AP Features, December 21st, 2007
Rev. Vien The Nguyen, a Catholic priest at a Vietnamese-American church in eastern New Orleans, chuckled when he saw the flier printed to notify Vietnamese speakers of air-quality tests on trailers housing thousands left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.
"It's gobbledygook," he said, noting the font used for the flier made it impossible to decipher the words.
For Vien and thousands of Vietnamese whose homes and businesses were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina more than two years ago, the flier provided an unintelligible reminder of the problems the local Vietnamese community has had obtaining government assistance in the storm's aftermath.
"This is the first time I've seen something like this, so messed up," said Vien, pastor of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Church.
Charles Green, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which distributed the fliers, said the agency is pulling the unintelligible notice off its Web site and will circulate corrected fliers.
The fliers, which also were translated into Spanish, are part of a packet of information about air-quality tests in government trailers that are scheduled to start Friday in New Orleans.
About 500 occupied trailers and mobile homes in Louisiana and Mississippi will be tested for levels of formaldehyde, a common preservative and embalming fluid found in building materials for manufactured homes.
Formaldehyde can cause respiratory problems and has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.
A software glitch was blamed for rendering the fliers unintelligible.
Green said the CDC used TransPerfect Translations, a New York-based translation service, to draft about 5,000 fliers for distribution to Vietnamese community groups in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The company correctly translated the flier into Vietnamese, but the words were altered by a glitch in the software used by a graphic designer, according to Green.
"The strange thing is, this has never happened before," he said.
As of Nov. 23, around 47,000 families were still living in travel trailers or mobile homes along the Gulf Coast. Hundreds of Gulf Coast trailer occupants who blame their ailments on formaldehyde are suing trailer manufacturers in federal court.
On Dec. 13, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt in New Orleans ordered FEMA to allow lawyers for trailer occupants and manufacturers to observe the tests. This week, however, Engelhardt lifted that requirement after government lawyers protested.
Gerald Meunier, a lawyer for trailer occupants, said he agrees with the judge's decision.
"The last thing we want to do is upset the schedule for the testing," he said.
The tests are expected to take about five weeks. Trailer occupants are scheduled to get the test results for their units in mid-February. A final report on the CDC's findings is due out in mid-May.
