Over the summer, Hurricane Irene and the East Coast earthquake put national attention on America’s disaster response system, especially the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And once again, the problems that The Heritage Foundation has been pointing out for years—the federalization of routine disasters, FEMA’s funding issues, and the condition of capabilities at all levels of government—were exposed.
As the chart below shows, the number of disasters the federal government has declared has accelerated substantially in the past year. (Read more below chart)
The exploding number of declarations is trend that Heritage’s Matt Mayer says must end:
Keep in mind: During Obama’s time in office, not one hurricane has struck the United States, and not one earthquake of a 7 or higher reading on the Richter scale has occurred. As we have pointed out many times, the U.S. is federalizing more and more natural disasters that were handled by states and localities from 1787 to 1992. The federalization trend since 1993 gets larger with each presidential Administration.