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Starting from last May, CBS has owned the FEMA trailer story. Armen Keteyian launched an Investigation into the formaldehyde fumes that turn their indoor air toxic. The emergency housing is still used by some 38,000 families along the Gulf Coast, displaced by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005. Keteyian was not around for the denouement as the Centers for Disease Control published its test results that the carcinogenic fumes were 35 times heavier in the trailers than in new homes. His colleague Byron Pitts covered the news that the trailer dwellers will be relocated, as did Ron Mott on NBC and David Kerley (embargoed link) on ABC.
ABC's Kerley called it a "colossal and expensive embarrassment." The trailers had been used in the first place to get evacuees "out of more expensive hotels and motels." So with this new health warning, where will they go to now? Motels and hotels, was FEMA's reply. "Whatever housing is available is typically very expensive," NBC's Mott pointed out from New Orleans. CBS' Pitts looked at the three hardest hit coastal counties of Mississippi where 6,000 families are housed in trailers. Together their stock of available apartments for rent totals 300 units.
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