The United States is currently navigating a period of unprecedented environmental volatility as a convergence of disparate natural disasters creates a phenomenon experts describe as "compound events." Over the past week, the nation has witnessed a harrowing tableau of climate-driven crises: thick plumes of Canadian wildfire smoke have descended upon the Midwest and Northeast, plunging major metropolitan areas into a localized twilight; extreme, record-breaking heat waves have gripped the Atlantic seaboard; and catastrophic flooding has once again decimated communities in central Texas. While each of these events would be taxing in isolation, their simultaneous occurrence is exposing deep structural vulnerabilities in the American emergency management system, exacerbated by recent and significant budgetary contractions at the federal level....