Puerto Rico And Virgin Islands Still Not Getting Enough Help

(This photo of the Public Works Department workshop in Puerto Rico just last month is by Christopher Gregory.)

After being hit by two hurricanes, much of the infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands was devastated. The residents, all American citizens, had hoped they would get enough help from the U.S. government to rebuild.

That help was slow in coming, and now has virtually stopped -- far short of what is needed. It seems that the Trump administration simply doesn't care about them. The federal government was quick to help Texas and Florida after they were hit, but the same cannot be said for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Here is just part of an excellent article on this travesty written for the New York Times by Mark Walker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs.

ST. CROIX, U.S. Virgin Islands — More than two years after back-to-back hurricanes ravaged this tropical island, medical workers are still treating gunshot wounds in hallways and kidney failure in a trailer. They ignore their own inflamed rashes that they say are caused by the mold that has shut down an entire hospital floor below a still-porous roof.

At least they have a hospital. The lone medical center on Vieques, an idyllic island that is part of Puerto Rico, was severely damaged by Hurricanes Maria and Irma, then abandoned to wandering roosters and grazing horses. Ailing people wait at the ferry dock to catch a boat to the mainland. 

Two years on, “we are in the same situation as we were in the days after the hurricane,” said Rafael Surillo Ruiz, the mayor of Yabucoa, on Puerto Rico’s hard-hit eastern edge.

An examination of Federal Emergency Management Agency dataand records demonstrates the degree to which the recovery from Hurricanes Maria and Irma on America’s Caribbean islands has been stalled compared with some of the most disaster-prone states on the mainland, leaving the islands’ critical infrastructure in squalor and limbo. FEMA officials say 190 long-term recovery projects have been funded in Puerto Rico — out of more than 9,000 requests. On the United States Virgin Islands, about 218 projects had funding — out of more than 1,500 requests and still counting.

In contrast, about 3,700 large and small permanent work projects had obligated funding in Texas, two years after Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast in August 2017. More than 3,700 such projects had been funded over that time in Florida.

That disparity underscored how a federal government in Washington has treated citizens on the mainland, with voting representatives in Congress and a say in presidential contests, compared with citizens on the islands. . . .

“At the end of the day, we’re talking about the life and the well-being of human beings,” said Dyma Williams, the acting chief executive at the Gov. Juan F. Luis Hospital on St. Croix. “I hate to make the distinction about American versus not American, but at the end of the day, we’re not being treated the same way as other Americans are being treated.”. . .

FEMA, through its public assistance program, helps communities recover from major disasters by assisting with debris removal, lifesaving emergency protective measures and public infrastructure reconstruction. Debris removal and protective measures are classified as emergency work. The “permanent work” of public infrastructure repair is what guarantees long-term recovery.

And that permanent work is in little evidence on St. Croix and in Puerto Rico.

U.S. Government Failed Puerto Rico (And FEMA Knows It)

While Donald Trump will never admit it, his administration failed the people of Puerto Rico (American citizens) in the response after Hurricane Maria. The disaster planning was grossly inadequate -- and the response was incompetent, inadequate, and far too slow.

The charts above are from the 2017 Hurricane Season FEMA After-Action Report. The top chart highlights the inadequacy of FEM's disaster planing for Puerto Rico. The second chart shows how slow the response was. After Hurricane Harvey in Texas, it took FEMA about a month to reach peak deployment. It was about the same after Hurricane Irma hit Florida. But it took over two months to reach peak deployment in Puerto Rico -- and that deployment was far from what was needed.

Here is how Arelis R. Hernandez sums up the FEMA report for The Washington Post:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency experienced personnel shortages, was caught with a critical lack of aid supplies, had trouble coordinating logistics and found itself struggling to do the work of the territorial government while responding to Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico last September, according to an official after-action report released late Thursday.

Despite repeated Trump administration efforts to play down federal failures in responding to a humanitarian crisis on the island territory, the new report is a public acknowledgment of systemic failures during what was one of the most destructive hurricane seasons — and costliest disaster responses — in the nation’s history.

It shows that responses to Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida taxed the agency and left it understaffed and out of position for the catastrophe that unfolded in Puerto Rico, where millions of U.S. citizens suffered through widespread communication blackouts, massive infrastructure failures and lengthy power outages. . . .

The sobering report runs counter to the White House narrative that President Trump presented at the time, when he praised FEMA’s performance and characterized the devastation on the island as not being “a real catastrophe like Katrina.”. . .

In Puerto Rico, the Category 4 Hurricane Maria knocked out communications and left more than 3.5 million residents without power for months while FEMA scrambled to provide food and water and restore electricity. Resources that had been redirected to deal with Hurricane Irma in the U.S. Virgin Islands left few supplies for Puerto Rico when the hurricane hit — and communication lapses, transportation challenges and a lack of situational awareness caused major delays in help for those living on the island.

The inability to communicate, or to reach isolated areas of Puerto Rico, was a particular problem. FEMA officials conceded that in the first 72 hours after the hurricane, they had little understanding of what was happening across the island and could not assess road conditions or damage to water and wastewater facilities. A week after the hurricane made landfall, according to the report, officials had been able to assess about half of the island’s wastewater treatment sites and did not have information on the status of 37 out of 69 hospitals.

Storm Highlights GOP's Wrong Policies

The picture above is a satellite photo of Hurricane Sandy, which shows the massive size of this storm -- stretching all the way from the East Coast to the Great Lakes. As I write this post, the storm is just beginning to come ashore and nobody knows just how much damage it will cause. But anyone who thinks the damage won't be massive is clearly living in a dream world (populated by unicorns, happy dragons, and teabagger Republicans).

Willard Mitt Romney did not need this to happen right before the election -- for several reasons. First, it brings back the memory of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and how badly that emergency was mishandled by the Bush administration. For days we watched as people died and the government just twiddled their thumbs and drug their feet. We're going to see a much better reaction from the Obama administration to Hurricane Sandy. In fact, he's already met with FEMA and other disaster relief agencies, and lit a fire under them.

Second, this once again highlights just how hard-hearted the Republicans are to any disaster (unless it happens in their own backyard). During a previous disaster, House Minority Leader Eric Cantor tried to block funds for disaster relief -- unless they funds were offset by cuts to programs helping hurting Americans in other areas of the country. Rep, Paul Ryan (the GOP veep nominee) proposed a budget that would not only cut social programs, but substantially cut funds for FEMA and other disaster relief.

And GOP presidential nominee, Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie), has joined his mean-spirited Republican colleagues in demonizing FEMA just because they are a federal program. In debates during the GOP primary, Willard said he wanted to get rid of FEMA, and let the states (or the private sector) take over that function.

This sounds good to some teabagger Republicans, because it means they won't have to pay for disasters happening in other states. But it is short-sighted. It also means the other states won't have to help them when they are the victims of disaster. The truth is that none of us lives in an area safe from all disasters. No matter where you live, disaster will strike someday. It may not be a hurricane -- it could be an earthquake, tsunami, tornado, massive fire, floods, drought, high winds, or numerous other things. But when it happens, you will need help.

Whether we like it or not, we are our brothers' keeper. And the best way we can fulfill that obligation is through federal disaster agencies like FEMA, that can move anywhere in the country at a moments notice to provide help. That also allows the cost of the disaster relief to be spread throughout the country, so that no one section of the country bears a burden it cannot afford. The Republicans, including Willard, are spectacularly wrong on this issue -- and this storm right before the election highlights that fact.

Third, this storm once again shows the danger we are creating for our country  and the planet as a whole by refusing to deal with man-made global climate change. While the Democrats have drug their fett in trying to deal sufficiently with this issue, the Republicans have been far worse. They refuse to even admit there is a problem. Willard himself has said we need to cut subsidies for clean and renewable energy (like wind energy) and increase production and use of the climate-damaging fossil fuels (like oil and coal).

Sometimes it takes a disaster to bring people to their senses. Hopefully, this current disaster will cause people to think about the Republican denial of global climate change and their opposition to federal disaster relief -- and vote to kick them out of office until they change their hard-hearted and ridiculous policies.

Hurricane Poses Problems For The GOP

It now looks like the Republicans have dodged a bullet. Hurricane Isaac will not directly hit the part of Florida where they are holding their convention (Tampa). There will still be some bad weather, and the delegates will probably be getting wet, but now that the hurricane has shifted its course to the west the Republicans will be able to get on with their convention. For a while, there was speculation that the convention might have to be called off, but that won't happen now.

But while the GOP has dodged one bullet, there are a couple more that could also cause them serious damage. One is that the convention will not be able to completely hog the news as was hoped by the Republican Party. In a normal election year, the week of a party convention (by either political party) is dominated in the news by what is happening at the convention. And Willard Mitt Romney (aka Wall Street Willie) really needed that to happen this year. He is not liked by most Americans (even some of his supporters), and he needed the opportunity at the convention to redefine himself and try to make himself more likable.

But this year that's going to be harder to do, because the convention will be happening at the same time that Hurricane Isaac in making landfall. And much of the news-time that would have been spent covering the convention will now go to hurricane coverage -- both the storm and its aftermath. The Republicans will be lucky to get half the coverage they would have gotten if Hurricane Isaac did not exist (or did not threaten the United States).

The second is that Hurricane Isaac is now headed for the worst possible landfall location for the Republican Party -- the New Orleans area. It has only been seven years since Hurricane Katrina hit that area with devastating consequences, and the images of Katrina have not faded from the American consciousness. And another thing that is vividly remembered (to the embarrassment of Republicans) is the totally incompetent way the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was handled by the Bush administration -- with many storm survivors having to wait for days to get any help at all.

Right now, it doesn't look like Hurricane Isaac will cause the same devastation that Hurricane Katrina did (although that could change). But even so, the American people will be watching to see how the government reacts this time -- and comparisons of that reaction to the Bush failure of Katrina are inevitable. If President Obama is smart (and I believe he is), then he already has FEMA, the Coast Guard, and others ready to spring into action as soon as they know where they are needed. And any competence the Obama administration shows will make the Republican Party look bad by comparison.

The Republican Party certainly did not need this hurricane to happen at this time. It bears nothing for them but an ill wind.

Another Threat Of Government Shutdown ?

The government is not yet a half a year away from a previous threat of government shutdown -- with the political parties arguing over the extension of the government's debt ceiling. They were barely able to avert that government shutdown, but it was enough to make the American people so mad that they are still giving Congress record-breaking low approval ratings -- around 15%.

It was hoped that Congress had learned their lesson, especially since the leaders of both parties came back to Washington after their August break swearing there would not be a repeat performance of that ridiculous stand-off. Well, those promises didn't last very long, because another threat of government shutdown is now brewing on Capitol Hill. This time it's over funding for FEMA -- the agency tasked to helping American victims of disasters.

There is a continuing resolution that must be approved by both houses of Congress before the end of this month. The continuing resolution will allow the government to operate until at least November 18th, while work continues on the budget for the new fiscal year. If the resolution doesn't pass before the end of this month, there will be a government shutdown, since the government will not have the allocated funds to operate.

The fly in the ointment that could prevent the continuing resolution from being passed is FEMA funding. The House has allocated only $3.65 billion for FEMA, but the Senate has approved $6.9 billion. The difference, slightly more than $3 billion, is tiny when compared to the budget in general. But if both parties dig in their heels and refuse to budge, it will shut down the government. Adding to the mess is the fact that Congress is supposed to be in recess next week -- which means there is only a couple of days to get the continuing resolution passed.

So far, neither side is giving in. The House Republicans won't raise their allocation without cuts to equal the raise, and Senate Democrats say they will send the bill back if FEMA is not fully funded. It looks like brinkmanship has become the new norm for our government.

The Republicans should fold this time. I know they are trying to make a point about government spending, but Democrats have given in to massive cuts recently, far more than the funding they want for FEMA. And I don't think the American people are going to be happy with Republicans making a whipping boy out of FEMA (and the thousands of victims they help every year).

There are lots of areas of government that Republicans and Democrats can argue about funding, but FEMA is not one of them. Disasters strike without warning, and the victims of those disasters cannot wait around while Congress argues about spending.

Krugman Speaks Out On Cantor's Nonsense

By now you've probably heard that House GOP Majority Whip Eric Cantor is using the damage caused by Hurricane Irene to double down on the meanness of the Republican Party. He wants to hold the victims of the hurricane hostage to force more cuts from the federal government. He, and his House GOP cohorts, say they won't authorize any money for FEMA to provide disaster relief unless the government cuts an equal (or bigger) amount from the current budget.

And the cuts wanted by the Republicans make no sense (such as cutting training and equipment funds for first responders, and cutting money for hurricane flights to help predict the ferocity & direction of the storm). These are the kinds of cuts that could make future natural disaster response and prediction worse, but Cantor and the GOP don't seem to care as long as tax cuts for the rich are protected and new ones promoted.

I have already spoken out about the insanity of these GOP actions, but now Nobel Prize-winning economist and columnist for the New York Times Paul Krugman has spoken up. He pretty much nails Cantor and his mean-spirited friends to the wall. Here is what he has to say:

“Have you left no sense of decency?” That’s the question Joseph Welch famously asked Joseph McCarthy, as the red-baiting demagogue tried to ruin yet another innocent citizen. And these days, it’s the question I find myself wanting to ask Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who has done more than anyone else to make policy blackmail — using innocent Americans as hostages — standard operating procedure for the G.O.P.


A few weeks ago, Mr. Cantor was the hard man in the confrontation over the debt ceiling; he was willing to endanger America’s financial credibility, putting our whole economy at risk, in order to extract budget concessions from President Obama. Now he’s doing it again, this time over disaster relief, making headlines by insisting that any federal aid to the victims of Hurricane Irene be offset by cuts in other spending. In effect, he is threatening to take Irene’s victims hostage.


Mr. Cantor’s critics have been quick to accuse him of hypocrisy, and with good reason. After all, he and his Republican colleagues showed no comparable interest in paying for the Bush administration’s huge unfunded initiatives. In particular, they did nothing to offset the cost of the Iraq war, which now stands at $800 billion and counting.


And it turns out that in 2004, when his home state of Virginia was struck by Tropical Storm Gaston, Mr. Cantor voted against a bill that would have required the same pay-as-you-go rule that he now advocates.


But, as I see it, hypocrisy is a secondary issue here. The primary issue should be the extraordinary nihilism now on display by Mr. Cantor and his colleagues — their willingness to flout all the usual conventions of fair play and, well, decency in order to get what they want.


Not long ago, a political party seeking to change U.S. policy would try to achieve that goal by building popular support for its ideas, then implementing those ideas through legislation. That, after all, is how our political system was designed to work.


But today’s G.O.P. has decided to bypass all that and go for a quicker route. Never mind getting enough votes to pass legislation; it gets what it wants by threatening to hurt America if its demands aren’t met. That’s what happened with the debt-ceiling fight, and now it’s what’s happening over disaster aid. In effect, Mr. Cantor and his allies are threatening to take hurricane victims hostage, using their suffering as a bargaining chip.


Of course, Mr. Cantor would have you believe that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. But that’s no more than a cover story.


Should disaster aid, as a matter of sound public finance, be offset by immediate cuts in other spending? No. The time-honored principle, backed by economists right and left, is that temporary bursts of spending — which usually arise when there’s a war to fight, but can also arise from other causes, including financial crises and natural disasters — are a good reason to run temporary budget deficits. Rather than imposing sharp cuts in other spending or sharply raising taxes, governments can and should spread the burden over time, borrowing now and repaying gradually via a combination of lower spending and higher taxes.


But can the U.S. government borrow to pay for disaster aid? Isn’t the government broke? Yes, it can, and, no, it isn’t. America has a long-run deficit problem, which should be met with long-run budget measures. But it’s having no problem at all borrowing to pay for current expenses. Moreover, it’s able to borrow funds at extremely low interest rates. Notably, right now the interest rate on the benchmark 10-year U.S. government bond is only slightly more than half what it was in 2004 when Mr. Cantor felt that it wasn’t necessary to pay for disaster relief.


So the claim that fiscal responsibility requires immediate spending cuts to offset the cost of disaster relief is just wrong, in both theory and practice. As I said, it’s just a cover story for the real game being played here.


Now, Mr. Cantor may end up backing down on this one, if only because several of the hard-hit states have Republican governors, who want and need aid soon, without strings attached. But that won’t put an end to the larger issue: What will happen to America now that people like Mr. Cantor are calling the shots for one of its two major political parties?


And, yes, I mean one of our parties. There are plenty of bad things to be said about the Democrats, who have their fair share of cynics and careerists. There may even be Democrats in Congress who would be as willing as Mr. Cantor to advance their goals through sabotage and blackmail (although I can’t think of any). But, if they exist, they aren’t in important leadership positions. Mr. Cantor is. And that should worry anyone who cares about our nation’s future.

More Mean-Spirited Nonsense From GOP

It's pretty obvious to anyone that the Republicans love rich people. When the rich bankers were in trouble during the Bush administration they came up with $700 billion to bail them out. They had help from Democrats on that, but their giveaways to the rich didn't end there. They helped Bush give an unneeded tax cut to the rich that ballooned the deficit, and then held small tax cuts for other Americans hostage to force a continuation of the huge tax cuts for the rich. They are now protecting subsidies for corporations (the same corporations that are making record profits) and demanding more tax cuts for the rich.

But it's only the rich that Republicans are willing to help. They have shown they want to hurt the elderly by abolishing Medicare and cutting benefits for Social Security. They would hurt children by abolishing the Dept. of Education and cutting Food Stamps (which feed over 20% of America's children). They would hurt workers by wanting to abolish work safety rules, unions,  and unemployment insurance, while continuing to encourage the outsourcing of American jobs. They would hurt the sick by repealing health care reform and destroying Medicaid. And they would hurt all Americans by abolishing the EPA and allowing corporations  to pollute our water and air.

Those things were already known, but now it seems like the Republicans want to remove any doubt anyone might have about their hatred for the common man. They have now decided that the government can't afford to help disaster victims (even though they think there's plenty of money for give-aways to the rich). Some, like Ron Paul, want to abolish FEMA altogether. Others want to hold disaster victims hostage so they can force further budget cuts.

Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) and other House Republican leaders are threatening to withhold disaster funding for the recent victims of Hurricane Irene unless Democrats agree to further budget cuts. And what do they want to cut. First they want to cut FEMA funding by 6% overall. Then they want to slash funding to equip and train first responders by 40% (on top of the 19% they have already cut).

These Republicans must have agreed with President Bush that "Brownie" did "a heck of a job" with the delayed and disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, because the kind of cuts they are proposing would help to insure that the federal response to future disasters would also be late and ineffective.

Surely they don't think they have the support of the American people for this kind of mean-spirited action. Americans have never begrudged helping their fellow citizens who are victims of a natural (or man-made) disaster. They know that they are not only their brother's keeper, but they may need that same kind of help some day. There are all sorts of disasters and no part of the country is immune from all of them.

And it gets even crazier. They also want to cut the funding for hurricane hunter flights from $29 million to $17 million (about 40%). This would make it much harder for the National Weather Service to predict the ferocity and direction of an impending hurricane in the future. The nutty part of this proposal is the fact that this modest expenditure actually saves America much more money than it costs. Think Progress says:

Since it costs $1 million per coastal mile for evacuation and preparation when a storm approaches, every mile that is not evacuated yields substantial savings for taxpayers. Estimates put the savings due to monitoring flights at $100-$150 million per storm, far outstripping the $29 million budget dedicated to the hurricane hunters.

Once again I am left to wonder, why do the Republicans hate ordinary Americans -- and common sense?

Would Republicans Really Refuse To Help Joplin ?

I'm sure you probably know by know that an F5 tornado (the most powerful rating) hit the community of Joplin, Missouri. So far, the death toll due to the twister rests at 125 people and the number of the injured is over 900 people. It is one of the deadliest tornadoes to ever strike in the United States.

But what you may not know is that House Republicans are using the disaster as an excuse to play politics. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia) declared after the disaster that there would be no help for the tornado-ravaged city unless Congress could cut some government program to make up for it.

It has been obvious for a while now that Republicans don't care about ordinary Americans. They have proposed cutting programs that help hurting Americans like Social Security benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, education, family planning & women's health, Medicaid, and even gone so far as voting to abolish Medicare for the elderly. But holding disaster relief for the people of Joplin as hostage to their budget-cutting frenzy is a new low in mean-spirited politics.

The Republicans want to cut $1.5 billion from the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program at the Department of Energy (although they would only give 2/3 of that money to FEMA to help in Joplin). This program is to help develop clean-energy automobiles -- cars that would help to stop global climate change, which very likely is the cause of the Joplin tornado. That's not irony -- that's just mean and stupid. Note -- these same politicians refused to remove the subsidies from Big Oil (which would have been more money in the government's pocket and actually helped the climate).

Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-Missouri) said, "When you talk about cutting clean energy programs versus cutting subsidies for big oil, let's have that debate here in Washington. But not on the backs of the people of Joplin."

The Republicans will probably get away with this horrible game they are playing with the lives of the people of Joplin. But I am left to wonder, what if the Senate refused to cut the money from that program and voted to give FEMA the money anyway? Would these Republicans vote to not help the people of Joplin?

Is there any bottom to how low the Republicans will stoop to find the money to give their corporate masters more tax cuts (while holding hurting Americans hostage to those budget cuts)?

Is FEMA Ready ?

Three years ago, George Bush and the Republicans failed miserably in their response to Hurricane Katrina (and a few weeks later to Hurricane Rita). FEMA and other government agencies were not ready for the disaster, and their slowness to adequately respond make it even worse than it should have been.

Now another hurricane is heading for the same area. Hurricane Gustav is on track to hit the Louisiana coast as a catagory 3 storm late Monday or early Tuesday. Could we have a replay of three years ago? Is Bush paying attention? Is FEMA ready?

They had better be ready. They have had three years to study their mistakes and make things right. Doing it right this time may not help in the coming election, because after all, people really expect FEMA and other government agencies to be ready and be competent. But screwing it up again could be disastrous to any remaining Republican hopes in the coming election.

If I were John McCain, I think I'd be on the phone to the White House right now. He really can't afford for Bush to drop the ball again. The Gulf Coast and New Orleans can't afford it either.

UPDATE -- Gustav is now a catagory 4 hurricane, and could easily be a catagorey 5 by the time it hits land.

FEMA Protects Employees - Not Disaster Victims

Once again, the agency (FEMA) that is supposed to help victims of disasters shows that it really doesn't care for their welfare. FEMA has about 48,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina living in trailer houses -- over 10,000 in Mississippi and more than 37,000 in Louisiana.

The problem is that these trailer houses have been found to have high levels of the chemical formaldehyde in them. Formaldehyde causes respiratory problems and is believed to be a carcinogen. The problem is so bad that FEMA has ordered its employees not to even enter the thousands of trailer houses that are empty because they pose a health risk.

But while they won't let their employees enter the empty trailers, they don't seem to mind that they have 48,000 victims living in the same kind of trailer houses. A spokesman for FEMA said the empty trailers pose a risk because they have been shut up.

I don't believe that, and neither does Senator Landrieu. She said, "I don't really buy that argument. It makes no sense, in that most of these (occupied) trailers are closed up and locked during the day".

Making matters even worse, FEMA has once again put off testing the occupied trailers, even though they have known about this problem for months. They just don't seem to care that they may be seriously damaging the health of these victims -- the same people they are supposed to be helping and protecting.

FEMA tried to tell us during the California fires that they have reformed and are now doing a better job. Obviously, that is not true. They only seem to do well when the victims are middle and upper class whites. Minorities and the poor must still suffer at the hands of FEMA.

FEMA Determined To Do The Wrong Thing

It's not bad enough that FEMA totally bungled the Hurricane Katrina and Rita disasters, and then put many of the survivors into life-threatening trailers reeking of formaldehyde. They now seem determined to make a mess of the recent flood disasters.

A reasonable person would think that after their recent humiliating screw-ups, FEMA would want to redouble their efforts to help those in need and salvage what's left of their reputation. But I guess that's just wishful thinking on my part. They seem determined to continue screwing up.

Two non-profit organizations, Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRGLA) and ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), have filed suit against FEMA for denying disaster victims easy access to legal help.

For the last 10 years, TRGLA has had access to FEMA disaster recovery centers. They don't approach anyone, but simply set up a booth and answer questions about legal rights for anyone who approaches them with an inquiry. But FEMA has decided to deny access to the centers to TRGLA recently.

In a way, I don't blame FEMA for denying victims easy access to legal help. If I was as incompetent as FEMA seems to be, I don't think I would want my victims knowing they have legal rights either.

But FEMA is not set up to harm disaster victims. They are supposed to be helping them. They seem to have forgotten that part of their job.

If FEMA would just concentrate on helping victims, they wouldn't have to be afraid of non-profit attorneys informing people of their legal rights. But instead of correcting their mistakes and doing a better job, FEMA seems to be far more interested in hiding their shortcomings.

This not just another Republican mess we can shake our heads at, and wait for a Democrat to get into office and fix. Disasters don't wait for anyone, and when they strike we need a competent and open organization that can respond quickly and appropriately.

America needs FEMA to care more about helping victims than covering up its mistakes. Is there any chance of that happening soon?

FEMA Still Harming Katrina Survivors

I can remember when FEMA was one of the most respected agencies of the federal government. We all knew that wherever disaster struck in our country, FEMA would be there to take care of the situation and lend a helping hand to those in need. But that was before Bush was elected and placed his sycophants in the agency's leadership positions.

Their total and utter incompetence was exposed when Katrina struck New Orleans. Even though there were repeated warnings of the impending disaster, FEMA was caught totally unprepared. They finally arrived far too late with far too little and generally screwed up what little help they were able to offer. Even Republicans were embarrassed by the agency's shortcomings.

There was some hope that after the humiliating Katrina debacle, the agency would make necessary changes to restore its competence and its good name. But those hopes were in vain.

FEMA finally did provide 120,000 trailer houses to the Katrina survivors, but even this turns out to be a blunder. Many of these trailers were inundated with formaldehyde fumes. When people complained of the fumes, FEMA's answer was to tell them to open all the doors and windows. Anyone who's experienced a southern summer knows this is not a real option -- air conditioning is a necessity in these stuffy trailers.

Breathing formaldehyde fumes can cause respiratory problems and even cancer in high doses. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health requires workers to use respirators if they work in conditions where there are 0.016 parts per million of formaldehyde.

FEMA tested one trailer after hearing many complaints. They found 1.2 parts per million! Did they warn these thousands of survivors that they were in danger and immediately test all the trailers, removing those who were being dangerously exposed?

That's what they should have done, but it's not what they did. No, they stopped the testing on advice of their lawyers (it might provide legal liability problems) and tried to hide the testing results. Now it looks like some people have died and many others were injured as a result of living in this toxic environment.

As far as I'm concerned, this goes beyond legal liability. The agency that's supposed to help and protect victims of disasters actually put them in mortal danger and then tried to hide and cover-up that fact. This was a criminal act and should be prosecuted as such.

Good job, Brownie!