What Fumes?

For those people who still don't believe that the federal government is doing everything possible to avoid any responsibility for anything connected to the flooding disaster in New Orleans, this note: remember FEMA's pledge to test its trailers for formaldehyde fumes? Well, according to Thursday's Times-Picayune, reporting on the agency's decision to close down the remaining trailer parks in Lousiana:

The agency has been careful not to attribute park closures to concerns about formaldehyde, which has been found at dangerous levels in some trailers. In a "Frequently Asked Questions" flier released Wednesday, a question asked: "Is FEMA closing parks because of formaldehyde?" FEMA answered: "Trailers were intended as short-term housing solutions. Rental resources are increasingly available in Louisiana and are more appropriate for long-term housing."

Testing of local units was scheduled to begin this month but has been postponed. It should begin "very soon," Josephson said.

This was testing that was originally scheduled to have been conducted months ago. In the meantime, of course, residents of the trailers have been exposed to months more of whatever it is that's in those vehicle/residences. I'm sure certain commenters are asking, "Why didn't they take personal responsibility and test themselves?"

Comments

[professor]

Well, New Orleans is a classic example of what I"m calling the shock doctrine or disaster capitalism, because you had that first shock, which was the drowning of the city. And as you know, having just returning from New Orleans, it was not"this was not a natural disaster. And the great irony here is that it really was a disaster of this very ideology that we"re talking about, the systematic neglect of the public sphere. . . .

So you"first the ideology weakens, creates the disaster, and then it"s used as an excuse to finish the job, to privatize everything, and that is what happened in New Orleans. Immediately after the city flooded, you had this ideological campaign, ground zero of which was the Heritage Foundation in Washington, which has always been, I guess, the most powerful engine for this radical free-market vision, announcing that, you know, this is a tragedy, but it"s also an opportunity to completely remake the state, i.e. eliminate it, so an explosion of charter schools"the public schools were not reopened. They were converted to charter schools. The public hospital, like Charity Hospital, remains boarded up. The public housing"and this is the most dramatic example"that horrible quote from a Republican congressperson: "We couldn"t clean out the housing projects, but God did it ten days after the levees broke." This is what I mean by the shock doctrine, this idea of harnessing a disaster to push through radical privatization."
Naomi Klein

[professor]

There was, and continues to be, an understanding that unless there is a massive crisis that makes the alternative look even worse, then people just don't give up things that make their lives better, whether it's unemployment insurance or public housing. I mean, look at New Orleans. People wouldn't have given up their homes if there hadn't been a natural disaster. Now, they didn't plan the natural disaster but I can tell you I was in New Orleans a week after the hurricane hit, while it was still half under water, and the newspapers were quoting a Republican congressman saying, "We couldn't clean out the housing projects but God did."
Naomi Klein

[professor]

If the reconstruction industry is stunningly inept at rebuilding, that may be because rebuilding is not its primary purpose," writes Naomi Klein in the cover story of this week"s Nation. "If anything, the stories of corruption and incompetence serve to mask this deeper scandal: the rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering."
Naomi Klein

[dasht]

Harry, you are being silly.

Testing trailers is probably a lot less difficult and expensive than you think. I don't mean to spend your money for you but I'd bet that if you find some friends at a University they could set you right up for a quick but meaningful study for 6 figures. Gaining access to the trailers you want to test takes some leg-work, of course. Go for it!

Whether its FEMA or the Army Corp, it's just a fact of life that organizations of that size and scope will always, always, always have ongoing, systematic failures. We can argue and moralize all day about the boundaries of neglagence and "proximate cause" but no resolution of those arguments will in any real way prevent the *next* systemic failure.

The open source software world has the best mediation for that problem in its "with many eyes on the problems, all bugs are shallow". In the case of something like levies, what I'd suggest going forward is that some of you in N.O. privately organize to tax yrselves and produce independent, periodic, engineering reviews. As with testing trailers, I'll bet you'll find that (once you get past the hurdles of *access* for the inspections) it can be pretty inexpensive to do meaningful "spot checks" using third parties.

Heck, I'll bet you could even get back some of the costs by then sharing the spot check reports and process with your insurers.

When you've got, mostly, indignation and usually pretty debatable outrage against the Feds -- but not much else -- engineers and responders tune you out. But if you have privately acquired *data* -- then you've got a conversation.

(And, no, it's not quite the same thing to just report on 3rd party data, like the Berkeley study, that you didn't buy. Everyone already has that you're just echo-chambering. Meanwhile, if a few dozen big property owners meet among themselves, buy the study, and then confront their repersentatives, uh, I think you'll gain serious audience.)
HARRY ASKS: Big property owners? in FEMA trailers?

-t

[pirx]

Hopefully better late than never.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/formaldehyde/pdfs/revised_formaldehyde_report_1007.pdf

A reference to the most recent analysis of formaldehyde (CH2O)sampling in unoccupied FEMA trailers.

Most is background information, but there is section on expected levels of CH2O in urban areas that could explain why FEMA is reluctant to sample in occupied trailers. Simply put, cigarette smoking or cooking in a normal building has been shown to generate as much CH2O as an unoccupied, unventilated trailer, so sampling in occupied trailers is confounded by the lifestyle of the occupants.

On the other hand the data show that an empty trailer with the windows closed and the AC on is probably well above the safe CH2O level for even a healthy adult, so allowing anyone to continue to live in them is ill-advised at best, and in all honesty, probably criminal.

[Qbear]

The inside the FEMA trailor was the good part of the two hell hole trailor camps in Baker LA.
They put hundreds of the evacuees on clear cut "woods", without one tree for a bit of shade, not a G*D DAMN blade of grass. The dust there was blinding, and coated everything in minutes. There were no jobs, no job training, and the people could ONLY bus to a WalMart daily.There's not enough Xanax on the planet to get over that depressing place.

[jazzman]

No, I don't remember but I bet they don't either.

[JAUG]

My friends FEMA trailer arrived with peeling wall coverings, the gas line to the stove uncoupled, the drain to the shower on the ground. We figured it had been made less than 48 hours of arriving.
Good thing they did their own maintenance on it prior to using it (my trailer blowed up sir!) If only they had know to change the locks (not allowed) imagine their surprise to find out that ONLY 4 keys could unlock every FEMA trailer. pah...

Oh boy did it stink, and not that nice new car smell either.
Every time you cooked the smoke alarm would go off, burnt or otherwise - disabled!
They did their best NOT to stay in it for any length of time and it took 4 months for the FEMA people to come take it away!

I feel for the people that were given FEMA boxes to house 5 or more people.

[susang]

I read in the NYT the other day that FEMA is going to kick everyone out of those trailers by May, ostensibly to "help" them get into all that cheap available housing that is so plentiful now in New Orleans.

Meanwhile, as I heard on LeShow recently, FEMA is spending over a million bucks a month in Hope, Arkansas to store 19,000 brand new and empty RVs that were supposed to go to New Orleans but have been sitting at this site next to Hope's airport for the past 2 years. 75 people are employed there.

FEMA may no longer have Brownie but they're still doing a heckuva job.

[OttoMann]

That's classic -- it's not even doublespeak; it's misdirection-speak:
Q: Is it the formaldehyde?
A: We'd like to answer that by changing the subject. We figure if we wait long enough, then by the time we actually do the test, the levels will be in the "acceptable" range.

Doctor, I think I might have the flu. "Well, come back in a couple months; we'll do some tests, and I feel confident they'll come out negative."

[criscokid]

Maybe Congress should tell the President that they want to have affordable public housing rebuilt in New Orleans before he gets another dime for Iraq.

[Kungfublood]

but he thoughtfully ordered F.E.M.A. employees not to enter the trailers.

[WTFbush]

Aloha Harry,

Are you serious? Please, we're only talking about the health of families, pregnant women and kids. You can't possible expect a governmeny that is by the People and for the People to care for its citizens. Besides, Bush showed how much he cares for kids with his outpouring of love towards children by denying them basic healthcare.

Where is the OUTRAGE? Where is the accountability of the PEOPLE to hold the government accountable. Here it is, in the year of election and I hear, for the most part the same BS that I always hear.

I fear that too many people have tuned out, are ignorant to the situation (of the country as a whole) and have way too short of a memory. In fact most people and politicians think of Katrina in terms of a past event and will not address it or even think of it in terms of a continuing debacle...sad.

Well, here is a reminder. "Heck of a job Brownie."

Mahalo

[ljsfolly]

Another rush to do something without concern of the health and wellbeing of those at risk for 1 having no housing 2 with the rush to build and supply the housing (trailers) no one was concerned about what condition these trailers would be in and if they were safe for those who already traumatized by not having a place to live would live in whatever was provided. So one more time the rush, like they did with the 9/11 air quality, just blew off all concerns as it was no longer front page news and since they said they would do the testing they no longer cared since the attention was elsewhere. Remember this same crowd saying the air wasn't bad at ground zero and then people started to die from the bad air.

[Ahoon]

I would very much like to know who built these unlivable trailors and why they are not being held responsible...I would also like to know the links between the the builders,the sellers and the buyers.
HARRY RESPONDS: As detailed in previous posts on this subject, FEMA rush-ordered trailers from American manufacturers and, according to the manufacturers, they did not have the time to "cure"--i.e., ventilate out the formaldehyde fumes emitted by new carpets, particleboard, etc.--the vehicles before FEMA took possession and shipped the trailers south.