Michael Loewinger

The tide was turning for FEMA's reputation.

President Clinton and I was talking about it in Governor Carnahan, Missouri.

And I said, you know, Mr. President, we can't let people build back in those areas that flooded.

In Missouri alone, we bought out over 4,000 pieces of property.

Thirty years later, this type of policy is considered a core tenet of good emergency management.

Recent studies vindicate Witt's approach.

Research shows that for every dollar spent on mitigation, six dollars are saved down the line.

During the 90s, FEMA had gotten to be so well known.

In 1996, President Clinton publicly elevated James Lee Witt to cabinet level, saying he's done such a great job here.

That's how it was.

You can probably tell from the way he talks about it, Leo Bosner was so proud of his agency during the 90s.

Some of its greatest work, he says, was visible on one of the darkest days for the country.

That April morning in 1995, we're all at work like normal, all of a sudden.

People are yelling because on the TV screen, oh, my God, there's been a bomb in Oklahoma City.

Within, like, a few minutes, my pager's going off, and we're seeing all this action suddenly, very organized,

action going on.

Our regional office in Texas, within one hour, was on the phone with Oklahoma.

And they decided that what was needed most from FEMA was our specialized search and rescue teams who had special tools and training to go into collapsed concrete buildings, which is not a simple thing to do.

And our search and rescue teams were then deployed there within a couple of hours.

So they were quick.