The very first federal emergency response was The Congressional Act of 1803 under President Thomas Jefferson responding to a devastating fire in Portsmouth, NH. Since then, and even up until the present day, there has been more than a hundred separate bills to deal with emergencies and disasters (the Chicago Fire, San Francisco Earthquake, the Galveston Hurricane, The Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act , the Pets Act, the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act, etc.). In 1932 President Herbert Hoover created the Reconstruction Finance Cooperation to cooperate with states and local agencies in emergency response.Congress finally passed a comprehensive federal disaster program in 1950. FEMA was created in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter at the request of the governors when it was discovered during the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster that the 100 agencies responsible for emergency management could not effectively respond. .

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https://www.disasterassistance.gov/
http://www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/index.shtm
http://www.fema.gov/plan/prevent/earthquake/state_contacts.shtm#ut
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