For two decades, the Pentagon operated under a simple doctrine: We must always be able to fight two wars at once. But in 2009, the Pentagon started to rethink its strategy. Since 9/11, the nature of world conflict had changed; the military needed to be able to fight more than two wars, and to be prepared for unconventional threats. “We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we planned,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at the time.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is likely facing a similar realization. Three unique, major hurricanes have hit three distinct, major metropolitan areas—and the damage was far more extensive than had been planned for. “This is the FEMA equivalent of the Pentagon’s two-war doctrine,” said Jeff Schlegelmilch, the deputy director for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. “I’m not aware of any time in FEMA’s history where they’ve had to handle three major disasters at once.” The young agency, formed in 1979, has had to deal with a sharp increase in the number of billion-dollar disasters in the last decade. But this year will likely be the most expensive yet. “There’s no doubt about that,” Schlegelmilch said. “I really honestly think this is going to be the most costly year on record for disasters.”

FEMA, as a rule, does not plan for the worst-case scenario when it comes to natural disasters. According to Schlegelmilch, the amount of money in the Disaster Relief Fund (DRF), the pot of money allocated for declared disasters, is determined based on the average annual cost of past catastrophes. A few weeks before Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, FEMA Administrator Brock Long wrote that the $3.8 billion left in the DRF was “sufficient to support the needs of disaster survivors and communities through the remainder of the fiscal year”—but only “absent a new catastrophic disaster.” There have been three new, near-unprecedented catastrophic disasters since then, and they are projected to have stunning price tags: Anywhere from $65 billion to $190 billion for Harvey, $50 billion to $100 billion for Irma, and $40 to $80 billion for Maria. (Hurricane Katrina’s cost was estimated at $160 billion in 2017 dollars.)

To deal with that, FEMA needs Congress to allocate emergency supplemental funding. Congress approved a $22 billion aid package as part of President Donald Trump’s government funding deal with Democrats, but that’s just “a down payment,” Schlegelmilch said. A FEMA spokesperson said that as of Monday, there was only $5 billion left in the DRF for major disasters; an additional $6.7 billion will become available on October 1. But that’s not nearly enough, and over the next few months, Congress will be asked for many billions more.



The biggest short-term mistake Congress could make would be to delay approval of necessary funding; to allow American cities and citizens to suffer in the name of partisan bickering. But the biggest long-term mistake would be to consider this year a fluke. “We’re seeing these emergency supplementals more and more as the cost of disasters increase,” Schlegelmilch said. “Whereas they used to be sporadic, we’re seeing them almost on a yearly basis.” According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. on average experienced about five disasters costing more than $1 billion every year from 1980 to 2016. But from 2012 to 2016, the annual number of billion-dollar disasters ballooned to about 10. This year will add to that average: Before the three major hurricanes, the U.S. had already seen nine natural disasters that cost more than $1 billion—and there’s still more than a month left of hurricane season.