Thousands of hurricane victims still waiting for trailer tests

[Contrary1]

Hey Chucklenuts, while you're in that part of the world, why not visit these trailer homes and take some really deep breaths?




"WASHINGTON — About a year after she moved into a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer, Teresa Coggins, a diabetic, lapsed into a coma. When she woke up in an Ocean Springs, Miss., hospital eight days later, she blamed the trailer she'd been living in.

Coggins, 48, is one of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims who moved into FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005. FEMA spent nearly $1.8 billion buying about 120,000 trailers and millions more maintaining them. Once storm victims began moving out of the trailers, FEMA had no use for them. But now the agency can't reuse, sell or even give the trailers away because of complaints they emit hazardous levels of formaldehyde.

Coggins, who began living in her trailer in February 2006, is bitter not just about her $100,000 hospital bill but also about what she described as FEMA's lack of response when she asked that her trailer be tested.

"I could have died and nobody would know it was formaldehyde," Coggins said.

<snip>

FEMA has asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to come up with a plan to test the trailers for formaldehyde. But more than 15 months after the Sierra Club found excessive levels of formaldehyde in trailers on the Gulf Coast, the federal government has yet to begin testing any of the thousands of trailers that still house victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita...

** Be sure to read the part about the government auctioning off 10,000 of these toxic tin cans. :grr:

http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070828/NEWS01/708280317

[unhappycamper]

1. Someone brought a FEMA trailer up to Kennebunkport last weekend.

[Sydnie]

7. Those pictures make me mad as hell!

blivet** should be forced to live in one until the very last person has a real place to call home!

[Swamp Rat]

2. k&r

It fucking REALLY SUCKS to live in one of those things.

[malaise]

5. Everything about the treatment of Katrina victims

sucks.

[JTFrog]

3. But MSNBC

shows pretty pictures of how restored things are. Surely they wouldn't be trying to make us think that things are better now if they weren't? MSM doesn't do those kinds of things do they? I mean just because many of the before and after pictures are missing the actual structure that was standing before.... at least there is pretty green all around it after 2 years. :sarcasm:

What exactly was the point of them putting this out there?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20364536/?gt1=10252

[blogslut]

4. kick

:kick:

[Squatch]

6. Why are they still in trailers after 2 years?

I think that is the important question here.

[merh]

8. Ask the citizens of Greensburg, Kansas what they are living in -

those that returned to their town after the tornado destroyed it.

Ask them what FEMA provided them in tornado alley.