The federal government is not immune from lawsuits claiming many Gulf Coast hurricane victims were exposed to potentially dangerous fumes while living in trailers it provided, a federal judge ruled on Friday.
US District Judge Kurt Engelhardt cited evidence that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) delayed investigating complaints about formaldehyde levels in its trailers because it might be held legally responsible. The preservative can cause breathing problems and is classified as a carcinogen.
Engelhardt said FEMA learned of the formaldehyde concerns around March 2006, several months after Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, but responded by “sticking their heads in the sand” rather than ordering air-quality tests.
“Indeed, the evidence shows that FEMA initially ignored the potential formaldehyde problem and neglected to conduct testing in fear that such testing would ‘imply FEMA’s ownership of the issue,’” he wrote in his 48-page ruling.
A government attorney said the agency’s decisions in responding to a disaster, including its use of travel trailers, are legally protected from “judicial second-guessing.”
Engelhardt, however, said ignoring potential health problems associated with FEMA trailers wouldn’t be a “permissible exercise of policy judgment.”
Lawyers for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, also in 2005, also accused FEMA of negligence for using trailers as long-term shelter after the storms, but Engelhardt said the government is shielded from liability for that decision.
“Taking into account the urgency of the situation following what has been called the most destructive natural disaster in our nation’s history,” the judge wrote, “this court declines to partake in ‘judicial second-guessing’ of FEMA’s discretionary decision” to use the trailers.
Roughly 800 storm victims are named as plaintiffs.
Government scientists tested the air quality in the trailers, showing average formaldehyde levels five times higher than what people are exposed to in most modern homes.
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