Emergency Management: You said recently that emergency management is becoming federalized. How did this happen and what does it mean?
Eric Pickering: Actually it has been more nationalized and less federalized, meaning the states collectively. The world moves much faster than it ever did before, and most of us expect things instantly. That extends to disaster relief as well. We see people who want to help after a disaster and that’s a good thing.
The reason I think it’s become more nationalized is because 49 states have balanced budget laws and when a major disaster happens, they can’t meet the expectations for disaster recovery in the time frame people have come to expect. The federal government doesn’t have that restriction; they just borrow more money to get the people what they want regardless of the long-term financial considerations. FEMA has become a tool for the redistribution of federal taxpayer money to states, local jurisdictions and individuals. I don’t believe this was ever the role of the federal government.
We need to return to relying on our neighbors and communities to rebuild and to supporting charity groups to fill that role. Where I live, there’s a church on both ends of my block. It was inspiring to see the first six years [after Katrina] each of those churches hosted 50 to 100 volunteers every week who came here of their own will to help rebuild houses. That’s where American spirit is — it’s not reliance on the government.
FEMA does have to continue to lean forward; we learned that lesson after Katrina when it took many days for them to get here. But that federal government intervention should only be to save lives and provide short-term recovery, not long-term recovery.
EM: How do we get to that point?
EP: By building more individual preparedness and self-reliance in our communities — the federal government talks about this culture of preparedness, but it seems most of the things they do make us less responsible for ourselves, not more responsible.
EM: Do we also continue to make the same mistakes over and over, like building where we know it’s dangerous to build?
EP: I do think Administrator [Craig] Fugate is trying to put some of that risk back on the private sector, and take it off the taxpayers through some reforms. He’s trying to change the NFIP [National Flood Insurance Program] and the public and individual assistance programs. That being said, coastal populations and infrastructure soared over the last 50 years. Florida’s population has gone from 1.8 million to 19 million and there’s now $10 trillion worth of insured assets on the high-risk coastal areas from Maine to Texas. That doesn’t even account for the earthquake-prone zones, the Madrid fault region, which I believe will one day result in our first multitrillion-dollar disaster.
The Miami hurricane in 1926 resulted in [$100 million] worth of damage. If that happened today, it would cost [$178] billion. That’s not sustainable. But people are deeply connected to their hometowns and cities, and no politician wants to tell their constituents they can’t rebuild their homes and businesses, and they’re going to have to move. That’s not going to happen.
We rebuild in these areas, but you have to rebuild with future risk considerations in mind. That can be done through engineered mitigation like levees, but we also have to take the natural world into account and build in natural solutions. If we’re going to build in flood zones, we have to build high. If we’re going to build in an earthquake zone, we have to build stronger. We don’t necessarily do that.
EM: We tend to spend on rebuilding and not mitigation. What is it going to take to change that?
EP: The only way to change that is a complete breakdown of the system, much like our public schools in New Orleans before Katrina. A New York Times reporter was talking to me a few months after the storm and asked if there was anything positive to come out of the storm. My answer was yes, 66,000 children in our public school system now have a chance at a future. At that point I thought they were going to be educated in other school systems that would do a better job. If it hadn’t been for the utter destruction of our school system, we wouldn’t have today what’s considered a national model for public school reform, which prior to our storm resulted in 40 percent of our adults reading at the fifth-grade level.
The political will for change doesn’t exist, for the most part. For every dollar we spend on preparedness and mitigation, we spend $15 on response and rebuilding. The cost is not sustainable. A 2005 study [from the Multihazard Mitigation Council] on disaster mitigation grants showed that for every dollar we spend on mitigation, we saved $3.65 on recovery. There was also a study by the American Society of Civil Engineers that estimates that federal spending on levees pays for itself six times over in preventing flooding damage to American homes and businesses.
However it’s been clearly demonstrated that politicians are re-elected at much higher rates for spending on disaster recovery than prevention. Until the public is educated more and makes more informed decisions at election time, that won’t change. Fugate deeply believes in individual and community preparedness. He believes that’s the only way to make our country truly resilient.
EM: You said state and local preparedness has declined. That’s saying a lot considering we’ve had some spectacular disasters to learn from.
EP: It’s difficult to come to terms with. Based on recent polling that FEMA did, 50 percent of Americans are preparing or at least have started thinking about preparing for a disaster. That study also found that more than [20] percent of Americans have no intention to prepare themselves in any way.
New Orleans is more prepared today than ever for a hurricane. That has to do with better flood protection — we’ve spent billions of dollars on new levees and pumps and things like that, but also disaster awareness. But the more time passes, the more people will forget the lessons of Katrina. The danger is complacency builds while the memory of the disaster fades. Many of us in disaster management are trying to figure out how to get people to prepare, but it’s hard to get and keep their attention. If we can just get people talking seriously about the risk and dangers and face the consequences, we might be able to get them interested in preparing a bit.
As an example, it’s cheap and easy to put a smoke detector in your home. Last year in New Orleans, 15 citizens died in residence fires. Not one of those homes had a smoke detector. After each one of those fires, the fire department sent out press releases saying how important it was to have smoke alarms to prevent you from dying, but people don’t call. We’re going to have more fires and more residents die this year in homes that don’t have smoke detectors. It’s a very simple measure to have a smoke detector to make sure you wake up and get out of that fire, but people won’t do it.
EM: You said we should update the threshold for what constitutes a federally declared disaster. Why haven’t we done that?
EP: I think Administrator Fugate is working on that, trying to institutionalize the reforms that he’s begun in his term. But he’s fighting an uphill battle for sure. The federal government has not updated the Stafford Act, called the per capita damage indicator, since 1985. A study [by the Government Accountability Office] in 2012 estimated that 44 percent of disaster declarations would not have met the per capita damage indicator if it had been adjusted for income, and 25 percent of those disasters would not have met the standard if it had been adjusted for inflation.
Congress is unwilling to limit states’ access to public and private assistance mostly because it’s become an economic development tool. They will not face their constituents and make the argument that it’s fiscally responsible not to do this when come election time, they’re going to have an opponent who is going to promise free money to fix their house, school and community.
We have to transfer more risk from taxpayers to individuals for lots of reasons, but [especially] to keep FEMA programs sustainable. The only way to reform the system is to make people pay the consequences of their decisions. It’s a simple but difficult process of returning Americans to a spirit of self-reliance and personal responsibility.
