Venezuela's Cautionary Tale for US FEMA Reform

Over the past 10 days since Venezuela's doublet M7.2 and M7.5 earthquakes, strikingly different media accounts of the response have emerged.

Even as the New York Times reported that civilian volunteer self-deployment had interfered with response efforts to the hardest-hit state of La Guaira – "carrying food, water and medicine... chok[ing] the only highway into the disaster area, delaying ambulances and rescue crews" – other media were reporting a different view.

Three days after the catastrophe, the Associated Press reported frustration with "inadequate response by the government, whose soldiers, firefighters, police and military cadets were evidently underprepared to respond to the scope of the tragedy.... amplified by efforts to project the image of a robust state response" including selfie-snapping state workers.

Nearly a week later, The World reported "...a slow, uneven and disorganized response from [Venezuelans'] own government," including troops armed with weapons rather than shovels and bare-handed civilians digging survivors and bodies out of rubble. Some heavy machinery, the story reported, was inoperable for lack of fuel.

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald described residents of mountain region El Junquito who "had seen little direct government assistance and were relying heavily on neighbors, farmers and local volunteers for food and basic supplies."

The Associated Press reported that the response had become deeply politicized as a result, even to the point where interim president Delcy Rodriguez "shut down commercial air traffic into Caracas, [which] were set to bring hundreds of relief workers to assist with earthquake recovery efforts," after learning that rival Maria Corina Machado was seeking to return to her home country from exile.

Although, as NBC News reported, Rodríguez had "publicly welcomed aid and rescue teams from countries across the political spectrum" unlike her predecessor Hugo Chavez in 1999, PBS News observed that "Hospitals lacking medicines and equipment[, d]aily power outages[, and a]t least 8 million people in need of humanitarian support... were the realities in Venezuela before it was hit by back-to-back earthquakes on June 24."

Emergency management has matured, and also struggled to keep up

In an opinion piece for The Hill, Kelly McKinney, a former deputy commissioner at the New York City Office of Emergency Management and a former member of FEMA’s National Advisory Council, argued that Venezuela's chaos serves as "a somber warning for US preparedness":

"When the scale of a crisis exceeds a state’s capacity, the federal government steps in with money, logistics, specialized teams and national coordination. But that system is now caught between dismantling and reinvention....

"A FEMA Review Council offered a roadmap, but its central recommendation — shift responsibility to the states — raises the very question Caracas forces us to confront: What happens when the state itself is overwhelmed?"

The news cycle in the US has become so exhausting that few people have probably had a chance to stop and think about these questions, much less to ask how we got here. Those of us who have encountered that sense of overwhelm, though, might indeed want to understand the situation.

The four episodes comprising the podcast series American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA, produced by WNYC Studios' On the Media team, walks viewers through the Federal Emergency Management Agency's tumultuous beginnings, the partisan whiplash that shifted its focus from nuclear war to natural disasters to terrorism, and the current efforts to reinvent the agency.

Listening to each episode, it becomes clear that like so many Venezuelans, Americans also distrust federal efforts to manage catastrophes.

That's in part because of past mismanagement and inaction, again due to priority shifting. But it's also because even the agency's best intentions have been waylaid by misinformation and its own inability to meet everyone's needs, especially relative to more immediate assistance from neighbors and friends.

In Episode 1, hosts Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger describe the 1974 plane crash that revealed the existence of Mount Weather, a "a tightly guarded Cold War secret" government installation built deep within northern Virginia's mountains. "If our government could build a secret city, it does kind of make you wonder what else could they be hiding," Loewinger speculated.

The question isn't without merit. Although FEMA was originally founded upon request from the National Governor's Association in 1978, after President Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, it shifted focus from preparing for weather catastrophes like Hurricanes Betsy, Camille, and Agnes, to preparing once again for nuclear war.

As a result, it became highly secretive. The episode describes its J. Edgar Hoover-like director, Army Colonel Louis Guiffrida, whose black budget and classified projects included Project 908: the identification of large buildings like department stores and casinos to serve as refugee housing in the event of nuclear war.

Thus was born the "FEMA camp" conspiracy theory, not least as a result of Hoover's own list of suspected communists to be detained en masse in the event of nuclear war.

After FEMA bungled its response to both 1989's Hurricane Hugo and 1992's Hurricane Andrew, though, incoming FEMA director James Lee Witt – an experienced emergency manager – dismantled much of the secrecy for both employees and the media, used their feedback to fix the problems, and constructed a "crackerjack" agency more akin to what the state governors had requested 15 years previously.

By the time Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, though, the agency had once again been retasked away from natural disasters like the 1993 Mississippi River floods. Episode 2 describes how FEMA, now folded into the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, had emphasized terrorism to the point where "its response to Hurricane Katrina... stained the agency’s reputation forever," according to the episode's description.

You can find my previous post on Katrina documentaries here. What stood out to me about this episode was its brief introductory spot, an interview with Brian Walsh, a senior editorial director at Vox and editor of its Future Perfect section.

The focus of this interview was "economic blindness," or the market's inability to respond to either the current crisis within the Strait of Hormuz or, previously, the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic. Walsh is circumspect about his own reporting's role in contributing to that blindness:

"I had seen and covered so many other situations that petered out because that is ultimately what generally happens. An event like that is incredibly rare. There was almost a fear I had of not wanting to seem alarmist, which is strange because I would often spend much of my time as a reporter outside this crisis trying to actually raise the alarm, trying to get people to understand this would be a real threat. We would not be ready.

"And yet when the moment came, what I found myself doing was trying to not come off alarmist. I'm not sure whether I was trying not to scare people or whether I myself just when presented with what ultimately was exactly what I've been warning people about, I couldn't make myself believe it. It didn't feel real to me."

Walsh acknowledges that failing to put the beginnings of the pandemic in clearer, declarative terms – "to put the pieces together and... really make audiences understand that something was happening in China in January" – contributed to the "ostrich paradox" identified by two Wharton professors, Robert Meyer and Howard Kunder.

Ironically, Walsh's observation that news stories about flight cancellations or fuel rationing are "all presented as somewhat discrete events" and that "You don't hear that one story that says all this is connected" speaks to his own reticence to be alarmist – or for that matter, the power of conspiracy theories and, perhaps, media reluctance to lose credibility by sounding like them.

Conspiracy theories are a key feature of Episode 3, which focuses on FEMA's response to Hurricane Helene. Notably, the agency learned from its catastrophic failure after Katrina and pre-positioned 1,500 federal workers (nearly two-thirds of which were rescue personnel), 2.7 million meals, more than 100,000 gallons of gasoline, and 10,000 beds for survivors.

In spite of these proactive efforts, though, "a new kind of emergency" was how Loewinger described the social media firestorm of misinformation in Helene's wake.

The narratives included FEMA camps, survivor assistance capped at $750 while funds went to undocumented migrants, and even land theft. On X, Elon Musk claimed FEMA was blocking Starlink shipments. Right wing militia members claimed to offer support and supplies that government workers were withholding.

"Several state and local officials also tried to dispel rumors that FEMA was blocking or confiscating third party donations, but there was simply too much noise online," Loewinger reported. "The reality is that our information environment isn't well designed for debunkings."

Will Amis, a technology reporter at the Washington Post, told Loewinger that working with researchers from a nonprofit called the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, his team learned that "FEMA's most popular tweets since Hurricane Helene have reached 50 times fewer people than the false rumors." Among people posting conspiracy theories: Cameron Hamilton, recently selected to lead FEMA.

Another challenge was the culture of self-reliance many residents had been born and raised with throughout smaller disasters that didn't result in federal aid. Like so many Venezuelans, these residents struggled to trust federal authority and found themselves relying more on neighbors and local volunteers to clear fallen trees and make swiftwater rescues.

Between these factors and challenges with both the bureaucratic application process and the technology needed to access it, only about 15 percent applied for individual and household assistance.

Episode 4 brings us to the present day, including a discussion with Hamilton himself and a discussion of anticipated reforms, including the shift in responsibility for disaster recovery back to states.

Even that possibility is fraught, though. As Loewinger reported, some states, like Vermont, don't have the tax base needed to support robust response and recovery capabilities on the same level as federal capabilities – even as major disasters increase owing to climate change.

McKinney's op-ed for The Hill cautions about "the other great cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle — that sit astride the planet’s restless fault lines, waiting their turn.... Even the best state system would be overwhelmed by a disaster this big, especially an earthquake. Earthquakes are uniquely unforgiving because they do not merely create victims; they disable the very systems built to save them," often within hours rather than days.

So what can we do about it?

Episode 3 began with a short but in depth piece about Louisiana v. Callais, the Supreme Court decision clearing the way for states to have "nearly unrestricted power to gerrymander." The spot doesn't need to state outright that gerrymandered election results ultimately influence decisions on, say, funding disaster relief.

In addition to engaging our elected officials already in office, along with any activities we participate in to get out the vote at local and state levels, we can integrate more in our own communities. We might forge connections with neighbors and others through volunteering, for one, at community gardens or economic mobility programs.

We can also support the more organized development of "community serving resilience hubs," or "facilities that are enhanced to support residents or critical infrastructure and coordinate resource distribution and services before, during, and after disruptions like wildfires and floods, heat waves, and even pandemics."

Finally, we can examine how the mismanagement of the disasters in Venezuela, as well as here at home, contribute to survivors' trauma and how we might – as individuals, communities, and states – support survivors, refugees, and their family members reintegrating into their own, or entirely new places.

Are you involved in community capacity building in any way? If so, how?