Factoid: Who's Stupidly Not Getting Flood Insurance?

A lot of the commenters who seem indisposed to sympathize with the plight of New Orleans call the citizens of that community dumb or careless for living in such a location. Yet, a New York Times story reports that:

A...study by the RAND Corporation, a research group, concluded that only about half of homeowners living in high-risk flood zones throughout the nation had flood insurance policies.

Compare this with the figures in this New Yorker blog post by the splendid reporter Dan Baum:

According to an article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune from March 19, 2006, sixty-seven per cent of New Orleanians carried flood insurance on their houses, compared with a national rate of just five per cent

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Depends on What the Meaning of Deceive Is

There's yet more on FEMA's hilarious defense that its fake press conference was not intended to deceive.

The former director of external affairs for FEMA, John P. Philbin, penned a letter to the editor of the Washington Post today decrying an editorial about the fake presser (thanks to TPM Reader WF for the link). Philbin, who left the agency shortly after the fake presser and seems to have lost a prospective job at the Directorate of National Intelligence because of it, writes:

Here is what happened: There was pressure to inform the public quickly, and the staff, exhausted from round-the-clock duty, dropped the ball on announcing the news briefing. I was busy with meetings and unaware before the briefing that reporters had not been given adequate time to arrive and that the phone line for reporters was "listen only." The staff tried to salvage the event by asking the kinds of questions they had been fielding that morning. . . .
Because I was in charge, I take responsibility for letting this hastily planned briefing go forward.

However, neither I nor anyone on the staff is guilty of any attempt to deceive.


I refer you again to the picture CBS scrounged up today. Go take a look. It's a hilarious example of no intent to deceive.

Lesson: Work for FEMA, Don't Get Helped by It

The sad comedy-drama of the FEMA trailers sent to the Gulf Coast, New Orleans and Mississippi alike, just got a new chapter. These trailers, which have been home to hurricane and flood victims for a year and a half now in thousands of cases, have been long since known not to have been put through the "curing" process (due to rushed FEMA orders) that ventilates out the toxic formaldehyde fumes. This year, FEMA had finally agreed to have the trailers tested for the fumes, although the testing, by the Centers for Disease Control, has been repeatedly postponed.

Friday's Washington Post, following up a report by CBS, adds the latest twist: FEMA prohibits its own employees from entering the same trailers in agency storage. But, lest you think that's a double standard, FEMA head David Paulison demurs:


Paulison said there is no double standard for Katrina survivors and FEMA employees. Instead, he said, the difference is between trailers that have been aired out by occupants and those sealed in storage. A new FEMA memo states that the latter be ventilated by forced-air pump for 30 minutes before any entry by workers, Knocke said.

"Aired out by occupants"? Herein may lie a clue to the postponements. Testing the trailers in the heat midsummer, when the vehicles' windows are shut and the AC is on, might result in higher, even dangerous, levels of the noxious fumes than after Thanksgiving, when trailer inhabitants may actually have had the windows open for a few weeks. Never too late to let the evidence blow away.

FEMA Protecting Its Employees, Not Evacuees

There are still 50,000 families forced to live in FEMA trailers ever since Hurricane Katrina. Trailers in which the levels of formaldehyde present in the air are so high, CBS has obtained emails that indicate the agency is prohibiting its employees from even briefly stepping inside them, and despite agency claims “that it is still working on the formaldehyde problem,” it isn’t.

In July the head of the agency told Congress he was working quickly to deal with the toxic formaldehyde issue.

“FEMA and the CDC are scheduled to begin Phase One of a study in the Gulf Coast within the next few weeks,” said FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison.
Now FEMA says the study has been halted - not a single trailer tested.

The stated reason: the agency says it needs to identify “action levels for responding to the results.”

In other words, when FEMA finds high levels of the toxic fumes, the agency still doesn’t know what to do about it.

Sadly, this is exactly what we can expect as long as the party that doesn’t believe in government is heading our government. Ever since Ronald Reagan’s inaugural speech when he declared “Government isn’t the solution; it is the problem,” Republicans could hardly have done more to make sure it is the case.