FEMA Protects Employees - Not Disaster Victims

Once again, the agency (FEMA) that is supposed to help victims of disasters shows that it really doesn't care for their welfare. FEMA has about 48,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina living in trailer houses -- over 10,000 in Mississippi and more than 37,000 in Louisiana.

The problem is that these trailer houses have been found to have high levels of the chemical formaldehyde in them. Formaldehyde causes respiratory problems and is believed to be a carcinogen. The problem is so bad that FEMA has ordered its employees not to even enter the thousands of trailer houses that are empty because they pose a health risk.

But while they won't let their employees enter the empty trailers, they don't seem to mind that they have 48,000 victims living in the same kind of trailer houses. A spokesman for FEMA said the empty trailers pose a risk because they have been shut up.

I don't believe that, and neither does Senator Landrieu. She said, "I don't really buy that argument. It makes no sense, in that most of these (occupied) trailers are closed up and locked during the day".

Making matters even worse, FEMA has once again put off testing the occupied trailers, even though they have known about this problem for months. They just don't seem to care that they may be seriously damaging the health of these victims -- the same people they are supposed to be helping and protecting.

FEMA tried to tell us during the California fires that they have reformed and are now doing a better job. Obviously, that is not true. They only seem to do well when the victims are middle and upper class whites. Minorities and the poor must still suffer at the hands of FEMA.