ABSTRACT
During the past decade the U.S. witnessed two natural disasters, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, which were so severe as to warrant the title “mega-disaster.” Indeed, Katrina inflicted greater economic damage than any other such event in American history. Federal government efforts to assist the response to and the recovery from these dreadful storms met with dramatic success and dismal failure. This chapter examines both the successes and the failures of mega-disaster policy that Katrina and Sandy demonstrated. Based on that assessment, it proposes a revision of the statute that governs federal disaster-management policy in order to redress the glaring weaknesses that Sandy and Katrina exposed.
