Introduction
Over the past decade, California has experienced a succession of devastating wildfires—from the 2017 Tubbs Fire (Napa and Sonoma) to the 2018 Camp Fire (Butte) and the Eaton and Palisades fires of 2025.Footnote 1 These events have repeatedly strained local emergency response capacities and exposed enduring challenges in state and municipal coordination under extreme conditions. As wildfires have grown more frequent and destructive,Footnote 2 they have tested not only the technical capabilities of firefighting systems but also the institutional capacity for emergency governance in the United States—particularly in California. Although public discourse often frames these events as failures of infrastructure or planning,Footnote 3 they should also be understood as manifestations of a longer historical transformation: the gradual relocation of emergency preparedness from the federal domain into decentralized, multilevel systems of governance rooted in state and local practice.
This article examines the institutionalization of emergency preparedness in California, particularly in Los Angeles, within the longer historical development of disaster governance in the United States from the early nineteenth century through the 1980s. By situating the Californian case within this extended federal trajectory, it analyzes how national civil defense mandates and emergency authorities were reinterpreted and operationalized through professional, institutional, and civic networks at the subnational level. The central question, therefore, is how emergency preparedness, initially articulated as a security-driven imperative under Cold War civil defense, was transformed through these layered interactions into a more distributed system requiring local capacity, intergovernmental coordination, and public participation.
Although the historical evolution of emergency preparedness has received increasing scholarly attention, much of this literature remains oriented toward specific risk domains or institutional mechanisms. Studies have explored preparedness in relation to counterterrorism,Footnote 4 climate change,Footnote 5 earthquakes,Footnote 6 flooding,Footnote 7 pandemics,Footnote 8 and tsunamis.Footnote 9 Others have examined the rise of disaster-focused governance,Footnote 10 historical transformations of risk and disasters,Footnote 11 and professionalized emergency expertise.Footnote 12 Yet few studies have interrogated how civilian roles in emergency preparedness were historically constructed or how unpreparedness itself was shaped as a policy problem through evolving institutional, political, and professional dynamics.
When this issue is addressed, it is often treated from one or more of the following perspectives: as a technical gap to be solved through better training or outreach,Footnote 13 as an organic outgrowth of the professionalization of emergency management,Footnote 14 as an organizational or interagency coordination issue,Footnote 15 or as the outcome of top-down policy mandates.Footnote 16 As a result, these approaches tend to overlook the historical contingencies and power relations through which civilian engagement in preparedness was framed, reconfigured, and institutionalized.
Responding to the limits of existing scholarship, this article contends that the figure of the prepared civilian did not arise as a natural or inevitable development but rather emerged through historically contingent decisions and adaptations across multiple levels of governance. The analysis foregrounds the case of California to trace the layered processes through which federal civil defense logics were translated into more civilian-oriented practices of emergency management. To support this argument, the analysis draws on archival research and institutional materials from California-based emergency agencies, newspapers, public discourse, and US legal documentation—including statutory frameworks, judicial decisions, and federal and state laws. Drawing from this empirical base, the article explores how emergency preparedness—conceived as a system of classification, routines, scenarios, and templates that gradually crystallized into a mechanism of powerFootnote 17—came to shape the interpretative lenses of actors inhabiting key institutions, directing their perceptions and actions within this evolving public policy domain as well as contributing to the construction of their legitimacy and value.Footnote 18
The article unfolds through four interrelated lines of historical inquiry, each of which traces the institutional reshaping of emergency preparedness across federal, state, and municipal levels while contributing to public policy analysis in emergency management. In this framework, the federal trajectory is not intended as a stand-alone national history but rather as the structural terrain within which California actors negotiated and reassembled preparedness at the subnational level.
First, the opening section examines how, between 1800 and 1945, the federal government transitioned from near-total disengagement to piecemeal and reactive disaster interventions. This section contributes to policy scholarship by showing how fragmented federal responses created the foundational tensions between decentralization and coordination that continue to shape emergency governance today. It demonstrates that early federal engagement was not merely technical or operational but also entangled with evolving, non-Weberian constructions of state responsibility and public legitimacy.Footnote 19 Second, the article turns to the Cold War period to investigate how civil defense was institutionalized as a national security mandate from the 1950s to the 1980s. This section provides an empirical contribution by analyzing how federal preparedness frameworks were constructed as multilevel bureaucratic systems that appeared centralized in theory but remained operationally dependent on subnational implementation.Footnote 20 It highlights how the tension between centralized authority and decentralized action structured the governance logic of preparedness, shaping the responsibilities of state and local actors in new and often contradictory ways.Footnote 21
Third, shifting focus to California, the article traces how medical and emergency professionals reinterpreted federal mandates between the 1940s and 1970s. These actors translated civil defense into a form of public health governance, embedding preparedness in local infrastructures and reframing it as a shared civic responsibility. This section contributes a socioinstitutional perspective to public policy analysis by demonstrating that it was professional networks—rather than top-down directives alone—that played a central role in embedding and implementing preparedness within local governance systems.Footnote 22 Finally, the last section analyzes how municipal actors in Los Angeles—facing fire and seismic risks—built on this groundwork between 1979 and 1985. Here, preparedness was reframed as a community-based practice, operationalized through public education and civic participation. This section contributes empirically by showing how local governance actors reappropriated and adapted federal and state frameworks,Footnote 23 institutionalizing new rules, models, and expectations in emergency planning that placed civilian involvement at the center.
From Disinterest to Engagement: Early Federal Responses to Disaster in the United States (1800–1945)
Federal involvement in disaster management in the United States emerged not from a coherent strategy but through piecemeal and reactive engagements between 1800 and 1945. Legislative actions, although initially sporadic and inconsistent, gradually laid the groundwork for a more structured conception of emergency preparedness. These early developments did not reflect a unified federal framework but rather exposed the limitations of decentralized governance during large-scale emergencies. Over time, repeated disasters—such as major floods, earthquakes, and epidemics—challenged prevailing beliefs that emergencies were either divine punishments or purely local issues. As these events were reframed as systemic failures demanding coordinated intervention, they triggered a slow federal reorientation in which emergency preparedness came to be recast as a legitimate object of national governance, paving the way for its civilian reinterpretation at state and local levels.
Although it may seem logical today that local, state, and federal actors would coordinate their efforts during large-scale disasters, such coordination was not the norm in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Genuine federal engagement in disaster response only began with the First World War, and even then, it was framed narrowly under the rubric of civil defense. Prior to this shift, the federal role in managing major disasters—those officially recognized as affecting the national interest—was largely restricted to the legislative domain. Responsibility for initiating aid fell to Congress, not the executive branch, often leaving the president without direct authority to act. As a result, disaster response was subject to the deliberation of 100 senators and 435 representatives, producing a system that was procedurally and structurally ill-suited to the demands of urgent aid.Footnote 24 This reliance on legislative consensus created delays in federal action and exposed the limitation of decentralized governance in times of major emergencies.
Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States lacked a coherent and proactive federal policy on disaster and emergency management. Legislative responses were predominantly reactive, driven by the occurrence of specific events rather than by a comprehensive preparedness framework.Footnote 25 Between 1803 and 1945, Congress passed 128 pieces of disaster-related legislation—an indication not of systematic governance but of fragmented and episodic engagement.Footnote 26 These acts reflected an ad hoc approach in which each disaster prompted its own improvised response, typically lacking consistency or continuity with previous efforts. In practice, when federal support was mobilized, it was often delegated to institutions like the military or the American Red Cross. These bodies operated in collaboration with local aid committees that were responsible for tasks such as fund-raising, coordinating logistics, and managing recovery.Footnote 27 This patchwork of actors, while functional in some instances, underscored the broader absence of federal leadership and the lack of standardized protocols. Rather than providing a centralized framework, the federal government operated more as a reactive participant, stepping in only after the scale of destruction or public pressure demanded attention.
During this formative period, the federal government did not view disaster response as part of its institutional mandate and direct assistance was exceedingly rare. Responsibility for relief was primarily devolved to state and local governments, charitable organizations, and religious institutions.Footnote 28 This reliance on decentralized relief systems was reinforced by dominant beliefs of the time: disasters were often interpreted as acts of God, thus placing them outside the perceived realm of human agency or governmental intervention.Footnote 29 Such interpretations justified the federal government’s passive stance and reinforced the idea that intervention, if needed, should be local and voluntary. However, this outlook began to shift toward the end of the nineteenth century. Political leaders and influential media outlets started to reframe disasters not as divine punishment but as events requiring structured responses to support recovery. This reframing carried important implications. If disasters were seen as systemic failures or preventable tragedies, then governmental institutions—especially at the federal level—could no longer claim exemption from responsibility.
The American Red Cross became a central actor in this period of redefinition. Founded by Clara Barton on May 21, 1881, the American Red Cross quickly emerged as a pivotal force in national disaster relief. Under Barton’s leadership, the organization intervened in major emergencies such as the Michigan forest fires of 1881, the Ohio and Mississippi floods of 1884, the 1888 blizzard in the Northeast (New Jersey, New York, and New England), the 1889 Johnstown flood (Pennsylvania), and the 1893 Sea Islands hurricane (South Carolina). After Barton’s departure, Mabel T. Boardman played a crucial role in consolidating the organization’s structure and mission. During her tenure, the Red Cross received its first congressional charter in 1900 and a second in 1905, which formalized its objectives and institutionalized its role. In the absence of consistent federal intervention, the Red Cross also expanded its functions to include assistance for military personnel and their families, communication services, disaster relief both domestically and internationally, and mitigation planning.Footnote 30
Between 1900 and 1950, three landmark disasters—the Galveston hurricane (1900), the San Francisco earthquake and fires (1906), and the 1918 influenza pandemic—served as critical turning points in the redefinition of the federal role in disaster response. These events did more than reveal specific shortcomings in local governance. According to observers at the time seeking to expand national involvement in disaster response, these events offered compelling cases for the ways in which federal coordination and intervention could improve outcomes during large-scale emergencies. The Galveston hurricane illustrated the dire consequences of lacking early warning systems and structured evacuation procedures. The devastation in San Francisco laid bare the inadequacies of urban infrastructure and the fragmented control over emergency operations. Meanwhile, the nationwide spread and high mortality of the influenza pandemic made it clear that public health emergencies could exceed local institutional capacities and disrupt multiple sectors simultaneously.Footnote 31 The pandemic exposed the limits of decentralized governance by highlighting the need for coordinated surveillance, information sharing, and resource mobilization across jurisdictions. Together, these events strengthened the case for institutionalizing federal involvement in emergency management and helped advance a broader discussion about the need for systematic preparedness measures.
Building on the perceived lessons of earlier disasters, federal emergency professionals began to develop a more expansive narrative that framed these events as fundamentally beyond the capacity of local governments to manage. This perspective did not emerge in isolation, as it was continually reinforced by the recurrence of large-scale emergencies that overwhelmed municipal and even state-level response systems. The 1927 Mississippi flood, the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, and the 1947 Texas City explosions all served as emblematic examples. Each of these events was said to expose not only logistical and infrastructural weaknesses but also the limitations of decentralized and fragmented governance in large-scale emergencies. As a result, these disasters were used strategically by federal actors to argue for a more centralized and systematic approach—emphasizing that effective disaster response, particularly for events that crossed state or regional boundaries, necessitated robust federal involvement.
Although federal disaster intervention during the New Deal era (1933–1938) remained primarily reactive, it gained a degree of regularity and legislative structure that marked a significant departure from earlier ad hoc approaches. A series of laws reflected a shift toward systematic thinking about disaster management. The Flood Control Act of 1928 marked the formal beginning of federal–local cooperation in the development and maintenance of flood control infrastructure.Footnote 32 This initiative was expanded and given a clearer framework through the Flood Control Act of 1936, which articulated a national policy for flood mitigation.Footnote 33 Likewise, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 channeled federal funds into newly created aid programs,Footnote 34 signaling an increasing willingness of the federal government to accept a leadership role in managing disaster recovery. These measures, while still limited in scope, collectively contributed to a more formalized role for the federal government.
Meanwhile, high-profile incidents such as the 1947 Texas City explosions kept public attention focused on the question of federal responsibility. Although legal rulings from the Texas district court, the Fifth Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the Supreme Court ultimately declined to hold the federal government legally accountable for the Texas City explosions,Footnote 35 the surrounding public debates effectively placed federal authorities at the center of the narrative on disaster causation and response.Footnote 36 In doing so, they further entrenched the idea that disaster management was no longer merely a local or charitable concern but a legitimate object of federal governance.
One of the most enduring insights to emerge from these debates—later taken up with particular intensity in states like California—was the recognition that local authorities consistently lacked the resources and capabilities to manage large-scale emergencies on their own. This shortfall was not portrayed as a local failure but as evidence of the structural limitations of decentralized disaster governance. The persistent inability of municipal and even state systems to cope with increasingly complex and transboundary disasters prompted a broader conceptual shift: emergency preparedness was not merely a local concern or solely a federal responsibility but a shared imperative requiring coordination across all levels of government. This reconceptualization laid the groundwork for a more expansive understanding of preparedness. Over time, the concept evolved beyond institutional arrangements to encompass the active participation of civilians. The resulting layered distribution of responsibility established the institutional conditions under which state actors, particularly in California, could reinterpret preparedness as a domain characterized by negotiated authority and intergovernmental collaboration. The federal developments outlined above thus provide the structural backdrop against which California’s subsequent adaptations must be understood.
Civilian Preparedness and Federal Authority: Institutionalizing Civil Defense and Emergency Planning (1950s–1990s)
The Cold War reconfigured emergency preparedness in the United States as a strategic function of national security.Footnote 37 In the aftermath of decades of reactive and fragmented federal interventions, the mid-twentieth century brought new legal and institutional frameworks that prioritized the survival of the civilian population in the event of a nuclear attack. Between the 1950s and 1980s, this imperative took shape through an expanded civil defense apparatus that codified emergency preparedness as a federal concern while continuing to rely on decentralized implementation by state and local authorities. Within this layered system, federal leadership provided legal scaffolding and strategic rationale but local jurisdictions remained operationally central. As civil defense logics circulated beyond their Cold War origins, they were adapted by new actors—including public health professionals and local emergency planners—who reinterpreted the preparedness imperative in response to distinct risks and capacities at the subnational level.
Cold War civil defense initiatives played a central role in shaping the institutional structures and operational modalities of federal emergency management.Footnote 38 As fears of nuclear war intensified, the federal government promoted an expanded civil defense framework that portrayed disaster response as a shared responsibility between federal authorities and local jurisdictions. This period reinforced the prevailing narrative that in large-scale emergencies, local and federal capacities would be overwhelmed, thereby justifying enhanced federal engagement. The enactment of Public Law 920 in 1950, known as the Federal Civil Defense Act, was emblematic of this turn.Footnote 39 Signed by President Harry S. Truman, the legislation signaled the institutional onset of enduring federal involvement while still assigning primary responsibility for civil defense to state governments.Footnote 40 The federal role remained largely coordinative, but the Act nevertheless initiated a transformation from a reactive and voluntary system to one concerned with the continuity of government operations during large-scale emergencies.Footnote 41
Public Law 920 was significant for three main reasons. First, it institutionalized a lasting federal role in disaster response. Second, it empowered the Executive Branch by authorizing the president to determine when federal assistance was warranted and which agencies should be mobilized. Third, while nominally reinforcing the principle that federal support should be temporary and limited, it nonetheless obligated the federal government to assist in pre- and postdisaster phases, including encouraging the development of state and local preparedness plans.Footnote 42 This legal foundation established the basis for the layered federalism that would define American emergency management in subsequent decades. Simultaneously, by reiterating that primary responsibility for disaster management resided with states, the Act institutionalized a form of delegated federalism. This arrangement preserved substantial room for subnational interpretation and implementation, thereby enabling states such as California to recalibrate preparedness in accordance with their distinctive risk profiles.
However, by the 1970s, the fragmentation of emergency programs across various federal agencies became increasingly untenable. Congressional oversight bodies and the National Governors Association criticized the lack of coordination and strategic coherence. In response, President Jimmy Carter’s administration established the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1979 to centralize disparate functions, budgets, and personnel.Footnote 43 FEMA inherited mandates from five major public policy areas and was tasked with coordinating intergovernmental efforts to protect the population from both nuclear and so-called natural disasters.Footnote 44 FEMA’s core responsibilities encompassed a broad array of intergovernmental and operational functions that sought to consolidate and professionalize federal emergency management.Footnote 45 The new agency
develops and coordinates, through the National Preparedness Directorate, national policy and facilities necessary for the federal government to deliver effective crisis management during periods of national emergency. Administers, through the State and Local Programs and Support Directorate, disaster relief and other emergency support programs to states and localities. Operates and maintains the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS). Administers, through the Federal Insurance Administration, the national flood insurance program. Coordinates, through the United States Fire Administration, federal programs in the areas of fire prevention and control. Provides training and education programs at the National Emergency Training Center (National Fire Academy and Emergency Management Institute).”Footnote 46
Yet despite its centralizing ambitions, FEMA remained constrained by the principles of federalism. During the Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) and George H. W. Bush (1989–1993) administrations, coordination challenges persisted, as state and local governments retained primary responsibility for emergency preparedness.Footnote 47 FEMA, led in its early years by a former California Guard general, struggled to expand its operational focus beyond civil defense. This institutional rigidity, combined with a continued emphasis on Cold War–era logics, hindered FEMA’s ability to respond effectively to evolving disaster scenarios. Although the agency attempted to build more professional and targeted federal management structures, implementation was uneven, particularly during major events such as Hurricane Hugo (1989), the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989), and Hurricane Andrew (1992). These disasters revealed the persistent gaps in intergovernmental coordination and exposed FEMA to widespread criticism for mismanagement, delays, and inadequate response. Public scrutiny, amplified by intense media coverage, contributed to eroding confidence in federal emergency capabilities and damaged the public standing of the George H. W. Bush administration.Footnote 48 Despite the agency’s efforts to professionalize through grant programs and planning support for states and municipalities, its perceived failures reinforced the belief that federal support during major emergencies could not be fully relied on. In states like California, already exposed to fire and seismic risks and dense urban vulnerability, such perceived federal limitations further encouraged local authorities to treat preparedness as a domain requiring autonomous institutional development.
By the late 1980s, civilian preparedness had become a central organizing principle in American emergency management. However, the structural limits of this civil defense framework were becoming increasingly apparent. In California, these federal shortcomings were interpreted not merely as bureaucratic inefficiencies but as indicators of the deeper vulnerability of local capacities in the face of major disasters. The challenges facing federal emergency preparedness did not spark these concerns anew but rather reinforced efforts already under way in the state. Since the late 1940s, medical and emergency professionals in California had been engaged in translating Cold War–era civil defense imperatives into more civilian and public-health-oriented practices. This earlier trajectory of reinterpretation established the basis for more sustained local adaptations. By embedding federal preparedness rationale into emergency management practices tailored to local institutional settings, these actors helped establish a subnational framework that both drew from and redefined federal strategies. In doing so, they contributed to the emergence of an approach to emergency management centered on civilians in California, which would later inform subsequent community-based initiatives in cities such as Los Angeles.
Adapting Civil Defense: Medical and Public Health Translations of Preparedness in California (1945–1970)
In California, medical and emergency professionals played a pivotal role in reframing Cold War civil defense as a civilian responsibility rooted in public health. From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, as federal efforts concentrated on preparing for nuclear attack, Californian health actors broadened the preparedness imperative to include so-called natural disasters and localized emergencies. Drawing on their positions within state agencies, academic institutions, and professional associations, they translated military-derived preparedness logics into tools for civilian use. This process of circulation involved not only technical adaptation but also the redefinition of preparedness as a shared civic obligation. By embedding this rearticulated vision into local training programs, policy discussions, and public communication, they helped establish emergency preparedness as a civilian norm within the state. This early articulation laid important groundwork for later municipal efforts—such as those in Los Angeles—to integrate preparedness into local emergency management infrastructures.
Rather than constituting a direct response to federal shortcomings, these Californian efforts predated and, in many ways, anticipated the limitations of centralized frameworks that would become increasingly apparent by the 1980s. These adaptations did not occur outside federal authority but within the discretionary space that civil defense legislation had left to state and professional actors. As early as the 1950s, medical professionals in the state were already operationalizing emergency preparedness in ways that extended beyond nuclear concerns. In doing so, they adapted the conceptual tools of civil defense to a broader spectrum of hazards and civilian settings. Their work illustrates how the federal imperative of preparedness—originally framed in terms of national security—was reinterpreted through local institutional practices as a form of public health governance and community responsibility. This analytical approach to this reappropriation of preparedness builds on and critiques the work of Stephen Collier and Andrew Lakoff, who attribute the emergence of “distributed preparedness” for nonmilitary threats to a “diffusion” process initiated by civil defense officials in the early 1950s.Footnote 49 Although their account highlights important bureaucratic mechanisms, it downplays the heterogeneity of actors involved and the broader networks through which preparedness logics circulated via practices of translation. This study complements their analysis by foregrounding the role of California’s medical professionals—who, although often closely aligned with civil defense structures, operated across academic, clinical, and emergency planning domains—in reinterpreting military preparedness as a civilian and public health concern.
In this context, health was understood not merely in clinical or individual terms but as a collective capacity of populations and infrastructures to withstand and recover from acute disruptions. Preparedness-oriented actors distinguished such emergencies from chronic social or medical problems by emphasizing temporality, scale, and the need for anticipatory coordination rather than ongoing therapeutic care. Central to this reinterpretation was the reconceptualization of societal vulnerability. Federal officials had framed emergency preparedness around the protection of “vital systems”—including human life, economic infrastructure, and governmental operations—in the event of a nuclear attack.Footnote 50 In California, medical professionals translated this framework to civilian contexts by selecting and re-marking specific elements of distributed preparedness.Footnote 51 During the 1950s and 1960s, this work was spearheaded by figures within the Sanitation Section of the Medical and Health Services Division of the California State Office of Civil Defense.Footnote 52 Their efforts were supported and amplified by professional platforms such as the journal California Medicine, symposia hosted by the California Medical Association on health and medical services and disaster medical care, and ongoing coverage in regional newspapers including the Santa Barbara News-Press, Contra Costa Gazette, Los Angeles Daily News, and the Oakland Tribune. These venues collectively facilitated the dissemination and legitimization of emergency preparedness as a civilian issue within medical and broader public discourse.
Among the most prominent of these translational actors were Dr. Justin J. Stein and Dr. Wayne P. Chesbro. Dr. Stein—a renowned oncologist at the Los Angeles Tumor Institute and professor of radiology at the University of California, Los Angeles—served as chair of both the California Medical Association’s Committee on Military Affairs and Civil Defense and the Governor’s Citizens Advisory Committee on Medical Health Services.Footnote 53 Dr. Chesbro, a physician and surgeon based at the University of California, Berkeley, held the post of Chief of Medical and Health Services in California’s Region II and served as a lieutenant in the US Volunteer Reserve.Footnote 54 Both physicians leveraged their multi-positioned expertise to promote preparedness as essential not only for civil defense but also for routine medical readiness and public safety.Footnote 55
Dr. Stein, widely recognized in local media as a key architect of California’s radiological preparedness, emphasized the role of medical professionals in managing the aftermath of a nuclear incident.Footnote 56 He advocated the formation of mobile teams of doctors, nurses, and radiological experts, supplied in advance with medical kits, who would be deployed to provide urgent care and manage exposure risks. Importantly, Stein stressed that most injuries in such scenarios—burns, lacerations, and trauma from debris—would not be radically different from those seen in nonnuclear emergencies. He therefore called for universal first aid training among civilians, insisting that early self-help could save lives before professionals arrived.Footnote 57 Similarly, Dr. Chesbro viewed civil defense not as an isolated effort but as a set of practices that needed to be integrated into everyday emergency preparedness. As part of Operation Star, a large-scale preparedness exercise involving physicians, hospitals, and military personnel, he articulated the goal of ensuring that California’s health care system could respond to mass casualties in regional disasters.Footnote 58 For Chesbro and his peers, the main challenge lay not in the technical capacity but in the public’s lack of engagement and awareness. To counter this, they selectively reframed and repurposed elements of civil defense distributed preparedness—such as decentralized coordination, public training, and anticipatory planning—into tools for broader civilian emergency management.
This reframing relied on a specific grammar of adaptation. Core elements of distributed preparedness—including layered authority, urgency, individual initiative, and collective responsibility—were reinterpreted through a medical lens.Footnote 59 Emergency preparedness became not only a technical system but a civil responsibility rooted in collective care. Medical professionals incorporated this expectation into training programs targeted at diverse audiences such as high school students, Boy Scouts, and community organizations, fostering a mindset of localized responsibility and self-sufficiency.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, these ideas had begun to move beyond the medical field and into collaborative networks involving emergency professionals, medical experts, and civil administrators. In 1969, at the 98th annual session of the California Medical Association in Los Angeles, Dr. Chesbro chaired a panel on “Preparation, Care and Transport of the Casualty,” which provided a platform for direct engagement between the medical community and emergency professionals in the city. The panel featured participants such as E. D. Heringer of the California Highway Patrol and Bruno Bakey, a local representative of the California Ambulance Association.Footnote 60 Three years later, at the Association’s 101st session in San Francisco, Dr. Chesbro delivered two presentations highlighting the critical role of medical preparedness in airport emergency scenarios. To illustrate his points, he drew on the results of the “Air Med” drill conducted at Oakland Airport and expanded on the concept of emergency service planning as a model for coordinated response among civil, medical, and transport authorities.Footnote 61
Although federal initiatives provided the conceptual and legal scaffolding for civilian preparedness during the Cold War, California’s medical professionals helped establish the foundations of locally adapted, health-oriented interpretations of these frameworks. Their work did not simply mirror national strategies but redefined them within a civilian logic of care—that is, an orientation that framed emergency preparedness not as military defense but as a medical and humanitarian responsibility centered on preserving life and community continuity. This reorientation recast community not merely as a site of service delivery but as a unit of collective preparedness, capable of contributing to its own protection through training, anticipation, and distributed responsibility. In doing so, they contributed to a durable infrastructure of preparedness that would shape how municipal actors—particularly in cities such as Los Angeles—would approach the challenges of emergency management.
Local Rationales for Preparedness: Reframing Emergency Management in Los Angeles (1979–1985)
In Los Angeles, the evolving logics of federal civil defense and California’s health-oriented interpretations of preparedness converged within a distinct municipal context. Between the late 1970s and the mid-1980s, city officials and emergency professionals reconfigured preparedness not simply as a matter of institutional response but as a civil responsibility anchored in community engagement. This urban approach did not emerge in a vacuum: it built directly on prior efforts at the federal level to frame civil preparedness as a national imperative and on the work of California medical professionals who had already adapted those frameworks to broader civilian applications. In Los Angeles, these layered influences crystallized into a rationale for local emergency management—one that addressed the limitations of professional emergency services and promoted the active participation of the public. Two complementary dynamics shaped this shift. First, from 1979 to 1983, earthquake preparedness was promoted as a practical solution to the perceived inadequacy of public readiness and the overextension of emergency personnel. Then, from 1983 to 1985, the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), in collaboration with city officials, institutionalized a community-oriented preparedness model grounded in public education and local participation.
Redefining Earthquake Risk: Civil Preparedness as a Response to Perceived Institutional Limits (1979–1983)
Although fire protection had long been a municipal responsibility, it was during this period that it became embedded into a broader preparedness paradigm, reframing fire as one hazard within multirisk planning centered on civil participation. In this context, on April 12, 1976, Frank Borden, a young battalion chief in LAFD’s Battalion 2, submitted a letter to the Division 1 commander outlining procedures for responding to an earthquake.Footnote 62 He emphasized that the priorities in combating fires resulting from seismic events were to control their spread and to rescue occupants from damaged structures. At the time, the institutional orthodoxy defined the relationship between firefighters and civilians in terms of savior and victim, expert and layperson. In practice, however, operational perspectives within fire services remained more ambivalent, even as Cold War rhetoric promoted civilian self-help. Untrained civilians were often perceived as complicating rescue operations, particularly in fast-moving disasters where crowd behavior, spontaneous volunteering, or lack of coordination could hinder response efforts.Footnote 63 Events such as the 1961 Bel Air Fire, the 1965 Watts Riots, and the 1971 San Fernando Valley earthquake contributed to a gradual reassessment of this stance in California, as emergency professionals increasingly recognized both the necessity of civilian involvement and the importance of structuring it through training and legal frameworks.
Even as ideas promoting civilian preparedness and first-responder roles circulated informally among professionals, they were not immediately translated into institutional mandates. At least until 1980, LAFD’s mandate did not include preparing the public for disasters. Its internal priorities focused instead on improving operational control procedures, managing organizational conflicts, and firefighters’ relations with the institution.Footnote 64 Internal tensions within LAFD,Footnote 65 evolving professional norms,Footnote 66 and the emergence of a broader network concerned with earthquake preparedness in Los AngelesFootnote 67 eventually led figures like Borden to reorient their roles in support of a community-based preparedness approach.
In January 1981, the idea of educating and preparing the public for emergencies was formally endorsed as a legitimate strategy to support LAFD operations, marking a shift in institutional thinking that had begun to take shape in the late 1970s.Footnote 68 The Los Angeles Board of Fire Commissioners submitted its 93rd Annual Report (1979–1980) to Mayor Tom Bradley (1973–1993) in which Commissioners Jerry Fields, Ernest Shell, Ann Reiss Lane, Domingo Rodriguez, and John G. Lawson argued that local residents, if equipped with basic first aid and emergency response skills, could act as first responders and provide assistance to the fire service during emergencies. This institutional openness coincided with the emergence of a network of actors working to reinterpret the broader logic of emergency preparedness, understood here as the governing assumptions and operational principles structuring preparedness policy, through the specific lens of seismic risk. Beginning in 1979, this network—which included emergency professionals, elected officials, academics, and policy makers—sought to translate federal and state preparedness mandates into locally relevant strategies focused on earthquake readiness. One key node in this development was the 1983 Los Angeles International Earthquake Conference, where Frank Borden joined a transnational coalition of experts from Los Angeles, Sacramento, Washington DC, Mexico, and Japan committed to advancing a model of community-based disaster preparedness.Footnote 69
This network had gained visibility earlier, in 1979, when Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, chair of the Building and Safety Committee, proposed a public education campaign to raise awareness of the risks associated with a major earthquake. In September 1980, the city launched “Earthquake and Awareness Week,” during which all municipal agencies involved in seismic risk management distributed educational materials and hosted events to inform the public. On February 10, 1981, Bernson organized a seminar marking the tenth anniversary of the 1971 San Fernando Valley earthquake, an event that continued to serve as a powerful referent for local preparedness discourse. Following a recommendation from Dr. Fred Krimgold, director of the disaster program at the National Science Foundation (NSF), Bernson collaborated with Dr. William Petak of the University of Southern California’s Safety and Systems Management Institute to begin planning the 1983 conference.Footnote 70
These developments reveal how, in the Los Angeles context, earthquake preparedness became a key vector through which the broader civil defense imperative was reframed as a matter of local capacity and civic participation. In addition to five plenary sessions and eighteen roundtables, the conference included earthquake simulation drills and field visits to sites such as the San Andreas Fault and the Van Norman Dam. Sponsored by NSF alongside FEMA, the California Office of Emergency Services, and the US Geological Survey, the event was locally organized but benefited from both symbolic and financial support at state and federal levels.
The conference brought together approximately 350 participants from local, state, federal, and international backgrounds to focus on public earthquake preparedness. Day one addressed seismic risk assessment and earthquake forecasting, encouraging participants to devise plans for rapidly urbanizing areas, improve understanding of seismic prediction, engage public institutions and media in educational efforts, and raise public awareness of earthquake-related risks. Day two centered on vulnerability and risk mitigation strategies, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing preventive measures over postdisaster aid, formulating urban evacuation plans, and promoting public education on the value of seismic preparedness. Day three focused on emergency response and recovery, with particular emphasis on training the public for roles in disaster response. The program’s structure and content thus illustrated how federal and state preparedness logics could be locally reinterpreted—not only to address perceived deficiencies in existing emergency infrastructures but also to reconceptualize citizens as active participants rather than passive recipients, in disaster management.Footnote 71
The conference highlighted two key aspects of how Los Angeles’s emergency management challenges were translated into a community-focused preparedness approach. First, beginning in February 1983, Borden, Bernson, and Bradley—representing an emerging network of emergency professionals and local officials—formed a core group committed to developing training programs to prepare civilians as first responders. Second, the conference served as a platform for exchange among local, state, federal, and international actors, facilitating the circulation of knowledge that enabled Los Angeles actors to reframe public emergency preparedness as an essential component of disaster planning.Footnote 72 Between 1983 and 1985, this process of translation was rooted in the LAFD’s operational responsibilities and its growing concern over the catastrophic potential of earthquakes.
Operationalizing Community Preparedness: Institutional Shifts within the LAFD (1983–1985)
Building on the momentum generated by the 1983 conference, the growing network around Borden, Bernson, and Bradley began translating the shared knowledge and new partnerships into operational practices. Between 1983 and 1985, Frank Borden developed a seismic preparedness program directed at local government employees and residents. With the support of newly appointed LAFD Chief Engineer Donald O. Manning (1983–1995), the initiative took on greater institutional backing and reframed public emergency preparedness as a vital strategy for addressing the catastrophic risks posed by earthquakes. It drew on two intersecting networks: one shaped by the international conference and another embedded in LAFD units focused on public education and community outreach.
This translation became visible through the gradual adaptation of LAFD’s internal structures, which progressively shifted their focus from narrowly defined fire prevention and response tasks toward a broader understanding of preparedness. By 1980, the department had established several specialized units: a planning section, a community relations officer, a public service unit, and a fire safety education unit. Although public education and fire risk awareness were already institutionalized, the idea of community-based, all-hazards preparedness had not emerged as a dominant institutional priority.
Within this evolving framework, the LAFD’s planning section—led by a captain tasked with disaster preparedness—played a central role in coordinating radiological and major incident responses, liaising with external agencies such as the police, civil defense, the Red Cross, and the Los Angeles County Health Department and participating in interagency disaster drills. Through the California Mutual Aid System, the section also conducted training sessions for neighboring cities including Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Culver City. These exercises simulated responses to aircraft crashes, floods, nuclear incidents, and wildfires, reflecting the LAFD’s principle that preparing for the unknown requires simulating it in advance.Footnote 73 In parallel, the Community Relations Office oversaw public outreach programs intended to broaden engagement and visibility. Supervising the public service unit, the fire safety education unit, and the department’s Affirmative Action officer, it developed educational initiatives that included newspaper articles, instructional brochures, school presentations, and televised campaigns. These were intended to familiarize the public with home safety practices and the appropriate use of emergency services.Footnote 74
The Fire Safety Education Unit contributed to this evolving landscape by offering training in evacuation procedures, fire extinguisher use, flammable materials handling, and domestic safety. Initially focused on specific groups—such as prison staff, university personnel, commercial tenants, hotel workers, and residents—the program expanded during 1982–1983 to incorporate new themes including earthquake preparedness, hazardous materials, and predisaster planning.Footnote 75 This curricular broadening marked a deeper institutional expansion of community-based preparedness thinking. In 1984, the department institutionalized this shift through the creation of a “community fire brigade” composed of 17 local organizations operating in wildfire-prone areas around Los Angeles.Footnote 76
These developments redefined the department’s view of the community from passive recipients of safety education to proactive participants in decentralized emergency planning. By 1984, the expectation that civilians be equipped with basic knowledge to respond to nuclear, fire, and seismic threats had begun to take root in Los Angeles’s emergency management framework. This shift was reinforced by wider legal and cultural transformations in California, including the introduction of Good Samaritan protections beginning in 1959, which both reflected and institutionalized the growing acceptance of structured civilian participation in emergency response. The trajectory that followed illustrates how a preparedness logic initially rooted in Cold War national security—and later reformulated by a diverse group of California-based actors, including medical professionals—was ultimately rearticulated as a locally embedded rationale grounded in public participation and shared responsibility. Prior to this reframing, local emergency practices were largely reactive, service oriented, and centered on professional responses to incidents such as fires or accidents, with limited emphasis on anticipatory planning, multihazard coordination, or structured civilian participation. From the second half of the 1980s onward, this evolving framework would provide the foundation for community-based preparedness initiatives in Californian cities such as Los Angeles, including the LAFD’s Community Emergency Response Team program.
Conclusion
This article has examined the institutionalization of emergency preparedness in the United States from the early nineteenth century through the 1980s, situating the Californian experience, particularly the city of Los Angeles, within the broader transformation from a fragmented federal concern to a decentralized and locally embedded practice of governance. It has demonstrated that emergency preparedness did not emerge from a single directive or coherent federal strategy but through successive and fragmented reconfigurations shaped by shifting political rationalities, professional interventions, and context-specific reinterpretations of risk and responsibility. From a policy-historical perspective, this trajectory reveals not a linear transfer of authority from federal to local levels but an ongoing negotiation in which governance tiers remained structurally entangled and mutually constitutive. These reconfigurations not only enabled emergency preparedness to emerge as a distinct governance practice but also allowed its underlying logics and techniques to circulate unevenly across institutional levels and professional domains.
The analysis began by showing how the federal government, initially detached from direct disaster response, gradually expanded its role through piecemeal legislation and symbolic partnerships, notably with organizations like the American Red Cross. It then examined how Cold War civil defense formalized preparedness as a national security mandate while relying on a layered structure of implementation involving state and local actors. Although this framework was formally centralized, in practice it generated a diffuse distribution of roles and expectations. In California, medical and emergency professionals adapted civil defense imperatives into instruments for public health governance, embedding preparedness into civilian infrastructures through anticipatory planning, local training initiatives, and institutional collaborations. These reinterpretations laid critical foundations for the municipal innovations that emerged in Los Angeles during the 1980s, where fire and seismic risks became catalysts for integrating preparedness into community-based initiatives and public education programs.
This reframing carried important implications for power structures and public policy. By promoting preparedness as a civic responsibility anchored in community participation, Los Angeles authorities redistributed elements of emergency responsibility away from centralized institutions and toward local populations. Preparedness thus functioned as a historically contingent mechanism of power that reconfigured state–citizen relations, as communities were increasingly expected to act as auxiliary responders within a distributed security architecture. In this sense, the purpose of preparedness extended beyond immediate disaster response to cultivate self-reliance, anticipatory behavior, and shared responsibility within urban governance.
Across these developments, a central insight emerges. The concept of the prepared civilian was not a natural byproduct of disaster governance or a straightforward extension of federal emergency planning. Rather, it was socially constructed through situated negotiations involving institutional mandates, professional fields, and civil imaginaries. The roles envisioned for local populations—whether as passive recipients, trained first responders, or coproducers of safety—were shaped not only by the limitations of federal frameworks but also by the initiatives of subnational actors, who reinterpreted those frameworks to align with their own institutional environments. By foregrounding these layered processes of knowledge and practice circulation, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how civilian emergency preparedness was institutionalized in the United States. It challenges technocratic interpretations that cast emergency preparedness as a neutral policy instrument, diffused uniformly across American bureaucracy. Instead, it interrogates the conditions under which emergency preparedness was constructed as a public policy issueFootnote 77 and how it has been continually legitimized and assembled as a fragmented yet credible mechanism of governance—anchored in expert knowledge and differently implemented across multiple levels of action.Footnote 78
The circulation of emergency preparedness can be understood through multiple epistemological lenses,Footnote 79 each highlighting different dimensions of how knowledge and practices move across time and space.Footnote 80 First, it may be seen as a diffusion process—where preparedness innovations travel within and between social systems via communication channels,Footnote 81 shaped by the interests of actors and oriented toward perceived functional convergence.Footnote 82 Second, this circulation process can be framed through the prism of policy learning, whereby evolving preparedness practices transform power relations and reduce uncertainty,Footnote 83 reinforce institutional beliefs,Footnote 84 reconfigure bureaucratic rationales,Footnote 85 reorganize resource allocations,Footnote 86 and draw lessons from past experiences.Footnote 87 Third, it involves the temporal and spatial transfer of ideas and practices, whereby preparedness instruments developed within the federal political system are repurposed within state and local governance frameworks.Footnote 88 Fourth, the circulation of emergency preparedness can be understood as the import–export of a broader political and social model,Footnote 89 one that is continually reinvented through structured implementationFootnote 90 and shaped by contentious, uncoordinated, and historically specific conditions.Footnote 91 Finally, it can be approached as a process of translation: whether understood through science and technology studies—as the linking of concepts to materials, skills, and rulesFootnote 92—or through a Bourdieusian lens that emphasizes the reinterpretation of instruments via selection, marking, and recontextualization.Footnote 93 Taken as complementary analytical lenses, these frameworks help clarify how preparedness has circulated through ongoing yet fragmented adaptations embedded within the evolving landscape of American emergency governance.
While the empirical focus of this article has been on California, particularly Los Angeles, the analytical framework invites further investigation in other key US contexts. Future research might apply this approach to preparedness initiatives in states and cities such as New York (New York City), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana (New Orleans), Texas (Houston), New Jersey (Newark), and California (San Francisco, Sacramento, and San Diego) as well as across the United States during large-scale emergencies such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Such comparative studies could shed light on the diverse ways in which emergency preparedness has been operationalized and negotiated across institutional, geographical, and sociopolitical boundaries. More broadly, interdisciplinary perspectives—from political science, history, and sociology—remain essential for understanding how emergency preparedness has evolved not only as a strategy for managing risk but also as a mode of governmentality and a mechanism of civic participation that emphasizes a particular vision of the citizen.Footnote 94
By refusing to treat emergencies and disasters as static conditions that mechanically define the present, this analysis of the layered historical development of preparedness opens the way for a critical reconceptualization. It reframes emergency preparedness not as an inevitable or essential feature of actors’ intersubjective reality but as a contingent and unstable mechanism of power—anchored in specific historical and social configurations and continually reassembled through processes of fragmentary circulation. In doing so, it creates space for critical reflection on emergency preparedness as a political technology that governs “life in motion” and contributes to the permanent becoming of collective security imaginaries.Footnote 95 Rather than accepting preparedness as a fixed requirement of emergency governance, this perspective foregrounds its shifting and situated character by emphasizing how it continuously emerges from and reshapes intersubjective understandings of risk, responsibility, and agency across time and space.
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