BalancedWx Special: Whither emergency management?
Talking about FEMA, NWS and how we prepare for and respond to disaster
I have written a number of articles in the last two months talking about the damage being done to the scientific community by recent decisions of the Trump Administration. I want to focus today’s post on an area that is very closely related to the meteorology community but not an earth or physical science: emergency management. Before I dive in to this, I feel like I should give a little bit of background on why emergency management (EM) is important to the weather community and my own experience with emergency management - and that I should preface this by making clear that my perspective here is my opinion based on my experience.
When I started as a National Weather Service meteorologist in 1990, EM in the United States was a field that was evolving, from the Cold War civil defense era focused on nuclear war to becoming the primary entity at all levels of government responsible for disaster management. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was established in 1979, and there is an extensive state and local emergency management structure that works within our federal system on four primary goals related to disasters (natural or man-made): mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
The relationship between the NWS and the EM community at the time I started with NWS was, I think it’s safe to say, a work in progress. The NWS was going through a major modernization and reorganization, and as part of that they were closing a number of the smaller “Weather Service Offices” that served local communities in order to move to a new structure with approximately 120 “Warning and Forecast Offices” or WFOs with new WSR-88D Doppler radars. As an example, my first NWS job was at the Weather Service Office in Columbus, Ohio, which was one of 10 NWS offices that served the state of Ohio at that time. After NWS modernization, all of those offices were consolidated into WFOs in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Wilmington, OH, Charleston, WV, and North Webster, IN.
The emergency management community at the time had some skepticism about the NWS modernization, particularly in those areas where local and state emergency managers had good relationships with offices that were going to be closed, and also in areas where there was concern about losing local radar coverage. Emergency managers often led organized political pushback against some of the NWS’ planned consolidation, and in fact the office in North Webster, IN was added to the NWS original modernization plan in part due to this pushback, as were the offices in Huntsville, AL, Caribou, ME and Key West, FL. The Doppler radar in Evansville, IN and the move of the Jackson, MS radar to a more optimal location in Brandon, MS also resulted from similar local grassroot efforts that tended to be led by local and state emergency managers.
While that period was obviously somewhat contentious, what came out of it was a renewed sense of how much the NWS and EM relied upon each other. Even though 9/11 caused the move of FEMA into the new Department of Homeland Security and a major shift in the emphasis of emergency management at the federal level toward terrorist threats, most state and local emergency managers recognized that a weather disaster was the most common and most likely type of disaster they would face, and that they needed the NWS not only to provide weather forecasts and warnings but to assist with preparedness and response. Meanwhile, the NWS came to realize that they did not have the bandwidth to directly meet a lot of society’s needs for weather support and that core partners like emergency managers could amplify their message and be partners in education and preparedness.
Hence, an ever strengthening partnership between the NWS and emergency management at all levels of government evolved through the 2000s and 2010s. I became the Meteorologist-in-Charge of the WFO in Jackson, MS in 2002, and became very involved in developing that partnership in Mississippi and Louisiana. Working with the local and state emergency management communities was truly one of the most rewarding aspects of my career. I found these people to be tremendously dedicated to the public safety of their communities and interested in any sort of project or initiative that might help their communities better deal with natural disasters. This was especially the case because the emergency managers I was working with were often resource challenged and welcomed any partnership that would help build community preparedness and resilience.
I worked closely with the EM community from federal to local levels through a number of major weather and water events, including Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ivan (and many others), the April 2011 Super Outbreak, and the 2011 Mississippi River Floods. What I observed and learned about emergency management so interested me that when I decided to go back to school and get my master’s degree, I decided to do it in emergency management which was evolving as an academic field. In 2014, I finished my master’s degree at Millersville University in emergency management.
So while I have never worked as a full-time emergency manager, my experience and academic career have given me a lot of exposure and knowledge of the field. While working at the National Severe Storms Laboratory, I was able to participate in research that involved emergency management and we worked on projects that were directed toward providing improved weather information to emergency managers.
The NWS of today considers emergency management one of its most important core partners, providing specialized services to the community like NWSChat and Impact-Based Decision Support Services (IDSS). My sense based on conversations I have had with NWS colleagues is that provision of IDSS to the emergency management community, including ensuring the ability to have NWS meteorologists in federal, state and local emergency operations centers during high impact weather events, has been a core aspect of the NWS planned future concept of operations.
Given this strong collaboration between NWS and emergency management and the role that EM plays in preparing and warning communities for weather disasters, clearly the robustness of the emergency management framework in this country is of crucial interest to the meteorological community. Emergency management has been a significant focus of the Trump Administration, and rather than go into detail on all the proposed and ongoing actions, I suggest you read this excellent summary from Andrew Rumbach for the full details.
Obviously elimination of FEMA has been one of the emergency management related actions discussed by the administration that has received the most attention. However, this action has really been more of just a talking point so far while more immediate concrete and concerning actions have been taken. A few examples from the article:
On March 19th, 2025 the President signed another executive order titled “Achieving Efficiency Through State and Local Preparedness” that describes a policy that “State and local governments and individuals play a more active and significant role in national resilience and preparedness” and ordered the publication of a national resilience strategy. Perhaps most importantly the order directs administration staff to make recommendations to “reformulate the process and metrics for Federal responsibility” and to “move away from an all-hazards approach.”
FEMA has canceled numerous events and trainings that typically support the field, like the National Fire Academy and the Higher Education conference.
The Trump Administration has also disbanded several key advisory councils that guide FEMA’s work, despite them being established in law. They include the National Advisory Council, the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, and the National Dam Safety Review Board.
Most important, a large number of FEMA staff were fired, laid off, or opted for early retirement. It is unclear how many staff will ultimately be let go, but it seems clear that parts of FEMA that focus on issues like climate change and resiliency are particularly hard-hit by the downsizing.
The first item here gets to what seems to be one of the key strategies of the administration for emergency management, namely shifting federal responsibilities more to state and local levels. This is one of those ideas that can sound reasonable in principle, but very concerning in practice based on actual experience with disasters.
It is important to recognize that on a routine, day-to-day basis, the federal role in emergency management is primarily to provide an overall framework for collaboration, standards and training. The fact that training events and advisory councils are being terminated as discussed above is worrisome when it comes to maintaining a strong foundation at all levels of emergency management. When I was still with the NWS, I participated in, and in some cases helped plan, FEMA sponsored emergency management exercises for various potential weather and flood events. These exercises were very important in helping to train state and local emergency managers on severe weather operations and identify possible weaknesses in operational procedures. Perhaps even more importantly, they also helped bring together key federal, state and local EMs and other important government staff involved in disaster preparedness and response and built relationships among these individuals. Having these relationships identified and established ahead of time is crucial to effective operations during and after disasters.
Even though this high level collaboration role is important, it is not what the public generally thinks of when they think of FEMA, rather it’s their role on the ground in response and recovery efforts after disasters. The reality, though, is that emergency management in this country under the guiding Stafford Act is already structured where FEMA does not become actively involved “on the ground” unless or until local and state resources are overwhelmed. If FEMA is pre-deployed ahead of, for example, a hurricane, it is because the meteorological information provided to the EM community by the NWS and other members of the weather community indicate the high likelihood that state and local resources will be overwhelmed.
Given this, it is hard for me to understand what is meant in the first bullet above by “State and local governments and individuals play a more active and significant role in national resilience and preparedness.” State and local government and individuals already play the primary role in resilience and preparedness. Reducing the role of the federal government will just place even more burden on those state and local governments, and on individuals who in many cases are in vulnerable situations and already unable to adequately prepare for and respond to disasters.
At a time where meteorological physical science is on the threshold of making significant advances that could be used to improve our societal ability to deal with weather and water hazards, it seems that we are in danger of ignoring years of emergency management and social science research that shows societal outcomes to natural hazard events are most closely related to the pre-existing socioeconomic vulnerabilities of communities and individuals. Having decades of experience working in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, I greatly fear that placing more responsibility for EM and preparedness at state, local and individual level will just yield increased vulnerabilities and poorer societal outcomes. Bottom line: turning more EM responsibility over to already vulnerable communities and individuals does not seem like a recipe for success.