PBS asks, "Where's the access?" on oil spill questions

[kokonut]

But there’s one roadblock that we encountered that mystified us — and, we understand, many other journalists. It has been virtually impossible to get any information about the federal mobile medical unit in the fishing town of Venice, La. The glorified double-wide trailer sits on a spit of newly graveled land known to some as the “BP compound.” Ringed with barbed wire-topped chain link fencing, it’s tightly restricted by police and private security guards.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up the facility on May 31. According to a press release, the medical unit is staffed by “a medical team from the HHS National Disaster Medical System — a doctor, two nurses, two emergency medical technician paramedics (EMT-P) and a pharmacist.”

For over two weeks, my NewsHour colleagues and I reached out to media contacts at HHS, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone listed as a possible media contact for BP, in an attempt to visit the unit and get a general sense of how many people were being treated there , who they were and what illnesses they had. We got nowhere. It was either “access denied,” or no response at all. It was something that none of us had ever encountered while covering a disaster. We’re usually at some point provided access to the health services being offered by the federal government.

We tried the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals who told us to talk to HHS. HHS said they couldn’t provide us access and said they would get back to us about our questions.

We reached out to local parish officials, who told us to talk to Unified Command Center Operations. Unified Command Center Operations told us to talk to HHS… noticing a pattern here?

In Reporting on Oil Spill, Limits Persist on Media Access in the Gulf | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

If that's not interesting coming from PBS of all news media then consider that travel rules are quickly being re-written to "prevent" Congress members from visiting the oil spilled beaches coming from the Gulf of Mexico by not using Congressional travel funds for the trip.

House members who had planned to travel to Louisiana next week for a tour and meetings on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill being organized by Rep. Steve Scalise won’t be able to tap their member accounts to cover the costs, the Republican congressman said he was told Tuesday.

The travel would appear to be to in the category of “general oversight” into an issue in which several committees have already been authorized for member visits to the Gulf Coast, said Kyle Anderson, spokesman for House Administration Committee Chairman Robert Brady, D-Pa. Such trips, Brady said, are “not eligible for payment from the financial accounts” that finance members’ offices. …

California Rep. Dan Lungren, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, said barring “some extraordinary reason to prohibit this trip,” which he said hasn’t been communicated to anybody on the Republican side, “this is an unacceptable departure from past practices.”

“This is an educational trip for members using their own representational budgets to see, firsthand, the devastating impact of the Gulf spill,” Lungren said. “Our travel regulations permit this type of travel in support of our official representational duties, and unfortunately, this disaster is already having environmental and economical implications for the entire country, not just those districts represented by members sitting on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”

The Scalise trip, scheduled for July 9, was to include a breakfast overview of the spill in New Orleans, a flight over the Louisiana coast, a meeting with local officials on Grand Isle and a boat tour of outer islands to see how the spill has affected wildlife.

Travel regulations frustrate congressmen wanting to look into Gulf of Mexico oil spill | NOLA.com

When get PBS who can’t get any answers or responses on the oil spill response effort, something is being covered up.

YEAR 2010: THE BIG "O" SPILL

 

[Jiro]

maybe I missed something but did the article specifically mention who is blocking the access?

 

[Jiro]

Health of Exxon Valdez cleanup workers was never studied

"We don't have the good answers that we could have had from the Exxon Valdez to either know that there are problems or to reassure people that there were not," said Mark Catlin, an industrial hygienist who visited the cleanup in 1989 and says some Gulf workers aren't receiving enough training to protect themselves.

Critics have questioned whether the Obama administration has left too many decisions about the health and safety of the oil spill workers to BP's discretion as a growing number of workers complain about exposure to toxins.

Earlier this month, McClatchy reported that records released by the state of Louisiana showed that BP wasn't recording most worker complaints of illness after exposure to oil. While Louisiana records described least 74 oil spill workers complaining of becoming sick, BP's own official recordkeeping noted just two such incidents.

A report on the 2002 oil tanker Prestige spill in Spain concluded "participation in cleanup work of oil spills may result in prolonged respiratory symptoms that last one to two years after exposure," according to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Exxon's own internal medical reports, which surfaced in court documents years after the spill, showed an unspecified number of spill workers made thousands of clinic visits for upper respiratory illnesses. Exxon later moved to seal the records. NIOSH had the legal authority to subpoena the records but never did so.

 

[Jiro]

from OP -

When I asked Burger if he agreed with comments we've heard from some government officials as well as professionals who have been involved in disaster response that this setup is unusual, he said that this entire operation is run differently because "we are operating under the national contingency plan" which puts the U.S. Coast Guard in charge of the response operation, as well as BP, instead of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

I guess now you know who is in charge. I wonder if PBS has tried contacting BP for information.

 

[Jiro]

meanwhile - I'm envisioning that there will be a zombie movie based on this....