An investigation by Sheri Fink of ProPublica reveals “what really happened to some of the patients who died at New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.“
Archive for the ‘Disasters’ Category
Emergency responses fall short at Denver airport
March 17th, 2009 
Meganm Tony Kovaleski exposed the critical problems with Denver’s ambulance response to a crash in December 2008, in the KMHG investigative report “33 Minutes to 34 Right: Denver’s Broken Ambulance System.” A year-long investigation by Kovaleski, producers Tom Burke and Arthur Kane and photojournalist Jason Foster uncovered serious emergency response issues in Denver, at Denver International [...]
FEMA no longer provides ice in emergency situations
September 18th, 2008 Beth Megan Chuchmach of ABC.com reports that new FEMA rules stipulate that states must provide their own ice in emergency situations.
City’s wildfire clean-up exceeded estimates
August 4th, 2008 Beth Following the October 2007 wildfires, the city of San Diego contracted with two companies for demolition and clean-up of homes destroyed in the fire. Original estimates for the service was around $28,000 per home, but the final costs surpassed the original estimate by more than 68 percent according to a watchdog report by Dana Wilkie, Brooke Williams and Danielle Cervantes of The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Chinese officials buy silence from grieving parents
July 24th, 2008 Beth Chinese officials are offering “hush money” to families who lost children in the May 12 earthquake, reports Edward Wong of The New York Times.
Companies were aware of toxicity issues with FEMA trailers
July 10th, 2008 Beth CBS News‘ Armen Keteyian reports that Congress is investigating the manufacturers of the trailers used as emergency housing in the Gulf following Hurricane Katrina.
$85 million in supplies meant for Katrina victims declared surplus
June 12th, 2008 rescntr An investigation by CNN’s Abbie Boudreau and Scott Zamost discovered that FEMA gave away $85 million of new supplies meant for Hurricane Katrina victims . The items, ranging from clothes to cleaning supplies, sat in FEMA warehouses for two years before being declared federal surplus by the agency. The merchandise was then offered for free [...]
Revisiting Willow Island
April 28th, 2008 rescntr The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette published a two-day package marking the 30th anniversary of the Willow Island Disaster, the largest construction accident in U.S. history. Fifty-one construction workers died on April 27, 1978, when a scaffold collapsed during construction of a coal-fired power plant along the Ohio River. The Gazette examines the disaster’s causes, interviews [...]
The global food crisis
April 28th, 2008 rescntr A series by The Washington Post explores the causes and implications of the current global food crisis, the likes of which have not been seen since the 1970s. “A complex combination of poor harvests, competition with biofuels, higher energy prices, surging demand in China and India, and a blockage in global trade is driving [...]
Posted in Disasters, Government (federal/state/local), Health, International, Social issues 
Comments OffGaps in Wisconsin tornado warning system identified
January 25th, 2008 rescntr After tornadoes ripped through the southern part of the state earlier this month, Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that thousands of southeastern Wisconsin residents are out of range for tornado warning sirens. Using mapping software, Poston plotted nearly 75 siren locations in Milwaukee and Racine counties and then overlayed census data to [...]
