Safety Lapses Raised Risks In Trailers for Katrina Victims

Nicole Esposito says her daughters Alyssa, 16 months, above, and Alexa, 4, developed health problems while the family lived in a FEMA trailer. (By Nikki Kahn -- The Washington Post)
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A price has already been paid by trailer residents such as Nicole Esposito, 25, a full-time warehouse worker in Slidell, La. She first noticed her toddler's symptoms after moving into a FEMA trailer in April 2006: an endless series of coughs, colds, sinus infections, earaches and pink, crusty eyes. Treatments and antibiotics had no effect, and soon Alexa, now 4, and later her newborn sister, Alyssa, now 16 months old, regularly needed atomizers to help them breathe.

Last August, doctors said they suspected the cause was exposure to formaldehyde, and told the single mother to leave her trailer at once. "My girls, they could have all these problems the rest of their lives," Esposito said, her voice breaking, ". . . and the doctors still don't know any more."

Hasty Decisions

On Sept. 4, 2005, one week after the storm, Paulison's predecessor, Michael D. Brown, declared that FEMA was "pulling out the stops" to find housing for 237,000 Katrina evacuees who were staying in shelters, the largest internal displacement of Americans since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

The price of haste was, inevitably, waste. FEMA bought $762 million worth of mobile homes, most of them unusable in coastal flood zones under FEMA rules because they could not be moved quickly in case of another storm. After an intervention by then-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), FEMA spent $249 million to lease cruise ship cabins, which evacuees largely refused to use.

FEMA bought 21,300 mobile homes and 33,100 trailers off dealers' lots for $1.4 billion using one page of specifications, according to interviews and documents provided by the agency. It paid manufacturers $931 million to produce an additional 76,800 trailers using eight pages of custom requirements, again with limited safety standards and no mention of formaldehyde.

Paulison said FEMA incorporated applicable federal codes in ordering the mobile homes. Regarding trailers, which are not subject to federal regulation, those sold to the public and to FEMA in the past produced few complaints, he said. "We bought them in good faith, just like we have for the last 20 years."

The largest housing orders were filled by Fleetwood Enterprises and Gulf Stream Coach. FEMA's $520 million order from Gulf Stream, the largest from any builder, exceeded the company's reported 2004 recreational vehicle sales and was its first direct federal contract.

Formaldehyde is a colorless gas present at background levels in nature but emitted from the resins and glues used in many construction components, including particleboard flooring, plywood wall panels, composite wood cabinets and laminated countertops. Emissions are greatest in warm weather and when trailers are newly constructed, the conditions experienced by Katrina victims on the Gulf Coast.

But manufacturers did not discuss, nor did FEMA ask, if it would be safe to house evacuees in trailers for 18 months or more with such materials. "They did not," Paulison said. "I don't think they were asked, either."

A spokeswoman for Fleetwood, based in Riverside, Calif., whose subsidiaries produced 10,600 trailers and 3,000 mobile homes for FEMA, said the company did not discuss the formaldehyde issue with the agency. "You know, when something hasn't been a problem, you often don't suddenly consider that it will be. I don't believe that anybody expected these people to stay in the trailers as long as people have stayed in them," Kathy Munson said.

Fleetwood said its trailers, which were built with only higher-quality, low-emitting wood products that the company said met federal standards for mobile homes, had the lowest levels of formaldehyde, with only 10 percent exceeding the CDC benchmark. Gulf Stream's trailers had the highest levels, with more than 50 percent topping the CDC standard.

Gulf Stream's lawyers said in a letter to congressional investigators that the company mostly met a "longstanding policy" to buy components that comply with mobile home standards, but it acknowledged exceptions. They said the firm "did not conduct any testing on components or parts" but instead "relied on the representations" of its suppliers about their quality.