Last month marked 20 years since Hurricane Katrina, and the devastation that storm had across the Gulf South is still reverberating throughout the country. Today I’m talking with Dr. Samantha Montano, a professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy and co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice. In her words, “We can honor the people who have survived and are trying to recover their lives by ensuring that we don't let that happen again.”
Samantha wrote a great book called Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis. And, because climate change is making disasters more frequent and intense and we need to figure out how to deal with that, I interviewed her for my book What If We Get It Right?, wherein she dropped gems.💎
Now, amidst a continuing string of disastrous storms and wildfires, there are massive cuts at FEMA. We are clearly getting this very wrong. So I wanted to check back in with Samantha to understand what’s really going on at FEMA under the Trump Administration 🧐 (from the horror of “Alligator Alcatraz” to dealing with cyberattacks), whether we’re more prepared for hurricanes now than we were 20 years ago (spoiler: nope!), and what we can do (individually and collectively) to up our preparedness game.🙋🏽♀️
Alright Earthlings 🌎, let’s get into it.
“Hurricanes are not surprises. If we can't even plan for the things we know are going to happen, how do we plan for the things we don't know are gonna happen?” — Dr. Samantha Montano
CALLS TO ACTION from Samantha:
☎️ Call your members of Congress — (202) 224-3121: Congress doesn’t get many calls supporting FEMA, so it is helpful. Let them know: (1) we need funding for FEMA, (2) we need to hire more people at FEMA, (3) we need to remove FEMA from under the Dept of Homeland Security and re-establish it as a standalone agency, and (4) we need a qualified, Senate-confirmed emergency manager leading the agency.
👩🏽💻 Sign up for emergency alerts!: Absurdly, there is no centralized way to do this. So, embark on a tiny research project: google your town/city name + “emergency management.” Then find your county and state alerts too. This way you can be informed and ready to be a good neighbor.
Advocate for local resources: Look into your local emergency management agency. Do they have funding? Do they have staff? Do they have a qualified person leading? Be the advocate in your community for emergency management — they don't have a lot of advocates at the local level, so it matters.
Notes:
If you're enjoying the show, please help others find us — follow ✅, rate ✅, review ✅, tell your crew! ✅
If you are captivated by Samantha, rightly so, keep up with her work via her Substack newsletter: Disasterology, a monthly dispatch of interesting and/or important disaster things.
This podcast is ad-free thanks to the support of Future Being, a grant making and special project studio, which supports the healing of our planet and the safeguarding of biological and cultural diversity.
This episode was produced and edited by Gabby Bulgarelli, and me, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, with help from associate producer Jenisha Shrestha.
And if you’re new here, maybe pop into the back catalog and check out our previous episodes. A few dozen hours of sweet podcast conversations with incredible guests await you.
Alright, Earthlings. See you next week. xo
P.s. The winners 📚 of last week’s prize!
These 3 readers shared what they found most interesting in last week’s conversation with
, and I’ll be sending each of them a copy of Bill’s book, Here Comes the Sun. Drum roll 🥁🥁🥁- — “What was most impactful for me was the statistic that a truckload of minerals mined for solar panels has 500x the energy potential of a same sized truckload of coal. We need more apples to apples comparisons to refute bad propaganda.”
- — “The point that Bill made about the economic uncertainty of being hamstrung by America's quixotic vision of energy dominance indefinitely versus being able to make a one-time payment to China for a more sustainable (in more ways than one!) energy future was quietly revelatory, yet so clear.”
- — “I especially appreciated the talk about permitting at the end.... I know some states have better incentives, and I think we need to work harder to make solar more affordable to more of us.”
If you missed my convo with Bill, and are now enticed: listen here. And, winners, please DM me with your mailing address. 💌
