Opinion

FEMA’s Toxic Trailers

Reporter Braxton Thomas

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, a department dedicated to “Helping people before, during, and after disaster.” This is the veil they have employed to shield the public view of their organization. Throughout the United States, people live in what is known as FEMA trailers. Cheap shelters deployed by the agency after multiple hurricanes such as Katrina, that dot the midwest and most southern states near the Gulf of Mexico. Unknowingly however, the inhabitants of these trailers are slowly being poisoned due to the carelessness of people who live off of the disasters that destroy others lives.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, initially created in nineteen-seventy-eight. Its original purpose was to coordinate disaster repair and reorganization after natural disasters. In order for FEMA to enter an area or state, the governor must declare a state of emergency. Despite this, FEMA tends to come on its own and start its repair efforts whenever it sees necessary. The agency maintains a policy of helping those in need and making sure a sense of preparedness is always present in the public. This mission statement is a facade however, with FEMA being caught multiple times mishandling supplies for relief efforts, attempting to seize back the supplies they did distribute and poisoning the people they swore they were helping. In nineteen-ninety-two, Hurricane Andrew displaced enough people for FEMA to come and assist state governments. Here is where the first edition of FEMA trailers were seen. These white, boxy, unembellished mobile homes would be the homes of many people. Sporting a construction of cheap glue and particle board, they were cheap and quick to move throughout the United States and made for a cost effective home for those displaced by the storm. Inhabitants moving into the mobile homes were greeted with a chemical odor rivaling the insides of a medical facility. The problem arose when over eighty-three percent of these trailers were holding toxic levels of formaldehyde in the air within them

As early as 2006, reports were being turned in by the inhabitants of these trailers. They described symptoms such as breathing difficulties, persistent flu like symptoms, eye irritation and constant nose bleeds. In 2008, over eleven thousand reports had been reported to FEMA. the CDC further backed the claims of formaldehyde poisoning that just forty-two percent contained toxic levels of formaldehyde. FEMA’s response to this was to demand people move to the streets so the trailers could be brought back before the news broke. This led to cries from the families of the displaced which in turn led to the news of the formaldehyde toxicity also breaking. This news was quickly suppressed however because only a year later, FEMA began to wholesale over 130,000 trailers in online auctions to the public. The only warning of their toxicity was an easy to remove sticker that said, “DO NOT USE AS HOUSING.”

Going for just a little over two thousand dollars a piece, many entrepreneurs looking to take hold of the housing shortage in the Midwest due to the influx of workers for oil rigs easily removed the labels and sold them at an estimated one hundred percent increase in price. Unprecedented numbers of people are guessed to inhabit the trailers, with the surmised average being around 114,000 people. In order to save their reputation, FEMA hid reports from 2006 and onward to make sure that contractors would refrain from backing out of deals to make more of the trailers. This did not save FEMA from being grilled publicly and within the courtroom.

The Sierra Club, an environmental organization, attempted to stand a case against FEMA in court early in 2006 but was dismissed on grounds of lack of evidence. The higher-ups and the main proprietors of FEMA operations were aware of formaldehyde toxicity before the trailers were even first deployed. The reason behind FEMA’s lack of consideration has been described as a lack of restriction on the companies that pumped out the trailers and the use of less than desirable building materials to make sure plenty of money was being saved. Instead of keeping the records of medical reports safe, FEMA decided to shut down the only thing in place to protect the records. This was a plan that was shot down in its pilot stage to make filing and finding the reports even more difficult for those asking questions.

FEMA has shown its practices to be less than desirable or humane in any way, shape or form. With a consistent endangerment of the people it swears to protect, many question the intentions of those who guide FEMA through its operations. The promise of safety is not ensured by FEMA or any of its contemporaries.