The Case for a US Disaster Review Board

A guest post by Mike Smith

Mar 17, 2025

This is a guest post by Mike Smith. He is an incredibly successful scientist and entrepreneur, with 30+ U.S. and foreign patents, awards from three professional societies, and his publication record in the field of severe thunderstorms. He tells me that his proudest professional accomplishment is the thousands of lives saved by the forecasts made by Mike and his team at WeatherData — which he founded — and later at AccuWeather Enterprise Solutions, after his company was acquired. I served on his board of directors for several years and watched him work first-hand. We are fortunate to have his voice here at THB. —RP

The Case for a US Disaster Review Board, by Mike Smith

Compared to the past decade, the first quarter of 2025 has been terrible for America’s commercial aviation industry and its passengers. It has experienced:

near Washington’s Reagan Airport, the first mid-air collision involving an airliner since 1960 — with the loss of 67 lives;
a crash landing at Toronto’s Pearson Airport;
an extreme near-miss of a Southwest Airlines 737 and a business jet at Chicago’s Midway Airport;

There have been at least three other incidents involving emergency evacuations of aircraft with preliminary indications fires were in progress.

Yet, given the extensive media coverage, there has been little, if any, loss of passenger traffic since these accidents and incidents occurred.

Why?

I believe airline passengers have a great deal of confidence that these issues will be investigated and solved by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). With legislative origins dating back almost 100 years, Congress created the NTSB as an independent agency of the federal government in 1974 and since then, the NTSB has developed an outstanding reputation for fair and accurate analysis of accidents and incidents involving all modes of transportation.

In my career, I assisted the NTSB in a small way with two of its investigations. In 1997, my company, WeatherData was investigated by the Board for our flash flood warnings and services offered to our railroad clientele after the derailment of Amtrak’s Southwest Chief near Kingman, Arizona. The board was thorough and professional and we received a clean bill of health (see their report).

Based on my considerable experience in both the workings of the NTSB and more than 50 years of experience in the field of consulting, forecasting, and warning of extreme weather and its effects, I believe that Congress should create a U.S. Disaster Review Board (DRB) modeled after the extremely successful NTSB.

Just as the first quarter of 2025 has been a bad run for U.S. aviation, the past 15 years have experienced a series of natural disasters with significant fatalities and billion-dollar-plus damage tolls (in 2025-dollar values). These include:

2011 Joplin Tornado, 161 fatalities, $3.9 billion
2018 “Camp” Fire, 85 fatalities, $17 billion
2022 Hurricane Ian, 161 fatalities, $112 billion
2023 Maui Wildfire, 102+ fatalities, $5.5 billion
2024 Hurricane Helene Appalachian flooding, 230+ fatalities, final damage toll TBD
2025 Los Angeles Wildfires, 28+ fatalities (more than 30 missing), preliminary financial loss is estimated to be between $250 and $275 billion dollars, which would surpass Hurricane Katrina as the most expensive natural disaster in United States history.

When a plane crashes, aviation officials know exactly what to do to identify what happened, why, and to use this information to propose and implement changes to prevent future occurrences.

What about disasters? As a popular movie once asked, “Who ya gonna call?”

Unlike other nations — such as the United Kingdom — the U.S. has no systematic process for investigating disasters and applying lessons learned to future mitigation. Based on my considerable experience in the workings of the NTSB and more than 50 years of experience in the field of consulting, forecasting, and warning of extreme weather and its effects, I believe that Congress should create a U.S. Disaster Review Board (DRB) modeled after the extremely successful NTSB.

The NTSB was established by Congress originally in 1967 within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT). Seven years later, Congress determined the potential for conflicts of interest existed when the NTSB investigated other agencies of the DoT such as the Federal Aviation Administration.

So, Congress made the NTSB an independent federal agency.

The DRB would be staffed with experts in applied (as opposed to theoretical) meteorology, geology, oceanography, emergency response, and related fields, with an ability to appoint relevant experts to its investigatory panels as appropriate. The purview of the DRB would be on natural disasters including:

Hurricanes and tropical storms
Tornadoes and other severe convective storms such as derechoes and downbursts
Tsunamis
Floods
Wildfires
Earthquakes
Volcanic eruptions

Major disasters such as medical pandemics or technology related disasters (i.e., a radiation leak or chemical spill) will be beyond the purview of the DRB. Some of these human-created disasters are already handled by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.

One of the reasons for the NTSB’s high level of success is the underlying focus on transportation. If the DRB were to be assigned, say, pandemics that would require a signifcantly different focus and expertise than natural disasters – however, clearly the US also needs a capability to evaluate responses to pandemics as well.

In October, 2021, California Representative Katie Porter introduced a bi-partisan bill to create a Natural Disaster Safety Board which passed the House of Representatives (but not the Senate). Her bill provided $70 million for first-year expenses and specified that the Board must be either co-located with an existing government research facility (which I oppose because of the potential for conflicts of interest, similar to those of the early years of the NTSB) or a university campus.

To help insulate a DRB from politics and to make it equally accessible to the entire nation, the DRB should be headquartered outside the Beltway and the constantly shifting winds of politics Washington. My recommendation is that it be in the central United States to insure equal access to all parts of the nation and that potential conflicts of interest be considered, and avoided, when a site is chosen.

Like the NTSB, the DRB would be an independent agency. The NTSB has five Board Members, each nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate to serve 5-year terms. The President designates a Board Member as Chair and other a Vice Chair for 3-year terms. I recommend the same for the DRB. To their credit, both political parties have respected the essential requirement of the Board’s independence.

As America already has the U.S. National Climate Assessment, climate change would not be part of the Disaster Review Board’s charter.

When a major disaster presents itself, a “go team” from the DRB would quickly go to the site and the subject matter experts will collect perishable data. At the same time, weather forecasts and warnings, plus internal communications by local emergency management and related entities (if applicable) would be collected.

Once the disaster’s immediate effects have passed, interviews of people affected by and handling the disaster will be conducted. The DRB would have subpoena power but no law enforcement role. Like the NTSB, its findings will not be eligible to be entered into litigation, to encourage witnesses to be candid.

Similar to the NTSB’s procedures, the DRB’s would produce a preliminary analysis. The next step is public hearings will be held with additional evidence gathered. After, a final report will be published and distributed. If desired, testimony by the DRB would be provided to Congress, the president, and relevant agencies to share any recommended changes to federal policy or implementation.

A DRB will have two other important tasks:

Today, if an engineer is tasked with designing a new general aviation aircraft and wants to learn about, say, icing occurrences, accessing the NTSB’s database is easily accessible. There is no similar database or central repository of expertise in the field of disaster management. The DRB will be tasked with creating one.

In addition, the Disaster Review Board should also be tasked with independently keeping accuracy statistics of the National Weather Service’s storm forecasts and warnings. Currently, the NWS keeps its own statistics and investigates its own performance during disasters — creating an obvious conflict of interest.

While it will take time to make a major difference, an independent DRB is the only way we can begin to systematically understand the root causes of major disasters the United States and develop sensible options to reduce the chances of recurrence.

Consider: If the lessons that a Disaster Review Board might learn from the LA fires led to a reduction of just 2% of the economic losses caused by future fires, that would total billions of dollars. Given an annual budget of roughly $70 million, a DRB would produce a huge return on investment along with saving lives. Again, the NTSB provides a model to emulate.

The DRB provides a huge opportunity for Congress and the Trump Administration to engage in common-sense, bipartisan policy making — and is long overdue.

Comments welcomed!

The Honest Broker

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