Disasterology: August 2024

This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined). There’s a little something for everyone!

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Good Evening My Little Cherry Tomatoes!

The end of summer is here, I fear. The fall semester starts this week and I anticipate a chaotic (but good!) few months.

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FEMA’s Big “FU”

I’ve been reflecting on two related issues in our field this past week. The first is the launch of the fake FEMA University (read the background here). I hate to belabor the issue but as someone who works at a real institute of higher education that confers real degrees, I have a continued responsibility to speak up. The second is something one of my disaster researcher friends always says: “Be a good colleague”.

I work hard to instill in my students that emergency management is a small field and that word about how you treat others spreads fast. We notice if you punch up, or down. We see what you fight for and who you fight for. I remind my students often that their classmates are the same people they will call twenty years from now when they are running their own agency and need help. That reliance on each other requires trust. So, we talk. We talk about what you’ve posted online. We talk about what you said at the last conference. We talk about what you said on your podcast. Being unprofessional – being a bad colleague – will leave you lonely.

This is one reason I am so frustrated with the decision to move forward with “FEMA University”. Making a decision that threatens the past 30 years of progress this field has made towards professionalization and the creation of the discipline is, to put it simply, not being a good colleague. It is a breach of trust between FEMA and the emergency management higher education community and beyond.

I have had few criticisms about Administrator Criswell’s tenure at FEMA. She missed opportunities to reshape emergency management policy that will have lingering consequences, but she also helped to stabilize the agency in the wake of the Trump administration. Her approval of FEMA University, however, demonstrates such a remarkable lack of judgment that, for me, it calls into question her position as a leader in this field – something I do not say lightly. You are the company you keep.

A strain of this field has “Shiny Object Syndrome” and it is really dangerous. Not all ideas are good ideas. Just because it is new, does not mean it is effective. I don’t doubt ten years from now it will be obvious to all that FEMA University was the wrong move. The issue is that we do not have ten years to waste on one man’s pet project. As the rest of this newsletter demonstrates this is a country in crisis and emergency management is meant to be, you know, managing all that. A decade of moving in the wrong direction has negative consequences for practitioners and the communities they serve. We do not have time to be wrong.

As I explained in my book, fixing emergency management “require[s] an organized, concerted effort under the pressure of a ticking clock. Every minute we do not make changes, another home is destroyed, another community is lost, and entire cultures are threatened.” This is why I am angered by this choice.

This fall I will be teaching our Introduction to Emergency Management course. 100 new emergency management majors and this will be the class that sets the tone for the rest of their education and career. They will learn the tremendous breadth of the field, our history, and many challenges. I am in awe of my student’s starting point as compared to mine (or probably yours). To be 18 years old and have someone lay out foundational emergency management theory, to explain why the system is the way it is, and that there is a system!! They get to leapfrog so much confusion and frustration. They get the cheat codes to understand where the problems are in our field and go straight to identifying solutions. Our field is indebted to the people in the emergency management higher education community – including those associated with EMI – who worked for decades to enable us to be in this position. What a gift! And, something I’ll keep fighting to protect.

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A Brat Summer, Indeed

I dug through upwards of 300 news stories from this summer. Here’s what you missed while you were at the beach (or working, let’s be serious). (And, a reminder that disaster journalism matters. Here’s one example from Kentucky.)

There were two standout disaster stories this summer. The first, published in AntiGravity Magazine by Laura McKnight, is about the South Lafourche Levee District and some twists and turns will keep you reading! The second, written by Nolina Minj, shares the story of the people who clean out the drains in Mumbai.

This summer has been Hot (To Go) and media outlets took notice. Here’s one about how to mitigate heat through shade, one about chief heat officers, on quantifying the cost of heat, a warning that helicopters cannot do SAR because of the heat, one on Angola prisoners’ efforts to prevent their forced labor in bad heat, and one about why we need to FUND LIBRARIES.

Speaking of it being hot… Hurricane Beryl resulted in widespread power outages in Texas again. They could not even reliably track where the outages were… enter Whataburger. As many have long pointed out, the Texas government is simply not doing what they know they need to do to prevent these disasters. There’s no mystery here. There was a kerfuffle between Biden and acting governor Dan Patrick regarding the timing of the declaration request. To much frustration, Abbott was overseas throughout the response. Incidentally, South Dakota Governor Kristen Noem also left the state as it flooded this summer. No one went to Cancun, though, so there’s that.

 “Actually things are worse than we thought” remained a key theme of news coverage. The pollution in Cancer Alley is worse than previously understood (and we already knew it was bad) according to this study. Speaking of air quality, death tolls related to wildfire smoke are being undercounted.  

The housing issues on Maui continue. Some wrote about not leaving home in Louisiana and Texas while others wrote about leaving. AARP published a good piece on retirees losing their homes. There is some good news for home buyers about flood disclosers (though bad news for home sellers). It seems like people are starting to realize that home values are not accounting accurately for risk (yes, hi, welcome).  

There were a few standout stories on disaster volunteerism. This one is about a small church providing relief from the heat. This one is about mental health volunteers in Vermont. And this one on volunteers tracking wildfires. Speaking of Vermont… Vermont Public has been doing some good local disaster reporting. Here’s their flood page to get you started. Vermont also is trying to hold oil companies responsible for the damage caused by climate-related disasters. Big, if it works.

The evacuation news has generally not been good. Major alarm bells are deserved regarding the changes to New Orleans evacuation plans – namely that they do not intend to evacuate the city as done previously and instead opt for sheltering in place. This is a complicated issue with immense historical and cultural context which we don’t have the space to get into here but I will say I am deeply, deeply concerned. This article addresses one of the less often discussed wildfire needs – more roads!

Something to make you feel old: The Sandy Hook Survivors graduated high school. Many are continuing on to gun control advocacy-related careers. Speaking of kids, Grist has a whole series on giving birth on a planet in crisis which is worth a read.

Reporting on Gaza from most U.S. outlets is a mess but as The Lancet underscores with their death toll estimates, one that must remain front of mind and action. This report on the debris management – or lack thereof – in Gaza should resonate with those in emergency management. I’ve already written about my feelings on campus protests. As the fall semester begins those conversations will reemerge and this is an important read.

Finally, as is becoming a summer tradition, Congress has allowed the Disaster Relief Fund to run dry and FEMA has implemented Immediate Needs Funding. Not good.

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Meme Break

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The Politics of It All

Babes. There’s been massive political news over the course of this summer from devastating Supreme Court decisions to Kamala Harris becoming the democratic nominee. I hope to get into all of this over the next few months but until then I just want to acknowledge the insanity of Trump’s Project 2025. There’s a handy tool here where you can look at the main takeaways by subject area (climate change and environmental issues are a good place for you to start).

There is a FEMA section that you might want to scroll through. The top line take-away for us is that they want to put FEMA in either the Department of Transportation or the Department of the Interior. Sure they do not call for eliminating FEMA (as some Republicans have in the past) but moving us under another Department does not actually address the current problems with FEMA. Sigh, “Shiny Object Syndrome”, and all that. As often covered in this newsletter, FEMA needs to once again be an independent, cabinet-level agency.

In other words, what we really need is a… FEMA-ininomenon!

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The End Bits

I would love it if you’d forward this to your friends, post on social media, and undertake any other form of newsletter sharing you deem appropriate.

In case you signed up for this newsletter without knowing who I am (a bold choice!) you can read my book Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis to catch up! You can read a USA Today review here, order it here, or get it as an audiobook here. You can also find more from me on my blog, listen to this episode of Ologies, or follow me on Twitter and Instagram where I impulsively narrate my every thought.

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