Saturday, May 24, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
Anyone playing a word-association game would likely answer “debacle” if the clue were “FEMA trailers/mobile homes.”
And the reasons for that correct answer just keep on coming.
The latest was in a story from Gannett News Service about a woman who is still living in a FEMA mobile home as the result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The massively destructive storms struck the Gulf Coast regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in August 2005.
The news service reported that FEMA — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — is offering the woman the opportunity to buy the mobile home, for $13,000.
Yet her home is one of the thousands that were found to be contaminated with formaldehyde gas.
The woman, Lynn Henderson of Richton, Miss., lives in the home with her four children. “One day I get a letter telling me my trailer is contaminated, the next day they want to sell it to me,” Henderson told the news service, which reported the offer is also going out to many other storm victims still living in emergency housing.
It is incomprehensible that FEMA would make such offers. Exposure to formaldehyde, a chemical adhesive used in building materials, is dangerous, especially in contained areas not well ventilated. It can immediately cause headaches, nosebleeds and respiratory problems and it has been linked to several types of cancer.
Yet the sale offers are consistent with earlier FEMA bungling. With more than 100,000 people displaced by the storms, it took the agency more than six months to deliver the trailers and mobile homes.
And when people started complaining about getting sick in the homes, FEMA failed to respond. It took a volunteer with the Sierra Club’s Mississippi chapter, according to a USA Today story this month, to prove, through private testing, that unsafe levels of formaldehyde gas were present in a majority of the homes.
Even then, it took FEMA until February of this year to finally start arranging other shelter for the thousands of storm victims who had yet to find permanent housing.
At this late stage, when FEMA could have started showing some competence, it began offering contaminated homes for sale. Unbelievable.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy