The Federal Emergency Management Agency mishandled complaints about potential toxins in temporary trailers for Gulf Coast hurricane victims because agency lawyers were concerned about liability, a House committee charged Thursday…. The committee released hundreds of pages of internal FEMA e-mails, obtained by subpoena, showing that agency lawyers ordered workers not to test the levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde in the 120,000 trailers purchased to house displaced residents. The lawyers felt such testing 'would imply FEMA's ownership of the issue,' according to an e-mail on June 16, 2006. (USA Today, Friday)
Killing with kindness.
FEE Timely Classic
Mitigating Disaster: Abolish FEMA and Let Gas Prices Rise (pdf) by Dwight R. Lee