Mon, Feb 18, 2008 (2:07 a.m.)

Everything associated with the federal government’s involvement in providing temporary shelter for victims of Hurricane Katrina was fouled up beyond comprehension.

The hurricane struck the Gulf Coast regions of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama in late August 2005, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless.

It took about six months for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to respond with 125,000 trailers. During that time, the displaced families and individuals were living in hotel rooms, cars, barns, tent cities and on the streets.

Finally, after arriving at regional staging areas, the trailers sat there interminably while local officials wrestled with federal regulations that prohibited them from placing temporary homes in flood plains.

That Katrina was perhaps the biggest natural disaster in the nation’s history was not enough to spare the Bush administration from blistering criticism over its response.

But even after the trailers and mobile homes were set up and approximately 100,000 people had moved into them, the nightmare continued. Almost immediately, and from every location in which the temporary homes had been placed, the occupants began complaining of fumes that were making them sick.

The federal government, in keeping with its record of incompetence, ignored the complaints until last summer, when Congress began applying pressure. The homes were tested by a FEMA contractor in December and January, and the results were released last week.

For people still living in more than 38,000 of the trailers, the news confirmed what they had been saying. Formaldehyde gas at extremely elevated levels was found in most of the trailers. The chemical, widely used in building materials, causes respiratory and other health problems and is a suspected carcinogen.

How the trailers could have been manufactured and delivered without first having undergone inspections that would have detected the formaldehyde fumes is a question that has yet to be answered.

Federal health officials are now insisting that the remaining trailer occupants be moved into other housing as quickly as possible. We hope the Bush administration, in this latest chapter of the FEMA trailers fiasco, can finally show some competence.