CDC Tests Confirm FEMA Trailers Toxic
 

CDC tests confirm FEMA trailers are toxic

Agency to relocate Gulf Coast residents because of formaldehyde fumes

NEW ORLEANS - More than two years after residents of FEMA trailers deployed along the Mississippi Gulf Coast began complaining of breathing difficulties, nosebleeds and persistent headaches, U.S. health officials announced Thursday that long-awaited government tests found potentially hazardous levels of toxic formaldehyde gas in both travel trailers and mobile homes provided by the agency. [emphasis mine]

Complete article here.

Things like this make me ashamed of our administration. I just can't imagine how it would feel to be completely ignored for weeks or months after a disasterous hurricaine and then to find out that the meager help your own country was able to provide you probably has put you and your family's health at risk. I honestly just can't imagine how angry I would be.

So after he made the hurricane, Bush sent in poisoned trailers and made people live in them for more than two years? Diabolical.

I do think the efforts to avoid the testing or minimize the results of the testing are completely horrible. It's the only part that I see as being nefarious, FWIW, but it's significant.

It's hard to figure out why the people in health and testing would have played along, considering the strong advocacy and backup they could expect from the media.

I mean, if I had reason to believe that people were being poisoned, I don't think I'd allow that information to be suppressed with people's health at stake, and I don't regard myself as particularly courageous when it comes to speaking truth to power.

No one alleges that he caused the hurricaine. I think that when the government is going to give help so little and so late, that it could at least make sure that the help it gives doesn't create new problems. It isn't like this is something where the risk itself of formaldehyde (sp?) wasn't known at the time.

Who was ignored for weeks or months? It's bad enough that exaggerating really isn't necessary.

I agree that I'm baffled why it would take two years to build permanent housing or to make the determination that replacing the housing in some communities didn't make sense ( and therefore get people to relocate to someplace where housing could logically be built.)

But as I've mentioned before, I'm not sure it's a federal responsibility.

So you would have left them in tents?

It's not like a better option was available and they ignored it.

What would you have had them do? If you don't have an answer, then maybe we should lay off the judgment a smidgen.

Now, I sure would have had them handle the testing differently, but even so, if you don't have 38,000 hotel rooms available, what would you do?

Seriously, what would you have done? Where would you have put them? Where should all those families go now?

Wow. I thought everyone heard about the extreme delays:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/na...gewanted=print

And as far as leaving them in tents, no, of course not. I think that the federal government had a hand in deciding the type of trailers that were purchased and/or built and shouldn't have cut costs by putting people in trailers made out of risky materials that they themselves wouldn't feel safe in. At some point you have to ask yourself, if the government was helping out individuals from a more wealthy area of the country, would the government have put them in such housing (and took so long to get it there)? I sincerely don't think so.

Seriously, I think there isn't a perfect solution, but no one is arguing for perfection. I think if the government had made FEMA relief more of a priority (which I think it would have done had the people needing help been white wealthy families) that we could have done better than that.

Yes. Not everyone affected by the hurricane was poor.


I don't think there was any effort to spare expense in this case.

There's NO way you can say that the people affected by Katrina were IGNORED for weeks or months, which is what you said.

ETA: Did you read the article? Did you note the issues with state and local governments? Did you note the contrast between residents in Louisiana and Mississippi? You think Mississippi is that much richer?

You can think it, but it doesn't make it reality.

What can you come up with for non-perfect solutions? What solutions do you think would have appeared had the folks been richer and whiter?

Read the article. Much of the breakdown was a levels below the federal. ETA: have you read it? And you're still trying to argue that the Feds ignored the problem?

Plenty of trailers in Mississippi. Interesting.

Why do you keep thinking that I didn't read the article? You know, you're looking at Mississippi's number 6 MONTHS after the hurricaine... I wouldn't be too proud to point out that their trailer situation was BETTER than it was in New Orleans because it wasn't like it was great. It wasn't like after 6 months they were at 100% or anything.

Sure it was better. LESS of a disaster. Not like it is anything to brag about.

And I'd also like to say that it isn't as if I think that race and class are the ONLY reasons there was a delay. I'm not THAT into conspiracies... I just think they were factors.

Sheer incompetence played a role, as well.

Because you're trying to argue that Mississippi was so great and thus defeats my argument: http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publ...cle_2905.shtml

Like I said before... sure maybe they got more trailers to Mississippi, but that only makes is slightly LESS of a disaster.

No doubt the response could have been better, but I don't think anyone could have done it perfectly.

I didn't hold MS up as a model of perfection; I offered it as a contrast to show that some of the messing up wasn't at the level of this administration ignoring the problem.

And it's relatively easy for us all to say, trailers with formaldehyde are terrible, but it's pretty hard to offer a better alternative that could have been deployed at that scale. (The bureaucratic delay is ridiculous, but it looks at least 50% state or local level to me.)

Apparently FEMA says they won't be doing trailers in the future, so it will be interesting to see what the alternative is.


ETA: Did I argue that Mississippi was so great? Or did I just argue that it was less dysfunctional than Louisiana in this instance? And I think the real issue that you see in rebuilding Mississippi doesn't have much to do with the federal gov't, unless you just support giving people straight up handout of hundreds of thousands each. A big part of the problem is not being able to get insurance to rebuild in places that it really doesn't make sense to rebuild if you're an insurance company looking at the flood plain and the land. The stuff that came back fast tended to be self-insured.

And here's another article that focuses on the rebuilding in Mississippi gaining steam. An upbeat article, but here's an excerpt that explains why progress was better in Mississippi:
Full article: http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-0...rebuilds_x.htm

Right, and you also had largely functional local government.

I really think it's a mistake to dismiss what happened to Mississippi as lightly as that quoted material does. There may not have been standing water, but there was nothing left for most of the coast. Seriously, whole towns were essentially missing. Multi-story brick buildings gone to the dirt.

Now we can discuss whether than helped make a fresh start I suppose, but to argue that there was less water damage since there was nothing left is a little goofy.

I know it wasn't your point Skylark.

You want to know something really stupid, IMO? At the time that Katrina happened, despite being below sea level, New Orleans wasn't in a flood zone that required flood insurance. Why? Because it's behind a levee.

Honestly, property insurance companies don't really care about flood plains to insure a homeowner. Why? Flood insurance rates and claims are ALL set and paid by the federal government. The only difference is the name on the policy and potentially how fast or slow that claim is paid - i.e if you write it through an insurance company vs the federal government you'll probably get a check a lot faster. Your homeowners policy isn't going to provide flood coverage - if you read it, it is most likely specifically excluded. Insurance companies are more concerned about the wind exposure down there.

I apologize for any inaccuracies, but I'm talking about areas where, for any practical purposes that the cost of insurance makes rebuilding impossible for most people. It may be that the insurance companies fear wind driven water rather than just rising water, but the picture has apparently changed since Katrina and the damage is largely thought to have been related to the storm surge, rather than wind.

And I'm really not being critical of the companies. I wouldn't want to insure properties that I knew I was especially likely to take a loss on. Nobody who needs a mortgage really has to live in a single family residence on the beach or the bay, I suppose.

Post-Katrina most insurance companies have modified their homeowners policies to clarify that water damage doesn't mean storm surge, wind driven water, etc., unless they've got a flood policy or some other kind of additional coverage. Not something you'd know unless you sit around reading your policy - not too many people do that, if I hadn't implemented the forms with rate changes, I probably wouldn't have known it either.

But, flood insurance itself has a lot of it's own disclaimers. The flood waters have to rise high enough to enter through the doors. If my basement floods and that water rises to the first floor, I am not covered. If water comes in through the roof, I am not covered. Nothing in the basement is covered except the furnace, hot water heater and the foundation. It is also only covered if the flooded area is at least 2 acres or affects at least 4 properties. For this, I have been paying $1400 a year, in addition to my regular home owners insurance of $750. Everybody in my neighborhood hired a surveyor who discovered that, although some of our property is below flood level, our actual HOUSES are not. They are all several inches above the 100 year flood plain. We all had paperwork filled out and had our houses removed from the flood zone. The likelihood of our houses flooding per their requirements are extremely low. What might flood is the basement, but if the water doesn't come in on the first floor, they don't cover anything anyway.

This is what bureacracy does, it causes things to be inefficient and take too long. If the states were to just handle their own disaster relief with federal dollars and resources the whole process would run much smoother.

Or if not, at least the fault would be more centralized.