For weeks, couple lived in mobile home under Kansas City bridge — until it burned
Update: Jackson County officials said Monday that the trailer had been purchased by a third party and removed from the Heart Village mobile home park in June. Former residents of the trailer at Heart Village were rehoused in March, according to the county.
Kansas City Public Works officials were investigating Monday after a mobile home was found destroyed by fire and abandoned under a bridge on the city’s east side.
Investigators are looking into how the mobile home, where a couple lived for four or five weeks under the 23rd Street bridge near Manchester Trafficway, ended up there and was later destroyed in a blaze last week, said Alan Ashurst, an illegal dumping investigator for the city.
Firefighters were called to extinguish a blaze at the home last week, but the fire destroyed it, officials said.
The home was previously in perfect condition with a couple living in it, Ashurst said. City officials are searching for the couple to make sure they are safe.
After the fire, someone reported the now abandoned home to the city, Ashurst said.
Officials think the mobile home may have come from Heart Village, a mobile home park where dozens of residents were pushed out last year to make room for a new Jackson County jail.
“My investigation is leading to that trailer park,” Ashurst said, “and maybe this individual had to leave and couldn’t find someplace else to go so he put it here.”
The incident has not been labeled illegal dumping because officials would need to know if someone intended to throw out the home, Ashurst said.
“If they were living in it and their intention was to live in it until they could find someplace else to put it,” Ashurst said, “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to charge that illegal dumping because it wasn’t trash.”
If the home had been abandoned after the fire, Ashurst said it may be considered illegal dumping from that point.
Ashurst said he hopes to know more by the end of the day Monday.
The city wants to be sensitive to the issue, said Sherae Honeycutt, public information officer for the Kansas City Public Works Department.
“While it may look like a clear-cut illegal dumping, this also was someone’s home at one point,” she said. “We want to make sure that we look into it and understand what happened. If someone needs help, we want to make sure we can try to get them the resources they need.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2022 at 11:58 AM.
