Playing Politics with Natural Disaster

Hurricane Agnes, the 1972 Election, and the Origins of FEMA

Timothy W. Kneeland

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501748547
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Hurricane Agnes struck the United States in June of 1972, just months before a pivotal election and at the dawn of the deindustrialization period across the Northeast. The response by local, state, and national officials had long-term consequences for all Americans. President Richard Nixon used the tragedy for political gain by delivering a generous relief package to the key states of New York and Pennsylvania in a bid to win over voters. After his landslide reelection in 1972, Nixon cut benefits for disaster victims and then passed legislation to push responsibility for disaster preparation and mitigation on to states and localities. The impact led to the rise of emergency management and inspired the development of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

With a particular focus on events in New York and Pennsylvania, Timothy W. Kneeland narrates how local, state, and federal authorities responded to the immediate crisis of Hurricane Agnes and managed the long-term recovery. The impact of Agnes was horrific, as the storm left 122 people dead, forced tens of thousands into homelessness, and caused billions of dollars in damage from Florida to New York. In its aftermath, local officials and leaders directed disaster relief funds to rebuild their shattered cities and reshaped future disaster policies.

Playing Politics with Natural Disaster explains how the political decisions by local, state, and federal officials shaped state and national disaster policy and continues to influence emergency preparedness and response to this day.

1

AMERICAN DISASTER POLICY THROUGH 1972

Growing Benefits and Expanding Federal Authority

“Dear Mr. President,” began a letter addressed to President Richard Nixon and dated September 10, 1972. “My mind is full of problems; my heart is full of disgust and disappointment,” wrote the author, a “victim of Tropical Storm Agnes.” The writer told the president, “I lost everything.… I am broke, disquieted, heartbroken, and on the verge of mental and physical collapse.” Despite pledges of support for disaster victims, after three months this writer and his or her spouse still had not received the food stamps, housing, or loans to rebuild that had been promised to them. After twelve years of marriage, they were destitute and forced “to live with my in-laws.”¹ The writer was one of the thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Agnes in late June 1972, and one of the hundreds who wrote the president asking for help. For most of American history, few citizens would have asked the federal government for assistance after a natural disaster, but by the end of the twentieth century, federal disaster aid had become an expectation. Behind this dramatic change was the Disaster Relief Act of 1950.²

Under the Disaster Relief Act of 1950, the federal government assumed a permanent role and new responsibility for assisting local communities and state governments after a disaster. The law was an extension of the New Deal, which emphasized protecting vulnerable groups in society such as the aged, the impoverished, and those victimized by racial and ethnic prejudice. To this were now added victims of disaster. Between the 1950 legislation and the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Congress allocated an ever-increasing amount of money toward disaster relief and added new benefits for disaster victims. As a consequence, the number of executive agencies and civil servants involved in dealing with disaster recovery multiplied. Disaster assistance, which was once aimed exclusively at state and local governments, now included direct payments to private citizens affected by natural disaster. This pattern of adding new benefits to disaster legislation culminated in the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, which made permanent all the benefits and programs found in previous acts, making these programs tantamount to a new entitlement.³ President Nixon was not pleased with the existing entitlement programs and tried to reduce the role of the federal government by empowering the states to prepare for, and deal with, a disaster on their own.

Expanding Disaster Relief

In the nineteenth century, federal disaster relief consisted of an occasional bill passed in Congress to provide limited assistance to a specific community beset by disaster. Congress issued its first law covering disaster in 1803, and by 1950 it had passed approximately 150 such acts. Since this process was ad hoc rather than routine, the general public did not expect federal assistance. For example, it was not considered unusual when President Grover Cleveland vetoed an appropriation bill in 1887 that included $10,000 for Texans suffering from a severe drought. In his veto message, President Cleveland noted that there was nothing in the Constitution allowing the government to assist. Cleveland explained his belief that the people should “support the government; the government should not support the people.”⁴ In the absence of government programs, victims of disaster turned to private charitable and philanthropic organizations such as the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross.

Charitable organizations, however, were as cautious as President Cleveland about encouraging dependency and provided only what was immediately necessary after a disaster. Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross in 1881, wrote the bylaws to ensure that the U.S. version of this international organization assisted not only during wartime but also after a natural disaster. The first instance of the American Red Cross aiding in disaster occurred following a forest fire in northern Michigan that burned down entire communities. The Red Cross solicited donations and provided financial aid to the fire victims. The relatively unknown organization gained national prominence when Clara Barton rushed to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, following the 1889 flood, which killed over two thousand people. In 1893, the American Red Cross came to the aid of the African American inhabitants of the Sea Islands, off the coast of South Carolina, after a hurricane in 1893. However, the organization left the islands once recovery operations began, lest residents become dependent on charity and unable to fend for themselves.⁵

Despite the reticence of Cleveland and Barton, other factors at work in the nineteenth century combined to make governments more responsive to the needs of disaster victims. After the Civil War, state institutions assumed greater responsibility in caring for the poor, the disabled, and the mentally ill.⁶ During the Reconstruction period (1865–1877), the Freedmen’s Bureau provided direct assistance to African Americans suffering from a series of natural disasters in the South, and although this was limited in scope, it set a precedent for more federal intervention.⁷ Meanwhile, the rise of the national press, which developed only after the Civil War, brought attention to the plight of those afflicted by natural disaster. By the end of the nineteenth century, disasters from across the globe became headline news. As a result, people became more sympathetic to the victims’ plight and demanded that their government provide assistance.⁸

By the twentieth century, the federal government had the capacity, past precedent, and public sentiment supporting increased federal intervention following a disaster.⁹ Federal intervention occurred when a significant amount of public attention became focused on disaster. Each intervention brought with it the precedent to respond in future disasters.¹⁰ For example, after the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt tasked the Red Cross with distributing the donations of food, clothing, and medicine but also sent financial assistance and military personnel to the city to help with disaster relief and recovery.¹¹ When cataclysmic flooding on the Mississippi River struck several states in 1927, killing a thousand people and displacing six hundred thousand more, President Calvin Coolidge took the unprecedented step of organizing and directing federal disaster relief to the stricken area. Coolidge reasoned that federal intervention was necessary and proper due to the interstate nature of the disaster and the economic devastation wrought by the flooding. The president appointed his secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, to take charge of the disaster zone, in effect designating him a flood czar mandated to oversee relief operations.¹²

Modern historians looking back at Hoover’s actions criticize him for his heavy-handed and overtly racist delivery of disaster relief. For example, Hoover segregated the refugee camps that were created to house the hundreds of thousands of people made homeless by the flooding. He placed African Americans in substandard housing and forced them, under military guard, to assist in cleanup efforts. Hoover placed white flood victims in comfortable housing and did not require them to help in the cleanup. He allocated more relief to whites than blacks and set a precedent that is all too familiar in the history of disaster assistance.¹³ People of that time, however, were impressed with Hoover’s successful federal intervention to relieve the afflicted population, restore order, and provide timely assistance.¹⁴ Hoover’s disaster relief effort was lauded by the press, and the efforts of “the Great Engineer” in Mississippi won him the White House in 1928. From then on, federal response to a major disaster was expected.

FIGURE 1. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, the central figure shown here, with other officials involved in the federal flood relief operations of 1927. Courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce.

President Franklin Roosevelt passed significant pieces of legislation as part of his New Deal, but he also overhauled the presidency by creating the Executive Office of the President (EOP). The reorganization provided the president with an executive staff within the White House and gave the chief executive direct oversight of many executive agencies once controlled by Congress. Following the government reorganization, American presidents became more influential and the federal bureaucracy more independent from Congress. On paper, at least, the president could oversee and deliver disaster assistance.¹⁵

President Franklin Roosevelt routinely assigned responsibility for disaster relief to federal agencies. Roosevelt directed disaster aid to states and localities through the Federal Civilian Works Administration, Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Works Progress Administration, Public Works Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, and Bureau of Public Works.¹⁶ Additionally, he asked Congress to authorize the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) to make loans to state and local governments to fix or replace public facilities destroyed by a natural disaster through the Disaster Loan Corporation, which foreshadowed the use of the Small Business Administration (SBA) two decades later.¹⁷

President Harry Truman followed Roosevelt’s example by authorizing the Federal Works Administration to donate surplus war material to local and state governments following disasters. The Surplus Property Law of 1947 allowed Truman to initiate federal disaster relief without specific funding or approval from Congress. The law proved to be a stopgap measure, as the war surplus soon ran out. However, with these New Deal precedents in mind, Congress passed the Disaster Relief Act of 1950. This legislation transferred congressional authority to provide disaster assistance to the president. The president or a designate now had broad power to declare a “major disaster” and to allocate funds to state and local governments to rebuild roads, sewers, bridges, and public buildings.¹⁸

Marking a turning point in the history of disaster policy, the Disaster Relief Act of 1950 created a permanent role for the federal government in disaster management and became the template for all subsequent disaster legislation.¹⁹ The legislation made clear that federal intervention did not replace, but only supplemented, state and local responsibility to respond to and assist in disaster recovery. Federal assistance came after the governor of a state requested it, but even then federal officials had to determine whether the disaster exceeded the ability of the state and local governments to respond.

After passage of the 1950 legislation, the president took the lead in disaster relief and recovery operations but remained dependent on Congress for allocating funding and supplying the bureaucracy for implementing relief. President Truman delegated his executive power to respond to the Housing and Home Finance Agency. The fiscally conservative president Dwight Eisenhower sought to limit expectations of federal largess and used his revolving disaster funds sparingly after Hurricane Hazel in 1954, Hurricane Diane in 1955, and Hurricane Audrey in 1957. Conversely, presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) sought to make disaster assistance more generous and the federal presence more visible.²⁰

President Kennedy used an executive order to delegate his power to supervise federal assistance for major natural disasters to the director of the Office of Emergency Planning (OEP), which he located in the Office of the President.²¹ Sworn in as president on November 22, 1963, following the assassination of President Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson faced his first significant disaster just four months later...