Climate change is intensifying natural disasters such as hurricanes, storms, and wildfires and making them more frequent. Yet President Trump has proposed eliminating the federal emergency management agency, FEMA, that responds to disasters. Why was FEMA created and how effective has it been? [ dur:58mins. ]

• Timothy Kneeland, History, Politics, Law, Director, Center of Public History, Nazareth University. He’s the author of Declaring Disaster, Buffalo’s Blizzard of 77, and the creation of FEMA, and Playing politics with natural disaster, Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 elections and the origins of FEMA.
• Claire Rubin is an independent researcher (https://clairerubin.com/ and the Blog RecoveryDiva ) and has co-edited six books on the topic, including Emergency Management The American Experience and the U.S. Emergency Management in the 21st century from disaster to Catastrophe.
• Jack Rozdilsky, he’s an associate professor in the disaster and Emergency Management Program at York University in Toronto, Canada.And he has recently written a piece called Trump’s Plan to Eliminate FEMA is a Very Bad Idea. That was published in the conversation.

Reference: Timeline of FEMA Disaster handling in the past ( co-authored by Claire Rubin ).

This program is produced by Ankine Aghassian, Doug Becker and Sudd Dongre.

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