Katrina Trailers Attack
They’re baaaack. The creepy creatures from Hurricane Katrina are reappearing on the Gulf Coast, having been raised from the dead.
These creatures are the infamous contaminated trailers that federal emergency officials bought and set up in 2005 for tens of thousands of families who had lost their homes in the devastating storm. Unfortunately, the house trailers turned out to reek of formaldehyde – a toxic industrial preservative that can cause such unpleasantness as nasal cancer and possibly leukemia. The formaldehyde levels were so high that the government banned the trailers from ever again being used to house people.
Good! However, rather than destroying these contaminated creatures, the emergency agency decided to sell them in 2006, and more than 100,000 of them went to various buyers in public auctions. Each buyer was to inform any subsequent owners of the housing ban, and a formaldehyde warning label had to be prominently and permanently attached to the trailers.
But now they’re cropping up on the Gulf Coast again – not as tool sheds or some such, but as housing for workers involved in the cleanup of BP‘s oil disaster. Yes, many of the trailers still reek of the toxic preservative, and, no, many of the workers living in them were not informed of any danger – nor are the required warning labels still attached.
“These are perfectly good trailers,” asserts one contractor who’s selling them to workers who brought their families with them to the coast. “You know that new car smell?” asks the contractor. “Well, that’s formaldehyde, too. It’s not a big deal,” he says. Of course, he and his family aren’t living in one.
Meanwhile, federal health authorities haven’t even started the study they promised in 2006 on the health dangers faced by children who live in the trailers. So the disaster on the coast just keeps creeping along.
Averting the ‘Long Depression’
The most moronic oxymoron I’ve ever heard is the one being cheerfully bandied about by economists as they tell us that the Great Recession of 2008-2009 is over, exulting that we’re presently experiencing a “jobless recovery.”
I don’t see how their minds can put those two words together without having their heads explode! Excuse me, Einsteins, but there’s no such thing. You can spin your data ’til the cows come home, but an economy that has nearly 20% of the work force either unemployed or underemployed, that has no plan for replacing the 8 million jobs we lost in the last two years, that is now proceeding with mass layoffs of such essential workers as teachers and firefighters, and that is willing to accept poverty pay as the new American normal is not by any stretch of the imagination a recovery.
Au contraire, buckaroos. The reality we face is the darkening shadow of what economist Paul Krugman is frankly calling a “Long Depression.” As happened in a similar decline in the 1870s, those at the top will prosper and take an even larger share of the wealth we all produce, while the majority see declining income and rising poverty.
There is, of course, a way to avert this. It’s called leadership. The way out is to enlist our grassroots people in an all-out “Rebuild America” campaign. Stop talking about a green economy and put Americans to work building it. Also, let’s lead the world in putting high-speed Internet in every home and school. And our crucial national infrastructure, from bridges to parks, is in a sorry state – let’s go to work to repair and improve these public resources.
Destiny calls, but our leaders are either self-absorbed, clueless, or cowardly. So, we must lead. One place to start is the Blue Green Alliance: www.bluegreenalliance.org.
This article appears in July 23 • 2010.