A couple of weeks ago, when I blogged on the long-delayed Centers For Disease Control tests of formaldehyde levels in Gulf Coast FEMA trailers, a persistent commenter opined to the effect that the people in New Orleans should have just tested the trailers themselves. Armed with the results, the commenter suggested repeatedly, the Feds would have had to respond.
This Week's Gambit Weekly puts the lie to that assertion, the latest in the seemingly unending series of "why don't you folks pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" recommendations from people elsewhere. The gist of the report: a volunteer for the local Sierra Club was in fact testing, as soon as she heard reports of symptoms from the toxic gas, and the Feds -- guess what? -- ignored her reports.
The unreported story: how FEMA managed to delay asking the CDC to do the testing until just this last December. Another Gambit story has some tantalizing details, but there's much more to be discovered, uncovered, covered.
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A few people dying is not nearly as important as protecting the industry from product liability. My suspicion is at the end of this trail is a no bid contract to a shrub donor.
Where do you draw the line? Industry does need to be protected more, a couple of examples include:
-McDonald's lady getting millions for spilling coffee on herself
-Best Buy loses her computer when repairing it, they give her a brand new one and a $500 gift card . . . not enough, she is trying to get $54 million from them
Read about the actual facts of the "McDonald's Coffee Case:"
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm
And, the allegations of "Best Buy Laptop Scandal:"
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/02/a-lost-laptop-a.html
Both of these stories begin with people seeking reasonable redress of damages caused by corporations. Both only escalated because the corporations tried to brush-off and outlast the citizens.
Sure, industry needs more protection - protection from its own stupidity. If they would follow their own rules and the law, they wouldn't have these problems.
"Industry" has something the public doesn't have, the ability to retain powerful attorneys who can appeal a jury award (like the McDonald's verdict) and keep a case dragging through the courts for years. "Industry" can make donations to judge's campaigns and hire lobbyists to protect them by pushing pro-industry laws through. Save your sympathy for someone who needs it.
So the lady who lost her computer or spilled coffee on herself shouldn't blame themselves but receive millions? Come on.
I refused a trailer and dayum glad that I did. I didn't need it as badly as others here. A friend got their trailer and it was obvious that it was Fresh from the factory as the fumes wafted out!!! The FEMA people DID NOT connect the shower drain nor the propane gas line Correctly - can you say BOOM!?!?!
Here's our take on the whole bloody mess. New Orleans was a present day experiment, period. The PTB (Powers that Be - Bush, My democratic neophytes Blagin and Narco er, Blanco and Nagin) and the world at large decided to Sit Back and Watch the Soap Opera Play out, I suspect that on Alien TV we were number one in the ratings for a good 6 weeks!!!!
Now we are able to answer all kinds of questions:
What do people do when no one rescues them. Freak out!!! Shoot at helicopters to get the pilots attention, loot, rape, pillage, murder, do what they have to to survive.
What do people REALLY care about?? Their dogs and cats. 64% of those that stayed was because of their pets and FEMA's REFUSAL to assist these people (later changed for Houston and Rita!!! See government can be taught, just takes the death of 1100 people to do it!!!)
How long does it take hundreds of people packed inside a Dome with no lights, running water, sanitation to regress to Hunter/Gatherer Cro Magnum mindset? Less than 3 days!!
What good are guns?? They ain't worth shit when your government takes the ONLY thing you have to protect your self and your property away!!!
In the next 5 years, more questions, more lawsuits, more suicides, more murders, more bullshit will come to pass. My Advice: DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ (remember your mother taught you that - don't forget!), the Democrats and the Republicans, the law-ticians that run our state and city and country don't give a shit about voters - just the almighty buck and looking good on camera, and their Pension and Great Healthcare (even if they are a convicted felon). Lastly, If you THINK you are right, YOU ARE NOT!!!!
I would take Nagin out of your "powers that be" in the first six weeks. He was a victim like everyone else stuck in the bowl. He had to curse the President out to get us help. Afterwards, there has been such an effort to blame the victims that it is hard to know what is really going on. I would cut Nagin some slack, and even Blanco to a degree. Bush...no way! We were and still are desperate for help. The President should have committed the nation's resources to helping one of its greatest cities, instead of invading 3rd world countries for no apparent reason.
Would you settle for inept and very short sighted? I cannot forget the rows upon rows of school buses parked in the school lots, empty and flooded and Nagin claiming they had no means to evcuate the people.
HARRY RESPONDS: I'm not a Ray Nagin fan, but contacting drivers--had any been available--in an emergency in which all ground and cell communication had gone down would have required the logistical help of something much bigger than the City of New Orleans. Something like, say, a federal government.
For the REAL story on the buses, I refer you to the following:
http://www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/katrina/projects/RebuildingInc/story_Buses.php
Recently in N.O..Passed by a trailer "village".it was essentially sitting in a ghost town area, placed in giant asphalt parking lot,. Imagine how hot it must get there in a N.O.summer! Heat is what really increases formaldyhyde vapor.. and the tests were done in the winter.I didn't see where you could even buy groceries nearby,( much less a formaldyhyde test kit) as all the shopping centers were boarded up.I was shocked by the how tiny the trailers were, especially considering that families with children must live in them.
Basically the Bush administration have sentenced these mostly moms and kids to a slow gas chamber.
And the media has moved on to cover the circus.
I know someone who still lives in a FEMA trailer. Not only is it TINY (about 8' x 15') but N.O. has as it's electric company Entergy New Orleans. Entergy was bailed out by the feds yet rates are still sky high. At Mardi Gras (in February when it was still a little cool) her utility bill was $68 a month for her poisonous little FEMA box. You can't believe how chinky these trailers are on the inside. There is a sleeping "slot" in one wall that, so help me God, I would sleep on TOP of that trailer before I would fold myself into that scary little space.
I gave a young guy that my daughter plays music with a ride home the other night. At least 60% of the houses in his neighborhood still had FEMA trailers in the yard. He said it was great how FEW there were still there. These people are still waiting on their Road Home money. What a joke.
Just remember, if it can happen to us, it can happen to you. And, ask yourself, how would you feel if it was your elderly parents or your children living in those FEMA trailers? Please keep telling them. Don't let them forget about us. We are Americans, too!
I was and still am ticked off the Dems didn't choose to hold their convention in NOLA.
My husband and I are keeping all of our donations to NOLA's various
charities and Xavier University (though the Catholic Church should have been
giving them help too.)
Again, the mess BushCo is leaving this country is CRIMINAL.
Best regards to all there - and keep on shouting to be remembered.
Thank you for all your support, VOTER. Also, please look into another fine non-profit that I can vouch for as doing amazing things for the people of New Orleans. It's the Tipitina's Foundation.
www.tipitinasfoundation.org/
The Tip's foundation has been very instrumental in helping New Orleans musicians with getting jobs, housing and replacing instruments lost to the levee failures. The Foundation also helped Fats Domino rebuild his house. The Foundation is helping give musical instruments to New Orleans area schools whose entire bands were lost after the levees failed. Our own Harry Shearer played on "Jeopardy" when they had their celebrity edition last year. Harry selected the Tipitina's Foundation as his charity and WON(!) $25,000 for the Foundation.
Come see us, VOTER! The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (Jazz Fest) is the last weekend in April and first weekend in May. (My kid is playing!) Also, French Quarter Festival is coming up. It's a nice time of year here and there's lots going on! Come to New Orleans. Come see what all the fuss is about. You may never want to leave.
Can we TAXPAYERS decorate one these trailers and offer it as a wedding gift to the
soon to be wed Bush daughter?
Unfortunately decorating your FEMA trailer can get you a TICKET and heavy fines for defacing Federal property!!!
You know her shoes wouldn't even fit in one!
ONLY if she has to live in it for 2 years.
Another LEGACY of our Compassionate Conservative President -BUSH.
"What's that? Katrina didn't kill you? Okay, here is my gift to you. All paid for by tax dollars. These are FREE.
Sure a buddy of mine got the contract to build them but let's not go there. And now, I am done
taking care of you folks."
Articles about the poisonous levels of toxic substances found in these trailers have been
in the news for several years. Why is the problem still around? Why did it ever happen?
Bush has created so many hell holes for us and others that we can't keep up with correcting them.
And we haven't taken on the responsibility to TAKE HIM AND HIS CRONIES TO COURT.
The mafia must admire the Killer Chimp's ability to continue his crime spree without being stopped.
Bush is Anti-American.
And our Congress is too for not putting Bush and his cronies in prison.
I remember being in a seacoast town in New England when a convoy of semi-trailer trucks
unexpectedly arrived. Residents were amazed. Traffic became a nightmare. Local police were not
prepared. They had not been notified about the trucks heading to their small town.
All of these trucks had labels on them - REFRIGERATED - ICE FOR NOLA - KATRINA.
The truckers had driven down to LA and federal officials sent them away. Gave them orders to
drive north to this town and WAIT.
The people of NOLA needed the ice. We, taxpayers, paid for the ice. We paid for these numerous
trucks to be parked and running for several days before leaving for NOLA.
Did this convoy ever make it there? I don't know.
As taxpayers, "consumers" of these poisonous trailers, why don't we have the laws and
courts on our side. Isn't there a "LEMON LAW" applicable to the Bush Administration?
Let's all be honest with ourselves, everytime you want to put more and more responsibility with government . . . this is what you get, a bigger mess than what you started with.
Sadly, I have to agree but I would like to make it clear that I refuse to believe that it has ti be this way and when it comes to trusting government or industry, I'll always give progressive government the benefit of doubt over any member of industry
Indeed-- unfortunately, "progressive government" has been intentionally destroyed by every administration since LBJ's problematic but noble and humane "Great Society".
The Compassionate State was pejoratively rebranded the "Welfare State", and when the present gang of criminal oligarchs were put in power, they hoped to finish off the remnants of the Compassionate State and establish a pure Hollow State. Wingnut economist Grover Norquist summed up the game plan as shrinking government down to a size small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Incidentally, the Hollow-State proponents who renounce any responsibility for maintaining social services to ordinary citizens just LOVE the self-righteous, reactionary views that flock to Harry's NOLA threads like pirhanas to a chunk of filet mignon. The Hollow-Staters make anti-common cause with these simple-minded Rugged Individualists and their cartoonish reduction of government assistance as folks "sitting around waiting for gummint help".
While these unsophisticated Rugged Individualists beat their chests and bluster about the virtues of Self-Sufficiency and Initiative, and castigate believers of progressive government as "whiners" and the like, the authorities in the Hollow State they so proudly endorse are picking their pockets and sucking out their bank accounts to insure that they and their cronies in the political, financial, and corporate elites remain obscenely wealthy and privileged.
Thus the scum at the top are assisted by the naïve or bamboozled bottom-feeders-- the same primitive jingo patriots who, in the right circumstances, become enthusiastic foot-soldiers or mercenaries when the Hollow State decides to directly destroy a targeted underclass instead of merely allowing it to suffer and deteriorate by intentionally providing poor and counter-productive services.
How's that for "whining"?
Roger, that is the exact reason why you will spend the rest of you life being a whiner. You put your hope in government instead of taking responsibility yourself. If you sit around waiting for Govt. to solve your problems, well do not bitch about the service.
Just wait for universal healthcare, that will be great. In the UK they are on the edge of cutting off fat people or smokers from surgery because of costs, France's system is costing too much to be sustainable and in SK, Canada it takes around 22 months to get an MRI.
"Levees".
You should read "Shock Doctrine" by Naomi Klein. The Bush administration DELIBERATELY screwed up after the levves failed so that they could justify putting more government responsibility into the private sector.
Right. Broken government doesn't work very well, does it? If anything, the shock of Katrina should have taught us that. Instead, the Republicans are still albeit more quietly singing the old "drown it in the bathtub" refrain, and I daresay they'd like to finish off Democratic, unruly, and un-categorizable New Orleans first.
Arguably the worst Katrina-related governmental failure, second only to failure of the federal levee system, was the total lack of effective emergency communication. Never mind the police not being able to talk to the mayor and the fire dept to the police and the National Guard to any of them...none of them were able to talk to EACH OTHER, esp after batteries died and generator fuel ran out and the isolating floodwaters rose, cutting off much face-to-face runner-communication.
America, listen and listen good. CELLPHONES DON'T WORK IF ALL THE TOWERS ARE DOWN for a hundred miles radius. I don't care if yours is hot pink and plays The Yellow Rose of Texas, honey, the damn thing is a worthless hunk of plastic if there are no towers.
For all people in the New Orleans Katrina disaster zone, it was like the world ended on 8/29 and they were suddenly living in a real-life post-apocalyptic movie scenario. They went weeks, some months, without adequate communication with each other, and the outside world. An extended nightmare.
Officials resorted to sending RUNNERS to communicate, face to face, when they could. Some,particularly entire sections of the New Orleans Police Department, couldn't even do that because of isolating flood waters. And if you were just a regular citizen, you were reduced to begging relief workers and bartering with your neighbors for things like powdered milk, generator fuel, and prescription medicine.
This is not common knowledge and maybe never will be, but I happen to know that for many weeks, then entire lower Mississippi River shipping traffic was run by amateur ham radio out of a Katrina survivor's broken, generator-powered living room while armed "vigilantes" protected the street from looting 24-7.
How much of the nation's vital commerce ultimately depends on Mississippi River traffic? By some estimates, half, by others, much more. Petroleum, chemicals, grain, coal...
Whatever happened to the old Cold War "Civil Defense" Program? We sure could have used such in the nation's largest disaster. If addressing effective massive disaster emergency communications isn't a national, federal concern, I don't know what is.
Harry, gris gris, bienville, do any of you know the lastest on this? If another Big One hit this July or August, would the only way to get a message in or out of New Orleans still be face-to-face in a boat, by relay via the tiny handful of "Luddite" ham shortwave radio operators, or by hitting "redial" at 3 a.m. on the few working landlines, or all of the above?
HARRY RESPONDS: You raise an excellent point. What I know is that from 9/11 to Katrina to more recent disasters, inter-agency (and even intra-agency) communication has been a persisten problem. The feds have thrown millions at it, but what little I've read indicates that it's been to no great effect so far. So get a windup radio.
luziannagirl, I don't know if there have been improvements in the communications systems. I know what you mean about how it seemed like it was post-apocalypse after 8/29. Most of America has no idea what this was like and probably (hopefully) never will. We were on the North Shore for the storm. We has trees on all 5 cars and 7 trees on the house. The phones didn't work. Our electricity was out for 5 weeks. We went into our neighbors houses who were away to empty their refrigerators and took gasoline out of their barns and garages (many partially crushed by trees) to use in our cranky old generator. The generator would power one small window unit I got in Baton Rouge after the storm, the refrigerator and a light and the cell phone chargers (we kept trying the cell phones). The generator kept running out of fuel and we wouldn't be able to start it up again so we took to re-fueling it using 5 gallon gas cans that we poured into the generator WHILE IT WAS RUNNING! We ran that generator non-stop for days. Can you imagine how HOT it was when we added gas to it? And, we ALWAYS spilled some gas (5 gallon cans are HEAVY!). How did we not set ourselves on fire?
The stories we could tell.
The federal government's fish rots from the head.
I agree with Mr Shearer about the malfeasance of FEMA _et al_ in respect to the mass formaldehyde poisoning of the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (what else are you going to call it?) but there's this larger question that keeps nagging at me:
Why are such toxic substances such as formaldehyde being used in construction materials in the first place? Why should people be forced to make a choice between living on the streets and living with a carcinogen?
I was one of the first occupants of a newly constructed building on this campus a few years ago and recall having a substantial increase in allergy attacks and other sinus-related problems soon after moving into the building -- issues which persisted until I finally left the organization years later. While I'm always sceptial of _post hoc, proper hoc_ analyses, there does seem to be a reasonable case for assigning causality.
Perhaps if we got the toxic substances out of our environment, we wouldn't have to deal with issues like mass poisoning in FEMA trailers.
Just a thought.
Ah yes, the "why don't you folks pull yourselves up by your bootstraps" recommendation, also know as "blame the victims."
If a building full of people collapsed to the ground, you wouldn't blame the unfortunate people who were in the building. You would grab the torches and go find the architect, the engineer and the contractor. And in the case of the New Orleans flooding, the US Army Corps of Engineers is all three of these.
Unfortunately, they also seem to be judge, jury and prosecutor.
If you're going to put the entire blame on them, then you should put the entire blame on their Commander In Chief; George W. Bush. He cut their budget in 2002 which included floodgates for the 17th St. Orleans and London Ave. Canals. If they had been installed per the ACE design, then you would not have even needed flood walls.
HARRY SUGGESTS: Big assumption, that a project funded in 2002 would have been built and in place in time for the 2005 hurricane season. Past, and current, experience with the Corps indicates that's not quite the pace at which they work. Also, those floodgates would have done nothing for people on the east side--Lower 9, NO East, St. Bernard--who were flooded by MR-GO and the Industrial Canal breaches.
As much as I would like to blame it all on Dubby-B, he's only been President for 7 years (I know it seems like a lot more). Previous presidents and previous Congresses have had plenty of time to log a better record. I don't doubt all of what you say about the floodgates and SELA. But, Bush is not alone in the official Washington neglect of Louisiana.
The Corps was given the nuts and bolts responsibility for protecting America's water resources and for protecting Americans from those resources. They weren't given enough money, that's true. But, what they did with the money they got is all their fault.
They used the wrong storm data to plan the system. They used the wrong factor of safety to design it. They used the wrong benchmarks to build it. They built flimsy I-walls that actually made the levees weaker. They used an average soil strength where the weakest soil strength is industry practice. They built a levee protecting a swamp higher that one protecting an adjacent subdivision. They built MRGO, and it destroys wetlands; they permitted pipeline and navigation canals that destroy wetlands; they dammed upstream tributaries trapping wetland-building sediment a thousand miles away; they levee the entire length of the river, flushing wetland-building-sediment out to sea. New Orleans District dismissed a critical comment from Vicksburg District, calling it "professional judgement." They have never submitted to independent review of their decisions.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers made these decisions, not Congress, not the President, not Louisiana, not New Orleans.
If they had not made so many wrong choices, if they had built the levees to their own design criteria and industry standards, if they truly protected America's water resource at the cost of industry profits, instead of the other way around, New Orleans would have been dry on August 29, 2005, Harry would have one less thing to blog about, and I would not be posting here. You can criticize Bush if you want, but you could say just about the same things about at least 7 other presidents.
To Harry, the floodgates were installed within one year once they funded, They are up and running now, which they could have been in 2004.
HARRY REPEATS: Just to reiterate, the Corps' level of alacrity post-disaster cannot be cut-and-pasted back in time to the way the Corps operated pre-disaster. And, again, please don't forget the problem with the pumps, which, had a serious storm surge threatened the city in 2006 or 2007, could have been disastrous.
As much as I would like to put all the blame on Dubby-B, or on Republicans in general, or on Congress, and so on, I cannot.
The problems with the Flood Protection "System" (ahem) go way, way back.
The inception of the project was flawed in that it used decades-old parameters for what the Standard Project Hurricane should be. Early in the design, and more than once in later stages, the National Weather Service upgraded the data that had been the basis of the Corps' original assumptions.
The Corps then used flawed assumptions about what "Mean Sea Level" meant and about what benchmarks should be used to baseline the project. It turns out the sea isn't level, and some of the benchmarks subsided over time. And then, when the Corps discovered these facts, they simply ignored them.
The Corps used a factor of safety more appropriate for farmland. They used an average soil strength to estimate the depth for sheetpiles. They used a flimsy I-wall design that reduced the strength of the levees by half - actually weakening levees instead of strengthening them. They built a higher levee protecting swamp than one protecting people. The New Orleans District dismissed a recommendation for design changes by the Vicksburg District, calling the decision "professional judgement." They have never been subjected to independent oversight.
It has been estimated that one or two breaches might have been within the capacity of existing pumps - that street flooding would have resulted, but not more - while the storm passed and emergency repairs were made. But the bowls were violated too many times; the pumps were discharging floodwater right back into the same breaches.
MRGO - a Corps project - has led to devastating weakening of New Orleans first line of defense, the coastal wetlands. Worse than that, it actually focussed the surge - drove it higher, and funneled it directly into the heart of the City. All three flooded bowls were breached on some frontage made more vulnerable by MRGO.
Navigation and pipeline canals cut by the oil and gas industry - constructed under permits issued by the Corps - have also led to widespread weakening of the wetlans barrier.
The levees-only policy of past generations dammed up a thousand miles of Mississippi tributaries and confined the river itself behind barriers, depriving the wetland of the essential ingredient for land-building: mud.
No Congress and no President have made full funding of the project a priority. Many have pursued their own pet projects for their own purposes. The Corps has even fudged its own data to fund unnecessary projects.
Posted February 28, 2008 | 11:46 PM (EST)