Donald Kettl, a one-time Dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy (and champion of the Academy for Excellence in Local Governance), offers views in Governing magazine that a proposed elimination of the Federal Emergency Management Administration would surely backfire as soon as its first true emergency situation.
In a column on Governing, Dean Kettl offers his views on the realistic situation around federal response to emergencies, citing numerous incidents where the theoretical dissolution of a federal presence would quickly be overwhelmed by public pressure to assist areas unable to properly respond to a large-scale crisis.
From his column:
When big problems hit, it’s politically impossible for federal officials to shrug off local calls for help because of some notion that it’s simply a local problem. And the bigger the problem, the more likely it is to swamp local capacity. A tornado in a rural area can quickly overwhelm local search, rescue, medical response and debris removal resources. When wildfires swept through Los Angeles in January, even the nation’s second-largest city didn’t have the aerial tankers and ground troops to fight the fires. Support teams quickly came to the area from as far away as Canada and Mexico.
