FEMA trailers found toxic

Agency to hasten relocation of hurricane victims

FEMA travel trailers such as this one in New Orleans have been tested to determine formaldehyde levels. The tests found toxic levels in hundreds of them, US health officials said. (File/Associated Press)

NEW YORK - The federal government pledged yesterday to intensify its efforts to move Gulf Coast hurricane victims out of trailers and into apartments or hotels after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that many trailers were contaminated with high levels of formaldehyde.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which issued about 144,000 trailers to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, has been widely criticized for its slow response to extensive evidence that many trailers contain unsafe levels of formaldehyde, an industrial chemical classified as a probable carcinogen.

About 38,000 families are still living in the trailers and mobile homes, federal officials said yesterday at a news briefing, including more than 7,000 in trailer parks that FEMA had already vowed to close by May, before hurricane season begins again along the Gulf. Most of the other trailers are parked next to flooded houses that families are trying to repair.

FEMA will now hasten to move families living in trailers into apartments or, if necessary, into hotels, said R. David Paulison, the administrator of the agency.

But many details of the new effort remain unclear. For example, the agency has not yet decided whether to force out people who have the trailers parked on their own property. Nor does the agency have a program to help families that have incurred medical bills because of formaldehyde exposure, Paulison said, adding that the agency would look into that.

But the agency appears determined not to repeat its mistakes with the tinny white trailers, which have become an emblem of government incompetence and inadequacy in New Orleans and Mississippi.

"We will not ever use trailers again," Paulison said, though larger mobile homes might still be used for temporary housing.

But some mobile homes in the Gulf Coast produced high formaldehyde levels, Paulison said, and it was unclear yesterday how FEMA would house victims of future disasters.

More than 7,000 families have asked to leave their trailers because of concerns about formaldehyde, according to FEMA; not quite half of them have moved into hotels or apartments.