Weekly Address: Lessons and Renewal Out of the Gulf Coast

The President discusses the steps being taken to finish the job of recovery from Hurricane Katrina as the fourth anniversary approaches. He points to local citizens working hard alongside responsible government to make real progress in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and pledges that the lessons of Katrina will not be forgotten.

3/28/09: Your Weekly Address

The President addresses the people of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota as they face down disastrous flooding. He speaks of what the government is doing, but also stresses that times of crisis like this are reminders of the need and opportunity Americans have to keep their dedication to service.

Commentary: McCain Failed to Mention the Middle Class Last Week, But Neither Nominee Mentioned Poverty

By: Deborah Mathis

This time three years ago, the national obsession was not presidential politics; it was poverty. Hurricane Katrina had flushed the poor out of their homes in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, pushing them into streets and shelters and FEMA-funded hotel rooms or claustrophobic trailers.

The country responded with sorrow, embarrassment and outrage that so many people were still so poor more than 40 years after the War on Poverty. It had been, after all, off the Topic A list for so long that some people seemed to think it, like polio, had been eradicated. The outbreak of reality presented in the hurricane’s aftermath put poverty back on the map, so to speak.

But that was then. No sooner had we started talking about poverty again than we dropped it like a hot potato. Sensitivity fatigue set in. The country returned to its old habit of looking the other way, pretending the problem either didn’t exist or was overblown or, in the worst instances, that the poor deserved their fate.

COMMENTARY....

Katrina Victims Facing Evictions June 1

By: Michael A. Bell, McClatchy Newspapers

BILOXI, Miss. - Residents living in FEMA trailer parks are panicking about where they will live when the temporary housing program ends June 1.

Some residents have flooded a local mission group with phone calls, asking for help finding and moving into new homes. Roughly 6,800 families in South Mississippi still live in the temporary trailers, as the third anniversary of Katrina nears.

ARTICLE....

FEMA TRAILERS FOUND TO BE POISONOUS

As if Hurricane Katrina victims didn't have enough to deal with, new FEMA trailers housing thousands of displaced residents in the Gulf Coast were found to be toxic with unsafe levels of formaldehyde.


A version of the chemical was present in composite wood and plywood panels used in thousands of travel trailers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency purchased after Katrina to house hurricane victims.


Formaldehyde is considered a human carcinogen, or cancer-causing substance, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Air quality tests of 44 FEMA trailers since April by the environmental group Sierra Club show formaldehyde concentrations as high as 0.34 parts per million – a level nearly equal to what a professional embalmer would be exposed to on the job, according to one study of the chemical’s workplace effects.


And all but four of the trailers have tested higher than the 0.1 parts per million that the EPA considers to be an “elevated level” capable of causing watery eyes, burning in the eyes and throat, nausea, and respiratory distress in some people.


Dr. Scott Needle, a pediatrician in Bay St. Louis, said he noticed some unusual and persistent health problems among his patients living in the trailers well before the possible link to formaldehyde exposure surfaced.


“I was seeing kids coming in with respiratory complaints – colds and sinus infections – and they were getting them over and over again,” he told the Associted Press. “…Almost invariably, these families were staying in the FEMA trailers.”

As a result of its testing and such accounts, the Sierra Club is pushing for a congressional investigation of the potential health hazards posed by the trailers.


“It’s simply wrong that the government would spend billions of dollars to poison people in these toxic tin cans,” said Becky Gillette, co-chair of the Sierra Club's Mississippi chapter.


A class-action lawsuit also has been filed in Louisiana, naming the federal government and trailer manufacturers as defendants and alleging that “the temporary housing is unsafe and presents a clear and present danger to the health and well-being of plaintiffs and their families.”