The Federal Emergency Management Agency said to expect this to be the new status quo after deadly storms tore through the Midwest and parts of the South.
The FEMA administrator, Deanne Criswell, said that the agency has seen a rise in intense storms and severe weather patterns that it anticipates to continue as a result of climate change. The country faces a "crisis of our generation" and the agency has plans to prepare for it, according to a statement from the agency on Sunday.
"This is going to be our new normal," he said on CNN. The crisis of our generation is caused by the effects of climate change. We're working with communities to help reduce the impacts from these severe weather events and we're also working with systemwide projects that can help protect communities.
The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, said on Saturday that it was likely to be the most severe tornado outbreak in the state's history.
The year was marked by historic storms that caused unprecedented damage across the country, including winter storms that left large swaths of Texas without power and killed an estimated 210 people, and forest fires on the West Coast that have produced harmful smoke that has traveled thousands of miles across the nation.
While FEMA is dedicated to improving disaster response and helping communities impacted by disasters, there is a lot that we need to do as a nation.
She told Stephanopoulos that there was a lot to learn from the event. We're seeing more severe weather, whether it's hurricanes, tornadoes, or wild fires. One of the focuses my agency will have is how can we reduce the impacts of these events as they grow?
FEMA is focusing on how to help communities become more resilient as they face powerful storms in the future, according to a conversation with Criswell.
She said that they are trying to help communities understand what their unique risks are and how they can be mitigated.
