Zoë Schlanger writes:

In the days since the Texas flash-flood disaster, the Department of Homeland Security has had a stock response to questions about delays in the federal government’s response, or about a recent rule requiring DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to personally approve FEMA expenditures over $100,000, including rescue teams. The response goes, over and over, like this: “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens … The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

The Trump administration has been using this line for more than a month now, in response to criticism of its plans to remake, or perhaps disband, FEMA. And many people who study emergency response agree that, to some degree, the agency needs reform. Yet now the administration’s press to quickly strip down the agency is being tested against a devastating disaster for the first time. And it is violating a basic precept of emergency management: Be prepared.

In any disaster, responding quickly can help save people and salve the harm. Protocols should be well known and well practiced before an event. An active disaster that killed more than 130 people, with more than 160 still missing, is not the occasion to switch up the norms. “This is exactly what many of us are concerned about,” Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the nonprofit Urban Institute, told me. However much FEMA might benefit from change, remaking it in an ad hoc fashion will just result in more devastation, he said: “In the context of a really complicated emergency where lots of people’s lives are at stake—that’s just not where you want to see experimentation happening.” [Continue reading…]