How much can FEMA get done in 19 months? It can not test trailers – occupied trailers – for formaldehyde, which it’s known about for that long.

Ralph Blumenthal follows up on this in the October 18th editions of The New York Times.

Three months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency halted the sale of travel trailers to survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita over possible risks from formaldehyde and promised a health study, none of the 56,000 occupied units have been tested.

“It is inexcusable that 19 months after the first questions were raised, testing of occupied trailers has yet to begin,” – Representative Henry A. Waxman.

“It is inexcusable that 19 months after the first questions were raised, testing of occupied trailers has yet to begin,” said Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

At a Congressional hearing on the trailers in July, R. David Paulison, FEMA’s administrator, said the agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “are scheduled to begin Phase 1 of the study in the Gulf Coast next week.”

But the first teams did not reach New Orleans and Mississippi until the end of September, and then began only a baseline assessment of unoccupied trailers, laying the groundwork for the full-scale study, said a C.D.C. spokeswoman in Atlanta, Bernadette Burden.

One result of the delay in the testing is that the agency has postponed a plan to charge rent on the trailers beginning in March. The rent was intended to encourage people displaced by the hurricanes to move into nonsubsidized housing.

Before sales were halted over the safety questions, 10,839 of the trailers were auctioned off by the General Services Administration and 819 more were sold directly to occupants by the emergency agency from July 2006 to July 2007, raising potential liability issues.

“It’s different now,” an agency spokeswoman, Mary Margaret Walker, said. “The idea of asking people to pay rent for units with health concerns doesn’t seem to make sense.” She said the change had not been announced.

This week, the agency announced a program of relocation subsidies, up to $4,000 a household, to encourage storm victims to return home to the Gulf states or seek permanent housing elsewhere.

But problems with the trailers have dealt further setbacks to self-sufficiency efforts: 4,110 people living in FEMA trailers have asked to be relocated because of health concerns, the agency said. Among these, 771 have been moved to alternative housing, 546 have been given rent subsidies to live elsewhere and 83 have been moved back into hotels and motels at government expense.

The mixed signals have confounded storm victims like Tom and Linda Pieri of Livingston, Tex., who have spent the last 21 months with their two dogs and, on occasion, their grown son, in a 12-by-32 foot Mallard trailer that the agency provided after their East Texas house was wrecked by Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Disabled and living on Social Security, the Pieris said they had made “a handshake deal” to buy their trailer for $300 in August, only to have FEMA withdraw the offer, leaving them facing ruinous rent charges — or so they feared.

The program that the emergency agency now says it has withdrawn would have charged the Pieris $50 a month in March, $100 in April and $50 more each month until the rent hit a ceiling of $600 a month. The charges would have varied according to the occupants’ means. But Mr. Pieri, 60, a former prison laundry manager injured in a work accident in 2001, said the rent would have been prohibitive on the couple’s combined Social Security payments of $1,700 a month.

“I just want to keep a roof over my head, and my wife’s head,” he said.

At the height of relief efforts after the 2005 storms, the emergency agency was providing 134,502 trailers of various sizes up to mobile homes.

The number of trailers still deployed was 55,785, Ms. Walker said. The agency paid about $10,000 each for the trailers, from eight manufacturers, she said.

Kathy Munson, a spokeswoman for one of the suppliers, Fleetwood Enterprises in Riverside, Calif., said dealers commonly aired out the trailers before selling them, which dissipated the formaldehyde. “FEMA ordered so many, they were at staging areas all sealed up and not aired out, and that causes fumes to get worse,” Ms. Munson said.

Charles Green, a C.D.C. spokesman, said that testing was expected to start at the end of this month or early November in at least 300 occupied trailers in Mississippi and 300 in Louisiana. Teams will spend about an hour in each trailer using a portable pump to take air samples. The occupants would also be asked questions about pets, smoking habits and the use of pesticides.

The Environmental Protection Agency lists formaldehyde as a colorless, pungent gas released by building materials and household items, including paint, draperies and pressed wood products. It can cause burning of the eyes, nausea and asthma attacks. It has been shown to cause cancer in animals and, the environmental agency said, “may cause cancer in humans.”

Formaldehyde has become a special concern in trailers, especially when they are new and unventilated, Mr. Paulison told the House oversight committee. The Department of Housing and Urban Development sets formaldehyde limits in manufactured housing, but not trailers.

The Pieris said formaldehyde was not of great concern. Both chain-smoke cigarettes despite asthma and pulmonary problems and, in Mrs. Pieri’s case, breast cancer and a mastectomy several years ago. “I know, we’re dumb,” Mr. Pieri said, adding that he had tried every possible anti-tobacco treatment.

In any case, he said, they were committed to keeping their trailer. Their house, which they bought for $27,000 in 2000 with $1,000 down and a mortgage of $301 a month, needed $32,000 in repairs, Mr. Pieri said, and the $5,300 FEMA had provided was barely enough to fix the roof.

FEMA offered them $411 a month to find housing elsewhere but the cheapest apartment in the area was $600, he said.

“Even if I can find another place,” he said, looking at his damaged house spilling moldy furniture and clothes, “everything we own is right there.”

Stalled Health Tests Leave Storm Trailers in Limbo – New York Times