Michael Loewinger

FEMA allows the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency.

Even with Kristi Noem replaced at DHS by Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, the future of FEMA is still in jeopardy.

This week, the administration announced that it was patching up some of the Noem-era cuts, but agency insiders say that it may take years to build FEMA back up to fighting strength.

About a month ago, Trump repeated his antipathy for the agency.

As I've followed the current-day crisis at FEMA, I've wondered whether it can survive the stories that have been told about it, the misinformation, mismanagement, and genuine catastrophes that have made this agency one of the least popular among Americans.

But for all its faults, and there are many, it's not clear we can afford to lose it.

Extreme heat is becoming a dangerous new normal.

The record-setting storm measured not in inches, but in feet of snow.

Hundreds of thousands are now without power in this freezing weather.

The U.S.

is experiencing a billion-dollar disaster every 10 days on average compared to every 82 back in the 1980s.

Over the next few weeks, we'll explore how the organization tasked with saving America came to be so despised and mythologized for a series we're calling American Emergency, the movement to kill FEMA.

We'll hear about FEMA's identity crisis during Hurricane Katrina, how conspiracy theories have fueled violent threats against federal workers, and how a group of anonymous employees are fighting to keep the agency alive under Trump.

For this first episode, we're looking at FEMA's secretive origins and the moment when Americans first learned that the agency was hiding things from us.

On December 1st, 1974, heavy rain and fog rerouted a passenger plane over northern Virginia, some 50 miles from Washington, D.C.

On its descent, the aircraft dropped into the forest below, shearing off the treetops and crashing into the side of Mount Weather.

The two pilots were killed first, lanced by trees that burst through the cockpit.

The rest of the aircraft crumbled into pieces, a mangle of shrapnel on the body parts of the 92 passengers and crew members.

There were no survivors.

One woman whose parents were on the flight said it seemed like the mountain had jumped up and bit the plane.