Word: fema
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...bloody noses started almost immediately. Paul Stewart, a former police officer and first lieutenant in the U.S. Army, completely lost his home when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. That December, the Federal Emergency and Management Agency (FEMA) gave Stewart and his wife a trailer to live in. The first night they slept in it, she woke up with blood coming out of her nose. Then he started developing troubling respiratory symptoms - burning eyes, coughing, a constantly scratchy throat. One morning, they awoke to find CiCi, their pet cockatiel, half-dead. All the symptoms pointed to formaldehyde...
Even so, luck may have played the largest role in protecting Chertoff's job. He was able to sidestep the firestorm after Katrina largely because there was a fall guy, FEMA chief Michael Brown, to take the heat. Without Brown, it could have been Chertoff's head that rolled. In addition, the U.S. hasn't been attacked since 9/11. Most experts acknowledge that even with the best security preparations, there's still a risk of attack. Our number hasn't come up again since Chertoff took office...
...that point was a grim one, made with a mixture of anger and exasperation and a plea for more federal help. Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina cut its destructive path through the Gulf Coast, the NOPD has found little relief. Six FEMA trailers make up its headquarters. The traffic department and SWAT team also call several double-wide units home. Seventy-two officers have left the force this year. Of the 1,200 that remain (down from 1741 before the storm), there is only a single fingerprint examiner and only one expert firearm examiner. This year, the deadliest city...
...Orleans campus. The resources that most major cities take for granted just haven't existed for the past 22 months. And according to Cannatella, it's not just the infrastructure-it's the manpower. Several hundred of his officers still live in temporary housing. "They live in FEMA trailers, they come to work in a FEMA trailer, and they patrol FEMA trailers," said Cannatella. "It's demoralizing. We say FEMA trailer like it's something specially built...
...vests. Robert Stellingworth, president of the non-profit New Orleans Police and Justice Foundation, told the panel how private funds were needed to replace police body armor lost in the floods since the city-whose tax base has fallen off precipitously since the disaster-couldn't afford it and FEMA couldn't guarantee that it could reimburse the city to replace the waterlogged vests. It's not exactly what an officer in one of the nation's most gun-ridden cities wants to hear. "You just cannot ask officers to worry about whether FEMA's going to buy them...