As if FEMA hadn’t done enough to Hurricane Katrina’s victims when the storm hit, the agency knowingly put families in trailers despite evidence that they would get sick.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday.
A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency’s lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers, out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.
Three months after reports of the hazards surfaced — and a month after someone living in a trailer filed a lawsuit against FEMA — a logistics expert with the agency said FEMA’s legal department advised officials not to do testing for hazardous materials, because it would “imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.” This came after early testing of the trailers found formaldehyde levels at 75 times the U.S.-recommended workplace safety threshold.
One man in Slidell, La., was found dead in his trailer on June 27, 2006, after complaining about the formaldehyde fumes. In a conference call about the death, 28 officials from six agencies recommended that the circumstances be investigated and trailer air quality be subjected to independent testing. But FEMA lawyers rejected the suggestions, with one, Adrian Sevier, cautioning that further investigation not approved by lawyers “could seriously undermine the Agency’s position” in litigation.
You occasionally hear stories about litigation involving a polluter poisoning a community in order to save a buck, but in this case, the Bush administration put people in government trailers with toxic gas, despite warnings, and stopped health tests to avoid trouble in court — all after the administration neglected the same people in the midst of a natural disaster.
It’s a level of callousness that would be almost hard to believe, were it not for Bush’s track record.
Thankfully, after six years of ignorance, we finally have a Congress willing to conduct oversight hearings — causing FEMA to scramble.
On the eve of yesterday’s hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, FEMA reversed course on the issue and said it has asked federal health officials to help conduct a new assessment of conditions in trailers under prolonged use. But revelation of the agency’s earlier posture — in documents withheld by FEMA until they were subpoenaed by Congress — attracted harsh bipartisan criticism.
Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) decried what he called FEMA’s indifference to storm victims and said the situation was “sickening.” He said the documents “expose an official policy of premeditated ignorance” and added that “senior officials in Washington didn’t want to know what they already knew, because they didn’t want the legal and moral responsibility to do what they knew had to be done.”
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) said FEMA had obstructed the 10-month congressional investigation and “mischaracterized the scope and purpose” of its own actions. “FEMA’s reaction to the problem was deliberately stunted to bolster the agency’s litigation position,” Davis said. “FEMA’s primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety.”
Compassionate conservatism strikes again.