From the NYTimes: Even as Floods Worsen With Climate Change, Fewer People Insure Against Disaster

Article from The Hill: Why Will FEMA Spend as Much in Past Two years as in Previous 37?  Article by Brock Long, former FEMA Administrator.  An excerpt:

It’s time to think differently about funding disasters and to stop politicizing them. The dedicated public servants inside FEMA know how to reduce costs and mitigate disasters, but they need Congress to listen to them and act. Doing so will reduce the complexity of future disasters. Reinsurance and catastrophic bond concepts, coupled with pre-disaster mitigation dollars, will ultimately reduce disaster costs in the future. Until then, costs will continue to rise in the future and unnecessary disaster politics will reign.

From GovTech.com: Survivors of Hurricane Michael in the Panhandle Fear Fires, Floods. As a long-awaited $19.1 billion disaster relief bill is finally poised to send more federal aid to Florida’s Panhandle, it’s unclear how much help will reach people on the ground, or when it will arrive.

From the Conversation: The economic cost of devastating hurricanes and other extreme weather events is even worse than we thought

Two recent articles have explained this recent, truly tragic phenomenon:

• From HSToday: ISIS Claims Escalating Use of Wildfire Arson as Terror Tactic
• From the WashPost: Mystery crop fires scorch thousands of acres in Syria and Iraq — and ISIS claims responsibility

From the WashPost: How a watchdog whitewashed its oversight of FEMA’s disaster response with ‘feel good’ reports.

Update from Wash Post on 6/7:

The Homeland Security watchdog has agreed to an outside review of its performance following missteps that led it to retract 13 audits of disaster responses that hid problems and instead flattered the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The outside review will be done by another federal inspector general’s office to ensure that Homeland Security’s monitor has improved its overall operations and oversight of FEMA, officials said.

From the Center for Disaster Philanthropy:  CDP 2019 Midwest Disaster Recovery Fund

From GovTech, this article by Lucien Canton: Characteristics of Effective Emergency Managers (Part 1)  Is it possible to define what makes an emergency manager effective? A survey of existing research shows nine common characteristics found in successful emergency managers.

Rebuilding Paradise: Finding health care after wildfire destruction. California town leveled by fire has chance to rethink, not just rebuild.

Why NYC Spent a Year Converting its 500-page Hazard Plan into a Website.

Thanks to Brandon Greenberg for the citation.