The tradition of federal assistance to American disaster victims extends back as far as 1803, but for over a hundred years it was on an ad hoc basis requiring specific Congressional legislation. In the 1930s, agencies such as the Reconstruction Finance Corporation received broader authority to provide relief, but the decentralized approach created bureaucratic delays, even after the 1974 Disaster Relief Act enabled the president to make "disaster area" declarations. To streamline the process, President Jimmy Carter issued an executive order in 1979 establishing a Federa......

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