FEMA, FORMALDEHYDE, FOUL-UPS

An article from the NEW YORK TIMES describes FEMA's continuing incompetence around Katrina recovery and rebuilding.

The article states:

"At a news conference Thursday, Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced that tests of 519 trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi revealed unacceptably high levels of formaldehyde, a suspected carcinogen that can cause serious breathing problems even in people who do not ordinarily have respiratory problems."


The problem?

"Red flags went up about formaldehyde nearly two years ago. In June 2006, a man who had complained of formaldehyde fumes was found dead in his trailer. FEMA received many warnings, not only from the families who occupied the claustrophobic trailers but from the Environmental Protection Agency and, more recently, the House Committee on Science and Technology. Yet FEMA waited until the disease control centers had done the survey before seriously swinging into action."

The trailers, which I wrote about in my book HEALING KATRINA: VOLUNTEERING IN POST-HURRICANE MISSISSIPPI, were used to house thousands of people in the afermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many of the people were part of the marginalized populations in our country. The New York Times:

"The saddest part of this is that the people who are most at risk are, for reasons of age, illness or poverty, the least able to defend themselves. Just about everyone who could move out of the trailers has moved. Of the original 140,00 trailers, only about 35,000 are still occupied, and many of these are on private property, usually the occupants’ driveways. The truly vulnerable trailer population consists of former renters who are still living in FEMA parks — playgrounds, churchyards and the like — because they have no place to go."

One of the hallmarks of a civilized country is how it treats poor, sick, young and old. By that standard, America is failing miserably.