Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How is climate change affecting disaster preparedness?
When it comes to home improvement, even the most experienced DIYer has a limit.
I'm not going to come in here with the blowtorch and get it hot and solder and put the copper pipes. I'm not doing it.
I call it very nice man to handle it.
When to call the experts and when to do it yourself. That's this week on Explain It To Me. Find new episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Eloise.
Hi.
Can you just introduce yourself, please?
Yes. So my name is Eloise Blondio. I am senior producer at On The Media, and I helped make American Emergency the movement to kill FEMA.
I'm a huge On The Media fan. Aw. I once ran into Brooke, the host of On The Media, at a wedding a couple years ago. And when she said who she was, I, like, spat out my drink.
That's such a fun surprise.
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Chapter 2: Why has FEMA become a target for conspiracy theories?
I wonder if you could just tee it up. What are they going to hear?
In this episode, we really go back to the very beginnings of FEMA, and we find out some really surprising things about the agency and about what it was doing behind closed doors.
And it also really sets up some of the problems that we see FEMA going through today.
Okay. Thanks, Eloise.
Thank you.
Here's On the Media. And that might be good. Did you get everything you needed? I feel great.
Well, I have to say it's really weird being a guest as a producer, but you guys are very nice.
Anytime I'm a guest on anything, I'm like... Like, are you sure?
Are you sure? Like, do you want me to check that you're recording?
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Chapter 3: What historical events contributed to FEMA's distrust?
And defunded. We could see the next Katrina-level disaster based on the stripping away of FEMA that we have seen. Can the agency survive the stories that have been told about it? And can we survive without FEMA? Whenever there's a disaster, the first thing people say is, where's FEMA? American Emergency, the movement to kill FEMA, is a brand new On the Media series.
The first episode is coming up right after this. From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Michael Ellinger.
Micah, this is the week. Yeah. The first episode of a brand new four-part series that you and OTM senior producer Eloise Blondio have been reporting out for months. It's about the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. And there is a ton of stuff in here that people won't have heard before. I'm excited.
Let's do it.
Okay. Thanks, Brooke. Hope you like it.
We've come to North Carolina with a simple message for all the people of this region who were hit so hard by Hurricane Helene.
At the beginning of his second term, amid all the chaos of the incoming administration, President Trump made his first trip to North Carolina.
That message is very simple. You are not forgotten any longer.
You were treated very badly by the previous administration and Before he got on Air Force One, Trump called a press conference on the tarmac and casually dropped this bomb.
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Chapter 4: How did the agency evolve since its inception?
After deadly floodwaters inundated Camp Mystic and other parts of Central Texas, the agency's support lines left thousands of calls unanswered. FEMA's top leader at the time couldn't be reached for 24 hours.
We live about a mile down the road from Camp Mystic, and we've already got two little girls who have come down the river, and we've gotten to them, but I'm not sure how many else are out there. The federal response to this disaster has come under scrutiny. Allegations that FEMA cutbacks meant delays in answering people's calls for disaster assistance and aid after the flood.
In one telling, the dysfunctional response was Doge's doing. It's true, at the start of 2025, no agency was safe from Elon Musk's chainsaw. But that's only part of the story. For many years, fomenting under the surface was a deep-seated distrust of FEMA, which broke through during Hurricane Helene just months before the 2024 presidential election.
Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.
Some on the right pushing conspiracy theories that they're blocking aid and seizing land from people here in North Carolina, and that is not true. An anti-government militia group known as Veterans on Patrol is claiming Hurricane Helene was caused by government-controlled weather weapons. The group called Hurricane Helene an act of war.
I knew from my years reporting on far-right militias that these groups often showed up after natural disasters to recruit, fundraise, and spit-shine their public image. But I never understood why they hated FEMA so much. So I started digging into right-wing media archives and found that the anti-FEMA lore went back decades.
People are waking up in droves to the FEMA camps, to the New World Order, to the troops on the streets.
The liberals are... Alex Jones has made multiple films claiming to have discovered secret prisons operated by FEMA. And right-wing pundit Glenn Beck entertained this stuff when he was still on Fox.
If you have any kind of fear that we might be headed towards a totalitarian state, buckle up. There's something going on in our country that is, uh, ain't good.
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Chapter 5: What role did misinformation play in FEMA's reputation?
News coverage of the day quickly turned to the blame game and the miscommunication from air traffic control amidst a violent storm. But our focus is something that was buried in the reports. When TV crews arrived at the crash site, they discovered, rather ominously, that Mount Weather had already been sealed off on the orders of federal security agents.
Quick action was taken because the big jet had landed almost a mile away from a super secret government installation, an underground complex of emergency offices set up for federal officials in the event of nuclear war.
the crash had inadvertently uncovered a tightly guarded Cold War secret. Inside Mount Weather was a massive, covert facility, and somehow that undersells it. Through a tunnel that burrows into the mountain and behind a 34-ton blast door lies a subterranean, strange Lovian lair, a freestanding city with a hospital, a crematorium, an emergency power plant, and even a broadcasting studio.
Everything that the White House and thousands of federal workers would need to run the country underground while millions melted on the surface. I expect your people to save our government. That's what President Dwight Eisenhower told the first director of Mount Weather after it was built in 1955. It's still operated by FEMA today. It's actually being renovated as I speak.
But back in the 1950s, Mount Weather was run by FEMA's predecessor, the Federal Civil Defense Administration, the FCDA, which poured billions into making America nuke-proof, or at least lulling people into the belief that with enough preparation, they might survive atomic hellfire.
The FCDA was behind this delightful, if slightly morbid, PSA, instructing schoolchildren to hide under their desks during bomb drills.
There was a turtle by the name of Bert.
And Bert the turtle was very alert. When danger threatened him, he never got hurt. He knew just what to do. He ducked. For adults, the FCDA organized Operation Alert, a series of dramatic exercises where millions of people acted out the day of their likely demise, emptying the streets of America's biggest cities.
While the sirens wail their grim warning, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers scurry for shelter against the attack. Riders and drivers taking cover in a realistic drill for a day all Americans pray will never come.
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Chapter 6: How has political leadership impacted FEMA's effectiveness?
Garrett Graff is a journalist and author of a book about the origins of FEMA titled Raven Rock, the story of the U.S. government's secret plan to save itself while the rest of us die. Before the agency was created, America's disaster response system was, well, barely a system. It didn't make sense for...
every state to be developing its own totally independent ability to respond to a hurricane because in any given year, most states don't get hit by a hurricane. Which became a big problem in the 60s and 70s when the country was rocked by a series of record-breaking disasters.
No one knows the full size of the disaster yet. In Betsy's wake, there's only darkness, confusion, and death. After suffering one of the most serious earthquakes in history, Alaska had to undergo the further ordeal of over 40 severe earth tremors. Imagine being there as the streets reared up around you like the scene of some terrible biblical retribution. They called her Camille.
Born of the sea, she turned like a woman scorned. She screamed and ripped and flooded and killed. These big disasters overwhelmed towns and counties and states. The big ones often do. But when they asked for help, the federal government was too disorganized to act quickly or efficiently. Supplying extra ambulances, delivering food and water to survivors, fixing roads and power plants.
Each piece of the emergency management process could come from a different office or department. A hundred agencies might play a role. Navigating this patchwork of services and jurisdictions was a major pain in the ass for local leaders, especially during a crisis when lives are on the line and every second counts. Like in 1972, when another big storm hit.
Many of the people here and others in the path of Hurricane Agnes were completely wiped out. Many of them feel that federal aid is too slow in coming and too little.
Trump says FEMA should return its responsibilities to the states, which is odd because states often bring in FEMA when they're unable to respond on their own. And anyway, it was the states that asked for FEMA in the first place. In 1978, the National Governors Association drew up plans for a streamlined one-stop shop for federal emergency response and delivered it to a sympathetic White House.
President Carter proposed merging five big federal emergency preparation and disaster relief agencies into one agency as part of his reorganization plans. Civil defense experts say it will provide much needed communication between the state and federal levels.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter signed an executive order giving life to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA was a federal Frankenstein with a dual mission, Cold War civil defense and disaster relief. I wish I could illustrate this moment by playing you like a triumphant speech from President Carter or some colorful news footage.
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Chapter 7: What are the consequences of FEMA's budget cuts?
To run FEMA, Reagan picked someone who would stir up a lot of trouble for the agency. This man.
Only a masochist with a death wish would accept the job of directing FEMA.
Army Colonel Louis Chafrida speaking here with a caller on Larry King's radio show.
I really don't believe that we can be saved if there is a nuclear war. I mean, how are you going to save me if you're blown up too? But you're not suggesting that because we both might be blown up by a nuclear war that we shouldn't have in place a system that would take care of us if there was an earthquake or a tidal wave or a hurricane or anything of that sort, right?
While Louis Jafrida paid lip service to FEMA's disaster relief mission, he was quietly funneling most of FEMA's budget towards Cold War civil defense. Leo Bosner. All of a sudden, we start seeing all these military officers signing in at the login desk. Why are these military people here? Military people go to floods or something?
And then we learned little by little that FEMA's mission was really, really going to be to get ready for the big nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. In the early 80s, Leo started to hear whispers about classified programs at the agency. Every day on his trip up the elevator at FEMA HQ, he'd ride by a secret fifth floor manned by a security guard.
Mostly, he rolled his eyes at all the Cold War theater, wishing FEMA would focus more on preparing Americans for natural disasters. But he still wondered, what were they doing in there? the majority of its funding. Garrett Graff.
And about a third of its workforce was actually hidden in the nation's classified black budget, the special budget that Congress oversees that protects our most secret programs and capabilities. And FEMA on a daily basis is in charge of tracking the whereabouts of everyone in the presidential line of succession.
So that in the event of a nuclear war, it knows where all of those people are, how to get them to secure relocation sites like the Mount Weather Bunker, and who would be best positioned to be the person who takes over as president of the United States in the event of a nuclear war.
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Chapter 8: Can FEMA regain public trust in its disaster response?
The most damning part of that Miami Herald piece, though, was news that Jafrida had worked with Reagan's National Security Council to write plans for declaring martial law and putting the country temporarily under a sort of shadow government. And not just in the case of a nuke, but also in a so-called national crisis, like a war.
A bunch of this comes out in the late 1980s amid the Iran-Contra hearings and investigations. It turns out that Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who is the central figure at the White House of Iran-Contra, was also one of the planners for Project 908. Oliver North was asked about these martial law plans during the Iran-Contra hearings.
Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned at one time to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?
North was questioned by Texas Representative Jack Brooks. We see North pause and whisper to his attorney. Then the chairman of the hearings, Daniel K. Inouye, jumps in to respond on the government's behalf.
I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir. I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami Papers and several others that there had been a plan a contingency plan that would suspend the American Constitution.
And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was, but I wanted to get his confirmation. May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage.
The government never acknowledged any of this stuff until much of it was declassified years later. Louis Giafrida ended up resigning from FEMA for totally unrelated reasons following a congressional fraud investigation.
According to Senator Albert Gore, Giafrida had spent $170,000 of federal money to build a house on federal property for his own use.
By the start of the 90s, FEMA employee Leo Bosner was beyond tired of the dysfunction and the kooky national security schemes. Frankly, for me, once that stuff was in the rearview mirror, it's like, fine, that's the trash. I hope they come on Friday and pick it up and dump it to the landfill. There were some pretty nutty people working back there then.
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