Return FEMA to its Civil Defense Mission

Don't eliminate it. Return it to its roots.

Though FEMA is our nation’s federal go-to for disaster preparation and response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has become a disaster in itself. And it has been this way long before President Donald Trump came to office.

But Trump now has the opportunity and mandate to fix it; not by adding to the bloat and over extended missions, or by eliminating it altogether, but by returning it to its original much narrower but critical, core national security mission – civil defense and major war.

Originally intended to prepare the country for major catastrophes, like nuclear war, and as the nation’s civil defense agency — orchestrate the national response afterwards — it is now focused on everything but that.

Garrett M. Graff a WIRED contributing editor and the author of Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die notes in ‘The Secret History of FEMA,’ that Harry Truman started FEMA’s forerunner, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA), in 1950.

It became FEMA in 1979 under Jimmy Carter in an effort to restore national civil defense planning and unite the nation’s disaster response with its planning for “continuity of government,” the secret programs to protect our institutions in the event of nuclear war or similar catastrophe.