Kyle King: [00:00:00] Two very different approaches to emergency preparedness unfolded in the spring of 2025 in Washington. DC. 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. This was from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who had told the council, and so their mission was clear.
Streamline disaster response, cut bureaucratic red tape, and 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 urge 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, and Finland took stock of its 50,500 emergency shelters that could shelter a possible 4.8 million [00:01:00] 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?
Hi everyone and welcome to the Crisis Lab podcast. I'm Kyle and I'll be your host today. Today we're going to discuss a new article that we published on LinkedIn as one of our series pieces. This is really focused on how we measure things. The question I'm asking, and I want to ask the community is, are we measuring against the wrong thing?
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, and over 150 remain missing. It happened so fast that warning systems either were not used or couldn't keep up.
This is the scenario that Europeans [00:02:00] are now measuring their preparedness against. Then, so let's talk a little bit about that. So what we are actually measuring, walk into any. Emergency Management office in America, you'll find all sorts of statistics. 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 are all metrics that we use and 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 and 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 Newham advocated for larger disaster recovery block grants from the federal government rather than tailored reimbursement and grants to [00:03:00] cover specific damage making the existing framework work.
Better, faster and smoother. But here's what is troubling me about these assumptions. They assume that disasters are discreet 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, and they assume infrastructure can be restored rather than replaced.
They assume normal is something we can return to, but what if those assumptions are wrong? The European perspective on overwhelming crisis isn't measuring efficiency anymore. They're measuring survival. Nato, secretary General Mark Ru, put it bluntly, it's time to shift to a wartime mindset. It's driving fundamental changes in how European nations think about preparedness.
And when Sweden updated its survival guide, if crisis or war comes, it wasn't about improving response coordination. It instructs citizens to go [00:04:00] indoors. Close all windows and doors, and if possible, switch off the ventilation and tells them where to shelter during air raids to include cellars, garages, and underground metro stations.
Estonian hospitals aren't measuring surge capacity or mutual aid response time. They're measuring how long facilities can operate in the event of power or water outages. They're installing generators because 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 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 [00:05:00] coming. Here's what makes this relevant to American Emergency Management. These are increasingly the same conditions that we create when we have our catastrophic disasters. So 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 is in enemy action. It's that we built systems that fail. The same way, whether the cause is intentional or not, and the Texas Hill Country floods this month provided a stark reminder despite flash flood warnings beginning around 1:00 AM the speed and scale overwhelmed response capabilities.
Kirk County lacked a comprehensive flood warning system. Proposals have 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 an adequate advanced [00:06:00] warning capabilities.
It's the same type of systemic breakdown of basic services that Europeans now plan for in wartime scenarios. Same result, different cause. Take Paradise, California, the campfire didn't selectively target infrastructure. It consumed everything in its path. 17 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. 56% of alert calls never connected, not because of sophisticated interference by an adversary, but because the infrastructure simply wasn't there anymore.
Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico created similar conditions. The storm didn't just damage the power grid, it essentially destroyed it. This resulted in the longest blackout in US history of about 11 months for Puerto Rico. For many months, hospitals operated without reliable electricity, with some areas remaining without power.
For up to 11 months, communities were cut off from outside help. [00:07:00] 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. National gas supplies froze. Communication networks went dark and transportation ground to a halt. Neighboring states had a limited capacity to provide assistance, not only because they dealt with similar crisis conditions, but because investment in decisions and the electrical grid infrastructure caused them to not be able to help when it was most needed.
Federal resources were overwhelmed by the scale of simultaneous failures across multiple states. Most Americans don't feel the existential crisis that drives European wartime preparations we're surrounded by two oceans, bordered by friendly nations and protected by the world's most [00:08:00] powerful military, the threats that keep European leaders awake at night, invasion, occupation, systemic infrastructure attacks and hybrid warfare 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. Blackouts become permanent power grid failures. Internet outages stretch from hours to weeks and 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. Whether the causes a Russian missile strike or Texas winter storm, a cyber attack on the power grid hurricane that destroys transmission lines, or whether it's a wartime sabotage or a bridge collapse that cut off supply routes.
Whether it's a flash flood that rises 26 feet in 45 minutes, geographic isolation that once protected us from foreign threats now amplifies the impact of our own domestic system and its failures. When your community is [00:09:00] 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.
Doesn't matter whether the cause was intentional or accidental. European nations recognize this reality because they've lived through it and they currently live through it. They understand that the conditions requiring self-sufficiency, such as no power, no communication, no outside help can emerge from multiple causes.
So they prepare for the effects, not just the cause. Needs 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 collapsed shut down one of America's largest ports with cascading effects across the global supply chain.
And 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 that Texas floods have shown how even well-prepared areas can be overwhelmed when nature exceeds [00:10:00] 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 largely become irrelevant. What actually mattered was how long could communities survive. Without external support, how well critical systems could continue operating under extreme stress and whether people were prepared to be self-sufficient for extended periods.
The European perspective shows us what measuring for these realities actually looks like. So here's really the uncomfortable questions. If we're honest about 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 time when disasters increasingly overwhelm all [00:11:00] potential aid sources?
I. During the Texas winter storm, neighboring states had a limited capacity to provide assistance as they dealt with similar conditions. And 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 with infrastructure? Rebuilding takes years instead of months. Paradise California reportedly remains partially rebuilt years after the campfire, and some hurricane Michael victims are reportedly still displaced. The Baltimore Bridge replacement is expected to take several years and recovery.
Isn't a timeline, it's a permanent state of adaptation. When communication systems fail during major disaster, cell towers go down, internet fails, radio systems get overwhelmed. The sophisticated coordination we measure and exercises disappears when the infrastructure supporting it has gone. Here's a telling [00:12:00] comparison.
Estonian emergency crews get both pro 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 the most. Finland has planned for 50,500 emergency shelters that could shelter as much as 4.8 million people.
We measure evacuation speed and temporary shelter capacity. Which approach prepares for disasters when people can't go home for years? The European approach forces uncomfortable Questions about every metric that we use. Are we measuring what makes us look good in reports, or what keeps communities alive when everything else fails?
What can we learn 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 finished approach.
Is particularly instructive [00:13:00] 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 Fins for the entire Cold War period took defense seriously. They learned from history. Nobody's going to help us and we have to do it on our own. Now, 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. So 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, we might measure infrastructure resilience under sustained stress. [00:14:00] Instead of restoration speed after isolated failures, and 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. Not at all. It's about recognizing that our most challenging disasters already create conditions where external help is inadequate and we need to measure accordingly.
We're really at a type of crossroads, especially with the FEMA Review Council and the initiatives and possible outcomes from the council decisions we can measure. Emergency management against success metrics that no longer represent our reality, or we can start measuring for the disasters we actually face.
Speed made sense when [00:15:00] disasters were discrete. Events that could be managed within existing capacity, but 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.
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 want to acknowledge it or not. The Paradise Fire moved faster than emergency communications could reach residents.
Hurricane Maria overwhelmed federal response capacity for months, and the Texas winter storm revealed cascading failures that mutual aid couldn't address. The July, Texas floods showed us how even prepared communities can be overwhelmed when reality exceeds planning assumptions. These aren't failures of our current system.
They're just proof that our current system is measuring for disasters that no longer exist. The next catastrophic disaster will reveal whether we've been [00:16:00] 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, the next disaster will give us the answer whether we're ready for it or not.
