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As states across the Midwest and South pick up the pieces after a spate of tornadoes believed to have killed dozens of people, the top US emergency management official warned Sunday that such cataclysms will be the “new normal.”
“The effects we are seeing of climate change are the crisis of our generation,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Criswell added that while it was “not unusual” for tornadoes to strike in December, “at this magnitude, I don’t think we have ever seen one this late in the year.”
“Even the severity and the amount of time this tornado or these tornadoes spent on the ground is unprecedented,” she said.
The twisters tore through parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee Friday night into Saturday morning. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear had initially feared that more than 100 people may have been killed in his state alone, but scaled back that estimate to as low as 50 dead Sunday afternoon.
Elsewhere, at least 14 people were killed by the storms in Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas and Missouri. Thousands more across the region were still without electricity, heat and other utilities Monday morning.
“This is the — beginning to be a cold time of year,” Criswell told ABC News’ “This Week” in a separate interview. “And so, when we have events like this and severe weather that happens in these cold months, it just makes the impacts of that even seem so much greater.”
On Sunday, President Biden issued a federal emergency declaration for Kentucky to help speed assistance to the commonwealth. The president committed to doing the same for the other impacted states if their governors requested it.
“I want folks in all these states to know, we’re going to get through this and we’re going to get through this together,” the president said Saturday. “This is one of those times when we’re not Democrats or Republicans.”
Biden told reporters that the “intensity of weather across the board” was a consequence of climate change, but acknowledged that “the specific impact on these specific storms, I can’t say at this point.”
“The fact is that we all know everything is more intense when the climate is warming — everything,” said the president. “And obviously, it has some impact here, but I can’t give you a — a qualitative read on that.”
Biden was scheduled to receive a briefing later Monday morning from Criswell and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, both of whom flew to Kentucky on Sunday to assess the storm damage.
“I think that there is a lot that we need to do as a nation,” Criswell said. “You know, there’s going to be a lot to learn from this event and the events that we saw through the summer. We’re seeing more intense storms, severe weather, whether it’s hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires. And one of the focuses my agency is going to have is, how can we start to reduce the impacts of these events as they continue to grow?”
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