Government Responsibility/Corporate Culpability

Just finished reading a very distrubing story about the FEMA trailers used to housed many…I don’t know…maybe thousands…possibly hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina victims.  Seems that the trails were highly toxic and found to have extremely high levels of formaldehyde in them. 

Currently there is a mass group law suit againts the manufacturers of those trailers, of which Gulf Stream Coach was a primary contracted provider.  Now, Gulf Stream is a pretty big trailer manufacturer in this country, of which many of their products can be seen whizzing by you on the highway as many people own Gulf Stream mobile trailer units in this country.

The problem with the story is that the manufacturers, all of them…not just Gulf Stream…they all knew about these very high levels of formaldehyde in their trailers, and said nothing about it.  They gave their contaminated trailers to those people who had already lost much of what they owned, if not everything…and didn’t think twice about it.

The Katrina victims who finally got a trailer later found themselves coming down with nose bleeds, dizziness, shortness of breath and blood running out of their ears etc…etc…  After having survived Katrina now to find themselves bombarded with mysterious health symptoms…which they probably thought were a side affect to the horrible conditions they had to endure following Katrina…such as stagnant water, decaying bodies, human waste and death all around them etc.   Only to find out that their latest series of woes are due to high levels of contamination which are attributed to egregious levels of formaldehyde (poision) all through their newfound living quarters which this government had given them.

The second part of this story which is equally distrubing is that these trailers typically are manufacturered with materials that commonly use formaldehyde as a preservative.  Which means the whole structure is laden with poison. 

I don’t understand that.

If you have to go through your house and remove lead poisoning…how in the world can companies be allowed to manufacturer products for unsuspecting consumers that are laden with contaminates which can cause cancer, poision their system and kill them?

And we are not talking about small ticketed items here.

Trailer homes and mobile units are very expensive.

Since there was such a back-order on the FEMA trailers one can only surmise that the products that the manufacturers used in mass producing the Katrina trailers were made of even cheaper and more heavily laden contaminates then usual.

What a shame.

Some of the Katrina victims waited months while others waited more than a year for their trailers.  They slept in rotted out cars, filty water washed houses and anywhere they could lay their heads with the hope of one day getting back on their feet…only to find blood streaming out of their noses, pouring out of their ears and trying to fight bouts of dizzness.

They survived Katrina…but not man’s greed.

Now, the fat cats sit in Washington, DC trying to determine who is to blame…while the Bush Administration trys to keep the fire off the manufacturers, which they hired and contracted…and probably divvied up the money with.

Frist came Bush, then came 9/11, then the bombing of Iraq…and then Katrina hit.  FEMA and fraud, inflated resume’s, multi-billion dollar contracts and scam artists from all over…including from Texas and the White House.  Everybody was getting theirs…except the people who really needed it.

Made homeless by a storm now the poor Katrina victims are faced with yet another blow…toxicants in their body. 

They may have survived Katrina but the formaldehyde in their system is a battle they won’t be able to overcome.  We just pray it won’t be painful…and all the money in the world can’t give them back their health. 

Now, they have truly been robbed of everything. 

This should not go un-addressed…not at all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080709/ap_on_go_co/toxic_trailers_6

…God bless…  ©2008

Add a comment July 10, 2008