Clinton Foundation Accused of Sending Haiti Shoddy Trailers Found Toxic After Katrina

[EFerrari]

Clinton Foundation Accused of Sending Haiti Shoddy Trailers Found Toxic After Katrina

A new exposé in The Nation magazine reveals that trailers the Clinton Foundation donated to post-earthquake Haiti to use as temporary classrooms—and to double as hurricane shelters—are plagued by mold, shoddy construction. In at least one case, an air quality test revealed worrying levels of formaldehyde. The trailers were built by the same company that is being sued in the United States for providing formaldehyde-laced trailers to displaced residents after Hurricane Katrina. We speak with the journalists who broke this story, Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet. “What does it say about the reconstruction efforts in Haiti, if the very first project approved by the commission that’s supposed to ensure accountability and transparency in Haiti’s rebuilding passes this kind of project?” says Macdonald. “Bill Clinton himself has his hands all over it, and he is the co-chair of this commission that is supposed to ensure that Haiti is 'built back better.'”

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/12/clinton_foundation_accused_of_sending_haiti

The Shelters That Clinton Built
Isabeau Doucet
Isabel MacDonald
The Nation

Editor's Note: This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, with additional support from the Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting.
 
When Demosthene Lubert heard that Bill Clinton's foundation was going to rebuild his collapsed school at the epicenter of Haiti's January 12, 2010, earthquake, in the coastal city of Léogâne, the academic director thought he was "in paradise".

The project was announced by Clinton as his foundation's first contribution to the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, which the former president co-chairs. The foundation described the project as "hurricane-proof...emergency shelters that can also serve as schools...to ensure the safety of vulnerable populations in high risk areas during the hurricane season," while also providing Haitian schoolchildren "a decent place to learn" and creating local jobs. The facilities, according to the foundation, would be equipped with power generators, restrooms, water and sanitary storage. They became one of the IHRC's first projects.

However, when Nation reporters visited the "hurricane-proof" shelters in June, six to eight months after they'd been installed, we found them to consist of twenty imported prefab trailers beset by a host of problems, from mold to sweltering heat to shoddy construction. Most disturbing, they were manufactured by the same company, Clayton Homes, that is being sued in the United States for providing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with formaldehyde-laced trailers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Air samples collected from twelve Haiti trailers detected worrying levels of this carcinogen in one, according to laboratory results obtained as part of a joint investigation by The Nation and The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund.

Clayton Homes is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company run by Warren Buffett, one of the "notable" private-sector members of the Clinton Global Initiative, according to the initiative's website. ("Members" are typically required to pay $20,000 a year to the charity, but foundation officials would not disclose whether Buffett had made such a donation.) Buffett was also a prominent Hillary Clinton supporter during the 2008 presidential race, and he co-hosted a fundraiser that brought in at least $1 million for her campaign.

http://www.thenation.com/article/161908/shelters-clinton-built

[Name removed]

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[masonjason22]

2. believe

Hard to believe but if true it's sad

[CrossChris]

3. People need to know about Clayton Homes. Hurt a lot of people on the Gulf Coast.

Thanks for posting this.

[EFerrari]

5. Not only are these things not hurricane proof but they are being used

as school buildings which is really distressing because children are more vulnerable to the carcinogen formaldehyde. :(

[AtomicKitten]

4. The toxicity of the trailers was apparent years ago.

Can't see an excuse for using them in Haiti.

[sad sally]

6. Clinton/Bush collected $52 million dollars to restore Haiti (remember what both of

these men, along with Bush Sr., while in office as presidents, did that wasn't exactly beneficial to Haitains). These current actions are disgusting.

From The Nation's article:

The Nation made multiple attempts to reach Bill Clinton for comment. However, the former president, known for championing the role of nonprofits in global affairs ("Unlike the government, we don't have to be quite as worried about a bad story in the newspapers," he recently said in a speech), never responded. A Clayton Homes official referred all queries regarding the contract to the Clinton Foundation.

Sitting in the sixth-grade classroom, student Mondialie Cineas, who dreams of becoming a nurse, said that three times a week the teacher gives her and her classmates painkillers so that they can make it through the school day. "At noon, the class gets so hot, kids get headaches," the 12-year-old said, wiping beads of sweat from her brow. She is worried because "the kids feel sick, can't work, can't advance to succeed."

"I thought the grand foundation of Clinton was going to build us latrines and dig us wells for the children to wash their hands before meals and after using the toilet...especially as we're at the mercy of cholera," Lubert says with a sigh. Less than an hour north of Léogâne, in Carrefour, the number of cholera cases went from eighty-five per week at the end of April to 820 a week at the beginning of June, according to Sylvain Groulx, country director of Médecins Sans Frontières. The disease, which is preventable with proper sanitary conditions, has killed 5,500 people since the epidemic began last October.

The Clinton Foundation did not build so much as a latrine at the school, or at any of the three other schools where its trailers were installed. (INHAC and two of the other schools had a limited number of pre-existing outhouses, which the school directors saw as inadequate, while the fourth did not have a single outhouse, making it unusable, according to the school's director.)

[EFerrari]

7. This morning I read that the funds to fight the cholera outbreak

are lagging 'way behind the epidemic.

Not only don't we help Haiti, we can't even keep up with the damage we do there. :(