Katrina: FEMA Is Still Doing A Heckuva Job

Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast while George Bush played the guitar, this administration continues to screw over the victims however and whenever they can:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has suppressed warnings from its own Gulf coast field workers since the middle of 2006 about suspected health problems that may be linked to elevated levels of formaldehyde gas released in FEMA-provided trailers, lawmakers said today.

At a hearing this morning of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, investigators released internal e-mails indicating that FEMA lawyers rejected environmental testing out of fear that the agency would then become legally liable if health problems emerged among as many as 120,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina who lived in trailers.

FEMA's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing," because this "would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue,"  [...]

Another FEMA attorney on June 15 advised, "[d]o not initiate any testing until we give the OK. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman called this "sickening."  He is the master of understatement.

Update:  To watch video highlights (or lowlights, as the case may be) of the hearing, go here.