Final

Emergency Management:

The American Experience

Third Edition

Edited by Claire B. Rubin

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48 David Butler

98

99

100

101

102

103

Southern California Earthquake Center, "Long Beach Earthquake: 7oth Anniversary," scec.org/ education/03031 0longbeach.html. Susan Faterni and Charles James, "The Long Beach Earihquake ol 1933" (National Information Service for Earthquake EnglneelilllJ, Universrty of California. December 8, 1997), nisee.berkeley. edu/long_beacMong_beach.htmr. (Arriole is no longer avall;,ble onllne.) Robert A. Olson, "Legislative Politics and Seismic Safety: California's Early Years and the 'Field Act,' 1925-1933," Earthquake Spectra 19, no. 1 (2003): 111-131; Perkins et al., "Retrospective on the 1906 Earthquake's Impact," S246.

Olson, "Legislative Politics and Seismic Safety," 117.

Carl-Henry Geschwind, "Earthquakes and Their Interpretation: The Campaign for Seismic Safety in California, 1906-1933" (Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Dissertation Services, 1996), 197, as cited in Olson, "Legislative Politics and Seismic Safety," 115.

Fatemi and James, "Long Beach Earthquake of 1933."

Chapter 3

The Expanding Role of the

Federal Government: 1927-1950

David Butler

A s communities in the United States recovered from one disaster after another, there was a growing body of knowledge about what response and recovery looked like. T here was also a growing understanding that

the needs of communities and their victims exceeded local capacity. The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the drought that plagued the Dust Bowl for several years during the 1930s captured the attention of the nation. Each of these events demonstrated that disasters and their effects do not respect state boundaries; the financial effects of the drought that plagued the southern Great Plains during the Depression rippled across the nation.

Throughout this period, federal government response continued to be reactive and focus driven, but it was becoming increasingly common. From 1933 to 1937, disaster relief legislation emerged as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal administration. Beginning in 1934, Congress authorized the Recon­ struction Finance Corporation to grant loans to rebuild public facilities damaged by disasters. Subsequent legislation in 1937 created the Disaster Loan Corpora­ tion. These programs eventually evolved into the Small Business Administration disaster loan program, which still exists today.

This chapter looks at three major disasters: the Great Mississippi Flood; the drought and storms that became known as the Dust Bowl; and the Texas City explosions, which occurred just after World War II. The explosions in Texas City captured the nation's attention not only because of the sudden onset and immedi­ ate death toll, but also because the event vividly demonstrated the risk that acci­ dents and other human-induced threats pose to communities. The chapter explores why and how these disasters became focusing events. In particular, the discussion examines how these events prompted the federal government, as well as state and local governments, to take a greater role in disaster prevention. response, and

49

50 David Butler

recovery-a gradual transformation that resulted in the passage of major federal

disaster legislation in 1950.

The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927

Communities along the Mississippi have been involved in flood control-primar­

ily levee-construction-since 1726, when residents orNew Orleans began building

levees to protect the city from the rising river. Thefederal government's involve­

ment dates back to 1824, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Gibbonsv. Ogden

thar it was constitutional for the federal government to finance and construct river

improvements. Within two months of the ruling. Congress had appropriated funds

and authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to remove certain

navigation obstructions from the Ohio and M.ississippi Rivers. As flooding of the

Mississippi River basin continued in the ensuing decades, the federal govern­

ment-primarily through USACE-became increasingly involved in flood control

efforts. In the Swamp Land Acts of 1849 and 1850. for example, Congress trans­ ferred "swamp and overflow land"' along the lower Mississippi River from federal

ownersl1ip to state governments on tbe condition that the states use revenue from the sale of the lands to build levees and drainage channels. in 1850. Congress com­

missioned two surveys of the Mississi!)pi River delta., "with snch investigations

as may lead to determine the most practicable plan for securing it from inunda­

tion.''1 These surveys ultimately led to a federal policy of using levees----andonly

levees�ro control flooding.

Continued -fto.oding of the river led in 1879 to the creation of the Missis­

sippi River Commission to regulate and coordinate the efforts of tbe many

private and local entities. such as levee districts, that were independently trying

to control the river. According to the Association of State Floodplain Managers

(ASFPM). "To some, 1879 marked the turning point in the long battle to gam,er

federal support for flood control. From that time forward. Congress gradually

increased federal government responsibility to develop flood control throughout

the nation.""

By J 890, the entire lower Mississippi valley from St. Louis to the Gulf of

Mexico !:tad been divided into state and local levee districts. In I 926, just one year

before the Great Flood, USA CE pub I icly declared that the levee system would pre­

vent future floods in tbe Mississippi River basin-an assertion thatwoujd quickly

prove false. Beginning in 1926 the Mississippi drainage basin, which stretches from New

York to Montana and includes tributaries in thirty-one states and southern Canada,

received unprecedented precipitation. Heavy rains began in the sunrn1er and con­

turned through the winter. On April 16, 'I 927, a 1,200-foot section of the levee

collapsed thirt) miles south of the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 51

The refugee camp at Vicksburg, Mississippi, was a relatively pleasant camp on high ground

.

Many refugees lived in such camps for mont hs with inadequate shelter and food until the wa

ters

of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 receded . Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administration.

flooding 175,000 acres. In the days to come, much of the levee system along the

lower Mississippi failed, affecting areas in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisi­

ana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. By May, the Mississippi River south

of Memphis, Tennessee, spanned sixty miles. As in all great catastrophes, the exact numbers of deaths, injuries, and home-

less people resulting from the flood, as well as the precise amount of destruction.

is uncertain. The American Red Cross reported 246 deaths, but the actual toll

may have been several times greater. An estimated 700,000 people were rendered

homeless, and more than 300,000 victims spent several months in more than 150

Red Cross camps hastily constructed following the flood. Another 300, 000 people

received food and other assistance outside the camps. Approximately 200,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and at least 20,000 square miles of land (or

as much as 27, 000 square miles, by some accounts) were flooded. In a compre­

hensive history offlooding in the United States, the ASFPM called the 1927 flood

of the Mississippi River "the greatest natural disaster to befall [the United States]

in terms of total human misery and suffering."3

52 David Butler

The Response

Kevin R. Kosar, a Congressional Research Service analyst, describes the federal

government's response to the 1927 flood:

[It] was a mixture of pre-New Deal minimalist federal governance and ... ;;governing by network." The federal government would make no imme­ diate appropriations to the affected area. Instead, it would utilize federal resources and coordinate networks of federal, state, private, and not-for­ profit organizations to deliver relief services. The President's Cabinet would direct the relief effort in close consultation with the American National Red Cross .... Thus, flood response policy was centralized. but its execution was decentralized.'

In Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed Amer­

ica, John M. Barry recounts two stories regarding how two different communities­

Greenville, in the delta cotton-growing region of Mississippi, and New Orleans,

farther downriver-responded to the flood.5 Each is instructive because of the light it

sheds on American history and the lessons it offers for today's emergency managers.

[n Greenville, African Americans were compelled, sometimes at gunpoint,

to maintain the levees protecting the town. More than 13,000 African Americans

around Greenville were evacuated to the crest of an unbroken levee and stranded

there for days without food or clean water, even as boats arrived to evacuate white

women and children. Meanwhile, anned members of the National Guard patrolled

the levee and refused to allow anyone to enter or leave without a pass. In the town

itself, whites stayed on the upper floors of offices and hotels, while African Ameri­

cans were crowded into warehouses, mills, and stores. A report of the Colored

Advisory Commission describes the plight of these people:

We found numerous instances where the colored people, as a result of years ofliving under a semi-peonage system, in many communities were afraid to ask for the things to which they were entitled under the Red Cross. In every community we visited we found some colored people of this type and many times their fear caused them a great deal of suffering."

As the flood approached New Orleans, the city's rich and powerful residents

(including Isaac Cline, head of the New Orleans weather bureau and previously

the head of the weather bureau in Galveston at the time of the 1900 hurricane)

had thirty tons of dynamite detonated to breach a levee downriver so that pressure

would be relieved on the city's levees. The New Orleans oligarchs promised to

compensate the trappers and other rural inhabitants inundated by the breach, but

they all but reneged on this promise and paid no reparations to local residents.

Moreover, the breach turned out to be um1ecessary; major breaks upstream had

already relieved pressure and minimized the risk.

The American Red Cross carried most of the financial burden of recovery

from the flood and nonnally would have been responsible for managing relief

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 53

Greenville, Mississippi, April 27, 1927. Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration.

operations. Given the enormity of th e flood, however, President Calvin C

oolidge

nam ed Secretary of Commerce Herb ert Hoover to head a quasi-governm

ental

commission that included cabinet me mbers and representatives of the Am

erican

Red Cross. With near-absolute auth ority to call on the resources of feder

al depart­

ments as weJJ as other state and loca l entities and the private sector, Hoo

ver over­

saw and coordinated the response- the biggest disaster relief effort in U

.S. history

to date. 7 The response blended federal, state,

local, and private resources and wa s

generally regarded as efficient and su ccessful.

The concentration of power, combi ned with minimum accountability a

t all

levels, caused problems, howeve r. African American sharecroppers

fared the

worst. In some cases, relief and rec overy suppli es were given to the la

ndowners

for whom the sharecroppers work ed, some of whom charged the share

croppers for

the supplies. Compounding these problems, Hoover had political amb

itions-his

eye was on the presidential nomin ation in the upcoming 1928 el ectio

ns-and he

was determin ed that any unsatisfact ory conditions that might occur be hid

den from

public scrutiny. He used his influence and promises of future political patro

nage to

African American community leade rs to keep the media from learning ab

out the

deplorable situation in the refugee cam ps. His subsequent election was large

ly due

54 DaVid Butler

The Mississippi levee below New Orleans was dynamited to reduce pressure on the levees within the city. However, the action was unnecessary (upstream breaches had already minimized the risk to the city) and resulted in the flooding of poor trappers and other rural residents downstream. Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

to the positive publicity and praise he received from managing the flood response.

But he failed to keep his promises to African Americans; as a result, their alle­

giance began to shift from the Republican to the Democratic Party.

The flood, then, had an impact not only on disaster management but also on

the political and social fabric of the nation. Barry concludes his examination of

the 1927 Great Mississippi Flood as follows:

[The flood] penetrated to the core of the nation, washed away surface, and revealed the nation's character. Then it tested that character and changed it. It marked the end of a way of seeing the world. :ind possibly the c11d of that world itself .... It shifted perceptio11_s of the role and responsibilit) of the federal government--calling for a great ex:pansion--and shattered the myth of a quasi-feudal bond between Delta blacks and the southern aristocracy .... It accelerated the great migration of blacks north. And it altered both southern and national politics.8

The Effect of the Great Mississippi Flood on

Federal Floodplain Management

The 1927 flood demonstrated the inadequacies of the federal government's

"levees-only" policy. Moreover, whereas flood management had been viewed pri­

marily as a local issue, the Mississippi Flood demonstrated the limitations of an

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 55

approach that relied on local governments, levee districts, and private efforts, and

the public began to warm to the idea of a federal flood control program to address

flooding in the Mississippi River basin and protect their lives and property. After

all, the 1927 flood involved drainage from far outside the lower Mississippi valley.

Federal legislators further recognized "that locals were unable to finance effective

flood control measures and that local governments were already making enormous

contributions to flood contro\."9

In the Flood Control Act of 1928, Congress abandoned the levees-only

approach. The act provided for a partnership between the federal and local gov­

ernments for the construction and maintenance of control structures. But while the

federal allocation was significant-more than local governments had paid for flood

control during the previous 200 years-the legislation held far greater significance:

"The law set a precedent of direct, comprehensive, and vastly expanded federal

involvement in local affairs," explains Barry. "In the broadest sense, this precedent

reflected a major shift in what Americans considered the proper role and obliga­

tions of the national government, a shift that both presaged and prepared the way

for far greater changes that would soon come."1° Congress appropriated $10 mil­

lion for relief and reconstruction associated with the 1927 flood, but it spent thirty

times this amount-$300 million-the following year on flood control projects

along the lower Mississippi.

Federal involvement continued to expand in the ensuing years. In the wake

of devastating floods in New England and the Ohio River basin, Congress passed

the Flood Control Act of 1936, declaring "flood control a 'proper' federal activity

in the national interest" and establishing a national policy of flood control. 11 The

legislation passed easily-in part because, in the midst of the Great Depression, it

supported numerous public works programs. The legislation launched

a two-pronged attack on the problem of reducing flood damages. On one side, the Department of Agriculture would develop plans to reduce runoff and retain more rainfall where it fell. On the other, the Corps [of Engineers] would develop engineering plans for downstream projects. In theory. the plan required cooperation between the two agencies but included no mecha­ nism to ensure coordination. In reality, the major work fell to the Corps.12

Not surprisingly, more flooding led to more legislation. Congress passed addi­

tional flood control acts in 1938 and 1941, authorizing more construction and increas­

ing the federal cost share .

for dams and reservoirs to 100 percent. Between 1936 and

1952, Congress appropriated more than $11 billion for flood control projects.

However, some floodplain managers, engineers, and scholars realized that this

reliance on engineering and construction to mitigate floods was, in its own way,

a policy as narrow-minded (and dangerous) as the earlier levees-only approach

of USACE. Studies demonstrated that, despite structural measures to control

floods, monetary losses continued to grow. Critics warned that with the country's

56 DaVid Butler

increasingly urban population, the national flood damage potential was growing faster than structural solutions could control.13 As one researcher writes, "Federal flood control projects in fact often made matters worse by providing a false sense of security that attracted new development to floodplains." 14 Thus, critics called for a broader approach that considered all possible means to mitigate flooding, including land use planning, zoning, restrictions on the use of land in flood zones, flood proofing, and insurance.

A few members of President Roosevelt's administration espoused these ideas in the 1930s. Perhaps the best known was Gilbert White, a young geographer from t�e University of Chicago, who in his PhD dissertation described the prevail­ ing national policy as "essentially one of protecting the occupants of floodplains against floods, of aiding them when they suffer flood losses, and of encouraging more intensive use offloodplains." 15 White advocated taking a broader approach. "Dealing with floods in all their capricious and violent aspects," he stated, "is a problem in part of adjusting human occupancy to the floodplain environment so as to utilize most effectively the natural resources of the floodplain, and at the same time, of applying feasible and practicable measures for minimizing the detrimental impacts offloods."16

It took several decades for such ideas to be embraced, but today they influence and shape the approach to flood control at all levels of government. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), requires local governments to institute effective floodplain management measures, and USACE now considers a wider range of approaches than just structural measures, such as levees and dams, to reduce flood losses. Still, the economic, social, institutional, and political forces that lead people to live in floodplains (and governments and government agencies to promote struc­ tural "solutions") remain powerful and intractable. An equitable national flood control policy has yet to be devised and instituted.

Management Implications for Emergency

Managers

Like most other great disasters of the twentieth century, the 1927 flood exposed problems and inequities in society. Wealthy white citizens fared far better than African Americans and other poor minorities. The manifold reasons for this dif­ ferential effect are not always attributable to blatant racism or abuse of power, however. Rather, wealthier residents in almost any community tend to live in places that are less vulnerable to natural hazards and in structures that are better able to withstand the damage wrought by such hazards. ln addition, wealthier citi­ zens have more resources to respond to and recover from an event. They have cars in which they can leave when a threat occurs, and they can afford other means of

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 57

transportation if needed. They have friends and family in other parts of the com­ munity, state, or nation with the means to take them in. Their jobs are likely to be secure; and they have savings, insurance, and other resources to fall back on if work is disrupted. Moreover, they know how government agencies work, and they have relationships with banks and other financial institutions should they need to obtain loans or other financing.

The response and recovery issues following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, dis­ cussed in detail in Chapter 7, reveal that the issues of class and race that emerged during events of almost a century ago are still very much a part of the American social fabric. The fundamental lesson for emergency managers is clear: Any plans for preparedness, warning, evacuation, response, recovery, or long-term mitiga­ tion, as well as any actions, must consider all members of a community. This includes not only ethnic minorities but other groups as well-women, children, the disabled, the elderly, those with limited proficiency in English, and individu­ als housed in institutions such as hospitals or prisons. These people cannot or will not respond to the information and actions directed toward able-bodied, middle­ class citizens with all the resources that "able-bodied" and "middle-class" imply. A modem emergency manager must consider the needs of the entire community.

The Dust Bowl

The 1930s Dust Bowl was a different species of disaster. It did involve some hor­ rific dust storms that would qualify today as quick-onset events requiring immedi­ ate emergency response. Lawrence Svobida, who wrote an eyewitness account of the Dust Bowl in Kansas, describes these dust storms:

A cloud is seen to be approaching from a distance of many miles. Already it has the banked appearance of a cumulus cloud, but it is black instead of white, and it hangs low. seeming to hug the earth. Instead of being slow to change its form, it appears to be rolling on itself from the crest down­ ward. As it sweeps onward. the landscape is progressively blotted out. Birds fly in terror before the storm, and only those that are strong of wing may escape. The smaller birds fly until they are exhausted, then fall to the ground, to share the fate of the thousands of jack rabbits which perish from suffocation. 17

Yet, overall, the Dust Bowl was a slow-onset disaster with very deep-seated ecological and social origins and widespread consequences. Researcher Richard A. Warrick compares it to more common disasters: "As opposed to the three-minute impact time of an earthquake, or the two-day impact time of a hurricane, the impact of a drought can cover many years. ln addition, it is difficult to state precisely when the effects and their associated 'costs' begin, or when they cease."18 In his award­ winning analysis, historian Donald Worster maintains that the Dust Bowl was the worst ecological catastrophe in U.S. history. 19

58 David Butler

Severe drought and soil erosion first occurred in the Great Plains in eastern Montana and the Dakotas at the start of the 1930s. W hile drought was widespread during this decade and struck every state in the Union except Maine and Vermont, historians generally define the Dust Bowl as the drought that plagued the southern Great Plains-specifically, southwestern Kansas, southeastern Colorado, north­ west New Mexico, and the panhandles of Oklahoma and Texas-from the early 1930s to 1940. The Oklahoma panhandle was ar the center of the Dust Bowl, which encompassed almost JOO million acres. By 1935, the landscape there had become. in the words ofone reporrer. '"a vast desert, with m.iniature shifting dunes of saryd.' "!O By 1938. the peak year for wind erosion, l O mill ion acres had lost at least the upper five inches of topsoil and another 13.5 million acres had lost at least two and a half inches. The average acre lost more than 400 tons of dirt. The soil drifted; in some cases it blew so far to the east that plumes of dust were witnessed in the skies over the Atlantic shore. At its height, the Dust Bowl involved sixty to seventy dust storms per year.

Aside from being an ecological and economic catastrophe, the blizzards of sand.and dirt presented a major health hazard. Many people contracted upper respi­ ratory diseases. Among the most vulnerable were the elderly and infanrs. To help handle the health risks, the Red Cross set up six emergency hospitals in Colorado, Kansas, an.d Texas and staffed them with its own nurses.

Thus, like the 1918 flu pandemic, the Dust Bowl severely affected human beings. To a lesser degree it affected structures and other personal property,

Dust storms, like this one approaching Stratford, Texas, plagued areas throughout and beyond the Midwest in the 1930s. Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 59

although clearly one type of personal property-the land itself-was severely damaged. Hence, the effects can be classified as environmental as well as social and economic.21

The ongoing drought devastated crops, and the people of the Great Plains, namely farmers, suffered accordingly. The social and economic systems on which the farmers depended and which depended on them-from banks and businesses to schools and families-suffered as well. The severe economic hardship that resulted from the Dust Bowl uprooted many families in and beyond Oklahoma, who migrated in search of a livelihood. Some settled in a nearby county; more moved thousands of miles away. Thus, the effects of the drought rippled across the United States.

Because the Dust Bowl occurred during the Depression and because its effects were integrated into the regional and national economy, it is impossible to accu­ rately estimate its economic consequences. The National Drought Mitigation Cen­ ter (NDMC) calls the Dust Bowl one of the greatest economic disasters in the history of the United States but says that "determining the direct and indirect costs is a difficult task because of the broad impacts of drought, the event's close asso­ ciation with the Great Depression, the fast revival of the economy with the start of World War II, and the lack of adequate economic models for evaluating losses at that time."22 Worster concludes that "the financial cost of the 1934 drought alone amounted to one-half the money the United States had put into World War I. By 1936, farm losses had reached $25 million a day, and more than 2 million farmers were drawing relief checks."23

The Dust Bowl was unique in at least one other way. Perhaps in large part because it came on top of the Great Depression, it soon passed into American cul­ ture through John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the photographs of Dorothea Lange, the songs ofWoody Guthrie, and other works, all of which told the story of the crisis and its victims. The Dust Bowl was soon seen as a landmark social crisis that revealed social inequities and failures in the prevailing economic system and, perhaps, in humanity itself. Unsurpassed by subsequent events, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s remains the archetypical drought disaster.

The Causes of the Dust Bowl

Many researchers have identified the "causes" of the widespread drought that became known as the Dust Bowl. But experts reach different conclusions, depend­ ing in part on whether they define the Dust Bowl as a climatological event, an agricultural failure, a socioeconomic problem, or an ecological catastrophe, and on how they define the "cause" of such an event. Computer modeling undertaken by scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for example, focuses on changes in surface temperatures of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and

60 David Butler

Dust buried fanns and equipment, killed livestock, ruined crops, and increased the misery of the Depression. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

on the resulting synergistic effects.24 Although there was substantial local vari­

ability, precipitation decreased markedly in the central United States during the

1930s. In Boise City, Oklahoma, the annual precipitation averaged over 19 inches

(2 inches above nonnal) from 1926 to 1930, but averaged just 11.65 inches from

I 93 I to 1936. A change of 7 inches in a humid climate may be hardly noticeable,

but in a marginal ecological zone like the southern Great Plains, it can-and did­

make the difference between a bumper wheat harvest and a disaster.

But the 1930s Dust Bowl was more than a simple climatological event; it was

a social disaster with social origins. As with any disaster, where and how people

live makes them more or less vulnerable to the physical hazard. Worster points

to a number of human actions that contributed to this particular disaster. Agricul­

tural practices-including the destruction ofnatural grasslands; overgrazing of the

range; tillage of poor, marginal soils; and the reduction of agriculture in the region

to a single crop (winter wheat}-that worked in more humid regions of the United

States proved destructive to the more fragile land of the southern Great Plains.

Native grasses were replaced by wheat fields, undennining the Great Plains eco­

system. Dry-land wheat fanning had been practiced extensively in the region for

less than thirty years when the Dust Bowl hit, and the fanners lacked experience

with changes in precipitation.25 Unwise land use practices were fueled by the desire

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 61

to maximize production and profits at the expense of taking a long-term view of

the effects. Simply put, these agricultural practices led to greater exposure of the

soil to wind erosion.

Another contributing factor was the increased use of machinery, including tractors, combines, and disk plows. The disk plow, in particular, increased the

vulnerability of soil to erosion much more than the lister, or double-sided plow,

which it had replaced. But there was a far greater impact: the widespread use

of machinery, along with improved varieties of wheat, led to the cultivation of

more and more land-including marginal land. This, in turn, increased the land's

exposure to erosion. It also created ever-larger harvests. The increased production

(including a bumper crop in 1931) caused a marked drop in the price of wheat.

Thus, a destructive cycle emerged: increasing production led to declining prices,

which led to even more production. In the race to survive, agricultural producers

abandoned soil conservation practices and cultivated increasingly marginal land.

Further exacerbating the problem was the need for farmers to increase their profits

in order to pay for the capital equipment they needed to increase production. In

sum, efficient methods led to overproduction and a drop in prices, which led to

even more production.

An Eyewitness Account

When I knew that my crop was irrevocably gone I experienced a deathly feeling which, I hope, can affect a man only once in a lifetime, fyty dreams and ambitions had been flouted by nature, and my shattered ideals seett)�d gone forever. The very desire to make a success of my life was gone; the spirit and urge to strive were dead within me. Fate had dealt me a cruel blow above which I felt utterly unable to rise.

-Lawrence Svoblda

Source: PBS, American Fixperience, •suivlving the Dust Bowl.". pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl.

Social and cultural factors further contributed to the disaster. Tenant farming,

for instance, created an arrangement in which decisions were made by people who had no permanent interest in the land. Most tenant farmers sought to maximize

their annual yield and had little concern for the potential long-term effects on the

soil. Further, tenant farmers tended to be a migratory population, moving from

farm to farm. Many had no attachment to or understanding of the land they toiled.

An increasing number offarms were owned by "suitcase farmers," who lived and

worked elsewhere and visited their land only during planting and harvesting-if

4':� ·"'

62 DaVid Butler

at all. Finally, agribusiness had taken hold in the area. Corporations working the

land on a large scale sought primarily to maximize profits.

Collectively, these social circumstances alienated farmers from the land they

worked, and they lost their connection to it. Examining deeper causes of the Dust

Bow 1, Worster argues that th is alienation was a direct result of the American culture

and economic system. "The Dust Bowl," he writes, "was the inevitable outcome of

a culture that deliberately, self-consciously, set itself that task of dominating and

exploiting the land for all it was worth."26 He goes on to claim that the Dust Bowl

was a direct result of the American economic system--capitalism. "It came about

because the expansionary energy of the United States had finally encountered a

volatile, marginal land, destroying the delicate ecological balance that had evolved

there," he explains. "What brought [farmers] to the region was a social system,

a set of values, an economic order. There is no word that so fully sums up those

elements as 'capitalism. '"27

Yet it would be a mistake to place the blame solely on capitalism or broader

aspects of the American culture. Droughts have occurred in many places where

capitalism is not the prevailing economic principle. In fact, Worster himself notes

that drought occurred in the Soviet Union in 1921-1922 and again in 1932-193 4,

resulting in widespread famine and the deaths of millions of people. A situation

much like the Dust Bowl also occurred in the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1965,

when, in an effort to massively increase wheat production, the country plowed

almost I 00 million acres in Kazakhstan and eastern Russia. Subsequent drought

led to severe wind erosion and the destruction of the land.

In a 1986 article, Harry C. McDean questions Worster's conclusions, not­

ing that the circumstances of the American Dust Bowl were unique in both time

and place.28 McDean argues that the Dust Bowl was not the inevitable result of

a capitalist society. Throughout time, farmers in the United States and elsewhere

have adopted systems and practices that are more sympathetic to the land. In other

capitalist agrarian regions, ecological disaster has not occurred.

Regardless, Worster's analysis contains an essential truth about disasters: the

catastrophe is the sum of a physical hazard and a complex social structure that

puts residents (some more than others) at risk. Any society, culture, or economic

system that heedlessly seeks to maximize production without concern for either

the welfare of the land or the safety of its inhabitants can and will suffer similar

catastrophes. Furthermore, the penalty for such folly will be manifest first where

the environment is fragile and resources are limited.

Prior Events, Response, and Recovery

The dry period that led to the Dust Bowl was not unprecedented. Droughts had

occurred in the southern Great Plains in 1892 and 1912; at that time, however, the

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 63

sod had not yet been "busted" and native grasses for the most part remained intact,

so the soil was less vulnerable to erosion. Droughts have also occurred since the

Dust Bowl. The area experienced a more severe drought (by climatological mea­

sures) in the mid-1950s, and major dry periods continue to this day.

The response to the severe dust storms of the 1930s was much like the response to any sudden-onset emergency, but the response to the overall drought

at the individual, local, and national levels was different. Worster describes the

reaction of those who lived in the affected region:

The pattern of reaction among plainsmen went something like this: fail to anticipate drought, underestimate its duration when it comes, expect rain momentarily, deny that they are as hard hit as outsiders believe, defend the region against critics, admit that some help would be useful, demand that the government act and act quickly, insist that federal aid be given without strings and when and where local residents want it, vote for those politi­ cians who confirm the people's optimism and pooh-pooh the need for major reform, resent interference by the bureaucrats, eagerly await the return of "normalcy'' when the plains will once more proceed along the road of steady progress. 29

Despite the denial ofa recurring hazard and the sense of frontier independence

that was prevalent in the area at the time, the severe economic hardship brought

about by the drought during the Depression changed the general attitude regard­

ing aid. More than 2 0 percent of rural families received federal relief during the Dust Bowl. Moreover, the federal government's role shifted. The NDMC explains:

[M]any measures were undertaken to relieve the direct impacts of droughts and to reduce the region's vulnerability to the dry conditions. Many of these measures were initiated by the federal government, a relatively new prac­ tice. Before the 1930s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches. This began to change with the development of the Great Depression in the late 1920s and the 1933 inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roo­ sevelt. The Depression helped '·soften deep-rooted, hard-line attitudes of free enterprise, individualism, and the passive role of the government:' thus paving the way for Roosevelt's New Deal programs, which in tum provided a framework for drought relief programs for the Great Plains.30

As the Depression and drought continued, the federal government adopted a

wide-ranging and long-term approach. Federal drought relief programs provided

emergency supplies, cash, and livestock feed and transport to maintain the basic

functioning of livelihoods and farms and ranches; established health care facili­

ties and supplies to meet emergency medical needs; established higher tariffs,

government-based markets for farm goods, and loan funds for farm market main­

tenance and business rehabilitation; and provided the supplies, technology, and

technical advice needed to research, implement, and promote appropriate land

management strategies.31

64 David Butler

Roosevelt's administration established numerous agencies and programs toaddress the hardships of the Great Depression. The plethora of agencies and pro­grams involved in the federal response, however, often resulted in contradictorygoals and approaches, interagency conflicts, and competition for funds. Among the first actions Roosevelt took was the creation of the AgriculturalAdjustment Administration (AAA), which probably had a greater effect on fannersin the Dust Bowl than any other federal program. The AAA's principal approach tothe problems created by the drought was to create "planned scarcity" by reducingagricultural production. To accomplish this, the AAA managed a program wherebywheat farmers could receive payments for not planting part of their previouslyproductive land. From 1933 to 1937, these payments for not working the landprovided many Dust Bowl farmers with their only source of income.3� They alsolaid the groundwork for today's federal farm policy, which involves a complex andoften controversial system of price supports and subsidies. Initially, the federal government focused on general economic problems.For instance, the Farm Credit Administration, created in 1933, was charged withrefinancing farm mortgages and making low-interest production and marketingloans to farmers. As the drought progressed, however, the administration beganto directly address issues related to agriculture and land use. On June 9, 1934,Congress approved President Roosevelt's comprehensive $525 million droughtprogram, making funding available for emergency livestock and feed programs,seed purchase, the purchase of submarginal lands, relief for farmers, and assistancefor displaced residents. In August, the federal government formed the DroughtRelief Committee chaired by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) and with members from other federal agencies responsible for provid­ing relief. Subcommittees were established to carry out specific tasks, includingdrought area designation, livestock purchase, and feed provision. The Taylor Grazing Act of 1935 and the subsequent land use project repre­sented further efforts on the part of the federal government to reverse the damagedone to the land by overuse and to purchase submarginal lands in order to returnthem to their natural state. Such actions further increased direct federal govern­ment involvement in the stewardship of the land. At the same time, the USDA'sSoil Conservation Service (SCS) worked with private citizens to help them pre­serve and manage their land for greater productivity. The Civilian ConservationCorps-another New Deal program designed to provide jobs-worked with theSCS to conduct soil conservation projects, including the creation of shelterbelts,which entailed the planting of rows of trees to decrease wind erosion. The federal government continued to seek ways to provide relief to thoseaffected by the drought. In January l 935, the administration formed the DroughtRelief Service to coordinate relief activities, including the purchase of cattle indesignated drought-affected counties. More than half the animals were deemed

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 65

unfit for consumption and destroyed; the remaining cattle were given to the Federal

Surplus Relief Corporation for food distribution to needy families. An account

of the program concludes, "Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their

herds, the cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. The

government cattle buying program was a God-send to many farmers, as they could

not afford to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they

could obtain in local markets."33

On April 8, 1935, President Roosevelt signed the Emergency Relief Appro­

priation Act, which earmarked $4.8 billion for the creation of government assis­

tance programs. Prior to this legislation, most New Deal programs provided relief

payments to qualified applicants, but this act ushered in a new approach by requir­

ing many aid recipients to work on public projects. Several new employment

programs, including the Works Progress Administration and the National Youth

Administration, were put in place to provide jobs.

Federal Disaster Mitigation

Flood control and New Deal programs represented the first federal disaster mitiga­

tion policies. By the end of the Depression, one out of every three or four farmers

in the area affected by the Dust Bowl had accepted government relief at one time

or another, "with tenants represented most heavily and smaller operators more

common than large ones."34 In short, federal policy regarding the drought and its

economic consequences soon became a mix of disaster relief and disaster mitiga­

tion or prevention.

Some of the programs that took seed during the Depression continue today.

The NDMC notes that the Roosevelt era "marked the beginning of large-scale

aid [and] also ushered in some of the first long-term, proactive programs to

reduce future vulnerability to drought."35 Federal agencies, including the Natu­

ral Resources Conservation Service, which evolved from the SCS, continue to

promote crop diversity, crop rotation, the use of irrigation, the enlargement of

reservoir capacity, and other soil conservation measures. Moreover, crop insur­

ance and other measures to mitigate the effects of a drought are widely available.

These programs have played a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerability of

the nation to drought.

Given the many factors that contributed to the Dust Bowl, one might ques­

tion whether any of the actions perceived as "solutions" were in reality long-range

answers to the fundamental problems that led to that event. Some analysts argue

that the actions were simply stopgap measures that delayed the desecration and

eventual desertification of large tracts of the Great Plains. To avoid future calami­

ties, the tendency to deny the hazard and the fragility of the soil, the fierce inde­

pendence that prevented some farmers from heeding advice regarding agricultural

66 David Butler

The federal government initiated a host of new programs to help Dust Bowl farmers deal with drought. Here, a Civilian Conservation Corps worker is planting seedling trees to form a shelterbelt to prevent soil erosion. Photo courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

practices, and, above all, the tendency to m�imize short-tenn production and

profit would have to be counterbalanced by a deeper understanding of and appre­

ciation for the land :itself These ideas took hold among some government leaders

during the 1930s. Worster writes:

A few of Roosevelt"s administrators soon began to see that somethia_g more WIIS required: a more far-r�aching conservation program that would include social and economic changes. Some officials, lherefore, began to call for major revisions in the faulty land system: others emphasized new agronomic techniques, rural rehabilitation. more diversified farming. or extensil<e grassland rcstorntioa. l3u.t their common theme was !hat staying meant changing. The Dust Bowl, in ihis evolving government Yiew. must be explained as a failure in ecological adaptarion-as an absence of envi­ ronmental realism.36

A comprehensive plan to achieve such adaptation was prepared by the Great

Plains Drought Area Committee and presented to President Roosevelt in Decem­

ber 1936. The 194-page The Future of the Great Plains: Report of the Great

Plains Committee provided possible strategies-both social and environmental­

for overcoming the Dust Bowl and preserving the region.37 It pointed out some of

the fundamental cultural attitudes and economic assumptions that had led to land

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 67

destruction in the southern Great Plains: the domination of the nature ethic, with

the corollary view of natural resources as raw material to be exploited and used;

the belief in the inexhaustibility of those natural resources; and the convictions

that an owner could do as he liked with his property, that market forces should

control production, and that industrial fanning represented the way to maximum

utility. The report failed to address these underlying causes in its conclusions,

however. In an evaluation of the report published fifty years later, geographer

Gilbert White writes:

The committee was perspicacious in listing attitudinal obstacles to readjusting the system of social controls and incentives. It did not know how to gauge their weights in relation to the possible benefits from altering state and federal policies and procedures and it assumed its rec­ ommendations would be put into practice. It felt unable to recommend basic modifications in the economic and political organization of the nation.38

Worster sees many of the New Deal approaches to the Dust Bowl as failures. "Neither the federal land-use planners nor the ecologists made a lasting impact on

the region .... The return of dust-bowl conditions in the 1950s demonstrated, or

should have demonstrated, the inability of a technical assistance program by itself

to refonn the old ethos."39

Worster is somewhat more positive when discussing present-day federal

policy:

Even free-market fundamentalists have come around to agree with pro­ government planners ... that aggressive farming must be controlled to prevent another thirties-style disaster. They have admitted that wind erosion is a human-caused problem and that its solution lies in grassland restoration on a large scale. The nation cannot it is now agreed on all sides, depend on the fanner's economic self-interest to bring back the grass or prevent ero­ sion. Pragmatism has triumphed over ideology.'°

W hite offers a more optimistic viewpoint. He points out unexpected devel­

opments-including the creation of high-yield, drought-resistant hybrid species

of wheat and com, and the development of central-pivot irrigation that draws

water from massive subterranean aquifers below the Great Plains-that have made

continued widespread, highly productive agriculture possible in the region. But

White cautions that those living in the Great Plains-and the emergency managers

who work there-should be vigilant about the possibility offurther problems. The

water pumped from the Ogallala Aquifer to irrigate the Plains is a finite resource,

warns W hite, and there is no guarantee that another technological fix can be found

once this water is depleted. Questions about whether the region can continue its

current agricultural production and whether the area will be affected by a future

severe drought remain unanswered.41

68 David Butler

Drought and Emergency Management

What does the Dust Bowl imply for today's emergency managers? Those managers may not be directly involved in answering broader questions regarding resource management, but they will be involved in planni.ng for. responding to, and miti­ gating the immediate problems and longer-term social consequences of a severe drought.

In the last few decades, interest in planning for drought has increased at all 1,evels. Whereas only three states (Colorado, New York, and South Dakota) had drought plans in 1980, today thirty-eight states either have such a plan in place or are in the process of develop.ing one. In several states, the plans are maintained by the state offices of emergency management.

The NDMC's website provides information (including a ten-step guide) des.igned for emergency managers to use to develop a drought plan, which, it says, should be based on three main components: monitoring and early warning., risk assessment. and miligation and response!? The site includes copies ofexisting state drought plans, which: adopt a number of approaches to address the problem. W hich specific approaches are appropriate depends on local circ'Ul11stances, but many of the approaches require the knowledge. skills, and authority ofan emer­ gency manager. Indeed, the ability to conduct the planning process itself may be one of those essential skills.

Texas City Explosions, L947 On April 16, 1947, a freighter containing more than 2,000 tons of ammoniumnitrate caught fire and exploded in the port of Texas City. The blast-comparableto a two- to four-kiloton nuclear weapon-knocked people off their feet in Galves­ton, ten miles from Texas City, and shattered windows in Houston, more than fortymiles from the explosion. Two small planes flying over Texas City were knockedfrom the sky, and numerous fires ensued among the crude oil and petrochemicalfacilities surrounding the docks. Fire reached another freighter loaded with ammo­nium nitrate and sulfur, causing it to explode sixteen hours after the first blast. Atleast 581 people were killed and 3,500 injured in what is still considered the worstindustrial accident in U.S. histor y.

Preparedness and Response The Texas City catastrophe was not without precedent. Perhaps the most devastat­ing industrial explosion ever occurred on December 6, 1917, in Halifax Harbor,Nova Scotia, Canada, when a Norwegian vessel collided with a French munitionsship carrying more than 2,500 tons of explosives. The explosion-the largesthuman-induced detonation before the atomic bomb--leveled more than half asquare mile and damaged virtually every building in Halifax. The blast killed

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 69

more than 1,500 people outright; hundreds more would die in the hours and days to come. An additional 9,000 people were injured, not only by the blast itself but also by the debris and glass from Halifax's crumbling buildings.43 Another devas­ tating accident involving ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate occurred on September 21, 1921, at a BA SF chemical and fertilizer plant in Oppau, Germany, when a silo exploded, killing between 400 and 600 people and injuring more than 2,000.44

Hence, port safety and the hazard posed by ammonium nitrate were recog­ nized issues at the time of the Texas City catastrophe. The loading of this chemical compound was prohibited in Galveston, but Texas City officials seemed unaware of the risks it posed. Author Angus Gunn describes the scene at the port:

Within a one-square-mile area beside the docks were six oil-company com­ plexes, eleven warehouses, and several other installations and residential blocks. Fire-prevention experts assured the port authorities that only one­ fifth of this area was in danger of a serious fire and that existing precautions would be adequate to cope with such an eventuality .... [T]his thinking should have changed when large quantities of ammonium nitrate fertilizer began to be shipped from Texas City in 1946.45

All twenty-eight members of Texas City's volunteer fire department were killed in the initial blast-more in one day than were killed in any previous fire in the United States. With no local firefighters to stem the ensuing blaze, as many as 200 volunteers from as far away as Los Angeles battled the fires for a week.

Convergence, Spontaneous Organization,

and Improvisation

Immediately following the explosion, medical personnel, law enforcement offi­ cers, and other responders-some called in by authorities, others of their own accord-began to converge on the scene. The city's auditorium was transformed into a roughshod first-aid center to cope with the casualties. In his book on the 1947 disaster, author Hugh W. Stephens notes, "within an hour, doctors, nurses, and ambulances began arriving unsummoned from Galveston [and] state troop­ ers and law enforcement officers from nearby communities helped Texas City's ... police force maintain order and assisted in search and rescue."46 These rescue workers were joined by news reporters, federal investigators, relief organization volunteers, and a host of others.

In Texas City, as in most disasters, both the immediate on-scene responders and those who converged on the disaster site in the hours and days that fol lowed organized themselves into functional groups. And, as with almost any other disas­ ter of significant size, responding to the Texas City explosion required improvi­ sation. The first responders were those people near the blast who suffered no or inconsequential injuries, so these survivors could lend assistance to others who

70 David Butler

needed help. T hey were quickly joined by other altruistic, self-sacrificing citizens of the city, who improvised search and rescue strategies. Representatives from the oil companies, warehouses, and other organizations at the docks rushed to the scene and sent their organizations ' firefighters to help. An assistant to the mayor, who was put in charge of coordinating the city's response, describes the scene:

At first there were little groups doing separate jobs .... There were many [people] standing around who seemed to want to help but did not know what to do. They were glad to follow any reasonable instructions. These separate crews started out working on their own, but they began to get together when they would come up against bigjobs.47

Any such activity undertaken by people who suddenly find themselves in the midst of a disaster is clearly improvised. But a sudden-onset disaster requires that those at more removed levels of responsibility and authority also improvise an appropriate response. Even the most comprehensive response plan cannot predict the precise pattern of a disaster or foresee all the elements that will be involved.

The actions undertaken by Texas City police chief William Ladish illustrate this point. The explosion threw Ladish to the ground as he stood in his office more than a mile from the explosion, and it knocked out the police radio. Upon finding that the radio was inoperable, he "ran to the telephone exchange through glass-littered streets filling with dazed and bleeding people [and] placed a call to th e Houston Police Department, where he talked to Captain W. M. Simpson."48

Ladish told Simpson of the explosion in the harbor and requested that Simpson send fifty officers and all available ambulances. He then returned to city hall, where he ordered his officers to establish roadblocks and seal off the dock areas. He sent the few remaining men of his seventeen-man department to the docks "with no more direction than advice to assist in any way possible and use anybody who would help."49

lmmediately following the disaster, the "emergency managers" in Texas City-including the assistant to the mayor and Chief Ladish-had to deal with the convergence of well-intentioned volunteers as well as curious onlookers and the local media. They quickly put spontaneously organized groups to constructive use. In a larger sense, the emergency managers had to improvise in order to deal with an unexpected and unprecedented situation, using whatever resources they could amid overwhelming disarray and uncertainty.

Liability and Compensation

Following the Texas City explos ions , the first-ever class action lawsuit was filed against the U.S. government on behalf of 8,485 victims. A district court found the government responsible because "the explosion resulted from negligence on the part of the Government in adopting the fertilizer export program as a whole, in

Role of Federal Goverrunent: 1927-1950 71

its control of various phases of manufactu ring, packaging, labeling and shipping

the product, in failing to give notice of its dangerous nature to persons handling it

and in failing to police its loading on shipboa rd."50 The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of

Appeals overturned the decision, however, ma intaining that the U.S. government

had the right to exercise its own discretion in vital national matters. On June 8,

1953, the Supreme Court upheld the Appeals C ourt's decision (346 U.S. 15), con­

cluding that the Federal Tort Claims Act cle arly exempted "the failure to exercise

or perform a dis cretionary function or du ty " and that the government's actions

were discretionary. As the twentieth centu ry progressed, however, the responsi­

bility of public organizations--0r more s pecifically, their liability in a disaster­

would become an increasingly salient issue for emergency managers.

After the lawsuit was decided, Congress ena cted a special appropriation for

victims' relatives-yet another ad hoc approp riation in response to a specific event.

"At the time, Congress occasionally appro priated funds for flood relief, but only

on a case-by-case basis," writes Stephens. 51 He goes on to emphasize the lack of

a centralized response or recovery agency:

No equivalent of today's Federal Emergency Ma nagement Agency existed

to rush personnel and resources to the scene and p rovide emergency housing

and grants for individuals and businesses under the aegis of a presidential

disaster declaration. Rather, relief and recovery activities went forward in

a decentralized manner: volunteer agencies, c hurches, companies, indi­

viduals, and, to a lesser extent, municipaL co unty, and state governments

assumed or shared most of the burden .... Lo nger-term rehabilitation fell

to volunteer organizations, particularly the Salv ation Army, Volunteers of

America. and the Red Cross.52

The ad hoc approach to relief and recove ry resulted in incons istencies-both

in the funding provided to disaster v ictims and in the ways that this funding w

as

distributed. As discussed in the followin g chapters, the federal government tried to

remedy these problems in the decade s to come through overarching disaster leg

is­

lation. Several federal government agen cies, most notably FEMA, were created t

o

improve disaster response, but even tod ay, major disasters almost inevitably resu

lt

in disaster-specific appropriations.

Responsibility

In hindsight, it is relatively easy to see many of the conditions, decisions,

and

actions that led to the Texas City catas trophe. Stephens proposes that "the ev

ent

originated from complacency about ha zardous materials; the close physical pr

ox­

imity of docks, petrochemical facilities , and residences; and an absence of prepa

ra­

tion for a serious industrial emergency." 53 Angus Gunn adds that, despite U SDA

warnings and prior explosions, local railw ay managers, ships' masters, and others

involved in leading port operations s imp ly failed to recognize the risks posed by

72 David Butler

the transportation of ammonium nitrate. (Texas City did not have a port author­ity overseeing its operations.) Those who could have----w should have-takenresponsibility failed to enact or coordinate safety measures that would protectthe city. Stephens calls the lack of.governmental oversight of the transportationof hazardous materials (particuJarJy the U.S. Coast Guard's failure to play a role)and the concomitant lack of oversight of dock operations a "sin of omission.""' The Texas City disaster had a subtle but profound impact on disaster man­agement in the Uai-red States as it changed the way-people thought about disas­ter preparedness. "This [may bave been] tbe beginnfog of a shift away from anessentially passive. reactive posture toward a more active. anticipatory mode,"wri.tes Stephens. "Clearly some i:ndividuals came to understand that when hazard.ous materials were at issue, the public interest requrred a community-\vide effortto mitigate the worst effects of disaster and prepare response measures before­hand. "55 In the end, the tragedy of Texas City provided the impetus for fundamenrnlimprovements in preparedness and response for industrial catastrophes. not oi;ilylocally but at the state and national levels as we!I.'0

Complex System Failures The Texas City catastrophe might be considered an example of a new category ofhuman-caused disaster resulting from the failure of complex systems. Althoughindustrial accidents were common with the advent of the Industrial Revolutionat the outset of the nineteenth century, complex human-caused disasters becameincreasingly common in the latter half of the twentieth century. Such disasters arethe consequence of increasing industrialization, technological advances, increasedresidential development near industrial areas, and, particularly, complex industrial/human systems and processes in which cataclysmic risk is not immediately appar­ent and, thus, judgment and decision making are inadequate. In short, these aredisasters resulting from hazards created by humankind. Indeed, major catastrophesresulting from advanced technologies; the storage, transportation, and use of haz.ardous materials; and complex industrial systems have become hallmarks of thedisaster history in the late twentieth century.57

In Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies, a classic accountof such disasters, Charles Perrow discusses the risk of "tight coupling" in which"processes happen very fast and can't be turned off, the failed parts cannot be isolated from other parts, or there is no other way to keep the production goingsafeJy."58 Perrow explains that in recent years, accidents have been increasinglycaused by

interactive complexity in the presence of tight coupling, producing a sys­tem accident. We have produced designs so complicated that we cannotanticipate all the possible interactions of the inevitable failures: we add

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 73

safety devices that are deceived or avoided or defeated by hidden paths in the systems. The systems have become more complicated because either they are dealing with more deadly substances, or we demand they function in ever more hostile environments or with ever greater speed and volume. 59

Perrow demonstrates that we cannot foresee all the possible interactions in

complex systems that might lead to catastrophic failure:

The argument is basically very simple. We start with a plant airplane, ship, biology laboratory, or other setting with a lot of components (parts, proce­ dures, operators). Then we need two or more failures among components that interact in some unexpected way. No one dreamed that when X failed. Y would also be out of order and the two failures would interact so as to both start a fire and silence the fire alarm. Furthermore, no one can figure out the interaction at the time and thus know what to do ... . This interact­ ing tendency is a characteristic of a system, not of a part or an operator.60

In the case of Texas City, the individuals overseeing the port failed to recog­

nize the additional risks resulting from a change in the system: the introduction

of ammonium nitrate as cargo. Moreover, even those officials who knew that the

hazardous material was passing through the port could not foresee the many ways

in which its transportation could result in a disaster.

Implications for Emergency Management

The lessons for emergency managers are sobering. The first unavoidable conclu·

sion is that not all disasters can be foreseen, much less mitigated. Even if people

settle away from a floodplain, construct sturdier buildings in seismic zones, or

design better evacuation systems for hurricanes, in an increasingly complex, inter·

connected society other risks remain-risks that will inevitably manifest them­

selves as catastrophes. Even those measures specifically designed to mitigate

disasters can lead to failures that cannot be anticipated (consider, for example, the

failure of flood control structures during and after Hurricane Katrina).

Hence, emergency managers must plan and prepare for the unexpected. "Pre­

paring for the unexpected" might sound like an oxymoron, but it is essential.

Although the specific hazards posed by and to some systems may not be clear,

it is important to predict as many potential consequences of system failure as

possible. How the Internet will collapse may not be known, for instance, but the

resulting disruption to communication networks and those who use these networks

(individuals, businesses, government, etc.) can be anticipated to some extent. Flex­

ibility can and should be built into response plans, and improvisation in response

is not only inevitable but essential.

Perhaps the most glaring problem shown by the Texas City example involved

the lack of oversight and management regarding the transportation of hazardous

materials. T his lack of planning resulted in a failure to recognize the hazard and

74 DaVid Butler

contributed to the second explosion. Additionally, those re-spond.ing to the accident­ from doctors to firefighters, from the Red Cross ro the mi litary--eonfronted myriad complicated issues and decisions, and their efforts were hampered by inefficient and ineffective communication and a general Jack of coordination among responding agencies. Moreover, the failure to identif'.y the clear roles and responsibilities otlhe many agencies involved resulted in inadequate damage assessment. Other commu­ nication problems involved the media: the lack of a clear plan for communicating with the public contributed to widespread rumors and bad inform ation.

Other problems related to medical aid and mass casualty management with regard to triage, transportation, care, and tracking injw-ed and displaced indivi.du­ als: Again, the sudden convergence of peop.le and donations on the disaster scene wreaked havoc. And in the longer term, victims faced inadequ,ate sanitation and homelessness, as well as issues involving the recovery and reconstruction of the community and compensation for losses.

Again, although the specific event-in this case. two massive explosions­ may not have been foreseeable, most, if not all, ofrhese problems eould have been ameliorated through prior planning.

Ultimately-and beyond planning for such specific difficulties----em.ergency

managers must appreciate that risks are constantly changing. New and more com­ plex systems, with their attendant hazards, are appearing at an accelerating rare. la addition, the populations at risk are continually shifting in size, composition, distri­ bution, and vulnerability. Modem emei·gency managers must repeatedly reevaluate the situation and adapt preparedness. warning. response, recovery, and mitigation

to emerging hazards. Disaster authority E.L. Quarantelli warns that regard.less of the current situ­

ation, the future will be different. "As the world continues to industrialize and to urbanize, it is continually creating conditions for more and worse disasters,'' he writes. "Both social processes ... will increase the number of potential disaster agents and enlarge the vulnerabilities of communities and populations that will be at risk."61 Quarantelli outlines five factors that will contribute to an increase in potential disaster agents:

Accelerating incidents of accidents and mishaps in the chemical and nuclear areas

Technological advances that reduce some hazards but make some old threats more dangerous

New versions of old and past dangers, such as urban droughlS

The emergence of innovative kinds of technologies, such as computers and biogenetic engineering, whose breakdowns ,vi!l present distinctively new dangers

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 75

An increase in multiple or synergistic disasters resulting in more severe environmental consequences.62

As we prepare for an era in which there will certainly be more disasters, many of which may be complex and unanticipated, emergency managers can neverthe­ less look to the past for lessons to guide them.

1900-1950: A Summary and Lessons Learned

The first half of the twentieth century was marked by numerous catastrophes, only a few of which have been covered in the last two chapters. At the time, there were no unified federal or (in most cases) state or local response and/or recovery pro­ grams. Nor were there federal government programs (with the exception of flood control programs) in place to minimize hazards. With no coordinated government response or recovery programs, the primary responsibility for victim aid fell to the

American Red Cross. Many of the major disasters of the early twentieth century quickly became

part of the historical basis and national consciousness that informed the emerging, evolving practice of emergency management in the United States. In almost every

case, the catastrophes discussed in these chapters demonstrated deficiencies-if not failures-in preparedness, response, recovery, and long-term mitigation. Miti­ gation was particularly lacking, and similar disasters, with similar consequences, occurred again in many of the same communities. In some cases, the disasters also exposed deep problems in the American social structure-problems relating to race, poverty, and social inequality, and extending to the economic system and our system of government.

A survey of U.S. disasters from 1900 to 1950 reveals at least four significant truths:

Disasters happen with greater frequency than most people think. At least thirty-two hurricanes of Category 3 or stronger struck mainland U.S from 1900 to 1950. At least seventy-five earthquakes of magnitude 5.3 or greater struck California during the same period. Flu outbreaks cause approximately 36,000 deaths annually. The U.S. Geological Survey lists thirty-two "significant" floods occurring in the United States in the twen­ tieth century, seven prior to 1950. Flooding of some kind somewhere in

the United States results in loss of life and property every year. Similarly, drought occurs almost annually somewhere in the country, and, as men­ tioned in the discussion of the Dust Bowl, severe droughts continue to

occur every few years. Finally, technological/human-caused disasters are

an increasing nightmare in this modem age, constantly evolving with new forms and new risks.

76 David Butler

Disasters are soon forgotten and their causes often denied. Disasters

tend to be denied, or at least conveniently forgotten, by both ordinary

citizens and political leaders. Despite the frequency of disasters, no one

can ever say exactly when or where one will occur. Therefore, nationally

and locally, they tend to be overlooked relative to more pressing con­

cerns. Galveston was rebuilt, only to be struck by another devastating

hurricane fifteen years later. The oligarchs of San Francisco overtly cen­

sured mention of the seismic risk in their city so that it could be rebuilt,

and it was struck again in 1989. The victims of the Dust Bowl attributed

the massive dust storms and their subsequent misfortunes to "acts of

'God" as capricious as tornadoes, rather than to unsound agricultural

practices; the region experienced an even worse drought two decades

later. Today, the population of the American West continues to grow dis­

proportionately relative to most of the rest of the country, despite a

scarcity of water.

Rather than denying the risks, one of the ways that an emergency

manager can improve his or her work is to look at previous disasters,

consider what happened, and anticipate similar circumstances. One of the

great mistakes that an emergency manager can make is to assume, "It

can't happen again," "It won't happen here," or 'Tm ready." If a close

study of disaster history tells us anything, it tells us that it can, it will,

and you're not.

Mistakes are often repeated. It should be striking to anyone examining

twentieth-century disasters how the tragic response to Hurricane Katrina

reflects similar failures in 1900, 1906, 1918, 1927, 1930, 1947, and

beyond. These include not only the failure to recognize the hazards and

anticipate their consequences, but also recurring mistakes in response

involving such factors as failure to deal with incapacitated, poor, and/or

ethnic minorities, inability to manage unwanted relief supplies, failure to

improvise needed actions, and inability to manage converging responders.

They also include failures to recognize and deal with disaster myths such

as alleged looting, anarchy, and the need for martial law. Often com­

pounding these problems are poor communication and inadequate coordi­

nation. These failures can continue into recovery, during which rich and

powerful business interests in a community often assume control, and

communities are quickly rebuilt without consideration of the hazards that

brought them down in the first place or any planning to mitigate future

disasters.

Past disasters affect present-day disaster management. Despite soci­

ety's propensity to look the other way, past disasters can and should

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 77

inform disaster management policies and practices. As discussed in more

detail in subsequent chapters, government at all levels has taken steps to

address the hazards that occurred prior to 1950. The recurrence of hurri­

canes, for instance, has led to measures at the national level, including

the establishment of the National Hurricane Center, as well as at the local

level, where some communities in hurricane-prone regions have strength­

ened building codes and adopted zoning ordinances to direct settlement

away from areas that are most vulnerable. Similarly, earthquake hazards

are now addressed by national programs, such as the National Earthquake

Hazards Reduction Program, and by state and local legislation in Califor­

nia and other states. At the federal level, the National Flood Insurance

Program addresses flood losses, while floodplain management has become

an increasing concern of state and local govemments.63 At the same time.

many state governments have put plans in place to deal with drought,

while the NDMC offers information and technical assistance to both

develop such plans and deal with drought generally. The Centers for Dis­

ease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies, as well as their

counterparts at the state and local levels, are actively working to limit

possible future flu pandemics. And finally, modem technological hazards

are the focus of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensa­

tion, and Liability Act; the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to­

Know Act (also known as the Superfund Amendments and

Reauthorization Act [SARA] Title III), and other major pieces of legisla­

tion that encourage and support knowledge about and management of

hazards at both the national and local levels. In addition, for all these

hazards, the federal government has established policies, programs, and

agencies to deal with the attendant problems.

The numerous mistakes notwithstanding, there were also major successes

in disaster management in the early 1900s, resulting in disasters averted, risks

mitigated, and improved response that saved lives and reduced property damage.

Such successes can be hard to measure, but it is important to recognize that the

field of disaster management is evolving, building on the base of knowledge and

experience of those who have come before.

By looking at failures and successes in past disasters and identifying the pat­

terns that emerge, emergency managers and others can anticipate responses and

problems that will arise with present-day disasters and plan accordingly. The con­

sequences of disasters can be ameliorated by clearly identifying local hazards and

the vulnerable populations and environments. The intersection of these two sets of

data represents the overall risk to a community. Such risk analysis can then help

inform a set of plans to deal with the various hazards. Each plan should address

78 David Butler

preparedness (including warning and evacuation when necessary ), response, and recovery. as welJ as lhe long-term measures that can be undertaken to either reduce the hazard or minimize vul.nerability.

The early twentietb-cenrury events disCllssed in this chapter and tbe one before it set the stage for an increased role by the federal government in all aspects of disaster management. TI1e federal government has continued to react, through legislation and appropriations. to individual major disasters and catastrophes up to the present day.� Over time, however. bmh privare institutions and govern­ ment agencies have increasingly recogllized the need for better, more consistent, and proactive approaches to disaster management beyond event-based response. One result has been the advent of a new profession-emergency management­ charged with overseeing disaster-related tasks at all levels of govemment.

Notes

Association of State Floodplain Managers (ASFPM), The Nation's Responses to Flood Disasters: A Historical Account (Madison, Wis.: ASFPM, 2000), 5.

2 Ibid., 6.

3 Ibid., 9. The ASFPM report was published prior to Hurricane Katrina, which has perhaps eclipsed the 1927 flood.

4 Kevin R Kosar, Disaster Response and the Appointment of a Recovery Czar: The Executive Branch's Response to rhe Flood of 1927, CRS report RL33126 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Serv,ae. 2005), 4.

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

John M. Barry, Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997).

PBS, American Experience, "Fatal Flood," pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood.

David A. Moss, "Courting Disaster? The Transformation of Federal Disaster Policy," in The Financ­ ing of Catastrophe Risk, ed. Kenneth A. Froot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 308.

Barry, Rising Tide, 422.

ASFPM, Nation's Responses to Flood Disasters, 9.

Barry, Rising Tide, 407.

Nicole T. Carter, Flood Risk Management: Federal Role in Infrastructure, CRS report RL33129 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2005), 2.

ASFPM, Nation's Responses to Flood Disasters, 11.

These concerns were not r,ew. Nlneteanth-eentury sludies, including one of the aforementioned 1850 studies, pointed out that the flood problem along the Mississippi River was as much a prob­ lem of increased occupancy of the floodplain as it was of increased flooding.

Rutherford H. Platt, Disasters and Democracy; The Politics of Extreme Natural Events (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999), 6.

Gilbert F. White, "Human Adjustment to Floods: A Geographic Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States" (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1942), 32.

Ibid., 2. White is considered the father of modern floodplain management because of his advo­ cacy of a broad range of human adjustments to floods.

Lawrence Svobida, Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1986).

Richard A. Warrick et al., Drought Hazard in the United States: A Research Assessment {Boulder: University of Colorado, 1975), 28.

Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, 25th anniversary edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

Role of Federal Government: 1927-1950 79

Robert Geiger, Washington Evening Star, April 15, 1935, as quoted in ibid., 29.

See the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) website {drought.unl.edu) for analyses of

each of these dimensions, as well as extensive information o n the phenomenon of drought and

drought planning, monitoring, and mitigation.

NDMC, "What Is Drought?," drought.unl.edu/Education/D roughtforKids/WhatisDrought aspx.

Worster, Oust Bowl, 12.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, "NASA Explains 'Dust Bowl' Drought" (March 18,

2004), nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004 /0319dustbowl html.

NDMC, "What Is Drought?"

Worster, Oust Bowl, 4.

Ibid., 5.

Harry C. McDean, "Dust Bowl Historiography," Great Pla ins Quarterly 6 (Spring 1986): 117-127.

Worster, Dust Bowl, 28.

NDMC, "What Is Drought?"

Warrick et al., Drought Hazard in the United States, 37 ; NDMC, "What Is Drought?"

PBS, American Experience, "Surviving the Dust Bowl," pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/

features/surving-the-dust-bowl-interview-producer-cha na-gazit/.

PBS, American Experience, "Timeline: Surviving the Du st Bowl, 1931-1939," pbs.org/wgbh/

americariexperlenoe/leatUres/timeflne/dustbowl

Worster, Dust Bowl, 133.

NDMC, "What Is Drought?"

Worster, Oust Bowl, 41-43.

Morris Cooke et al., Report of the Great Plains Droug ht Area Committee, August 27, 1936,

HathiTrust Digital Library, babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id :coo.31924000933956:view:1 up;seq:3.

Gilbert F. White, "The Future of the Great Plains Re-visite d," Great Plains Quarterly 6 (Spring 1986): 93.

Worster, Oust Bowl, 229.

Ibid., 248.

White, "Great Plains Re-visited."

See NDMC, "What Is Drought?"

Many scholars mark the Halifax explosion as the b eginning of modern social science research

into disasters. Samuel Henry Prince, a curate in an Anglican church in Halifax, studied the effects

of this traumatic event on the victims. His resulting 1920 doctoral thesis is generally regarded as

the first in-depth sociological study of a disaster a nd its consequences.

See "Die Explosion von Oppau," wortlastig.de/tex t/oppau,htm.

Angus Gunn, Unnatural Disasters: Case Studies o f Human-Induced Environmental Catastrophes

(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2003), 46.

Hugh W. Stephens, The Texas City Disaster, 1947 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 4_

Quoted in ibid., 50.

Ibid., 43.

Ibid.

See Dalehite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15 (1953 ). caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.

pl?court:us&invol:15&vol:346.

Stephens, Texas City Disaster, 103.

52

53

Ibid.

Ibid,, 1.

54

55

56

Ibid., 18.

Ibid., 114.

The next time the United States witnessed a policy- changing disaster of this magnitude was in

1984, when a deadly gas leak at a Union Carbide p lant in Bhopal, India, resulted in approximately

3,400 deaths and countless disabilities.

80 David Butler

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

Gunn provides succinct analyses of thirty-four such disasters in Unnatural Disasters. Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books 1984), 4.

Ibid., 11-12,

Ibid., 4.

E.L. Ouarantelli, "Disaster Planning, Emergency Management, and Civil Pmteotion: The Histori­cal Development and. Current Characteris!ics oi Organized Eilorts to Pm118nt and to Respond to Disasters," DisaslI!r Researi;h Center Preliminary Paper 227 (Newark: University of Delaware, 1995), 22.

Ibid.

ASFPM has grown steadily and, as of 2011, had 14,000 members and thirty-two state chapters. See Claire B. Rubin, lrmak Renda-Tanali, and William Cumming, Disaster Time Line: Major Focus­ing Events and Their Outcomes (1979-2005) (Arlington, Va.: Claire B. Rubin & ASSbclates, 2006), 'disaster-time/ine.com.

Chapter 4

The Formative Years: 1950-1978

Keith Bea

P rior to World War II, reactive disaster relief and response generally con­

stituted the primary approach to emergencies andibeir consequences. The

decentralized and largely uncoordinated activities described in the preced­

ing chapters depended on voluntary private and local efforts to meet the immediate

needs of disaster victims and communities. When the threats of that war ceased,

academicians and policy makers recognized a wealth of interdisciplinary knowl­

edge that could provide the basis for establishing policies to manage both the

consequences of disasters and the conditions that might ease their impacts. Part

of this process involved sorting out the complex responsibilities of federal and

nonfederal entities before and after catastrophes.

Over nearly three decades, from 1950 to 1978, the nature of emergency man­

agement changed significantly. During those years, policy makers and adminis­

trators addressed several parallel concerns, including civil defense readiness for

enemy attacks, hazard reduction before and recovery from natural disasters, the

identification and typing of different threats, and the management of technologi­

cal and environmental disasters stemming from human-caused events. (A fourth

concern, public health emergencies associated with diseases, remained outside the

developing policy field of emergency management.) By the end of the 1970s, as

federal policy makers and administrators assumed a dominant role that could not

have been imagined in 1950, emergency management had become the primary

responsibility of a single federal agency.

1950-1963: Civil Defense and Natural Disasters

Natural disasters have always challenged societies. While World War 11 dominated

governmental efforts prior to 1945, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes continued

to take lives and destroy property. ln 1950, with the advent of the Cold War, some

of the tools used to manage "acts of God"-for example, sheltering in safe havens,

81