At 2:35 p.m. on a rainy Saturday, the Really Big One hits: A 9.1-magnitude Cascadia subduction earthquake rips a 600-mile-long gash in the earth’s crust from Vancouver to the California state line, pancaking freeways and igniting gas lines.
Metro Seattle is devastated; emergency services are overwhelmed. Nobody knows who’s in charge.
The White House Briefing Room is tense as drone footage fills the screens — dazed families wandering through ruined streets.
A reporter yells: “Mr. President — what are we doing to help them?”
At the podium, the president leans into the microphone: “We are following the plan we laid out in my executive order of Mar. 18. We are relying on the state.”
Fortunately, this scenario is fictional. The executive order, however, is all too real. It is the Trump’s attempt to offload responsibility for disasters to state and local governments, seeking to “inject common sense into decisions that make our communities resilient.”
We shall see how common this common sense is in the early hours of the Really Big One, as the multitude of white-hot issues, obstacles and unmet needs arising from the catastrophe roll right back up to the president’s desk.
Professional crisis managers have a simple but powerful, imperative — three words that define our mission: “Own the job.” In a catastrophic disaster, every second counts and accountability isn’t just a bureaucratic ideal — it’s the foundation of an effective, ethical and life-saving response.
Trump is attempting to shift this ownership to state and local governments. Who can blame him? After all, large-scale disasters overwhelm us, affecting everyone in the same way at the same time. They ignore political boundaries, sowing chaos and demanding information and resources way beyond what is immediately available.
Federal emergency managers have always disowned them, telling their president that “all disasters are local’ and that their role is limited to launching relief supplies, like bottled water and emergency power generators, into the field.
Time after time, those presidents, from George H.W. Bush (Hurricane Andrew) to George W. Bush (Hurricane Katrina) to Trump (Hurricane Maria) gazed at televised images of suffering children and families while their agencies sat back, waiting for the “all disasters are local” policy to kick in.
Those disasters weren’t just political failures — they were systemic failures. The U.S. had the resources and the expertise. What we didn’t have was anyone on the hook to take charge and make things happen.
That is exactly where we stand today, with a national disaster system consisting of 50 states and territories duct-taped together, each with its own structures, capabilities and methods. They have no obligation to help each other, and when they do, the process is slow and ad hoc.
Relationships between states shift with political winds and so, amid catastrophe, each state is left to fend for itself. If the Really Big One hit today, would we be ready? The answer is no.
The president has established a FEMA review council to propose ways to overhaul the agency. Rather than dismantling FEMA, the council must reimagine it as an elite federal agency capable of managing the increasingly complex and severe disasters of a turbulent age.
A refocused and empowered FEMA would forge strong public-private partnerships, driving a response that is government-led but not government-centric. It would become the national disaster machine we so desperately lack — fast, focused, relentless — bringing governors together in a supercharged mutual aid system that operates beyond politics and goodwill.
We need a 21st-century crisis management system built not on slogans or hope, but on readiness, coordination and command. The president’s executive order exposes the fatal weakness at the heart of our response doctrine: the absence of true ownership. If no one owns the job, no one does the job.
Believe me when I tell you that the next catastrophe will start suddenly and with great intensity, with its biggest problems and greatest needs coming in its earliest hours. Those early hours — the so-called golden hours — will be a time of maximum chaos.
The actions we take now will determine our fate.
Kelly McKinney was deputy commissioner at the New York City Office of Emergency Management and formerly served on FEMA’s National Advisory Council.
