
FEMA Spends More Preparing for Terrorism Than Hurricanes - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-27/hurricane-laura-fema-grants-aren-t-focused-on-climate-change
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D13Fd
In the abstract, this doesn't bother me. The potential attack surface for
terrorism is huge, and there is a lot of potential for damage (both loss of
life and economic damage). Hurricanes are a fairly well understood phenomenon
which tend to cause a lot of damage but in fairly limited ways (typically only
to coastal cities, and typically with warning).

It's not all that surprising that it may cost more to prepare for the huge and
unknown variety of possible terrorist attacks as compared to the pretty well-
known threat of hurricanes.

To me, the more important thing is that we make sure they have adequate
resources to address both kinds of disaster (as well as others). I don't
really care which one is more expensive.

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malandrew
I had the same reaction.

Hurricanes are not only well understood, they are also something that every
single citizen living in a coastal city knows is inevitable and frequent
enough that they take the precautions personally for dealing with them.

They also strike with anticipation, so after you've secured your personal
property and made sure you haven't built in a flood plain like a responsible
citizen, you have plenty of time to evacuate if/when one is going to make
landfall where you live.

Terrorism can strike without warning and the same preparations for terrorism
would help in disasters like the blast in Beirut.

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morsch
You propose that people should look after themselves, and their belonings.
Presumably some of the things people need to do in preparation for a hurricane
benefit from economies of scale. Temporary shelter, preparing for rescue
operations, structural engineering, stocking of supplies. People would
probably be well advised to band together in some sort of emergency management
cooperative to share expenses and increase efficiency.

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matthewmacleod
I don't think anybody was arguing otherwise.

The point is that hurricanes are arguably a less difficult emergency to manage
– they are predictable, understood and come with plenty of notice, to the
point that individual preparation is both possible and effective.

This doesn't mean that centrally-coordinated emergency response isn't still
useful – merely that it's not unreasonable for it to cost more to prepare for
a rare and unpredictable emergency than a more frequent but predictable one.

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throwaway0a5e
Hurricanes don't threaten government credibility the way successful terrorist
attacks do. We might not like it but it makes perfect sense that a government
agency prioritizes threats to the government.

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whatshisface
> _Hurricanes don 't threaten government credibility the way successful
> terrorist attacks do._

This is one of those claims where the only reasonable answer is... "do they?"
Bad disaster responses can make administrations look pretty bad.

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UnpossibleJim
While this may be true, one is carried on a news cycle for a longer period of
time. Weather events are a normal and predictable happening, so the "shock and
awe" don't carry the ratings necessary for the news coverage, regardless of
the human tragedy.

Unfortunately, our society's attention span for weather tragedy is short and
it is very unlikely any federally funded memorials will be built for victims
of wildfires, floodings or hurricanes.

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thatcat
People can’t disagree with and hate hurricanes the way they do other people.

~~~
saagarjha
Perhaps, but some apparently think they can with global warming.

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philwelch
A lot of FEMA’s work is generalizable—set up emergency shelters, evacuate
people from disaster areas, provide supplies to disaster areas. Most of that
stuff is pretty similar for earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, or terrorist
attacks. Having more terrorism-specific funding doesn’t mean terrorism is a
higher priority or greater threat than hurricanes, just that it’s more
expensive to deal with.

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rayiner
FEMA isn’t supposed to be a nationwide front-line disaster management agency.
It’s supposed to be a backstop for when state governments, who have the
primary responsibility for disaster relief, become overwhelmed. (Put
differently, nobody voted for the whole country to subsidize hurricane prone
states through FEMA.) It makes total sense for FEMA to focus on disasters that
could happen anywhere rather than ones that happen routinely in certain
hurricane prone stages.

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tehwebguy
Did the whole country vote for FEMA to subsidize relief for terrorism prone
targets?

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rayiner
More or less, yes, after 9/11.

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ApolloFortyNine
Are there any real examples of where the money is going for counter terrorism?
In the entire article there's only one example, copied below. And it's of $14
million out of billions.

>A review of FEMA grant requests made by the latter state for 2019 through
2020 shows that a large chunk of the nearly $14 million has been sought for
law enforcement communication, SWAT training, and bomb detection.

I'm also not sure what more FEMA money would do. As mentioned in the article,
they're not worried about running out of money during the initial response to
any disaster. If it's serious enough (like Katrina was), I don't doubt more
money will be made available. FEMA primarily responds to disasters, and while
some money goes to preventive measures, they are not in charge of preventing
hurricane damage along the entire coast.

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Shivetya
FEMA is misguided in that is should be dispensing aid to states and cities in
need and not instead doing the relief itself. Too often it actually steps in
and blocks cities and states from properly administering aid to those in need.
In effect, it should be handing out block grants and insuring that states
don't conflict with each other, not be the source of conflict.

One major problem FEMA faces is not how it allocates its fund between
disasters and terrorism it is instead the more of those funds land in states
which have representation in Congress committees which exercise oversight on
FEMA. Terrorism funding goes to police mostly and some to fire and related but
the police and sheriffs of this country have outsized power in politics;
related - the reason why defund the police was quickly dropped from political
platforms

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makomk
This would work great if every state and city government was competent and
good at disaster relief. In general they're not, and FEMA already rely too
much on having competent local government that they can co-operate with - in
particular, I get the distinct impression that a lot of the disaster relief
problems in Puerto Rico which were blamed on FEMA and the federal government
were actually the result of the local government being completely and utterly
useless (infamously so, even).

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stevehawk
terrorism is scarier. it's unpredictable to the masses with no warning sign.
it has people who commit. a person to put blame on and a theoretical ability
to prevent it.

weather is just weather. we just blame God or "it happens" regardless of how
bad it is. and most can be evacuated if we dont wait to the last minute to do
it. we treat them like they're already mitigated.

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ascagnel_
> weather is just weather. we just blame God or "it happens" regardless of how
> bad it is. and most can be evacuated if we dont wait to the last minute to
> do it. we treat them like they're already mitigated.

Kinda? The effects of extreme weather can be mitigated (eg: don't build on
flood plains), but we're seeing increasing cases where mitigation efforts are
ignored and the adverse effects of that (ie: Hurricane Harvey in 2017, where
neighborhoods in Houston that had been built on top of flood plains were
inundated by storm surge). Mitigation is almost always cheaper than recovery.

While you can definitely mitigate some elements of terrorism (eg: remove cases
where radicalization is likely), you can't mitigate it anywhere near as well
as weather effects.

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philwelch
FEMA is also not responsible for the civil engineering of Houston (or New
Orleans, for that matter). They’re in charge of _managing_ emergencies, not
preventing them.

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trothamel
I don't know if it's relevant or not, but FEMA is the agency that took over
the Civil Defense role. (Think fallout shelters and that kind of thing.) While
it later took on responsibility for natural disasters, I don't believe that
was the priority for it.

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Retric
Hurricanes don’t impact much of the US. Nebraska for example has zero
hurricane risks, and while low it’s has some terrorism risks. Also, in terms
of preparation that can have positive returns it’s not clear FEMA actually
needs to spend that much on Hurricanes per year. 10 year old flood maps still
work just fine etc.

So, this may actually be completely reasonable behavior based on FEMA’s
mandates.

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jcranmer
Atlantic hurricanes have cost $400 billion of damage in the last 5 years
alone.

The total damage caused by all terrorist attacks, worldwide, in the 21st
century probably amounts to the damage caused by an _average_ year of Atlantic
hurricanes. Add in the Pacific hurricane season, which is generally worse, and
it's clear that hurricanes cause far more damage than terrorism does.

~~~
Retric
It’s not FEMA’s job to reduce physical damage. That’s what building codes etc
are for. FEMA’s job is to coordinate responses to save lives in the short term
and rebuild infrastructure in the long term. Hurricanes do a lot of damage,
but rarely kill people in the US.

~~~
jcranmer
Hurricane Florence alone killed more people in the US than any terrorist
attack since 9/11\. All hurricane deaths in Trump's term alone (predominantly
Florence, Harvey, Irma), excluding Maria, have killed more people than all
terrorism attacks since 9/11 combined. Hurricane Maria killed more than 9/11.

~~~
Retric
If you’re looking at the excess deaths after Maria then you need to do the
same thing for 9/11\. By one estimate 221 policemen died as a result of
medical issues from 9/11 which don’t make the official figures based on
initial deaths. Dust inhalation etc very much killed people only indirectly
involved on 9/11\. Thus, any kind of apples to apples comparison of either
direct or direct + indirect deaths put 9/11 as a significantly more deadly
event.

PS: Also that extrapolation on death rates for Maria is extremely questionable
as it’s been rising in Porto Rico for years. The increase from 2013 to 2014 is
larger than the increase for 2016 to either 2017 or 2018.
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/580903/death-rate-in-
pue...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/580903/death-rate-in-puerto-rico/)
You can assume the only thing bad that happened was a hurricane, but the data
really doesn’t support that.

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jcranmer
You've lost sight of your own argument in the weeds of specific numbers here.

The broader point I'm making is this: hurricanes in the SE US and the
Caribbean are, to a large degree "expected" disasters. As such they can be
planned for, and damage can be minimized. And, I believe what you want to say
is that they aren't all that "bad" anymore because of proper disaster
preparation.

I would agree that hurricanes _shouldn 't_ be all that devastating in effect.
But the data shows, quite convincingly IMHO, that we aren't doing as good as
we could be doing in actually preparing for them.

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Retric
My point has nothing to do with what _we_ should be doing just what FEMA
should be doing. They have a very important but also very specific role. Other
organizations are supposed to prevent levees from overtopping, keep buildings
standing, etc. FEMA is there for redundancy so that such instances are
mitigated after the fact.

When it comes to hurricanes that equates to selecting evacuation routes and
locations to shelter the storm etc. If needed they may help create such
shelters, but that stuff really seems to be working well. What happens after
the storm is largely a question of how well other organizations have done
their job. Aka what percentage of homes are habitable translates into how many
people FEMA needs to find shelter for.

However, that last bit is a real question. Do we ramp up FEMA’s ability to
build temerity houses or reduce the need for such temporary houses? I think
it’s clear FEMA could do a much better job in disaster aftermath, but for
hurricanes I think that’s largely solving the wrong problem.

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hakfoo
Maybe part of this is a branding and messaging problem.

I think of FEMA as a response-oriented agency: They aren't there to prevent
disasters from occurring, they're intended to pick up the pieces afterwards.

If you approach it with that perspective, then you'd surely expect them to be
devoted predominantly to hurricanes and similar natural disasters, as they can
be anticipated and planned for.

If their true role is to be proactive about some specific disaster functions,
maybe this needs to be better communicated to the public. Otherwise you end up
with the poor guy who gets a job with the Secret Service and his family is
"OMG do you jump in front of a bullet for the President" when he's going to
spend his career squinting at bogus $5 notes.

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dwd
They should be focussing on their capacity to quickly move in mobile
hospitals, potable water, emergency accomodation, etc and have adequate
stockpiles of essentials ready to go.

How quickly and effectively you can help those impacted will reduce total
fatalities regardless of whether a terrorist attack, natural disaster or
something like the Beirut explosion.

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evan_
Hurricanes only kill people who can't afford to flee, while terrorism is
something that even the wealthy are afraid of.

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NovemberWhiskey
In FEMA speak, preparedness is different from hazard mitigation. FEMA has an
entirely separate grant program for hazard mitigation, which is funded with
~$0.7bn for flood and infrastructure resiliency, for example.

Each of these is dwarfed in turn by the actual response budget which goes into
the Disaster Relief Fund, something around $15bn this FY.

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vorpalhex
We have a pretty good idea of how to identify and respond to hurricanes.. not
so much for terrorism.

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xlm1717
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the article is that Congress usually
approves emergency funding after a major hurricane, which can be used to
rebuild to prepare for the next hurricane.

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hereme888
To me it's obvious and logical that they spend more resources on preparing for
terrorism.

