Disasterology: October 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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Hello My Little Hanging Chads! 

The time has come for the election issue of the Disasterology newsletter. Buckle up.

I am voting for Vice President Kamala Harris – for many reasons – but especially because the alternative, another Trump presidency, will be detrimental to our collective ability to do effective, efficient, and equitable emergency management.

I am not a fan of either major political party in the U.S. but I long ago decided that for me the morally correct strategy is to vote for the candidate under which it is most likely the fewest number of people will be harmed.

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The Emergency Management Case Against Trump & Project 2025 

There is a long list of reasons to not vote for another Trump administration, but the threat he poses to public safety and the continuation of the U.S. emergency management system as we know it today has to be near the top. Since federal involvement in disasters began in earnest, I cannot to think of a worse president for emergency management. No other president has so callously and incompetently overseen the response to two catastrophes (i.e., Maria and COVID). If his actions while in office were not enough to disqualify him, we can now also look to his behavior during the responses to the most recent hurricanes.

Responding to a disaster the size of Helene, let alone adding Milton in the mix less than two weeks later, is a herculean task requiring our very best to show up. On our best day the communication and coordination required are immense, and instead of helping – or simply shutting up – Trump decided to actively make the response harder. Trump and the people he associates with (e.g., Laura Loomer, Elon Musk, Marjorie Taylor Greene) not only worked to dissuade survivors from applying for the assistance they are rightly eligible to receive but actively put the lives of responders, particularly FEMA employees, in danger. It is unconscionable.

I am not looking to re-hash every bad disaster-related decision made by the Trump administration, but I do think it is worth remembering some of the highlights:

• He used a sharpie to re-draw Hurricane Dorian’s cone to include Alabama instead of admitting he had misspoke.

• He explicitly considered a county’s voting record as a factor of whether or not he would declare a disaster. You can read more in a recent interview with Mike Pence’s Homeland Security Advisor about how Trump politicized disasters.

• He threw paper towels at Hurricane Maria survivors which, while incredibly insensitive, paled to the rest of his Maria response and recovery.

• He has spent the duration of the COVID pandemic lying. Here’s a list of 654 false claims in just 14 weeks. He also inexplicably sent Jared Kushner to oversee FEMA’s operations. Then there is the recent revelation by Bob Woodward that Trump secretly sent COVID tests to Putin during a time when U.S. hospitals badly needed them (which does sound like a bad disaster movie plot twist).

• He led an attempted coup on January 6^th which on its own should be disqualifying. I would add that his actions that day created a horrific situation that fell to emergency managers to deal with.

• He poses an existential planetary risk by not just failing to act on climate mitigation but actively accelerating the climate crisis. 

Although it is necessary to consider past actions, it is arguably more important to consider future actions which brings me to Project 2025. Some people have taken issue with saying that Trump supports Project 2025. I think that is willfully naïve. If you’re friends with the architects of the plan, the likelihood of implementing their plan is high. As learned in the last Trump administration it is the people around him making everyday policy decisions. He does not care or probably even know about the existence of the Emergency Performance Grant Program (EMPG).

The section of Project 2025 which directly deals with emergency management is quite short. You may want to read it yourself, but I will walk through the highlights.

Structural Changes

A rumor going around online said Project 2025 calls for the elimination of FEMA. It does not (that’s Mitt Romney circa 2012 that you are thinking about). Instead, the big structural change is that FEMA would be removed from DHS (which will be dismantled). Don’t get excited -- FEMA does not get to be an independent, cabinet-level agency (á la the Moskowitz proposal). Instead, FEMA gets put in either the Department of the Interior or the Department of Transportation. The deciding factor would be whether CISA is subsumed by FEMA (DOT) or they are kept separate (Interior).

There is no explanation as to what it would look like for FEMA to be in either department. It is difficult to say if it would make a meaningfully worse situation for FEMA than the current structure but there is no evidence (or even argument) of how it solves the current problem of FEMA being subsumed within another department. If we are going to put FEMA through the turmoil of moving, we better be moving it to something that is actually going to help make emergency management more effective, otherwise, we are just shuffling deck chairs.

One thing I love about emergency management is that coming up with the wrong solutions for problems in emergency management is a bi-partisan activity. I love when we get along.

Privatization of NFIP

Project 2025 calls for the privatization of flood insurance. Okay, good luck! The private sector has for decades said they do not want to be in the flood insurance business. That is literally why we have the National Flood Insurance Program. Ultimately this would leave survivors with even less money for recovery. I am deeply disturbed by the continual framing of flood insurance as a tool for mitigation while ignoring that it is a lifeline for recovery. I explained all of this here.

Shifting Government Costs

Perhaps the biggest theme for emergency management in Project 2025 is minimizing federal spending on disasters across all phases. I agree that state and local governments should contribute more to emergency management costs across the disaster life cycle but that is not meant to be an alternative to federal assistance. The very definition of disaster is that the area affected is overwhelmed and requires outside resources – i.e., the federal government.

Most simply, they want to reverse the cost share to 25/75 for most events. The idea that states have the ability to cover the majority of disaster costs is rooted in fantasy. The vast majority of states simply do not have enough money to cover the costs of their major disasters plus mitigation and preparedness. Please do some math. They do say the federal government can cover 75% in “catastrophic” events (undefined). Imagine Washington and Oregon having to pay for 25% of Cascadia. Be serious!

Removal of the Mitigation & Preparedness Missions

The author is confused about which each phase is about but if you read through it you will find that they are effectively ending FEMA’s involvement in state and local mitigation and preparedness efforts because they call for all FEMA grants to be terminated. Putting aside BRIC, the loss of EMPG alone has the potential to collapse local emergency management across large parts of the country (assuming local and state don’t seamlessly step in).

Related Agencies

Outside of direct emergency management policy, there are any number of other changes that would increase our national disaster risk and make the job of emergency management more difficult, if not impossible. Notably, these changes would take away our ability to even identify our risk – the foundation of all mitigation and preparedness efforts in emergency management. One specific change, as an example, is the proposal to dismantle NOAA. Emergency managers are co-dependent on meteorologists. Imagine needing contracts, and the money, to learn the weather for your jurisdiction – think of the liabilities!!

In summary, these proposed changes in Project 2025 stand to create an agency that is FEMA in name only. They intend to absolutely gut the agency and by extension, emergency management. All equity and justice efforts would come to an end. Project 2025 would usher in an era of disaster discrimination unlike anything we have seen in decades.

These policy suggestions very obviously have not been given more than a passing thought. They demonstrate a deep lack of understanding of both FEMA and emergency management practice more broadly. They do not reflect the policy-related research in this area. But, of course, they have no intention of implementing policies that will create a more effective emergency management system or save lives and reduce damage, they are solely interested in reducing what the federal government spends on disasters. That’s it.

I would also note that Project 2025 is not only a problem if Trump wins the election. Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) has already effectively begun implementing Project 2025 policy by not calling Congress back to vote on supplemental disaster recovery funding and funding for the other federal disaster recovery programs. FEMA has spent about half of this year’s budget in just 8 days. They have enough for now, but Administrator Criswell is already talking about how soon they will need to reinstate Immediate Needs Funding (which just ended October 1^st). Much more urgently the Small Business Administration is expected to run out of funds in a matter of days.

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The Emergency Management Case for Kamala Harris 

As I am writing this Israel is bombing hospital tents in Northern Gaza where food and other humanitarian aid has been prevented from entering for the past two weeks. President Biden has the ability to stop this and he has for over a year refused to. To the extent that Harris has influence in this administration, it is not clear that she has done anything to try to stop this. Surely, throughout her campaign, although she has at times alluded to the humanitarian crisis she has not used her platform to meaningfully influence Israel to change course.

Those working in climate and disasters need to be more vocal about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Working to prevent people from being burned alive in climate-fueled wildfires and scorching temperatures just to sit back and watch people burn alive from US-made bombs is immoral.

Just from an emergency management perspective, the impacts and needs associated with this genocide are nearly incomprehensible. If I did not see it for myself broadcasted by Palestinians online daily, I am not sure I would believe it. My heart breaks too for the many humanitarian aid workers – many of whom work for organizations that readers of this newsletter work with regularly – that have been killed by Israel’s military with no meaningful repercussions. I applaud everyone who has protested and advocated for the voices and experiences of Palestinians to be heard by the Harris campaign. I look forward to those efforts continuing when she, presumably, takes office. 

I am unspeakably furious with the Harris campaign for not better addressing this. I understand those who do not want to vote for Harris on the basis of her stance on Palestine alone. Yet, there is every indication that this situation would become worse under a Trump administration. I ascribe to the approach used by Dr. Angela Davis and other activist leaders – you vote for the candidate for whom you will have the best conditions to work under and against.

To bring this back to U.S. emergency management policy, I am sorry to say that the Harris campaign does not have explicit emergency management policy recommendations. Without this, the emergency management case for a Harris presidency rests heavily on she is “not Trump”. I believe that voting against someone is a good enough reason to vote for someone else.

In the positions, she has held, she has had relatively limited direct interaction with emergency management. Nonetheless, here are some indications of how she might approach emergency management as president. 

• When the pandemic first began there were ongoing legal questions about the ability to use the Stafford Act because it did not explicitly list “pandemic” as a potential hazard. Instead of sitting around lamenting about this, it was then-Senator Harris who introduced a bill in the Senate to add the word “pandemic” to the Stafford Act. It ended up not being necessary but I appreciate that she immediately identified the problem and came up with a solution.

• She has not done anything weird during the response to these hurricanes or any other disasters that have happened during the Biden-Harris administration. There has been no lying, no throwing things, and no arts and crafts. We saw Vice President Harris engage with the Helene and Milton responses – visiting, volunteering, calling to check in, visiting FEMA – these are all the things we have come to expect from sitting Vice Presidents.

I do wonder if Governor Walz might not make for a good emergency management reform champion within a Harris administration. He was quite enthusiastic about burring powerlines at the Vice Presidential debate which is just about as nuts and bolts into emergency management that we have gotten at one of these things.   

Outside of the campaign, I fear, the Democrats do not even have a concept of a plan. There is no democratic parallel to Project 2025 for emergency management. (If I worked for the democratic party in some capacity I would probably, maybe, think about writing one but that’s just me.) I think it is appropriate to assume that a Harris administration would mean the status quo for emergency management. I do not want the status quo but I will take that over making the situation worse.

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The Future of Emergency Management

It strikes me as an existential problem for the profession of emergency management that the one comprehensive (if still shy on details) plan that a major political party in America has is one that effectively dismantles the emergency management system. Further, there is no political party that has outlined a comprehensive plan for readying the US emergency management system for the increased risk associated with climate change.

Over the weekend two popular storm chasers announced they were going on Laura Loomer’s podcast to raise money for hurricane relief. The announcement was met with instant and widespread backlash from the meteorology community because Loomer was central to the spread of misinformation during the hurricanes. Relatedly, meteorologists have explained the influx of conspiracy theories and death threats they received while forecasting the storms. Others pointed out this is what climatologists have dealt with for decades.

Emergency managers are getting what I fear is just a small taste of it during these storms. FEMA is pulling employees out of certain communities due to (at this time unconfirmed) reports of armed militias. I understand the utility in the profession of emergency management attempting to stay out of politics but I have always thought it a futile effort given disasters are inherently political. Our politics are untenable. When one side is advocating the dismantling of decades of work that emergency managers have done to make the public safer, you speak up loudly and without hesitation. 

It seems there are often people in emergency management who struggle to find moral clarity – I hope this helps.

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MEME BREAK 

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The Hurricanes 

I did not write much about the hurricanes here because I have literally reached Substack’s word limit. However, I spent over two weeks on the phone with journalists so if you want to know what I think, here are some articles I was quoted in that you can read.

• Yale Climate Connection. (2024, Oct 10). Hurricane misinformation festers, revealing a new side to the climate fight.

• FactCheck.org. (2024, Oct 10). Posts Make Misleading Claims About FEMA’s Future Under Trump.

• Wired. (2024, Oct 9). Hurricane Milton Shows How a Storm’s Category Doesn’t Tell the Full Story.

• NPR. (2024, Oct 9). How FEMA tries to combat rumors and conspiracy theories about Milton and Helene.

• NPR. (2024, Oct 9). They came to Asheville looking for a 'climate haven.' Then came Hurricane Helene.

• New York Times. (2024, Oct 6). Another Hurdle in Recovery From Helene: Misinformation Is Getting in the Way.

• The Guardian. (2024, Oct 6). Helene-ravaged areas will feel health effects for years.

• The Atlantic. (2024, Oct 5). The Fog of Disaster is Getting Worse.

• The AP. (2024, Oct 4). FEMA has faced criticism and praise during Helene. Here’s what it does — and doesn’t do.

• Washington Post. (2024, Oct 4). FEMA Deploys to Difficult Terrain After Helene as It Faces Criticism and Fights Misinformation.

• NPR. (2024, Oct 3). Politically Charged Rumors and Conspiracy Theories Flourish on X.

• The Atlantic. (2024, Oct 3). An Alarming New Trend in Hurricane Deaths.

• The New York Times. (2024, Oct 2). Sleeping Through Hurricane Helene.

• Washington Post. (2024, Sept 30). Why Helene’s Floods Caught North Carolina Off Guard.

I do want to recommend this article from Vox on the climate haven issue and this article from the Wall Street Journal on white supremacist disaster volunteerism/ recruitment that I am losing sleep over. Our profession needs to be more proactive in addressing this issue for the safety of the people working in the profession and the communities we work in.

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The End Bits

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