Katrina Coverage
(AP)
All Blog Posts from Primary Source
Read all 'katrina' posts in Primary Source
August 31, 2007 6:49 PM By our count tonight marks the seventh piece we’ve done on Katrina – Two Years Later. We made a total of about two dozen trips to Louisiana and Mississippi in the last nine months, telling stories ranging from formaldehyde in travels trailers – and FEMA’s response to it – to stories about a growing mental health problem among children, to Rodney Freeman’s battle with insurance companies to get his house rebuilt, to the raw emotion felt by hurricane survivors to being left out of President Bush’s State of the Union address.
August 22, 2007 7:09 PM 
In the coming days we’re going to see more and more stories set around the pain and heartbreak that is Hurricane Katrina -- Two Years Later. More and more stories like the one we did on Rodney Freeman, which arrived in a most unusual way. Producer Michael Rey and I had just finished doing an interview about formaldehyde in FEMA trailers in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, when we stopped at a bar down the street for something cool to drink. Inside, around a horseshoe counter sat a group of local folks, a story on every stool.
Katrina: Profit over People
(CBS)
June 22, 2007 2:34 PM 
The FBI has raided the office of a company owned by the wife of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's nephew. Rosemary Barbour's firm Alcatec LLC has a large contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to maintain thousands of travel trailers housing residents displaced by hurricane Katrina. There is no evidence that Governor Barbour is involved with the company.
Rosemary Barbour is married to Charles Barbour, the nephew of the Governor and himself a county supervisor. A spokesman at the FBI field office in Jackson Mississippi would not comment on the ongoing investigation but said agents had conducted a "court approved" search of a business late Thursday.
Though local Gulf Coast media has reported that Alcatec received more than $28 million in contracts from FEMA to maintain the trailers, CBS News has discovered this contract which shows that Alcatec was awarded a five year contract that amounted to $299,376,647 in January 2006.
Feds Raid Office of Mississippi Governor's Kin
(AP Photo)
Rosemary Barbour is married to Charles Barbour, the nephew of the Governor and himself a county supervisor. A spokesman at the FBI field office in Jackson Mississippi would not comment on the ongoing investigation but said agents had conducted a "court approved" search of a business late Thursday.
Though local Gulf Coast media has reported that Alcatec received more than $28 million in contracts from FEMA to maintain the trailers, CBS News has discovered this contract which shows that Alcatec was awarded a five year contract that amounted to $299,376,647 in January 2006.
June 21, 2007 11:02 AM
RICO Case Filed Against Katrina Insurer
State Farm is the first insurance company to have a RICO complaint filed against it over Katrina-related insurance claims. RICO stands for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations and is a federal law used primarily to take down criminal organizations like the Mafia.
The complaint was filed Thursday in the Southern District of Mississippi by veteran trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs on behalf of two hundred plaintiffs in the class-action suit against the insurer and at least one of the engineering firms it hired to do inspections of storm-damaged homes along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The complaint was filed Thursday in the Southern District of Mississippi by veteran trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs on behalf of two hundred plaintiffs in the class-action suit against the insurer and at least one of the engineering firms it hired to do inspections of storm-damaged homes along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
June 11, 2007 10:09 AM 
A new report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released Friday afternoon shows a large number of critical documents related to a suspicious $26 million Army Corps contract are missing.
Pumps
(AP (file))
May 18, 2007 6:59 PM 
On tonight's Evening News, we reported another startling development: FEMA knew a year ago about the high levels of formaldehyde in the trailers used by victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
How do we know? CBS News obtained this internal FEMA document produced by FEMA's own employee safety department. They tested 28 trailers and found at least 20 had levels of formaldehyde higher than the EPA's recommended workplace limit.
FEMA Trailers And Formaldehyde: The Story Continues
(CBS/EARLY SHOW)
How do we know? CBS News obtained this internal FEMA document produced by FEMA's own employee safety department. They tested 28 trailers and found at least 20 had levels of formaldehyde higher than the EPA's recommended workplace limit.
May 16, 2007 8:16 PM 
Terry Slone, a former employee of Gulf Stream Coach, spoke to CBS News outside of the factory in Indiana where he says the company built tens of thousands of travel trailers, part of a half a billion dollars contract with FEMA. As he told us in our story, he saw and smelled what he said were poor quality wood products coming into the factory on pallets and leaving the factory as cabinets and flooring in the travel trailers. He installed much of it himself.
But as you will hear , Slone also thinks he may have gotten sick from the same formaldehyde fumes that could also be making residents of the trailers in the Gulf sick.
Formaldehyde Fumes Felt in Indiana
(CBS)
But as you will hear , Slone also thinks he may have gotten sick from the same formaldehyde fumes that could also be making residents of the trailers in the Gulf sick.
May 16, 2007 6:47 PM 
When the Investigative Unit heard that some of the more than 144,000 trailers used by FEMA for temporary housing across the Gulf could be making people sick, the first thing we did was file a Freedom of Information Act Request with FEMA. We wanted to know what FEMA knew and when they were aware that formaldehyde might be a factor in the air quality of the trailers and the health of the people inside.
We filed the FOIA on March 30 and yesterday (May 15) as were editing this story for air we received an envelope stuffed with documents from the agency. Here is one that we found fascinating.
FEMA's Own Documents Tell The Formaldehyde Story
(AP)
We filed the FOIA on March 30 and yesterday (May 15) as were editing this story for air we received an envelope stuffed with documents from the agency. Here is one that we found fascinating.
April 13, 2007 3:50 PM 
There are more contracting problems for Gulf Coast reconstruction. Democrats on the House Small Business Committee say a total of $67 million in Katrina contracts were awarded to hundreds of large companies including Weyerhaeuser, CompUSA and Lowe’s Home Improvement but federal agencies LISTED them as “small businesses”. Members of congress held a hearing in New Orleans Thursday to address the issue.
What IS a small business?
(AP (file))
Mike Huckabee on GOP "rock stars," 2012, health care reform and more.
