{"id":3038,"date":"2026-03-13T15:02:41","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/?p=3038"},"modified":"2026-03-13T15:02:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T20:02:41","slug":"manufacturing-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimschwab.com\/Hablarbooks\/manufacturing-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Manufacturing Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given the almost comically corrupt nature of Kristi Noem<\/a>\u2019s administration of the Department of Homeland Security<\/a> (DHS) as its Secretary, I half-expected that her inevitable meltdown<\/a> after the most recent Senate hearing<\/a> would lead to flying monkeys celebrating as munchkins sing, \u201cDing, dong, the witch is dead<\/a>,\u201d and shouts by the guards of \u201cHail Dorothy!\u201d Except, I wasn\u2019t sure who was playing Dorothy in this melodrama, and Toto may be stuck in some ICE detention facility.<\/p>\n

But I digress. It\u2019s hard to focus your story on the curtain when the Wizard is bombing Iran.<\/p>\n

In any case, it\u2019s also hard to believe much will truly change when the man nominated to replace Noem, Sen. Markwayne Mullin<\/a> (R-OK), is still trying to find a soft landing for his confirmation on a badly shattered runway. This is the same Senator who, in another hearing, challenged Teamsters President Sean O\u2019Brien<\/a> to a fist fight over comments exchanged between them, stopped when Sen. Bernie Sanders<\/a> implored him to act like a U.S. Senator. He also seems terminally confused about whether we are at war<\/a> with Iran and who declared war on whom.<\/p>\n

But back to Noem, who has now become, according to Trump, Special Envoy to the Shield of the Americas<\/a>, a rather murky designation at best. I wrote at length<\/a> in November about the extremely disturbing and disruptive performance of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/a> (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol<\/a> (CBP) agents under her direction in the Chicago area last fall. That preceded their far more intrusive and sometimes deadly invasion of the streets of Minneapolis<\/a>, prompting the release of a protest song<\/a> by Bruce Springsteen. Understandably, these \u201coperations,\u201d such as Operation Midway Blitz<\/a> in Chicago and Operation Metro Surge<\/a> in Minneapolis, have dominated the headlines, along with Noem\u2019s scandals involving the use of an expensive jet<\/a> outfitted for her own trips and the expenditure of $220 million of federal money for a DHS promotional campaign<\/a> that more often than not features Noem on a horse, in one case riding below Mount Rushmore. And these all certainly led to her removal from leadership of DHS.<\/p>\n

What concerns me is what may not change because it was done in full view of, and with the full support of, President Trump: the crippling of vital disaster relief and recovery capacity within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), with the stated intent at least at times of eliminating the agency. In an era of intensifying climate change, with a climate denier sitting in the White House taking an increasingly partisan approach to providing federal disaster relief, what happens at FEMA greatly affects our nation\u2019s preparedness for major disasters of all types\u2014hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and earthquakes among them.<\/p>\n

The ostensible logic that has often been expressed is that more of the burden of addressing these problems should fall on the states instead of the federal government. This is deeply faulty logic on several accounts.<\/p>\n

First, let me state up front that there has been little question in recent years that most states need to step up to do more in response to natural and other disasters. They need to build capacity for supporting their communities, for building community and statewide resilience in the face of disasters, for assisting and promoting hazard mitigation, and for preparing their communities to take the lead in framing the terms of their own disaster recovery.<\/p>\n

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Hurricane Helene track. Source: National Weather Service<\/p><\/div>\n

That said, the biggest disasters respect no state borders. Hurricane Helene<\/a>, after making landfall in northern Florida, extended its reach all the way through Georgia into the hills of western North Carolina, devastating communities like Asheville<\/a>. Wildfires, floods, and tornado outbreaks often span multiple states. In those cases, there is dire need for a competent federal agency to coordinate services, research better ways of preventing losses of life and property, and support state and regional efforts to recover. Improving and refining those efforts was the primary rationale for development of the National Disaster Recovery Framework<\/a> (NDRF) a decade ago. Amid all this, I might note, Noem had insisted that any FEMA expenditures above $100,000, a paltry sum that must be used quickly in any major disaster, be subject to her personal approval<\/a>, even when she failed to make herself available<\/a>. The predictable backlog in FEMA contracts has led to slower disbursement of disaster support funds in situations like the Texas Hill Country floods<\/a> last year, in which speedy response was essential.<\/p>\n

\"Search<\/a>

Flood damage in Kerrville, Texas, destroyed the environment and disrupted the community. WCK was on the ground to provide comfort meals to families recovering from the disaster. From Wikipedia.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite that fact, FEMA has lost huge percentages<\/a> of both full-time and part-time staff over the past year, and the hemorrhage is expected to continue. I personally know some of the best and brightest people FEMA has lost. They are gone because the current leadership has either fired them or made it very attractive to leave. The result is an agency often saddled with inexperienced leadership, unprepared for the worst when it inevitably happens. It is very hard to imagine that the White House and current DHS leadership fully understand the long-term consequences of their approach. One day, there will be an enormous wildfire, a Category 4 hurricane, or a storm system delivering massive floods that will exceed FEMA\u2019s current capacity to respond. The political finger-pointing that will surely ensue will all be highly unnecessary.<\/p>\n

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Floodwaters rushing in front of a home in SW Virginia after Helene has passed. Photo courtesy of Virginia Department of Emergency Management, from National Weather Service document.<\/p><\/div>\n

In this context, let me discuss one of the less visible areas of FEMA support for states and communities. The National Disaster and Emergency Management University<\/a> (NDEMU) has a history dating to 1951 when it was the Civil Defense Staff College<\/a> (CDSC). When President Jimmy Carter<\/a> created FEMA in 1979, the new agency acquired a former Catholic college in Emmitsburg<\/a>, Maryland, for a training campus called the FEMA National Emergency Training Center (NETC). This then housed the National Fire Academy<\/a> and the newly minted Emergency Management Institute (EMI), renamed NDEMU in 2024. EMI, with a focus on emergency management, remains a part of NDEMU, which also features other elements of training focused on hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. Overall, the purpose of EMI and NDEMU involved the provision of professional training to first responders, emergency managers, and various other professionals involved in disasters such as urban planners, public health officials, and public works employees. Thousands of such people, mostly in local or state public service, have progressed through EMI\/NDEMU training courses over the past few decades. In recent years, at least, these have occurred not only at the NETC Emmitsburg campus, but at field locations hosted by state agencies as well as online during the pandemic. This was widely seen as an effective means of raising the skill levels and capacity of the participants and their employing agencies in order to improve disaster response, relief, and recovery. The same is true for fire fighters attending the National Fire Academy. Trainers included both federal agency staff, primarily from FEMA, and contracted certified instructors hired by NDEMU.<\/p>\n

I am telling this story because I was a certified instructor. Serving in that capacity was not one of my goals when I retired from the American Planning Association (APA) in 2017, although I was familiar with EMI. A parallel effort under the National Disaster Preparedness Training Center<\/a>, headquartered at the University of Hawaii and part of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium<\/a>, was developing courses on resilience and disaster recovery more than a decade ago, when it engaged the Hazards Planning Center at APA to assist in course development. At the time, I was managing the Hazards Planning Center. Throughout this time, I was also teaching a graduate seminar<\/a>, \u201cPlanning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery,\u201d at the University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 2019, however, long-time colleague Tim Gelston, working at FEMA Region 8 in Denver, invited me to participate on an unpaid basis as a contributing instructor at an EMI field course there in August. We had worked together in New Jersey on Hurricane Sandy<\/a> recovery six years earlier, when I was coordinating a week-long series of APA training workshops. Part of the rationale may have been to introduce me to what he and Dianne Walbrecker, the course manager, were doing in a course primarily focused on hazard mitigation. I quickly realized that students were remarking that I \u201cwrote the book,\u201d referring to the APA Planning Advisory Service Reports referenced in their manuals. Later, Walbrecker suggested that I apply to become a certified instructor for EMI, a process that involves reviewing past experience and credentials followed by an interview. By February 2020, just in time for the COVID pandemic to shut down all in-person instruction, I completed that process and was certified for disaster recovery courses focused on both state and local government roles. As a result of both the pandemic and a couple of canceled classes in 2022, I did not begin any contract work with EMI until 2023. But by February 2025, I had taught both online and in classrooms in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Utah. Between all those week-long classes and my other teaching and training experiences, I was very much an \u201cold hand\u201d by then. As was the case at the University of Iowa, I met many students in the FEMA courses and admired their dedication to the work they were doing.<\/p>\n

In the Utah case, I was contacted on an emergency basis to fill in for Walbrecker, by then retired from FEMA, who was supposed to be one of two co-instructors but was sidelined by COVID and pneumonia. I must give FEMA credit in this instance for showing just how fast its staff can work. James Blazes, the course supervisor, contacted me on a Tuesday evening in late January, regarding a course that would start the following Monday as an emergency substitute instructor. I discussed the situation with him the following day. Within hours, they had sent me a contract, and I hurriedly arranged a flight to Salt Lake City for Sunday morning, arriving in time to meet the others involved that evening at a state office building that was hosting the class. During that week, Blazes indicated to me that I would likely be chosen to instruct at least some of a series of pending courses in Illinois in March and April.<\/p>\n

Those classes, to be hosted, as I understood, by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency<\/a> using previously allotted disaster recovery funds, never happened.<\/p>\n

By Friday, March 7, 2025, FEMA officials moved to close the NETC campus in Emmitsburg. Nonetheless, perhaps on the assumption that this moved affected only that site, we had three conference calls from March 10-12 among the instructors and state hosts concerning the upcoming classes, focused on both the state and local roles in recovery. Of five classes, I was told I would co-instruct three, beginning with a class in Springfield<\/a> the following week. The other two were in late March and April near both the Quad Cities and St. Louis. I had not made any travel arrangements because it is much easier to drive from Chicago than to fly. But the curious thing was that I did not yet have a contract even though we were making plans and coordinating.<\/p>\n

Then came the email that told us all that all the Illinois courses had been canceled. It arrived on a Wednesday before the class that was to happen in Springfield the following week. I had committed three weeks on my schedule, plus time for preparation beforehand and evaluating worksheets afterward. More importantly, I think we had all looked forward to raising the awareness of course participants concerning the elements and fundamental concepts of disaster recovery. If the goal of the Trump administration is to rely on the states to handle far more responsibility in this respect, the logical role of NDEMU, it would seem, would be to help build that awareness and professional capacity at the state level. Abandoning this federal role would leave a huge gap at all levels when disaster strikes. There is no gainsaying this reality.<\/p>\n

In fact, while most of us with any serious experience in this arena will readily agree that most states need to develop a much greater role in supporting disaster mitigation, recovery, and resilience in their communities, getting there requires a much smarter and more nuanced approach than simply abdicating federal leadership. It requires, as interim FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton<\/a> told a Congressional hearing in May 2025, careful deliberation and thoughtful strategy about how to reduce red tape and deliver aid more effectively. However, the very next day, Hamilton\u2019s honesty in stating that he opposed eliminating FEMA because it still serves an essential purpose got him fired<\/a> by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. At this writing, President Trump has yet to nominate someone for Senate confirmation to fill that role. In essence, more than a year into his second administration, FEMA leadership remains in limbo.<\/p>\n

I want to conclude by stating firmly that, while in the short term, I lost some income because of the course cancellations, I was already, at 76, looking beyond my short tenure as a certified instructor for NDEMU. In the face of what happened last year, I have not renewed my federal contractor registration. I faced none of the long-term career issues that faced many of my far more anguished friends who are much younger but faced termination, buyouts, or forced retirement. My concern is with the direction the nation is taking in handling the issues of disaster recovery and climate change.<\/p>\n

One huge concern lies with the fate of the teaching materials we used at NDEMU. FEMA was already rewriting the NDRF, the conceptual underpinning of the disaster recovery courses we were teaching. It had undergone what I considered considerable improvement in a new version released in December 2024. The administration was subjecting that and other documents, including our instructional manuals, to the deletion of any references to climate change or climate adaptation, in addition to a wider purge of federal policies highlighting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). There is an Orwellian element here in the demonization of DEI in the form of an acronym while never honestly debating the value of the three separate words that it represents:<\/p>\n