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Thursday is a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter. Other presidents — former, current and future — joined with many others at a funeral in Washington to celebrate Carter’s legacy.
At the same time, on the other side of the country, an enduring part of that legacy is being put into action.
Carter created FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in 1979 to centralize and strengthen our country’s ability to respond to disaster. And that critical agency is being mobilized again, this time to help the people of Los Angeles as they reel from a horrific and ongoing set of wildfires.
The fires, fueled in part by dry conditions and strong winds, have destroyed thousands of homes, led over 100,000 people to receive evacuation orders, and killed at least 5 people as of Thursday afternoon.
The speed and totality of the damage is astounding. The loss and displacement is heartbreaking. The need for help is immediate and astronomical.
That help must come first and foremost in the form of federal resources, including from the agency that Jimmy Carter started. It should also come with Carter’s sense of humanity, focusing on the people involved without getting mired in political mudslinging while fires are still burning.
There will be a time for policy debate, assigning blame and accountability. We’re not there yet. This is an active disaster. Now is the time to support organizations, like those listed by the Los Angeles Times, that are actively helping people on the ground. Now is the time for a coordinated and overwhelming emergency response, one that prioritizes the people in harm’s way. And one that is worthy of the president who had the foresight to create FEMA in the first place.
Local, state and federal leaders can honor Jimmy Carter best — not just with some kind words of remembrance — but by acting a bit more like him.
“He waged peace with love and respect,” grandson Jason Carter said at the Washington funeral on Thursday. “He led this nation with love and respect.”
Like waging peace, fighting fires and responding to other disasters should also be aided by love and respect.
Collectively, we need to be thinking about this situation, not as a political battle between President-elect Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, but as people battling for their homes and very lives.
Jimmy Carter, the president who created FEMA and recognized the dangers of climate change well before many other leaders, would not be hurling insults, as Trump has done, in this moment. He surely would not prioritize laying blame over finding solutions. He led with love and respect, and helped further imbed that approach into our institutions.
Carter would be focused on going in to help. He would be focused on the people impacted and the dire needs they continue to face. He would be focused on supporting the peacemakers, in this case the firefighters and organizations like the Red Cross and local YMCAs, as they courageously continue to battle the flames or support those who have been displaced.
The politics will be sorted out and some politicians might even be voted out as a result. But for now, let’s focus as a country on putting out the flames, and supporting the people whose lives have been caught in the path of destruction.
