"The emergency management agency should be very small."

This wasn't a radical proposition when the National Governors Association made it in 1978. It was common sense. Emergency managers weren't supposed to be responders—they were coordinators, bringing stakeholders together to collectively reduce disaster risk. Disasters were to be handled at "the lowest level possible," with federal intervention reserved for truly catastrophic events.

Fast forward to today: Federal data shows FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund had outlays of approximately $68 billion in 2020 alone—more than 60 times what was spent annually in the 1980s.

What happened? How did a discipline designed to reduce disaster impacts through coordination transform into a massive humanitarian relief operation? And what have we lost in the process?

In our previous articles, I've examined how governance failures often transform manageable problems into catastrophes. The same pattern that led to the Boeing 737 MAX door incident, the Texas power grid failure, and the water crisis in Flint is evident in emergency management: decisions made, warnings ignored, and systems designed to address symptoms rather than causes. Now it's time to explore perhaps the most consequential governance failure of all—the slow suffocation of emergency management under the weight of disaster relief.

A Mission Transformed

Imagine you're in emergency management. When you entered the field, you envisioned coordinating mitigation projects, strengthening community partnerships, and building a network of local responders who could handle most emergencies without federal assistance. You wanted to prevent disasters, not just respond to them.

Today, your reality looks different. Your office walls are lined with three-ring binders containing grant guidance for federal assistance programs. Your calendar is filled with meetings about damage assessments, applicant briefings, and recovery program administration. Prevention feels like a luxury—you're constantly chasing the last disaster.

This transformation didn't happen overnight. Former FEMA attorney Quin Lucie traces this evolution back decades. During the Cold War era, FEMA and its predecessors were charged with civil defense and national mobilization, not just disaster recovery. From 1979 through the late 1980s, FEMA was far more focused on preparing for potential national security emergencies, including industrial mobilization.

The turning point came in 1992 with Hurricane Andrew. Under President Clinton's FEMA Administrator James Lee Witt, the agency pivoted sharply toward natural hazards, mitigation, and day-to-day disasters. By the time of the 2017 hurricane season, federal disaster relief operations reached unprecedented levels.

The numbers tell the story. 

Federal spending records show disaster outlays averaged only about $1 billion (in today's dollars) in the 1980s. By the 2005-2006 period following Hurricane Katrina, that figure had grown to roughly $70 billion. The 2017 hurricane season prompted projected costs to reach about $86 billion. And in 2020, primarily due to COVID-19 response, FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund saw outlays of nearly $68 billion.

Meanwhile, funding for coordination and mitigation has grown at a fraction of that pace.

This isn't merely a budget shift—it's a fundamental transformation of emergency management's identity and purpose. And like the governance failures documented in "The Betrayal of Safety," it happened so gradually that many haven't recognized what's been lost until the consequences became impossible to ignore.

When Relief Overwhelms Coordination

The consequences of this shift extend far beyond organizational charts or budget lines.

Imagine you're preparing for Hurricane Milton, the Category 5 storm that devastated Florida in October 2024. As the storm approaches, you find yourself overwhelmed not just by the impending disaster but by the weight of federal recovery programs still active from previous hurricanes. You still have staff dedicated to administering recovery grants from storms that hit years earlier—some dating back to 2017's Hurricane Irma. The complex requirements of these programs have consumed so much capacity that basic coordination functions—the very heart of emergency management—are compromised.

You're trying to prepare for Milton while still managing recovery programs from multiple previous storms. There simply aren't enough hours in the day or people in your office. You find yourself making impossible choices between preparing for tomorrow's disaster and managing yesterday's recovery.

This is the cruel irony of emergency management's transformation: the more resources devoted to disaster relief operations, the less capacity remains for the coordination that could reduce the need for relief in the first place.

The problem isn't that we've gotten bad at relief. On the contrary, we've gotten remarkably good at it. Federal agencies can now deploy resources faster, provide more comprehensive assistance, and process claims more efficiently than ever before.

The problem is that this "success" has become an excuse to avoid addressing the underlying causes of vulnerability. Why make difficult zoning decisions when federal aid will rebuild in the same vulnerable locations? Why invest in prevention when relief is guaranteed?

When FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told Congress in 2022 that "we no longer have disaster seasons – we are busy year-round," she wasn't describing the triumph of emergency management. She was acknowledging a system under continuous strain—one that has abandoned its preventive mission in favor of an endless cycle of response and recovery.

The Eroding Coordination Muscle

As disaster relief operations have grown more sophisticated, the coordination function that was once the heart of emergency management has withered.

In a previous article, I highlighted research from the RAND Corporation that identified what they called an "adding machine" problem—where new requirements, systems, and frameworks are continuously added without others being retired. This has resulted in emergency management practitioners having to navigate an estimated 31 different strategic frameworks, a level of complexity that overwhelms the capacity for effective coordination.

The evidence of this erosion appears in multiple ways:

Resource imbalance. Federal records indicate that the vast majority of emergency management funding flows to disaster relief operations rather than coordination, planning, or prevention.

Fragmented responsibilities. Disaster functions are split across numerous federal programs in multiple agencies, creating coordination challenges that didn't exist when emergency management was simpler.

Increasing complexity. The proliferation of frameworks, regulations, and programs has created a system so complex that even experienced emergency managers struggle to navigate it, let alone coordinate it effectively.

Coordination skill gaps. A generation of emergency managers has been trained primarily in relief program administration rather than facilitation, collaborative problem-solving, and stakeholder engagement.

This eroding coordination capacity comes precisely when we need it most. Climate data indicates disasters are increasing in frequency and severity. Critical infrastructure is aging. Development continues in vulnerable areas. The need for coordinated risk reduction has never been greater—yet the capacity for such coordination has never been more compromised.

Just as we've seen in other systems—from aviation safety to water infrastructure—this isn't a technical problem but a governance failure. The institutions we've built and the incentives we've created have consistently prioritized visible relief operations over invisible prevention, despite overwhelming evidence that prevention is more cost-effective and saves more lives.

The Forgotten Art of Mobilization

This transformation has consequences beyond natural disasters. As former FEMA attorney Quin Lucie has pointed out in one of our recent conversations, the shift away from FEMA's original coordination role has led to a forgotten art of national mobilization.

Imagine a scenario where resources become scarce across the entire nation—not just in one region. Our current emergency management frameworks, like the Incident Command System (ICS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS), assume resources can be found somewhere and moved to the affected area. But what happens when there are no surplus resources anywhere?

This is exactly what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the nation faced critical shortages of personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other medical supplies, the traditional mutual aid model broke down. There were simply no resources to share.

The pandemic exposed a critical gap in our emergency management approach: the loss of mobilization authorities and capabilities—tools that were once central to the agency's mission but had atrophied as the focus shifted to disaster relief operations.

This parallels a pattern we've seen repeatedly across systems: the skills and capabilities needed to prevent catastrophic failure are often the first to be sacrificed when budgets tighten or priorities shift. Just as Boeing's safety culture eroded under production pressures and Flint's water oversight collapsed under financial constraints, FEMA's mobilization capacity withered as relief operations consumed more attention and resources.

This gap extends beyond equipment shortages. It affects how we prepare for and respond to all manner of national-scale emergencies, from catastrophic earthquakes to cyberattacks on critical infrastructure. The coordination function that would allow for effective national mobilization has been overshadowed by the day-to-day demands of disaster relief operations.

Structural Reform on the Horizon?

The growing recognition of this coordination-relief imbalance has sparked serious proposals for structural reform.

In March 2023, a bipartisan bill—H.R. 5599, the FEMA Independence Act—was introduced to remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and reestablish it as a cabinet-level, independent agency. As former Florida emergency management director Rep. Jared Moskowitz explained, "Right now, FEMA functions more like a grant agency with emergency management capabilities. This commonsense bill will help return it to its original mission—responding before, during, and after disaster events."

The bill proposes a comprehensive restructuring plan, including Senate-confirmed leadership with significant executive experience, regional directors, and full authority over all aspects of FEMA's mission. Supporters argue that FEMA has become bogged down by DHS's sprawling scope, which includes immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, and border control.

This echoes a parallel development: the March 2025 Executive Order on "Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness." The order explicitly states that "preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the State, local, and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible, and efficient Federal Government." More significantly, it mandates a review of national preparedness policies to "move away from an all-hazards approach" toward a risk-informed approach.

The Executive Order specifically targets the bureaucratic complexity that has hindered effective coordination. It criticizes the "bureaucratic and complicated lens of overlapping and overbroad 'functions'" and calls for a National Risk Register to quantify natural and malign risks to national infrastructure and systems.

These developments signal potential movement, but as we've seen with other system failures documented in previous articles, there's a vast difference between identifying a problem and implementing an effective solution. In "The Most Expensive Report Ever Written," I highlighted how post-disaster analyses often lead to reports rather than reforms. The repeated cycle of disaster, investigation, recommendation, and inaction has become a tragic routine in American governance.

Will these reform efforts break that cycle? History suggests caution. Previous efforts have sometimes been stymied by the same political dynamics that favor post-disaster spending over pre-disaster investment. The very institutional forces explored in "The Courage to Say 'We Don't Have the Answers'" – career incentives, cognitive limitations of expertise, bureaucratic path dependency, and political time horizons – all work against fundamental reform.

Different Functions, Different Structures

The evidence points toward a clear conclusion: emergency management coordination and disaster relief are different functions that might be better served by different organizational approaches.

Coordination requires:

• Deep local relationships and knowledge
• Convening authority
• Nimble organizational structures
• Consistent stakeholder engagement
• Integration with everyday governance

Relief requires:

• Surge capacity
• Logistics expertise
• Financial management systems
• Standardized processes
• Specialized technical capabilities

Rather than expecting a single organizational structure to excel at both, we should consider alternatives that recognize these distinct requirements.

But this is where the pattern identified in "The Courage to Say 'We Don't Have the Answers'" becomes evident. The solutions typically proposed—more funding, better training, stronger leadership—rarely challenge the fundamental structure of our emergency management system. They represent what organizational theorists call "first-order change"—adjustments within existing systems rather than reimagining the systems themselves.

True transformation would require what theorists call "second-order change"—questioning whether our current approach to emergency management is fundamentally sound, or whether it needs to be reconceived from first principles.

Potential approaches include:

Functional separation. Create clearer organizational distinctions between coordination and relief functions, with dedicated resources and leadership for each.

Strengthened coordination authority. Establish coordination offices with explicit mandate to convene stakeholders across sectors for risk reduction, separate from relief administration.

Balanced metrics. Develop measures that value successful risk reduction, not just efficient relief delivery.

Aligned incentives. Create financial and political motivations for prevention rather than relief dependency.

Restored mobilization capacity. Rebuild the capabilities needed for national-scale coordination during true catastrophes, recognizing that some emergencies will exceed the capacity of any single jurisdiction.

The question isn't whether these approaches are technically feasible—they clearly are. The question is whether our institutional structures and political incentives will allow us to make these changes before the next catastrophic failure forces our hand.

Reclaiming Coordination as Our Core

None of these approaches will be easy to implement. Each requires questioning structures that have evolved over decades. Each demands challenging the political dynamics that favor post-disaster spending over pre-disaster investment.

Yet the stakes are high. Every dollar spent on disaster relief operations represents a failure to address the underlying conditions that created vulnerability in the first place.

For emergency managers across the country, the path forward starts with recognition—that coordination was always the heart of emergency management, and that we've allowed that heart to be overwhelmed by the machinery of relief.

Imagine you're in emergency management again. You're witnessing the aftermath of Hurricane Milton in Florida. Communities that implemented strong building codes and land use planning suffered far less damage than those that didn't. Areas with robust coordination before the disaster are recovering faster than those where such networks were weak or nonexistent. You see firsthand the value of prevention and the limits of even the most efficient relief operations.

You still believe in the original vision. You know that emergency management at its best isn't about delivering relief after disasters. It's about bringing people together to prevent disasters in the first place. We've lost sight of that, but it's not too late to find our way back.

As we've seen throughout this series of articles, the challenge isn't technical—we know how to reduce disaster impacts. The challenge is governance—creating the systems and incentives that value prevention as much as we currently value response. It's about recognizing that true resilience comes not from how quickly we recover, but from whether we needed to recover in the first place.

More to follow soon...thanks for reading. 

With bipartisan legislation proposing to restructure FEMA and a new Executive Order pushing toward greater state and local preparedness, how might emergency management professionals reclaim their coordination role while ensuring communities remain protected from increasingly frequent and severe disasters?