Amid a Barrage of Climate Calamities, "Disasterologist" Samantha Montano Puts the Focus on Disaster [In]Justice

UPDATED post show: Given this year’s continuing string of unnatural disasters, a late-season hurricane poised to be a threat in the Gulf of Mexico, and the incoming Trump administration seemingly deadset on disrupting the Federal Emergency Management Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it’s high time to visit with a disaster policy expert.

So I reached out to my favorite “disasterologist,” Samantha L. Montano of Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

Watch here or watch AND SHARE on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter at @revkin).

We explored the politicized attacks on FEMA, and recent grotesque missteps by a now-fired employee (which I tweeted about quite a bit).

We also explored Montano’s timely push for a ”disaster justice” movement. She sees public pressure as vital to driving new approaches to disaster risk reduction and management as climate extremes and community vulnerabilities combine to worsen calamities like Hurricane Helene.

Here’s a concise summary of her concept of disaster justice from an earlier Sustain What show on disaster readiness and responsiveness with my former Columbia colleague Jeff Schlegelmilch:

I’ve been a big fan of Montano for years, particularly because of her passion for testing the wide span of media paths, from books to TikTok to integrating Twitter into teaching a course on Hollywood’s myth-amplifying approach to disaster storytelling during COVID. Even there, she didn’t restrict her output to X. She wrote an article for Writers Digest’s screenwriter-focused publication breaking down best and worst practices. And she recently co-authored an academic paper on this teaching method: Disasterologists at the Movies: An Innovative Use of Twitter for Disaster Education. (Lead author, John Carr, tweeted a fantastic distillation of his related work for his doctorate.)

And

Samantha Montano

is here on Substack, where I hope you subscribe to her monthly roundup of disaster news and nuggets:

Read her book: Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis. To get a feel for her writing and wisdom, you can start with a gripping excerpt posted by Amazon, in which Montano describes her experiences confronting the catastrophe wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. As she explains, the long devastating shadow the flooding cast on thousands of lives put in harm’s way was not so much a result of the water as of racism, poverty, corruption and other drivers of loss in such events:

She’s doing the brave work of testing out TikTok. Here’s a useful fresh explainer of the profession and field called “emergency management”:

@samlmontanoThere should be no such thing as a part time emergency manager in the year 2024. Be serious, please! #disaster #disasterrelief #emergencymanagement #fema

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More reading and watching (Montano is here):

There are no natural disasters

This deserves repeating and repeating. Here’s a tight excerpt from a fabulous short explainer by YouTuber Miriam Nielsen in which Montano distills things perfectly:

Rethinking Readiness Amid a Pandemic and Climate Crisis