[StBernard] Landrieu to FEMA: Trailers Unsafe for Your Employees, but Good Enough for Storm Victims?

[Westley Annis]

Landrieu to FEMA: Trailers Unsafe for Your Employees, but Good Enough for
Storm Victims? 

 

WASHINGTON - United States Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., today commented
on internal FEMA emails, as reported this evening by the CBS Evening News,
that reveal the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not allow
their own employees to enter FEMA trailers despite insisting they are safe
for residents. She also commented on the FEMA decision to delay the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from testing FEMA trailers for
formaldehyde. 

Press accounts and congressional inquiries have revealed that FEMA knowingly
let storm victims from the 2005 hurricanes move into FEMA trailers with
formaldehyde, a carcinogen, in the flooring, cabinetry and wallboard. When
the stories of residents getting severely sick made national news, the
agency listened to the call of residents and members of Congress and moved
to have the CDC test the air quality of trailers. But just before testing
was scheduled to begin, FEMA yesterday decided to postpone the CDC from
revealing to the public the prevalence of formaldehyde in trailers. FEMA
said it has no plan for how to deal with the information once it's revealed.

"Tonight's CBS Evening News report exposes internal FEMA emails forbidding
FEMA employees from entering trailers because of formaldehyde fumes.  The
particularly dangerous trailers, according to FEMA emails, are those sitting
in the sun where the heat may have released high levels of the toxic fumes.
While the trailers are too unsafe, FEMA says, for brief visits by their own
employees for repair work, they still house two years after the storms
nearly 50,000 people in Louisiana and Mississippi. This double-standard is
wholly unacceptable.

"Also very troubling is FEMA's decision to halt the CDC's testing. Storm
victims are suffering from the health effects of formaldehyde exposure while
the agency, fully aware of the danger reflected in its own employee policy,
is blocking public scrutiny of the extent of the carcinogen in these
trailers. It turns out the agency has no idea what it would do with the
information once it's compiled.

"These are more sad examples of ineptitude by the broken agency. As Chairman
of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Disaster Recovery
Subcommittee, I will use my jurisdiction over FEMA to press forward with the
agency's reform. We need a swift, effective and smart agency with
flexibility in its response -- not an agency that knowingly leaves American
disaster victims exposed to a whole new nightmare from the walls of their
FEMA-built temporary homes." 

Sen. Landrieu in July added an amendment to the Senate Homeland Security
Appropriations bill that requires FEMA Director R. David Paulison to conduct
a study of the amount and risk of formaldehyde in FEMA trailers used for
temporary housing after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. In May, Sen. Landrieu
sent a letter to Paulison seeking an explanation for the high levels of
formaldehyde discovered in FEMA trailers. 

- 30 -