What can the history of FEMA teach us about managing risks?
FEMA’s birthday was this week! I totally forgot to give them a gift, but if I could, I might gift them separation from the Department of Homeland Security. That’s right, welcome to this blog’s first hot take, let’s talk about the history of disaster management in the US and just how it came to be housed under counterterrorism objectives.
FEMA comes out of a couple trends in US history, but today we’ll just focus on Cold War home defense initiatives. During this time period, cities and towns created “civil defense director” positions, staffed by (typically) retired military personnel who sought to plan for nuclear attacks. As these positions grew across the nation, states joined together to advocate for a US agency that could supervise this new profession of “emergency management.” After notable disasters, including Three Mile Island, in 1979 President Jimmy Carter consolidated emergency management into the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
FEMA was initially tasked with considering fires, floods, and defense civil preparedness, and struggled to approach all of these priorities simultaneously. This led to the development of the (still in use) “all hazards” philosophy–the idea that generic emergency plans and protocols can be used to cope with many unforeseen emergencies, regardless of cause.
But it wasn’t that simple. FEMA has since experienced the pressure caused by the disasters of the day–in the 1980s FEMA focused on nuclear attack, after Hurrican Andrew in 1992 there was pressure toward hurricane preparedness, the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing shifted attention back to human security threats.
Even if the idea is to prepare for “all hazards,” it seems that every major hazard shifts public and political interests and priorities. Balance, then, may be impossible in the aftermath of catastrophe.
Enter 9/11. After the terrorist attacks, there was political interest in joining numerous federal agencies in the hopes of encouraging collaboration and intelligence-sharing. In the shuffle, FEMA got nestled under the newly-created Department of Homeland Security. There have been ongoing discussions about if this is the best system because it means another layer of bureaucracy during time-sensitive disasters.
Beyond the bureaucracy, though, in my work I’ve been thinking more and more about types of risks. Hurricanes, floods, tornados and fires are inevitable parts of the natural world. The mitigation plans include long-term considerations about where we build communities and how. Human-caused threats like terrorism bring in a whole different set of considerations related to human behavior, international relations, and information gathering. Are all hazards really the same? Or should we resist de-complicating risk in ways that miss important prevention details? Maybe I’ll have an answer by the time FEMA turns 44.
If you want to read more about the history of FEMA and how it influences us today check out Chapter 2 of my book.