Within a couple of years, it decomposes to the point it could cost you another twenty to fix it," he said.

Parks says hurricane victims should not be victimized again.

A spokesman for FEMA declined an on camera comment, but did give WLOX News a written response.
FEMA spokesman Eugene Brezany says, "A moisture problem has been suggested from the use of vinyl in the construction of mobile homes, a material widely used in the industry. To date, the number of complaints is extraordinarily low and FEMA has all confidence in the quality of mobile homes supplied to disaster victims."
Brezany also said that "any time residents have a housing concern, we do our very best to work with them and resolve the matter."
 
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