Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis

by Samantha Montano

Overview

Part memoir, part expert analysis, Disasterology is a passionate and personal account of a country in crisis—one unprepared to deal with the disasters of today and those looming in our future.

With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case – disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.

In Disasterology, Dr. Montano, a disaster researcher, brings readers with her on an eye-opening journey through some of our worst disasters, helping readers make sense of what really happened from a emergency management perspective. She explains why we aren’t doing enough to prevent or prepare for disasters, the critical role of media, and how our approach to recovery was not designed to serve marginalized communities. Now that climate change is contributing to the disruption of ecosystems and worsening disasters, Dr. Montano offers a preview of what will happen to our communities if we don’t take aggressive, immediate action. In a section devoted to the COVID-19 pandemic, what is thus far our generation’s most deadly disaster, she casts light on the many decisions made behind closed doors that failed to protect the public.

A deeply moving and timely narrative that draws on Dr. Montano's first-hand experience in emergency management, Disasterology is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how our country handles disasters, and how we can better face them together.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780778311034
Publisher:	Park Row Books
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	631,951
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

DR. SAMANTHA MONTANO is currently an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. She holds a BS in psychology from Loyola University New Orleans and a MS and PhD in emergency management from North Dakota State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

Part 1 Recovery: The Second Disaster 25

The Lady in the Purple Outfit 33

A Heckuva Job! 39

Do-It-Yourself Recovery 50

Green Dots 67

Bootstraps 76

Commemorative Snow Globes 89

Part 2 Mitigation: Preventing Disaster 95

Creating Disaster 101

The Fight for Camp Ellis 109

Disaster Denialism 119

A Reactive Approach 125

The Future of Camp Ellis 132

Part 3 Response: The Disaster 139

A Quick Response 145

A Warning 151

A Planned Response 159

An Unplanned Response 165

Up to Our Bottoms in Alligators 173

Part 4 Damage Control 179

Climate Change Is Already Here 183

Facing the Consequences 197

"A Real Catastrophe Like Katrina" 204

Part 5 Preparedness: Anticipating Disaster 219

Surviving on Checklists & Go-Bags 227

Designing an Emergency Management System 238

Planning for Walruses 251

How Not to Manage a Pandemic 263

Part 6 Disaster Justice 279

Creating a Movement for Disaster Justice 284

Working Toward Disaster Justice 293

On Finding Courage 303

Epilogue 311

Acknowledgments 317

Endnotes 319

Index 363

Editorial Reviews

05/10/2021

Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, debuts with a trenchant if uneven look at communities that are fighting for survival in the face of climate change. Montano’s passion stems from a formative trip she took as a teenager in 2005 to help New Orleanians rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina—she returned there for college and was aghast that, years after the storm, the recovery effort was incomplete and relied on “voluntourism” groups to rebuild the city. Montano argues that America’s national emergency system is based on a model of “limited intervention,” and amounts to “cobbled-together, underfunded system isn’t working.” As a fix, she calls for “disaster justice” and encourages readers to get involved in politics and push for emergency management to be seen as a priority for politicians. Her indignation is paired with comprehensive research, but the narrative often gets bogged down in repetitively cataloging the author’s experiences in, among other places, Louisiana, coastal Maine, and Texas—so much so that the disaster victims themselves feel conspicuously absent. Despite these missing voices, this is a great primer on the deficiencies of the country’s crisis response apparatus. Agent: Tess Callero, Europa Content. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2021

Montano debuts with a compelling account of her career: from a teen volunteering in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After witnessing firsthand the devastation in New Orleans, Montano sought to improve the way the U.S. handled increasingly frequent natural and man-made disasters. Her memoir takes readers through a history of federal responses to some of the earliest national crises, including the 1927 Mississippi River flood, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression; she notes these crises' disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. More recently, FEMA was established in 1979 to handle all phases of emergency management. When FEMA was placed under the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11, it muddied the mission and slowed response time, Montano writes. Turning her focus to the COVID-19 pandemic, she notes that the George W. Bush administration foresaw the disastrous potential of a pandemic and began preparations, but were those early efforts enough? VERDICT Linking climate change to the increasingly destructive natural disasters facing the nation, Montano's part-memoir, part-analysis book is an urgent call to take action.—Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens

Library Journal

2021-06-02
An expert in disaster management explains her specialty.

As a fiercely public-spirited teenager, Montano, who teaches emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, joined volunteers pouring into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although numerous writers have described the misery that she witnessed there, readers will encounter a few jolts. However, some may be surprised to learn that, more than 15 years later, volunteers still travel to New Orleans to work; although commercial and wealthy areas are up and running, poor, largely Black neighborhoods remain blighted. The experience inspired Montano to obtain an advanced degree in disaster management, and she delivers plenty of insights into 21st-century catastrophes. She writes that while Hollywood disasters happen fast, “every disaster you have yet to experience in your lifetime has already begun. The threads of risk are spun out over decades, even centuries, until they crescendo into disaster.” In the past decade, we have experienced record-strength hurricanes, forest fires, and floods. These follow from the burning of fossil fuels, so climate change is far from a future problem. Like countless scientists before her, she notes that “it’s not a question of if we will experience the consequences of climate change, but rather how bad it will be.” The author offers lucid accounts of how people respond to disasters (they rarely panic—Hollywood gets it wrong again—but rush to help) and how expert disaster management can mitigate future disasters, relieve suffering when they happen, and manage future recovery. Although Katrina is center stage, Montano illustrates her points with other disasters, most of which received inadequate responses. Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, was far more damaging than Katrina, and government response was slower. It’s hardly news that the Covid-19 pandemic was handled poorly, but Montano contributes more disheartening details. Most books on disaster end with hope, but the author will have none of it. She exhorts readers to take action but doesn’t claim to see light at the end of the tunnel.

Painful but essential reading.

Kirkus Reviews

Dr. Montano provides a compelling and important view of the complexity of disasters. Through deeply personal experiences interwoven with rigorous scientific evidence, she demonstrates that disaster resilience is the responsibility of all aspects of society, but impacts those at society’s margins deepest. This is a must read for scholars, practitioners and individuals looking to understand, and ultimately break our myopic understanding of disasters and to work towards a more resilient future for all.”
—Jeff Schlegelmilch, author of Rethinking Readiness and director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute


"A fascinating on-point analysis of our nation's current response to the ongoing climate crisis, and what must be done. Dr. Montano's on-the-ground observations also made the work interesting and relatable."
—Sandy Rosenthal, author of four-time award-winning book Words Whispered in Water


"Through both her personal experiences and extensive research in emergency management, Dr. Montano guides us from disaster to disaster, chronicling not only what happened in the moment of landfall for hurricanes, ice storms, and floods, but how disasters have reverberations in communities for years to come. This is an essential read for understanding how we got to where we are as a country, and where we might go next."
—Devi Lockwood, author of 1,001 Voices on Climate Change

"Montano debuts with a compelling account of her career. Linking climate change to the increasingly desctructive natural disasters facing the nation, Montano's part-memoir, part-analysis book is an urgent call to take action." —Library Journal

"[Montano] calls for 'disaster justice' and encourages readers to get involved in politics and push for emergency management to be seen as a priority for politicians. This is a great primer on the deficiencies of the country's crisit response aparatus." —Publishers Weekly

"Like countless scientists before her, she notes that “it’s not a question of if we will experience the consequences of climate change, but rather how bad it will be.” —Kirkus Reviews

"Is humankind prepared to manage the consequences of climate change? That remains to be seen. Is Montano giving up? No. She will continue to fight for “disaster justice” and a betterprepared world." —Booklist

From the Publisher