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RESERVATIONS TO GET FEMA TRAILERS July 25, 2007 Susan Bates

According to an article in the Rapid City Journal, the Federal Government has announced plans to "give" 2000 unused FEMA trailers to needy Native Americans who live on reservations. It is not known at this time which reservations will get the mostly 14 x 70 three bedroom fully furnished mobile homes, but it is presumed that the majority will go to Pine Ridge, the Rosebud and other northern reservations. The tribes will be responsible for paying the costs to move the trailers and setting them up. According to a 2003 study by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an estimated 90,000 American Indian families live in substandard homes and the families who get the FEMA gift trailers, will still live in substandard homes. For almost 2 years, tens of thousands of these trailers have sat unoccupied, gathering mold in fields in Arkansas and Texas while the people they were built for struggle to rebuild their lives after hurricanes Rita and Katrina slammed the gulf Coast. Maybe that is a good thing though, since a high percentage of those who did get FEMA trailers got sick from the excessive formaldehyde levels present in the hastily (and shoddily) constructed mobile units. When the Sierra Club, concerned about the reports of formaldehyde caused illnesses being reported, tested trailers in Alabama they found that 83-94% of them contained formaldehyde levels far above EPA and OSHA recommended workplace limits of 0.10 parts per million. Varying reports state that the gas levels emitted by the formaldehyde in the contaminated trailers ranged from 3 to 1,000 times above the acceptable EPA limits. According to a report by Dan Rather which aired on HD-TV, FEMA knew about the danger posed by living in the contaminated units in October 2005, but chose to ignore the information. OSHA tested the trailers to insure employees safety and found new units in four county FEMA staging areas to have toxicity levels 20 times above government standards just in the air OUTSIDE the trailers. Two employees who appeared on the televised interview said that FEMA not only knew about the problem, but had warned them to remain silent. "In June, 2007, the Louisiana Advocate News reported that a class-action lawsuit had been filed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana Federal Court which claims that "hundreds of thousands" of people in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama may have been exposed to dangerously high concentrations of carcinogenic formaldehyde fumes with no recourse or viable solution provided by FEMA. And the problems mount daily for those who have no choice but to live in toxic trailers. Who are these people that we hire to run our country? What are the requirements to become head of an agency responsible for spending tax payer money and taking care of people's needs? Do they have to eat 2 bowls of "Stupid" every morning? I heard on the news the other night that FEMA had finally dumped 85 million pounds of ice that the agency bought for hurricane victims in 2005. Evidently they chose to truck it all over the nation for months and then put it in cold storage while people's food rotted on the Gulf Coast. And worse than that is the fact that the FDA plans to close down 7 of its 13 food testing labs at a time when we have been subjected to poisoned pet food, toothpaste containing anti-freeze, dumplings puffed up with cardboard, fish so full of mercury and drugs that the Chinese who export them won't eat it and fruits and veggies infected with salmonella and e-coli. Since food importers have learned how to avoid detection anyway, I guess we might as well eliminate over half of our capability to protect ourselves. The money saved can be spent on more ice. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think this idea of Big Central Government is working... Perhaps our ancestors weren't as "educated" as folks are today, but our small bands and tribes with their individual Chiefs, along with the Clans and Clan Mothers, saw to it that all of their People's needs were met. If a leader wasn't doing a good job, he/she was replaced with one who would and life continued. Some people who have contacted me are worried that this represents a new wave of genocide against our People. But I doubt if any one up north will die of formaldehyde poisoning. They'll freeze to death long before that happens. <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop. P. J. O'Rourke

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