December’s tornadoes show a country desperately in need of disaster reform
You can't stop tornadoes, but you can stop them from being so deadly. Here's how.
John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images
Zoya Teirstein Staff Writer
Published
Dec 22, 2021
In less than a week in mid-December, two enormous storm systems plowed through the South, Midwest, and Great Plains, spawning 17 tornadoes and killing almost 100 people between them. The worst of the wreckage occurred in western Kentucky, where a tornado packing 190-mile-per-hour winds and bearing a footprint nearly a mile wide etched a 163-mile path of destruction that included the town of Mayfield. When President Joe Biden visited Mayfield the week after the tornado, he observed a town half-standing, many of its homes, businesses, and public infrastructure rubbed off the map by one of nature’s most powerful and bewildering disasters. Biden was quick to pledge limitless aid to Kentuckians affected by the event.
“The president’s message today is that he and the federal government intend to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes by providing any support that is needed to aid recovery efforts and to support the people of Kentucky,” White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. It’s an assurance the Biden administration has had to give out many, many times over the course of the president’s short time in office, after hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. But emergency management experts say that until the United States reforms its emergency management system from the ground up, sending the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, out to clean up communities in the aftermath of disasters is akin to stanching a catastrophic injury with a Band-Aid. Ultimately, it’s unsustainable.
https://grist.org/cities/decembers-tornadoes-show-a-country-desperately-in-need-of-disaster-reform/
