Disasterology: December 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!
Hello My Little Sugar Plums!
Congratulations on making it to the season finale of 2024. This year has been a lot. I hope you were able to rest over the Holiday season. I knit half a scarf, binge re-watched Pretty Little Liars (kill me), and fully ignored all work responsibilities.
As we wrap up this year, I want to highlight a few stories for us to keep an eye on going into 2025.
The Incoming Administration
The next time you read this newsletter Donald Trump will be president again. There is no shortage of concerns about what the next administration means for emergency management. Last month I shared this blogpost about the potential impacts to FEMA from Project 2025. Not good.
Thomas Frank interviewed Michael Coen about his concerns regarding FEMA being misused to support broader immigration/ deportation efforts. We will be spending much of the next year(s) navigating Trump’s brutal and inhumane approach to immigration. It will affect emergency management in many ways from having to re-work plans to finding ways of keeping undocumented people safe during disasters to shortages of help for recovery reconstruction.
Speculation over the FEMA administrator nominee has continued with both Graves and Moskowitz making headlines. I do not think there is much use in discussing this until someone is nominated. I will say though that it is deeply inappropriate to nominate a member of Congress to lead the agency.
President Carter’s passing this weekend felt like the end of an era. He was imperfect as all presidents are but he was also one of our most disaster-conscious presidents. Most obviously he was the one who signed FEMA into existence and set the course for the modern U.S. emergency management system. Despite FEMA’s many problems, creating the agency was the right thing to do and we all are safer because of it. He was alive to witness everything from the 1927 flood, the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, to the building of nuclear power plants. He helped move the modern environmental movement into policy and practiced humanitarianism. President Carter’s orientation to disaster stands in stark contrast to today’s leaders.
Goings On in Congress
Let’s start with the good news. Congress passed disaster relief funding. Please clap! They did the bare minimum!
There were also three recent FEMA-related hearings that may be of interest to you. I didn’t watch them but Colleen Hagerty did (god bless!). You can get links to each and read a helpful summary in her newsletter.
The House also recently passed H.R. 9495 also known as the “Nonprofit Killer Bill”. I am not sure what the future of this bill may be but it is something I am deeply concerned about not only for the effect it will have on nonprofit media outlets and the nonprofit sector broadly but on disaster work specifically, so we should talk about it.
If you have not been following, the bill would allow the Treasury Department to revoke tax-exempt status from any nonprofit that is deemed as supporting terrorism. One of the biggest issues here is that they do not define terrorism clearly – and, as we know, the U.S. government has a track record of abusing the term. Incidentally, the manipulation of terms like terrorism is a key strategy of authoritarian regimes so you can understand why the nonprofit sector is deeply concerned.
The bill seems to be a reaction to anti-genocide protests and is meant to punish non-profits who support Palestine (which is, to be clear, not terrorism). One group already being targeted is the Climate Justice Alliance whose work overlaps with emergency management including most directly their “Just Recovery” efforts. (So too does work done to support victims of genocide, incidentally.) So, this is of direct concern to emergency management.
Coincidentally, The Nation published an investigative piece this month which I think underscores how easily this bill can be abused and manipulated to support the political ideas of the ruling party – and how disaster organizations can be affected.
Common Ground is a disaster relief community organization founded by Malik Rahim during Katrina. The organization began by distributing medical supplies and addressing other urgent needs during the response to the flooding. They evolved to do rebuilding work in the recovery and today are working on wetland restoration efforts to prevent future flooding. The lifespan of the organization has crossed all disaster phases and I imagine hundreds of thousands of volunteers have passed through their doors. I first volunteered with them in 2008 and the organization was central to my education of disasters as systemic problems. Common Ground was a hub around which recovery was able to progress. They are a different organization today than they were in 2005 but I still bring my students to volunteer with them on our annual trip to New Orleans. They are a deeply respected organization among the other disaster nonprofits. They are the exact kind of community organization emergency management should be working with and for.
And, yet, as Rahim and volunteers were working around the clock to meet the needs of their community, the New Orleans Joint Terrorism Task Force was monitoring Common Ground and requested the organization be investigated (according to recently obtained documents by The Nation via FOIA).
The idea that in the months after Katrina Common Ground was engaging in terrorist activities is deeply ludicrous. As the article explains they were doing the following: “It had established a health clinic that served 15,000 residents; set up nine distribution centers; cleaned and gutted 1000+ homes and 12 churches; and served hundreds through the Common Ground Legal Team that monitored police harassment and abuse. They also distributed breakfast and had a kids’ bike shop and basketball tournaments.”
Rahim is a former member of the Black Panther Party so learning that the FBI was monitoring him is itself not surprising. What struck me is the extent to which it seems the FBI intervened in Common Ground’s recovery efforts – particularly related to their effort to maintain The Woodlands, a low-income housing complex.
It actually makes me sick… particularly in the broader context of what the federal government did to New Orleans before, during, and after Katrina. To have considered Common Ground a threat is ridiculous. Yet, they are exactly the kind of group who would likely be targeted by this bill. Many in New Orleans would be much worse off today if Common Ground had not been able to continue to operate. I can rattle off a long list of other disaster nonprofits that have done the same kind of work and that are also populated by activists that the Trump Administration does not like. As has become the trend with proposed conservative policy proposals -- losing tax-exempt status won’t necessarily stop this work from being done but it will make doing it harder.
Meme Break
From the Climate Sciences
As we move back into a time of forceful climate denial it is particularly important to stay abreast of climate research. Several studies have come out this year about the AMOC. You can read a long explanation here and a shorter one here. The consequences would be beyond dire. Incidentally, I have never once heard someone in emergency management talk about preparing for the risk of the AMOC collapsing. Something to think about.
Northeastern Wildfires
One of the most iconic Maine books happens to also be a disaster book: Wildfire Loose: The Week Maine Burned by Joyce Butler. It recounts October 1947, the last great fire in Maine, which saw 200,000 acres burn across the state. (Please don’t laugh at our baby fire we are but a small damp eastern state.)
My position is that if a disaster has happened before it can happen again, and just because a disaster hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen. And yet, as I came to get to know more folks involved in emergency management around New England, I was surprised to find that very few of them were concerned about our fire risk. There were few plans and even fewer resources, minimal public education efforts, and the like in a way that deepened my growing fears of future fires. A western problem, I am told.
Yet, this belief stood in contrast both to New England’s fire history and the future created by climate change. It has taken a while but it does seem that others are beginning to catch on. This fall the Northeast burned and now Stephen Pyne has a new piece out that has vindicated my decade of worry.
Now, what to do about it?
Bird Flu
There’s this great quote from someone (maybe Laurie Garrett) that I can’t find now but it’s something about how the entire global strategy for preventing a pandemic was to cross our fingers. And, boy, if that isn’t the current vibe.
I have spent a good portion of this year watching the evolution of bird flu across the country. My concern about the possibility of it escalating continues as we go into the new year. We should be monitoring it closely in emergency management particularly given what we know about the inadequacies of the U.S. public health system. We may get lucky, but luck isn’t a preparedness strategy as they say.
I recommend reading these three articles if you want to get a sense of the overall response and why we should continue to be concerned.
How America Lost Control of the Bird Flu, Setting the Stage for Another Pandemic from KFF Health News
Inside the Bungled Bird Flu Response, Where Profits Collide With Public Health from Vanity Fair
Louisiana Forbids Public Health Workers from Promoting COVID, Flu and Mpox Shots from NPR
There are a few issues these articles help illustrate as to why we should be concerned with where Bird Flu could be headed and advocating for increased response measures.
The scope and scale of animal infections even without fast widespread and consistent testing (i.e., it’s worse than we know).
We are but a few mutations away from it being able to spread from human to human.
The cases seen in humans (primarily farmworkers) have been downplayed.
The response so far has been far short of what we should see given the potential consequences and has seemingly been greatly influenced by business interests.
Given the incoming administration and specifically the nomination of RFK to lead HHS we can expect even fewer effective response measures.
The media ecosystem has further degraded and the prevalence of mis- and dis-information is greater than when COVID began.
The public is not in any way interested in having to respond to another pandemic.
Once again the response seems to largely be resting on crossing our fingers (even if it doesn’ have to be).
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 BlueSky and Instagram where I impulsively narrate my every thought.
Finally, this newsletter is ~FREE~. I plan on keeping it that way because eliminating barriers to disaster knowledge is important. However, I’ve created a “paid subscriber” option for $5 a month or whatever you’d like to give if you’re interested in supporting this work.