Two very different approaches to emergency preparedness unfolded simultaneously in the spring of 2025.

In Washington, the FEMA Review Council convened its inaugural meeting on May 20th. "FEMA is slow and clunky and doesn't solve the needs of those who need it the most," Texas Governor Greg Abbott told the council. Their mission was clear: streamline disaster response, cut bureaucratic red tape, make the system more efficient. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor emphasized the need for "cutting red tape, reducing the bureaucracy, and simply making the system easier and simpler to better serve Americans."

Meanwhile, across Europe, a different conversation was taking place. The European Commission urged all citizens to "stockpile enough food and other essential supplies to sustain them for at least 72 hours in the event of a crisis." Sweden distributed updated survival guides to millions of households. Finland took stock of its "50,500 emergency shelters that could shelter a possible 4.8 million people." Estonian hospitals began installing generators and distributing satellite phones to emergency crews.

The question I have to ask is: Which group was preparing for the world we actually live in?

That question took on new urgency just this month when catastrophic flooding struck the Texas Hill Country on July 4th. The Guadalupe River rose 26 feet in 45 minutes. More than 120 people died, including dozens of children at summer camps. Over 150 remain missing. It happened so fast that warning systems couldn't keep up—the very scenario Europeans are now measuring their preparedness against.

What We're Actually Measuring

Walk into any emergency management office in America and you'll find walls lined with performance dashboards. Response deployment times. Mutual aid coordination efficiency. Grant processing speed. Recovery timeline completion rates. Exercise participation statistics. Cost per beneficiary served.

These metrics tell a story about what we value and what we assume. They measure how quickly we can mobilize resources, how efficiently we can coordinate between agencies, how fast we can process paperwork, how well we can restore services. Every single one assumes the same fundamental premise: external help will be available when we need it.

The FEMA Review Council's focus on efficiency captures this mindset perfectly. Secretary Noem advocated for "large disaster recovery block grants from the federal government, rather than tailored reimbursements and grants to cover specific damage." Make the existing system work better, faster, smoother.

But here's what troubles me about those assumptions. They assume disasters are discrete events that can be managed within existing capacity. They assume mutual aid partners will have resources to share. They assume federal systems will be available to provide backup. They assume infrastructure can be restored rather than replaced. They assume "normal" is something we can return to.

What if those assumptions are wrong?

The European Perspective on Overwhelming Crisis

Europe isn't measuring efficiency anymore. They're measuring survival.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte put it bluntly: "It is time to shift to a wartime mindset." This isn't rhetorical flourish—it's driving fundamental changes in how European nations think about preparedness. When Sweden updated its survival guide "If Crisis or War Comes" for the first time in six years, it wasn't about improving response coordination. It instructs citizens to "go indoors, close all windows and doors and, if possible, switch off the ventilation" and tells them where to shelter during air raids, "including cellars, garages and underground metro stations." Estonian hospitals aren't measuring surge capacity or mutual aid response times. They're measuring how long facilities can operate "even in the event of power or water outages." They're installing generators because, as one official explained, "Russia is attacking civilian infrastructure, so there can be no situations where a hospital is not working due to a power outage."

Lithuania's Vilnius University Hospital is developing "underground infrastructure, shelters, helipads, and autonomous systems that would allow the facility to continue operating." They're not optimizing coordination with other hospitals—they're preparing to function when no other hospitals are available. The metrics that matter in this world are brutally simple: How long can you function without any external support? How do you maintain critical services when infrastructure is under attack? Can your population survive when no help is coming?

Here's what makes this relevant to American emergency management: these are increasingly the same conditions our catastrophic disasters create.

When American Disasters Look Like European Wars

What we're reluctant to acknowledge is that our catastrophic disasters already create the same conditions Europe is preparing for. The difference isn't enemy action—it's that we've built systems that fail the same way whether the cause is intentional or not.

The Texas Hill Country floods this month provided a stark reminder. Despite flash flood warnings beginning at 1:14 a.m., the speed and scale overwhelmed response capabilities. Kerr County lacked a comprehensive flood warning system—proposals had been made for years but weren't implemented due to cost and local resistance. When 6.5 inches of rain fell in three hours, communication systems failed, evacuation routes flooded, and emergency managers found themselves coordinating rescues without adequate advance warning capabilities.

It's the same systematic breakdown of basic services that Europeans now plan for in wartime scenarios. Same result, different cause.

Take Paradise, California. The Camp Fire didn't selectively target infrastructure—it consumed everything in its path. Seventeen cell towers burned the first day. Roads became impassable. Power lines sparked new fires. Water systems went offline. Emergency managers found themselves trying to coordinate evacuations through communication networks that were already failing. Fifty-six percent of alert calls never connected, not because of sophisticated interference, but because the infrastructure simply wasn't there anymore.

Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico created similar conditions. The storm didn't just damage the power grid—it destroyed it. This resulted in the longest blackout in U.S. history, about 11 months for Puerto Rico. For many months, hospitals reportedly operated without reliable electricity, with some areas remaining without power for up to 11 months. Communities were cut off from outside help. Federal resources were stretched thin across multiple disasters, limiting the support that could be provided. People had to survive on their own for far longer than any 72-hour emergency kit could sustain.

The Texas winter storm of 2021 revealed cascading failures across multiple systems simultaneously. When the power grid failed, water treatment plants shut down. Natural gas supplies froze. Communications networks went dark. Transportation ground to a halt. Neighboring states had limited capacity to provide assistance as they dealt with similar crisis conditions. Federal resources were overwhelmed by the scale of simultaneous failures across multiple states.

The Geographic Illusion

Most Americans don't feel the existential crisis that drives European wartime preparations. And honestly, why would they? We're surrounded by two oceans, bordered by friendly nations, protected by the world's most powerful military. The threats that keep European leaders awake at night—invasion, occupation, systematic infrastructure attacks—feel remote to American communities.

But here's what most Americans don't realize: wartime conditions can develop just as easily from cascading system failures as from foreign armies.

Rolling blackouts become permanent power grid failures. Internet outages stretch from hours to weeks. Traffic signals go dark across entire regions. Supply chains that deliver food, medicine, and fuel simply stop working. Communities find themselves in the darkness for weeks, cut off from the outside world, with no idea when normal services will return.

The effects are identical whether the cause is a Russian missile strike or a Texas winter storm. Whether it's a cyberattack on the power grid or a hurricane that destroys transmission lines. Whether it's wartime sabotage or a bridge collapse that cuts off supply routes. Whether it's flash flooding that rises 26 feet in 45 minutes.

Geographic isolation that once protected us from foreign threats now amplifies the impact of domestic system failures. When your community is surrounded by hundreds of miles of rural area, and the roads, power lines, and communication networks that connect you to the outside world all fail simultaneously, does it matter whether the cause was intentional or accidental?

European nations recognize this reality because they've lived it. They understand that the conditions requiring self-sufficiency—no power, no communication, no outside help—can emerge from multiple causes. So they prepare for the effects, not just the causes.

And these aren't anomalies anymore. They're becoming the new normal.

Hurricane Michael permanently displaced entire communities. Years later, some victims reportedly remain displaced. The Baltimore bridge collapse shut down one of America's largest ports with cascading effects across global supply chains. COVID-19 overwhelmed every level of our emergency management system simultaneously, revealing how quickly "mutual aid" becomes meaningless when everyone needs help at once. Now the Texas floods have shown how even well-prepared areas can be overwhelmed when nature exceeds the assumptions built into our warning systems.

In each case, the metrics we use to measure emergency management success—response speed, coordination efficiency, restoration timelines—became irrelevant. What actually mattered was how long communities could survive without external support, how well critical systems could continue operating under extreme stress, whether people were prepared to be self-sufficient for extended periods.

The European perspective shows us what measuring for these realities actually looks like.

The Uncomfortable Questions

If we're honest about the disasters we're actually facing, our current metrics start to look dangerously inadequate.

What good is measuring hospital surge capacity when regional disasters take all hospitals offline simultaneously? Hurricane Maria reportedly left Puerto Rico's hospitals operating without reliable power for many months. No amount of coordination between facilities mattered when none of them could function properly. Why measure mutual aid response times when disasters increasingly overwhelm all potential aid sources? During the Texas winter storm, neighboring states had limited capacity to provide assistance as they dealt with similar crisis conditions. In the recent Texas floods, even with massive multi-state response efforts, the scale and speed exceeded initial response capabilities. The concept of "mutual aid" broke down when aid had to come from outside the affected region entirely.

How relevant are restoration metrics when infrastructure rebuilding takes years instead of months? Paradise, California reportedly remains partially rebuilt years after the Camp Fire. Some Hurricane Michael victims reportedly remain displaced. The Baltimore bridge replacement is expected to take several years. "Recovery" isn't a timeline—it's a permanent state of adaptation. What's the point of coordination protocols when communication systems fail? During major disasters, cell towers go down, internet fails, radio systems get overwhelmed. The sophisticated coordination we measure in exercises disappears when the infrastructure supporting it is gone.

Here's a telling comparison: Estonian emergency crews get bulletproof vests and satellite phones. American emergency crews get response time targets and coordination protocols. Which approach prepares for the reality that communication systems might not work when you need them most?

Finland has measured and planned for "50,500 emergency shelters that could shelter a possible 4.8 million people." We measure evacuation speed and temporary shelter capacity. Which approach prepares for disasters where people can't go home for years? The European approach forces uncomfortable questions about every metric we use. Are we measuring what makes us look good in reports, or what keeps communities alive when everything else fails?

Learning from the European Perspective

The European shift offers a different way to think about emergency management metrics. Instead of measuring how efficiently we can restore normal operations, they measure how long communities can function when normal doesn't exist.

The Finnish approach is particularly instructive: "Since the 1950s, the construction of bomb shelters under apartment blocks and office buildings has been mandatory." They're not measuring how quickly they can evacuate people or how fast they can restore services. They're measuring how long people can survive in place when external systems fail. As one expert noted, "The Finns, for the entire Cold War period, took defense seriously... They learned from history; nobody is going to help us. We have to do it on our own."

This isn't about copying European models wholesale. It's about recognizing that our own disasters are teaching us the same lesson: when systems are overwhelmed, self-sufficiency matters more than response speed. What would American emergency management look like if we measured for survival instead of efficiency?

We might measure how long communities can maintain critical services without external power, water, or communication. We might measure population self-sufficiency duration instead of response deployment times. We might measure infrastructure resilience under sustained stress instead of restoration speed after isolated failures. We might design systems that continue operating when stressed instead of systems that fail gracefully and wait for repair. We might prepare communities for independence instead of dependence on federal aid. We might plan for scenarios where "temporary" becomes "permanent" and "normal" never returns.

The European perspective shows us what this looks like in practice. It's not about becoming pessimistic or abandoning mutual aid. It's about recognizing that our most challenging disasters already create conditions where external help is inadequate, and we need to measure accordingly.

The Choice Before Us

We're at a crossroads. We can continue measuring emergency management success against threats that no longer represent our reality, or we can start measuring for the disasters we actually face. The traditional metrics—response times, coordination efficiency, restoration speed—made sense when disasters were discrete events that could be managed within existing capacity. But our catastrophic disasters increasingly resemble wartime scenarios where external help is overwhelmed, multiple systems fail simultaneously, and recovery takes years rather than months.

Europe faced this reality first and changed how they measure preparedness. They shifted from "how fast can help arrive" to "how long can we survive without it." American disasters are forcing the same recognition, whether we acknowledge it or not.

The Paradise Fire moved faster than emergency communications could reach residents. Hurricane Maria overwhelmed federal response capacity for months. The Texas winter storm revealed cascading failures that mutual aid couldn't address. The July Texas floods showed how even prepared communities can be overwhelmed when reality exceeds planning assumptions. These aren't failures of our current system—they're proof that our current system is measuring for disasters that no longer exist. The next catastrophic disaster will reveal whether we've been measuring the right things all along. Communities optimized for efficiency aren't prepared for survival. Systems designed for coordination aren't resilient enough for isolation. Metrics focused on restoration aren't useful when there's nothing left to restore.

The European perspective offers a harsh but necessary lesson: when help isn't coming, the only metrics that matter are the ones that measure how long you can survive without it. The question every emergency manager should ask isn't whether we're getting better at our current metrics. It's whether we're measuring what actually keeps communities alive when everything else fails.

Are we measuring against the wrong thing? The next disaster will give us the answer, whether we're ready for it or not.