President Carter established the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979 with two missions: emergency management and civil defense. FEMA’s charter was further enhanced in 1988 with the Stafford Act, which laid out clear instructions and a framework for disaster response and recovery between the federal government and the states. After 9/11/2001, the federal government reorganized and created a new overarching cabinet department, Homeland Security (DHS), and absorbed FEMA and twenty-one other federal organizations to better coordinate and communicate where both civil defense and emergency management were concerned. Following the devastation along the Gulf Coast that Hurricane Katrina caused, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act of 2006 which redefined FEMA as a separate agency within DHS, defined its main role, made the FEMA Administrator a principal advisor to the President, the Homeland Security Council and the Secretary of Homeland Security for all matters related to emergency management in the United States.
There have been other reform acts since Katrina, designed to better streamline preparedness, reduce red tape, and turn FEMA into more of a partner with the affected states. The focus and intensity of readiness has depended on the experience of the FEMA administrator, appointed each term by the President, as witnessed most glaringly by the failure to respond early in Hurricane Katrina. Recently, we have seen that same lag time response around the Texas floods, due to a reduced number of call center contractors because contracts had not been renewed, and because the DHS Secretary was determined to eliminate FEMA. It appears that the president has changed his mind about elimination, perhaps because of the scourge of multiple disasters that have preyed upon various parts of the country, often more than once in a season. I am not talking about more predictable seasonal events like hurricanes, but rather about flooding, tornadoes, wildfires, and extreme heat or cold events.
States and cities have relied upon grants from the federal government for years, to expand awareness and preparedness for such events. As this funding has dried up under the Trump administration (at least, so far), state and local emergency response and planning is being affected. The saddest story from the Texas flooding is how many times local officials discussed and stalled out on the installation of an early warning siren, and an estimate of how many lives could have been saved with a siren notifying campers and residents alike in a known high-risk zone. Similarly to the FEMA call center staffing shortage is the hollowing out of the National Weather Service that has already taken place under DOGE, which surely affected the frequency and the intensity of the alerts that were provided. You could say that every principle upon which emergency responders train regularly was upended in this tragic flooding event.
We have been in this quandary at least once before. Late in 2006, the Financial Services Roundtable created a Blue Ribbon Commission to examine and make recommendations on what it called “Mega-Catastrophes,” which were defined as “a natural or man-made event that has significant adverse national impacts on economic activity, property or human life.” Five types of mega-catastrophes were scrutinized: Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Floods, Pandemic, and Terrorist Attacks. The 96-page report was overseen for the commission by William A. Longbrake, one of my two bosses at the time at Washington Mutual. I worked on two sections of the report (earthquakes and pandemic) and later introduced the findings on the pandemic at the National Press Club.
In the years since, I have continued to read and speak about the importance of business continuity and emergency management in the workplace and in coordination with local, state, and federal agencies like FEMA. Since over 80% of our critical infrastructure is in the hands of the private sector, cooperation with the government is essential to maintain continuity of operations, and it is with the federal government that we see how partnerships can work, during both natural and man-made events.
What I’ve focused on this month is but one impact that occurs when ignorant cabinet secretaries and DOGE rummage through complex budgets they don’t understand and make decisions that have terrible consequences for the victims of their work. What I’ve not spent much time talking about is the politicization of decision-making as it affects thousands. Did the president withhold FEMA or other support from the victims of the California wildfires? Are there funds available for rebuilding? I ask that because the president has spent a fair amount of time ignoring weather events in blue states, when the whole point of FEMA support is that the response is based on criteria, not political party.
Is this what we want of our federal emergency management agency? I feel as if we have reverted to 2005 and the painful lessons it took so long to learn from Katrina. States can no longer rely upon a timely, professional federal response. We must do better, and I urge you to write to both your Congressional representatives but also to the president directly.