The disasters that define us

As emergency managers, we remember the disasters that challenged us most. But do we fully appreciate how much they have shaped us, our careers, and our approach to emergency management? Below I reflect on four disasters that have most influenced me.

9/11 – September 11, 2001

I found myself at the top of the Capitol Building after the two planes had struck the World Trade Center. The congressman I worked for insisted on continuing with the previously scheduled press conference in the Capitol press gallery. I don’t remember much of what he said (nor do I suspect the gathered media paid much attention) as all of us were fixated on the live coverage from New York on the television tuned to CNN. As we saw the images and read the scrolling text, it was clear that America was under attack. Yet there we stood, oblivious to the risk.?

Then there was the CNN report that a truck bomb had exploded at the Pentagon. And as I turned to look out the third-floor window overlooking the Mall, I saw smoke rising from the Pentagon. Together with a handful of staff and media, we gazed in the distance, still not realizing the gravity of the situation. Soon a US Capitol Police officer would burst through the door and, with the fire alarm sounding from the hall, instructed us to evacuate the building immediately. Down the stairs we ran, greeted by the blinding sun as we hurriedly exited the back of the Capitol. No one was around. We had been the last to leave.

Later we would learn that the U.S. Capitol had likely been the intended target of the hijackers at the controls of Flight 93. Only then did it hit me that I owed my life to the brave souls aboard Flight 93.

Reflection: I had chosen the right career path and would dedicate my life to protecting Americans from man-made and natural disasters.?

Hurricane Katrina – August 2005

Just a few weeks after joining the White House staff, a hurricane was poised to strike the Gulf Coast. I learned that my role was to keep the White House staff updated by producing situation reports (Sit Reps) before and, if necessary, after landfall. I wrote each report every 12 hours, and with each elapsing time period, the forecast became increasingly concerning. I felt like for every report I had to think of stronger adjectives (from concerning to dangerous to catastrophic) to make sure that White House leaders understood the gravity of the situation. Hurricane Katrina soon reached Category 5 strength, and by then everyone was paying attention. The devasting impact, followed by the long recovery, meant it was my singular focus in the weeks and months that followed.?

Thereafter I transitioned to writing chapters of the after-action report, the?Federal Response to Hurricane Katrina: Lessons Learned, which would be published in February 2006. And years later, I would again review these lessons for my doctoral dissertation.

Reflection: My first remains the most deadly and costly disaster of our time. Seeing first-hand the challenges the federal government faced taught me (and many of those around me, including President Bush) that we cannot repeat the failures of Katrina.

Hurricane Maria – September 2017

In July 2017, the President nominated me to serve as a FEMA deputy administrator. My goal before joining FEMA was to create a new organization focused on resilience, and have resilience become an equal priority to FEMA’s response mission. But this would have to wait. Early on the morning of Saturday, September 16, I arrived at FEMA headquarters, having been sworn in by the Secretary of Homeland Security late the previous afternoon. As it turns out I wasn’t actually a FEMA employee yet; there hadn’t been time to process my paperwork, so I wore a visitors badge and didn’t have email, computer access, etc.

Nonetheless, as FEMA’s soon-to-be second-ranking official, I found myself at the head of the table for an interagency video teleconference (VTC) as Tropical Storm Maria formed in the Atlantic. Eventually, my paperwork was processed, and I became an official FEMA employee five days later on September 20—the day Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico. What would be one of the most devastating storms in recent memory came on the heels of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which had battered not only Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, but also the FEMA workforce (the FEMA National Response Coordination Center was activated 24/7 for months). From the moment of that first VTC, through the most intense months of my career during the response to and recovery from the disaster, FEMA and the entire federal workforce did everything they could to help disaster survivors—but even that was not enough.

In the weeks and months that followed Maria, policymakers would inquire what could be done to prevent a repeat of this situation. In addition to addressing the unique response challenges an island presents, we, as FEMA leaders, agreed that this was an opportunity to press for action on reducing consequences by authorizing a pre-disaster hazard mitigation program. Whenever we received an inquiry from Capitol Hill or the White House, our answer was always the same: give us a pre-disaster hazard mitigation program. Our collective efforts succeeded and the?Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities?(BRIC) program was included in the Disaster Recovery Reform Act of 2018.

Reflection: As a result of Hurricane Maria, the subsequent policy changes, and our concerted efforts to reduce the consequences of future disasters, FEMA began to shake its legacy role as the federal government’s first responder and instead became the government's disaster resilience agency.

Covid-19 – January 27, 2020

With Administrator Gaynor traveling, I was chairing the weekly FEMA senior leadership meeting. We received a message from DHS headquarters requesting I join a meeting in the White House Situation Room on “travel restrictions.” After questioning why FEMA would be attending rather than CBP or TSA, I did as requested and headed to the White House. There I would join a meeting chaired by the Vice President, with Cabinet Secretaries and other senior federal officials to discuss and debate what to do about the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus in China. There was little consensus on what to do or who should be in charge.

There I witnessed the beginning of what would become a challenging interagency response that would test political leaders and response plans alike. It wasn’t apparent to those gathered in the Situation Room that day that Covid-19 would become more than a “health emergency” and instead a disaster requiring the robust coordinating mechanisms that only emergency managers possessed.?

Just days later, I left government as planned. Then, as an outside observer, I noticed that the lack of interagency coordination I had seen during that Situation Room meeting had not markedly improved in the weeks that followed. By March, I grew agitated and penned an op-ed making the case that FEMA lead the response. A few days later, the President did exactly that.?

Reflection: The January 27, 2020 Situation Room meeting and the nearly three years of our collective experience demonstrated the value of emergency management’s “all hazards” approach. An emergency manager is the Swiss Army knife of crisis management. We, as emergency managers, should expect to step up and lead whenever a major emerges, regardless of whether it’s a “traditional” disaster or not—for example, a cyber-attack with physical consequences.?

These are the disasters that have shaped me. What are the disasters that influenced you, your career, and your approach to emergency management??