Katrina vanden Heuvel: NOLA Watch: Gulf Stream Fails the Smell Test

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut/336694

NOLA Watch: Gulf Stream Fails the Smell Test
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/14/2008 @ 10:54am


Last Wednesday, on Capitol Hill, at a hearing packed with reporters, photographers, constituents, and industry reps, Representative Peter Welch (D-VT) zeroed in on a key moment in April 2006 that contradicted the testimony of Jim Shea, CEO of Gulf Stream.

Shea's company was paid $500 million to supply the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with 50,000 trailers housing displaced persons in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Residents in some trailers would later complain of health problems including bloody noses, burning eyes, acute respiratory illnesses, and even miscarriages – as Amanda Spake reported in The Nation months before most in the mainstream media paid attention to this scandal. Shea testified that his company did nothing to hide any pertinent information about health issues associated with Gulf Stream trailers.

Yet in April 2006, as CNN prepared to air a story on elevated formaldehyde levels found in the trailers, Gulf Stream sent a statement to the network which Rep. Welch read aloud at the hearing: "We are not aware of any complaints of illness from our many customers of… travel trailers over the years, including travel trailers provided under our contracts with FEMA." Rep. Welch asked Shea, "Did your company make that statement?"

"We were speaking retrospectively," Shea said awkwardly, "prior to the March issue – when {the problems} started."

Rep. Welch continued: "On March 20, 2006… you received a statement – this was before you issued the ‘no complaint' statement – and I'll quote, ‘There is an odor in my trailer that will not go away. It burns my eyes and I am getting headaches everyday. I've tried many things, but nothing seems to work. Please, please, please, help me'.… How do you square your statement to CNN – ‘we are not aware of any complaints of illness' made in April 2006 – with a statement from a customer {in March} that was a complaint?... Had you received any complaints before April 2006 when you issued your statement to CNN that you had had no complaints?"

snip//

Despite Republican efforts to free the trail manufacturers from any responsibility, it was Representative Elijah Cummings who perhaps best summarized the failure of both industry and government to protect public health: "Our country is becoming mired in a culture of mediocrity, and a failure to be empathetic to human beings. So we can talk about standards here, there, and everywhere. But the question still remains: do we get what we bargain for, or are we getting something that does harm?"

While the CDC is now convening the relevant agencies to address the standards issue, and a federal class-action lawsuit against the trailer manufacturers and FEMA is pending, displaced people in 15,000 trailers still are in need of more permanent, safe homes.

[KT2000]

1. Rep. Cummings was great

he continued to bring the discussion back to the humans who were actually harmed. The Rs talked straight off the talking points the lawyers for the companies supplied - the equivalent of their position should there be a toxic tort case. It was sickening.