[00:00:00] Kyle King: So this isn't an attack on emergency management or the dedicated professionals who serve communities every day. It's a call for the kind of difficult self-reflection that mature professions must undertake when external pressures reveal internal contradictions that can no longer be ignored, and this conversation will likely be uncomfortable for many, [00:00:20] but I think it really needs to happen anyway.
[00:00:25] Kyle King: Hi everyone. Welcome to Christ Lab podcast. I'm Kyle. I'll be your host. And this article today is something that we published on LinkedIn some time ago, but I wanted to bring it back up in our podcast format because the conversation is still happening and I think it's a worthwhile discussion. And so when I published the [00:00:40] article on LinkedIn, it was really one of the most difficult articles that I've had to publish because I think that the observations and critiques that.
[00:00:47] Kyle King: Follow in the article and in this podcast aren't easy to put forward. And that's partly because I once believe deeply in this messaging and in the messaging and the mission that I'm questioning here. And partly because I know this [00:01:00] analysis will be received by some colleagues that I respect and it'll be a little bit difficult pill to swallow.
[00:01:05] Kyle King: But the recent events have made this conversation rather unavoidable. So the current administration's executive orders targeting FEMA reform, the unprecedented scrutiny following major disasters like the LA fires or hurricanes, Helene and Milton, and the fracturing [00:01:20] of this professional discourse I've witnessed firsthand, have convinced me that emergency management itself faces a moment of reckoning.
[00:01:27] Kyle King: And so I honestly think that we can either have this conversation now on our own terms or have it forced upon us by external pressures that may not be as generous with the nuance or context that's required. And so the profession I care about. [00:01:40] Deserves the chance to examine itself honestly before others do it for us.
[00:01:45] Kyle King: So let's get right into it. And what we're gonna talk about today is the burden of criticism and how external pressure is fracturing the emergency management community, from within. Something revealing happened in the emergency management community during, recent major disasters. While response [00:02:00] teams were conducting life saving operations, a different kind of storm was brewing on social media.
[00:02:05] Kyle King: And I think if we all reflect and recall what was happening earlier in 2025, we know this was happening. This was not just the usual conspiracy theories about FEMA camps or government overreach, but professionals within emergency management, questioning each other's [00:02:20] authority and credentials and public forums.
[00:02:23] Kyle King: The profession that prides itself on coordination was tearing itself apart in public view, and it was really just getting started.
[00:02:30] Kyle King: Even the FEMA administrator said in early October that this was, quote, the absolutely the worst I have ever seen. And that was in October, 2024, which was describing the [00:02:40] misinformation that followed hurricanes, Helene and Milton. But she was talking about external attacks, these conspiracy theories and political weaponization of disaster response.
[00:02:49] Kyle King: What she didn't mention and what emergency management leaders don't necessarily discuss, is that the most damaging criticism isn't coming from outside the profession anymore. It was coming from within.
[00:02:59] Kyle King: [00:03:00] And this is where we start to see the fracture lines emerge. So if you watch emergency management, social media during any major disaster now, and you'll witness something unprecedented, a profession often seen as cannibalizing itself under pressure, external criticism, claims that FEMA is giving victims of Hurricane Helene only $750, or that [00:03:20] FEMA is confiscating supplies, or that the agency prioritizes certain groups over others has created internal fractures that reveal uncomfortable truth about what emergency management actually is and who gets to speak for it.
[00:03:34] Kyle King: University of Akron, Stacy Willett noted that what has changed is both the increase and [00:03:40] speed of miscommunication. she was talking about public misinformation, but the same dynamic is destroying professional unity within emergency management itself. Criticism moves faster than coordination, and the profession is losing the ability to present a unified response to legitimate questions about its [00:04:00] effectiveness.
[00:04:00] Kyle King: the stakes couldn't really be higher with 90 major disaster declarations in 20 24, 1 of the worst years on record. According to the International Institute for Environment and Development criswell is acknowledging that we no longer have disaster seasons. We are busy year round.
[00:04:15] Kyle King: Emerging management faces unprecedented demand for its services while [00:04:20] simultaneously losing internal coherence about what those services actually are. In North Carolina, FEMA had to pause relief operations Because of threats against personnel, a man was arrested for threatening employees after consuming false social media reports.
[00:04:34] Kyle King: But while emergency managers focused on external threats, the profession was quietly eating itself alive over [00:04:40] questions of authenticity, authority, and accountability that it had never adequately addressed.
[00:04:47] Kyle King: And so we have the authority problem, and here's what emergency management, I guess I say, is a field doesn't really want you to know is that nobody can actually agree on who actually represents the profession anymore. Is it the federal coordinators who control big [00:05:00] money and policy decisions, but rarely see ground level operations?
[00:05:03] Kyle King: Or is it the state directors with comprehensive responsibilities but limited operational experience? Or is it local emergency managers who run the day-to-day response but lack broader perspectives? Or is it the academics who study the field but get dismissed for not quote, working real disasters? [00:05:20] Or is it consultants who advise multiple agencies but serve no community directly?
[00:05:25] Kyle King: Or, and this represents a newer development that concerns traditional emergency managers, individuals who have built substantial social media followings by discussing disasters and emergency management topics during major disasters. Some of these voices achieve greater public reach [00:05:40] than official agency communications, effectively shaping how communities understand emergency management operations.
[00:05:47] Kyle King: Traditional emergency managers largely dislike this development, but they can't ignore it when official communications struggle to reach audiences beyond professional circles and influencers regularly achieve viral reach, discussing the same [00:06:00] topics who really speaks for emergency management. And so the question is fracturing professional conferences, social media discussions, and even workplace conversations.
[00:06:09] Kyle King: It's a crisis of authority, so to speak, happening precisely when the profession most needs to speak with a unified voice. the authority crisis isn't just [00:06:20] a symptom. The real problem runs deeper to the heart of how emergency management has presented itself to the world versus what it actually does when a disaster strikes.
[00:06:29] Kyle King: For decades, emergency management has sold itself using heroic language Budget requests, emphasize saving lives, grant applications, highlight protecting communities, and conference presentations. [00:06:40] Celebrate emergency managers as guardians of public safety recruitment materials, promised careers dedicated to serving others in their darkest hours.
[00:06:47] Kyle King: And so the messaging worked very well. It worked perfectly when emergency management operated mostly behind the scenes. It secured funding, it attracted talent, and it built institutional support. And that's how I even got started in [00:07:00] the field. And so politicians loved writing checks to quote lifesavers communities, supported agencies that promised to quote, protect.
[00:07:08] Kyle King: Them media coverage celebrated merchant managers as unsung heroes, working tirelessly to keep people safe. Then Hurricane Helene hit and the messaging collided with reality.
[00:07:19] Kyle King: When false [00:07:20] claims about. That FEMA assistance that we previously mentioned was limited to seven $50. The agency's response was technically accurate. The amount represented immediate assistance for basic needs with additional programs available for housing and other damage. But the clarification missed what people actually wanted to know.
[00:07:38] Kyle King: Did you help us when we needed it the [00:07:40] most? when questions arose about response, coordination, and resource allocation, emergency management voices emphasized jurisdictional boundaries, mutual aid protocols, and inter-agency complexity. And it's all technically correct, but completely beside the point.
[00:07:54] Kyle King: The public was asking a simpler question, did the system work when lives were on the line? And that's when [00:08:00] the deception became more clear when accountability arrived. Emergency management. Retreated from heroic language that we had used in the past to bureaucratic explanations. We coordinate response efforts.
[00:08:11] Kyle King: We facilitate resource allocation, or we support primary responders and we manage processes rather than control outcomes. [00:08:20] The life saving talk largely just disappeared, replaced by careful descriptions of roles, authorities and limitations, and emergency management had spent years marketing itself as the cavalry, and then acted surprised when people expected them to ride to the rescue.
[00:08:34] Kyle King: And then we get to the scarcity secret. The contradiction runs even deeper than [00:08:40] messaging problems. Emergency management has been hiding a fundamental truth about its evolving role, one that makes the heroic messaging not just misleading, but intellectually dishonest.
[00:08:51] Kyle King: As emergency management analyst Robert Roller noted in domestic preparedness, the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, coupled with the reemergence of military threats from peer [00:09:00] and near peer adversaries overseas will greatly reduce the ability of emergency managers to meet the needs of disaster survivors.
[00:09:06] Kyle King: the profession is experiencing a paradigm shift in the primary role of emergency management from the delivery of resources to managing the scarcity of resources and making better use of them. Emergency management is shifting from providing help [00:09:20] to rationing, help from resource delivery to resource denial, from Here's what you need to, sorry, we don't have enough, but has anyone told the public about this fundamental change?
[00:09:32] Kyle King: Our budget presentations explaining that emergency management is transitioning from service delivery. To scarcity management. Do [00:09:40] recruitment materials mention that the job is increasingly about saying no rather than yes. I would argue, of course not. The profession continues using life-saving language while privately planning for resource constraints.
[00:09:52] Kyle King: It promises protection while preparing for inadequacy it markets. Managing decline, and this isn't [00:10:00] incompetence per se, this is just institutional dishonesty, Emergency management as an institution has been selling a product that knows it cannot deliver using language that describes a mission.
[00:10:10] Kyle King: It's quietly abandoning behind the scenes. this is where we start to get into a real reckoning about what's been happening. External criticism is forcing these [00:10:20] hidden contradictions out into the open when every decision faces real-time public scrutiny. When misinformation spreads faster than official responses, and when communities demand immediate answers about life and death outcomes, emergency management can't hide behind the same technical jargon and professional credentials anymore.
[00:10:37] Kyle King: The result is a profession in [00:10:40] crisis, not just because of external attacks, but because those attacks are exposing internal fractures that were always there and continue to grow. Emergency managers are arguing about authority because they never clearly defined it. They're struggling with messaging because they never aligned their promises with their capabilities.
[00:10:58] Kyle King: They're fragmenting [00:11:00] under pressure because they never built unity around honest principles, and some emergency managers are adapting by embracing transparency about limitations, consistency, and messaging, and proactive community engagement. This is a very positive development. They're acknowledging the shift from resource delivery to resource management, explaining what coordination [00:11:20] actually means, and building trust through honesty rather than heroic promises.
[00:11:24] Kyle King: A huge and fundamentally positive shift, but others are doubling down on the deception, retreating into professional insularity and technical language while continuing to use quote lifesaving rhetoric when it serves their interest. They're treating, external criticism as [00:11:40] evidence of public ignorance rather than professional accountability and viewing internal dissent as disloyalty rather than necessary reform.
[00:11:48] Kyle King: And so what does emergency management refuse to admit? in my view, the truth emergency management doesn't want to face is revealing that the profession has been living a bit of a lie for years. It promised more than it could [00:12:00] deliver, claimed credit for outcomes beyond its control, and built institutional support on messaging that didn't necessarily match operational reality.
[00:12:07] Kyle King: The external pressure isn't destroying emergency management. It's exposing what was already broken, what was already there. The misinformation campaigns aren't creating professional divisions. They're revealing fault lines [00:12:20] that were always there. The criticism isn't unfair. It's probably long overdue. emergency management can either use this moment to rebuild itself on honest foundations, admitting limitations, clarifying roles, and aligning messaging with capabilities, or it can continue fragmenting while communities lose faith in the institutions that promise [00:12:40] protection, but deliver only coordination.
[00:12:42] Kyle King: The choice isn't just about professional survival. It's about whether emergency management can evolve into something communities actually need, or whether it will remain trapped by deceptions of its own.
[00:12:52] Kyle King: communities facing increasing disasters deserve better than a profession that can't decide what it does. they deserve emergency managers who are [00:13:00] honest about capabilities, clear about limitations, and united around serving the public good. Even when that service involves uncomfortable truths about what protection actually means, and an age of permanent crisis, the burden of criticism has arrived.
[00:13:15] Kyle King: How emergency management carries it will determine whether the [00:13:20] profession has a future worth defending or whether it will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
[00:13:25] Kyle King: And that's it for today's podcast.
[00:13:26] Kyle King: Thanks for listening to the Crisis Lab podcast, and if you wanna find out more information about what we do, please head over to the Crisis Lab [email protected] and we'll see you next time.
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