Building A Progressive Future

My dad lives really near where the Missouri River and the Platte River join up in Plattsmouth, Nebraska. In case you're not up on your Nebraska geography, Plattsmouth is a stone's throw from Iowa; if you stand in my dad's back yard and look east, you're looking at Iowa. So when I heard about the massive river flooding and devastation in Iowa a few weeks ago, I was pretty worried. When I looked at the pictures and videos on the news of the Iowa flood victims, I couldn't help but draw parallels between these images and those that we saw after the Hurricane Katrina. Would my dad end up on the front page of the newspaper, waist deep in water trying to carry his belongings to higher ground? Would his riverside house be swept away and would he end up in one of those terrible FEMA trailers like the hurricane victims had?

Thankfully, my dad's house is still in its place and although he's been keeping one eye on it all the time, it seems that the rivers will recede all will be well -- for him. But still, what about the tens of thousands who've lost their homes and livelihoods in Iowa? What about the Katrina victims who, up until very recently, were still living in those trailers that were making them sick?

I don't think that you can compare the Iowa floods exactly to Hurricane Katrina. But I think that we can and should take these situations as times to remember and reflect on how we're doing. Have we learned from the utter mis-handling of Hurricane Katrina? Probably. Are we more prepared for disasters like this now? I think so. But have we really done all we can for those victims of Hurricane Katrina? When there are still homeless families living in hotels and getting sick from the elevated levels of formaldehyde in their FEMA trailers, I don't think so. When we haven't stood up for those people and held someone accountable, we haven't done all we can.

There's a lot of blame to go around when it comes to how we handled Hurricane Katrina, and it's probably not helpful to recycle old finger pointing here. But next week, Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee are going to take this opportunity to revisit Hurricane Katrina and they are going to hear from just one group who has some hand in the situation -- the manufacturers of the FEMA trailers. Their dangerous, toxic products have caused hundreds, even thousands of Katrina victims to be sick and hospitalized, and it's time they answered for their actions.  Let them know that they need to be responsible for their actions.