Governor Spitzer, backed by Senators Clinton and Schumer, this week asked President Bush to declare the August 8 storm in New York City, including the Bay Ridge tornado, a federal disaster, opening the door to assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They’d have a stronger case if the state weren’t so disaster-prone.

New York Disaster History Major Disaster Declarations
2007	07/02	Severe Storms and Flooding
2007	04/24	Severe Storms and Inland and Coastal Flooding
2006	12/12	Severe Storms and Flooding
2006	10/24	Severe Storms and Flooding
2006	07/01	Severe Storms and Flooding
2005	04/19	Severe Storms and Flooding
2004	10/01	Tropical Depression Ivan
2004	10/01	Severe Storms and Flooding
2004	08/03	Severe Storms and Flooding
2003	08/29	Severe Storms, Tornadoes and Flooding
2003	05/12	Ice Storm
Source: Federal Emergency Management Agency

In the last four years alone, as the accompanying table shows, New Yorkers have suffered through what the federal government, at the behest of the Empire State’s own elected officials, has defined as no less than 11 “major disasters.” According to FEMA, New York is fourth in the nation in declared disasters, following only earthquake and fire-prone California and hurricane-prone Texas and Florida. This year alone, severe storms and flooding on July 2 and April 24 have already qualified as “major disasters,” while last year, three storms, which many of us have probably already forgotten, qualified.

The controlling federal law, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988, gives the president wide discretion. The law defines a major disaster as “any natural catastrophe (including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, wind-driven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mudslide, snowstorm, or drought), or, regardless of cause, any fire, flood, or explosion, in any part of the United States, which in the determination of the President causes damage of sufficient severity and magnitude to warrant major disaster assistance under this chapter to supplement the efforts and available resources of States, local governments, and disaster relief organizations in alleviating the damage, loss, hardship, or suffering caused thereby.”

To ordinary New Yorkers and other Americans, a “major disaster” is something like Hurricane Katrina or September 11, 2001, not the sort of heavy rain or snowstorm that hits the Northeast a few times a year. For genuinely major disasters, a federal role in relief is necessary. For an ordinary bad storm, New York has the resources to deal on its own. Providing a federal bailout just encourages disaster-prone areas and property owners to avoid planning for emergencies or purchasing insurance. The story of local responsibilities being shifted to the federal government is one of the themes of American history in the 20th and 21st centuries, and it can be seen in the numbers of federal “major disasters” tracked on the FEMA Web site. Between 1953 and 1968, there wasn’t a year in which the number of major disasters nationwide exceeded 25. Between 1996 and 2006, there wasn’t a year in which there were fewer than 44 major disasters, with the high being reached in 1996, when there were 75.

It’s not that storms, fires, and floods are twice as common now as they were in the 1950s and 1960s, but that state and local politicians are twice as quick to cry to Washington for help, and Washington is twice as ready to open the federal funding spigot in return. Disasters of federal magnitude seem more common in presidential or congressional election years. Again, we doubt that storms, fires, and floods are more common in election years; it’s just that in an election year, the White House is less likely to decline a state request for assistance, and more likely to be generous with taxpayer funds.

None of this is to minimize the disruption to the lives of those whose homes were destroyed by the tornado. They have our sympathy. But once they have rebuilt their lives, will they really want their federal taxes going to bail out the next person caught in a bad rainstorm? The inflation of minor disasters into major disasters is a kind of disaster in its own right, symbolic of the decline in personal responsibility that so often accompanies a rise in federal power.