Michael Loewinger

He starts with this hokey bit about Louis Jafrida's nuclear evacuation plans.

In an apparent effort to coax Seattle officials into participating, FEMA had offered to subsidize the city's mass relocation, which the city refused.

After a bit of vamping, Russell calls up his band, The Buzzards.

To perform a song that I think captures the zeitgeist in the 80s.

According to its critics, FEMA's leaders were either mounting a comically pitiful defense against the nation's most pressing threat, or they were burning resources that would be better spent on responding to Mother Nature.

Leo Bosner, that OG FEMA employee, was in the latter camp.

As the 80s went on, he was busy trying to warn the press.

I was kind of in my whistleblower mode, letting them know.

that FEMA was spending all of its time doing nuclear stuff and not doing anything for these natural disasters.

If Ronald Reagan's FEMA was too active, too conniving, George Bush Sr.

's FEMA had the opposite problem.

It was out to lunch.

Daddy Bush left the agency leaderless for over a year, and he was punished for it in 1989 when a Category 5 storm came barreling off the Atlantic.

FEMA did a terrible job.

Leo Bosner.

But I think the feeling was, well, that's a once-in-a-hundred-years thing.

Except three years later, Hurricane Andrew hit in 92.

Another Category 5, one of the strongest in Florida's history.

And FEMA was on the front pages.

A barrage of criticism for its handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew.