It's up to you, New York

January 22, 2021

Thanks for reading my World’s on Fire, a weekly newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. If you found this dispatch interesting, I hope you’ll subscribe!

It’s been a week of historic firsts and – you guessed it – there’s a disaster angle in there.

Last Friday, President Biden announced he was nominating Deanne Criswell to be his FEMA Administrator. If confirmed, she’ll be the first woman ever appointed to that role. For Criswell, this isn’t her first time being first – the current Commissioner of Emergency Management for New York City was the first woman to fill that spot, as well.

A few months back, I looked at what we knew about Biden’s approach to disasters based on his words throughout the campaign. Today, I wanted to do the same for Criswell, going through her interviews and statements over the past two years to provide background and insight into how she might approach this position.

Criswell on her career path

“I started out as a firefighter in Aurora, Colorado, and I ended up as their emergency manager. At the same time, I was serving in the Colorado Air National Guard as a traditional Guardsman,” Criswell said of her early days in this field in a 2019 YouTube interview:

“I ended up moving on to the federal government, worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I did that for six years, leading responses to hurricanes and wildfires, severe storms, tornadoes across the country. They had me on the road quite a bit, and so I took a short break, you know, went to work for the private sector for a couple of years.”

Then, in 2019, she “got a phone call” and found herself headed to NYC.

On technology

Criswell’s excitement about technology is a regular theme in her interviews. On Prep Talk, the NYC’s Office of Emergency Management podcast, she explained it like this:

“There's so much technology out there now that you can really create better situational awareness, better tools, identify trends, do analysis, so you can make better decisions even if you have limited information. Because oftentimes, you have to make decisions without all of the information. And so the more comfortable you are with risk and understanding the risk, the easier it is for you to make those decisions based on the data that you have. And then you adjust those as needed, as more information comes in.”

She offered more concrete examples of utilizing tech in an interview with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, such as using drones to “visualize and map out areas affected by an incident” or using data visualization to better plan for heatwaves.

“To gain more insight, we can take social vulnerability data and overlay it with cooling center geographic data to see if we are providing the right support to the people who are needing it most,” she explained.

On climate change

Criswell has regularly acknowledged the reality and impact of climate change on her work, including naming it as a threat in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle interview and discussing rising sea levels on the Disaster Zone podcast.

"Sea rise is definitely a concern, and sea levels in New York City right now have risen about a foot since 1900," she said. "Our current climate change projections show they could rise another 30 inches by 2050. This is a big concern for us."

On COVID-19

In May, Criswell went back on the Prep Talk podcast to discuss the city’s ongoing response to COVID-19, and the short discussion offers a good look into how she viewed the unique challenges the city faced during its initial outbreak. The conversation covered a lot of ground, from interagency communication to preparing for compounding disasters and reaching NYC’s diverse populations.

At one point, she offered up her personal strategies for coping during these difficult time:

“For me personally, nothing is better therapy than coming home and spending some time with my English golden retriever, Wilson. I also connect with my sons and their families whenever possible and there's nothing that warms one's heart more, that gives hope in the future than spending a few minutes with your grandchildren.”

Fun fact: her dog, Wilson, is named after the volleyball in Castaway.

And finally, her response to the FEMA nomination

According to the NY Daily News, she also released a statement, saying in part, “As we face the devastating impacts of COVID-19, as well as the increasing threat of climate change, it is imperative that FEMA addresses these challenges with innovative ideas to serve all Americans fairly and equitably.”

While we’re talking FEMA, a few more links:

  • The agency, already key in the federal COVID-19 strategy, is set to play an even larger role under Biden.

  • Also last week, FEMA released a report on its performance so far responding to the pandemic, if you’re in the mood to read a long government report (interested in a TLDR on it for a future newsletter? Let me know in the comments).

  • Politico reported that FEMA’s associate administrator for resilience was among the attendees at the Jan. 6th “Stop the Steal” rally. The official claims he was not among the group that stormed the Capitol.

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