By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

This Spring Break, several LaGrange College students had other ideas on how to spend it. While they headed for the coast, like many Georgia college students, they took a little detour, giving up their fun to help victims of a natural disaster. But like Hurricane Katrina, part of the problem involved human problems. Locals we helped were quick to criticize their local government for a nonexistent Emergency Management Agency (EMA).

Such disasters are a problem that every city and county needs to prepare for.

Just a few years ago, I chaperoned a similar trip to Florida, where students, our chaplain and I did what we could to help residents in the aftermath of the awful Category 5 Hurricane Ian. This time, we were helping residents flooded by a tropical storm. But any thoughts that this assignment would be easier were washed away when we got there.

Local rivers filled to capacity, and then some, flooding the region. Residents claimed a nearby installation had a massive sewer break, filling the neighborhood with a stinky sludge that according to some, you could smell from miles away. One woman told us her husband packed up and left for Florida, leaving her and her son to try and manage the cleanup themselves. Even though we got there months later, it looked like the disaster happened just a week ago.

“Didn’t the government help out?” asked this political science professor. That was not the best question to ask. Homeowners gave me an earful about what the county did, or didn’t do, for them. They were split on the role the city played. And while some appreciated the shelters, others thought they could do more. FEMA and insurance companies were not spared criticism of these Georgians. Only the churches, like the one we worked with (we’re a United Methodist College), and UMCOR got positive marks.

I was also told that the county didn’t even have an EMA Director at the time of the disaster.

Imagine if a Category 5 Hurricane had hit the area near the coast.

There are still climate change deniers, who will point to any evidence saying “all is well.” But “It was one of the worst years for disasters declarations in the last three decades (1995-2024), according to a new analysis from the International Institute for Environment and Development, or IIED, shared exclusively with CNN. Ninety major disaster declarations in a year is nearly double the annual average of 55 declarations, according to the London-based think tank. It translates to a major disaster declaration every four days,” CNN reports.

CNN adds “Researchers also found that 41% of the US population lived in a county where a major disaster or emergency was declared — about 137 million people. ‘Our analysis of FEMA data shows the agency has been responding to a growing number of climate-driven disasters over the past few decades. This is in line with what scientists warned us would happen,’ said Sejal Patel, senior climate finance researcher at IIED, in a statement to CNN.” And yet our current administration is cutting FEMA. That’s going to leave states, cities, and counties more vulnerable, and why they need a plan of action.

Luckily, programs like Georgetown University are responding to the challenge, creating an Executive Master’s in Humanitarian Crisis & Emergency Management program, which “focuses on topics such as natural disaster recovery, strategic leadership, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, global health and pandemics, and humanitarian crisis management.”

Hopefully, places like Cobb County and surrounding areas will be ready for these future problems better than the site of our mission trip. As evidence shows, we’re going to need more preparation for future disasters, as once-a-century disasters happen once a decade.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.