Monday morning, Southern Californians have been reminded of simply how fragile the bottom beneath them actually is. A 5.2-magnitude earthquake rattled San Diego County, sending shockwaves so far as Los Angeles. San Diegans have been fortunate: No deaths or main injury have been reported. However luck isn’t a plan. And with our nationwide catastrophe system melting down, they might be on their very own when the true one hits.
Final month, President Trump signed Executive Order 14239, looking for to dump duty for catastrophe response to state and native governments. A number of days later, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned she deliberate to “eliminate” the Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA). This isn’t reform. It’s abandonment. It’s chaos by design.
Right here’s how our catastrophe system is meant to work: Native responders are the primary in. The state backs them up. And when the dimensions of the disaster exceeds their capability, the federal authorities steps in — like an enormous brother with deep pockets and nationwide muscle. The Stafford Act authorizes this, and the Nationwide Incident Administration System is the playbook.
This technique, when it really works, brings order to the chaos of disaster. However it’s being dismantled earlier than our eyes. And nobody has any concept what’s going to take its place.
The system hasn’t at all times labored. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, chaos within the first Trump administration led to extended struggling in Puerto Rico. Then got here the spectacular collapse of federal disaster administration in April 2020 throughout COVID-19’s early weeks. “We have been all instructed on a cellphone name — all 50 governors — that we have been principally on our personal,” mentioned Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. Hospitals overflowed. Private protecting gear vanished. States have been left to compete towards one another for lifesaving provides.
The administration’s workaround appears to be to write down the federal authorities out of the method altogether. That massive gamble relies on the concept that “all disasters are native” — an idea that crumbles within the face of true disaster. Research of main earthquake responses — from Mexico City in 1985 to Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2010 to Turkey in 1999 and 2023 — have discovered again and again that native and state governments have been overwhelmed inside hours.
This issues deeply for San Diego County, which is in danger from a number of fault zones. The California Earthquake Authority says there’s a 75% probability of a magnitude 7.0 or greater earthquake striking Southern California in the next two decades.
If the actually large one hit right this moment, would we be prepared? Not even shut.
The US has the sources, the folks and the experience. What we don’t have is somebody in cost to make issues occur. We want FEMA — now greater than ever — to handle the more and more advanced and extreme disasters of a polycrisis age. A refocused and empowered FEMA would forge sturdy public-private partnerships, main a response that’s government-led however not government-centric. It could develop into the nationwide catastrophe machine we so desperately want: quick, coordinated, relentless.
However we’re operating out of time.
At some point quickly, San Diegans will get up in a parallel universe. A large earthquake will rip by means of Southern California, severing infrastructure, overwhelming hospitals and leaving total communities stranded. Dazed households will wander by means of ruined neighborhoods. Hundreds shall be trapped within the rubble. And nobody shall be coming.
When that failure occurs, it gained’t stem from an absence of personnel, gear or expertise. It should stem from an absence of competence.
And that would be the disaster throughout the disaster.
McKinney is a former deputy commissioner on the New York Metropolis Workplace of Emergency Administration and a former member of FEMA’s Nationwide Advisory Council, and lives in New York Metropolis.
