Experts believe that the Wasatch Fault, one of the longest and most active normal faults in the world, is long overdue for a major earthquake, with a 57% chance of experiencing a magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquake within the next 50 years. This is common knowledge among Salt Lakers, who consider themselves blessed, if not lucky. But luck isn’t a plan. And with our national disaster system melting down, they could be on their own when The Really Big One finally hits.
Early in his second term, President Trump signed Executive Order 14239, seeking to offload responsibility for disaster response to state and local governments. A few days later, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she planned to “eliminate” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This isn’t reform. It’s abandonment. It’s chaos by design.
Here’s how our disaster system is supposed to work: Local responders are the first in. The state backs them up. And when the scale of the crisis exceeds their capacity, the federal government steps in — like a big brother with deep pockets and national muscle. The Stafford Act authorizes this, and the National Incident Management System is the playbook.
This system, when it works, brings order to the chaos of catastrophe. But it is being dismantled before our eyes. And no one has any idea what will take its place.
The system hasn’t always worked. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, chaos in the first Trump administration led to prolonged suffering in Puerto Rico. Then came the spectacular collapse of federal crisis management in April 2020 during COVID’s early weeks. “We were all told on a phone call — all 50 governors — that we were basically on our own,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee. Hospitals overflowed. PPE vanished. States were left to compete against each other for lifesaving supplies.
The administration’s workaround seems to be to write the federal government out of the process altogether. That huge gamble is based on the idea that “all disasters are local” — a concept that crumbles in the face of true catastrophe. Studies of major earthquake responses — from Mexico City in 1985 to Christchurch in 2010 to Türkiye in 1999 and 2023 — have found time and again that local and state governments were overwhelmed within hours.
With several strands of the fault zone passing directly through the city, this matters deeply for Salt Lake City, one of the most seismically hazardous urban areas in the West. If the Really Big One hit today, would we be ready? Not even close.
The United States has the resources, the people and the expertise. What we don’t have is someone in charge to make things happen. We need FEMA — now more than ever — to manage the increasingly complex and severe disasters of a polycrisis age. A refocused and empowered FEMA would forge strong public-private partnerships, leading a response that is government-led but not government-centric. It would become the national disaster machine we so desperately need: fast, coordinated, relentless.
But we are running out of time.
One of these days, in the not-too-distant future, Salt Lakers will wake up in a parallel universe. The fault will finally give way, shredding the Wasatch Front and ripping a gash in the earth’s crust from Ogden south through Salt Lake City and all the way to Provo. Dazed families will wander through ruined streets. Thousands will be trapped in the rubble. And no one will be coming to help.
When that failure happens, it won’t stem from a lack of personnel, equipment or technology. It will stem from a lack of competence.
And that will be the catastrophe within the catastrophe.