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Speaker 2: Okay, it's room temperature cheese, which you always forget is
Speaker 2: better than called cheese. Ali ward back with another episode
Speaker 2: of Ologies. You know every week I worry will I
Speaker 2: make a good enough episode for you? Am I gonna
Speaker 2: bungle it? This one is a disaster, and I'm happy
Speaker 2: to report it's a disaster in the best way. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna get a few formalities out of the way up top.
Speaker 2: I want to thank the patrons at Paton dot com
Speaker 2: for making the show possible. For as little as a
Speaker 2: buck a month, you can donate. Thank you to everyone
Speaker 2: wearing Ologies Merch from ologiesmerch dot com. Thanks to everyone
Speaker 2: who tells a friend or a lover oh about the
Speaker 2: show and who rates it and subscribes to keep it
Speaker 2: up in the charts, and most importantly perhaps reviews, because
Speaker 2: you know, on days when I'm eating peanut butter and
Speaker 2: hotel room for dinner, I read them and I smile
Speaker 2: like a creep with a warm heart, such as, for example,
Speaker 2: this one by tumbler Mobile, who says not to be dramatic,
Speaker 2: but listening to ologies has been helping me slowly climb
Speaker 2: out of the depressive funk I've been in for the
Speaker 2: past six months. Thank you, dad Ward for being curious
Speaker 2: and insightful and socio Kathy, Hello to your inner curious
Speaker 2: science Kid from my Inner Curious Science Kid and the
Speaker 2: rest of the ologite. So thank you for your reviews everyone.
Speaker 2: I read them all. I read all of them. Proof.
Speaker 2: There you go. Okay, disasterrology, let's get into it. This
Speaker 2: one has got to be made up right, No, shut
Speaker 2: your mouth, how Dario, It's in fact a very real
Speaker 2: and as it turns out, it's a pretty vital one.
Speaker 2: So this field of study was pioneered by doctor Samuel
Speaker 2: Henry Prince pretty much after the nineteen seventeen disaster in Halifax,
Speaker 2: Nova Scotia. Who I just read about this, in which
Speaker 2: a French vessel full of gunpowder caught fire, exploded in
Speaker 2: a harbor. It leveled buildings for half a mile, sent
Speaker 2: a shock wave that instantly killed sixteen hundred people and
Speaker 2: injured nearly one thousand more. Three hundred folks later died
Speaker 2: from their injuries. This was a catastrophe, so huge, so tragic.
Speaker 2: It wiped out twenty two percent of residents, including a
Speaker 2: neighboring Nigma community which perished in the resulting tsunami caused
Speaker 2: by this blast. This was huge, So doctor sam Henry Prince,
Speaker 2: a sociologist, began studying why disasters happened, how to mitigate them,
Speaker 2: how to respond and recover. So one hundred years later
Speaker 2: and there are now whole research arms dedicated to these fields.
Speaker 2: And when I first heard that desiger astrology was a thing,
Speaker 2: I want to sit down and I want to talk
Speaker 2: to someone who, as their life's work, focuses on making
Speaker 2: death and chaos into prevention and recovery. So I googled
Speaker 2: disasterrology and the first one million results were about a
Speaker 2: san Diego pop punk band called Pierce the Veil and
Speaker 2: their song Disasterrology, which seems to be from what I
Speaker 2: can surmise about getting wasted and having girls crawl out
Speaker 2: from under your bed. However, there is a very sweet,
Speaker 2: screechy refrain that goes, if it's the end of the world,
Speaker 2: you and me should spend the rest of it in love.
Speaker 2: And you know it's not wholly inaccurate. I thought this
Speaker 2: episode would focus on you're splitting havoc discomforts like a
Speaker 2: Pierce the Veil song, but really it left me with
Speaker 2: a faith in humanity and love and neurobiology. So this
Speaker 2: ologist you're about to meet has a BS in psychology
Speaker 2: and an MS and a PhD in emergency management from
Speaker 2: North Dakota State University. She is an assistant professor of
Speaker 2: Emergency Management and Disaster Science at University of Nebraska, Omaha, y'all.
Speaker 2: Her website is Disasterrology disaster dash ology dot com. She
Speaker 2: has the domain name I had to meet her so
Speaker 2: on a rainy April afternoon, I traveled thousands of miles
Speaker 2: from home to meet her on campus at North Dakota
Speaker 2: State University, and we pulled up a few chairs and
Speaker 2: dug into what is a disaster? What is a catastrophe?
Speaker 2: What risks do responders take? What are some of the
Speaker 2: worst historical disasters? What can we do to protect ourselves?
Speaker 2: Do doomsday preppers know what's up? Which disaster movies suck
Speaker 2: the most? Should we be afraid of the big one?
Speaker 2: Should you donate money or get your ass down to
Speaker 2: a hazard zone? How much looting happens when the shit
Speaker 2: hits the fan? And why keeping calm is one of
Speaker 2: the safest things you can do. So bat down the hashes,
Speaker 2: get cozy in the cellar for emergency management professor and
Speaker 2: professional disasterlogist, doctor Samantha Montano. Of all of all the episodes,
Speaker 2: I feel like this is gonna be the hardest one
Speaker 2: to pay because you're like, oh, yeah, there's there's some charity.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: When I found out you were in North Dakota, I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I'm coming for you. And now, how
Speaker 2: long have you been a disasterrologist.
Speaker 4: Well, it depends on how you define disasterrologists. I've had
Speaker 4: my doctoral degree in emergency management for two years now,
Speaker 4: and then before that, I was in grad school for
Speaker 4: five years and I did four years of disaster related
Speaker 4: work before that what.
Speaker 2: Is disaster related work entails.
Speaker 4: So I got my start in disasters right after Hurricane
Speaker 4: Katrina and the levee failure in New Orleans. I was
Speaker 4: in high school at the time, so.
Speaker 2: Side note, this was in August of two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: and Hurricane Katrina was a Category five storm that hit
Speaker 2: Florida and Louisiana. So New Orleans, which sits below sea level,
Speaker 2: was protected by miles of levees and floodwalls in which
Speaker 2: over fifty breaches and major leaks occurred, leaving eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the city flooded after the hurricane, so over eighteen
Speaker 2: hundred lives were lost. Sam who's originally from Portland, Maine,
Speaker 2: went to New Orleans in the.
Speaker 4: Aftermath, and there was like a group from my high
Speaker 4: school going down to New Orleans to help gut homes
Speaker 4: and rebuild, and so I went on that trip to
Speaker 4: volunteer for a week, and I kind of just got
Speaker 4: what we call the disaster bug, And so I ended
Speaker 4: up moving to New Orleans when I graduated, and I
Speaker 4: lived there for four years doing all different kinds of
Speaker 4: recovery work with different nonprofits in the city. And then
Speaker 4: it kind of just spiraled from there. While I was there,
Speaker 4: the BP oil disaster happened along the coast, and so
Speaker 4: I did some work with that in different organizations.
Speaker 3: Then I took a group of volunteers to.
Speaker 4: Drop in Missouri after their tornado, and I just kind
Speaker 4: of kept going until I went to grad school.
Speaker 2: And when you say that you got the disaster bug,
Speaker 2: as they say, you're not the only person who calls
Speaker 2: it the disaster bug.
Speaker 4: No, I don't know who started that, but it's definitely
Speaker 4: a saying, particularly among like practitioners and people who do
Speaker 4: a lot of volunteering during and after disasters.
Speaker 2: What is the disaster bug?
Speaker 3: It's just kind of this.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's like this like draw You're like
Speaker 4: being drawn towards disasters when they happen. I think you
Speaker 4: just notice them more frequently you especially when you are
Speaker 4: going to a disaster during the actual response and into
Speaker 4: like the very early days of recovery.
Speaker 3: It's like this very.
Speaker 4: Kind of unique feeling within a community that's going through that.
Speaker 4: And so getting the disaster bug is kind of like
Speaker 4: like it, not liking that feeling, but kind of being
Speaker 4: drawn towards that.
Speaker 2: Okay, side, don't I couldn't find the exact origin or
Speaker 2: first usage of this phrase, but it's definitely in parlance
Speaker 2: in the disaster community. So in one twenty seventeen disastrology
Speaker 2: workshop titled Preparing for the Future of Disaster Health Volunteerism,
Speaker 2: Sean Casey, who's an acting director of an emergency response unit,
Speaker 2: said that many volunteers quote get the bug to complete
Speaker 2: more disaster response deployments. This did not satisfy me, though, So,
Speaker 2: like a woodland creature, I decided to burrow into Google,
Speaker 2: screaming why but why the bug? Into an ever deeper trench,
Speaker 2: and I found the research of UCLA social psychologist doctor
Speaker 2: Shelley E. Taylor, who for decades has studied the role
Speaker 2: of the hormone oxytocin in stress response. And she theorizes
Speaker 2: that oxytocin leads us to quote, tend, and befriend in
Speaker 2: times of chaos or disaster. So the disaster book, it
Speaker 2: is a thing and it may also be chemical. Is
Speaker 2: there something about the unity that happens after a big
Speaker 2: event like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Rebecca Solnet has written an entire book about this. Actually,
Speaker 4: it's called a Paradise Built in Hell, And that's Basically
Speaker 4: the title of that book is what is kind of
Speaker 4: describing that feeling that a community goes through. It's like
Speaker 4: this paradise because there is this sense of unity and
Speaker 4: despite what Hollywood movies tell us about disasters, people are
Speaker 4: actually really pro social and come together when disasters happen,
Speaker 4: and so there's like the sense of unity within the
Speaker 4: community that kind of feels like a bit of a paradise.
Speaker 4: But then, of course there's this disaster happening around you,
Speaker 4: and so that is the hell that this paradise is
Speaker 4: happening within.
Speaker 2: Were you ever druk by that mister Rogers.
Speaker 3: Quote, Yeah, the one about the helpers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, always look for the helpers were there will always
Speaker 5: be helpers, you know, even just on the sidelines. That's
Speaker 5: why I think that if news programs could make a
Speaker 5: conscious effort of showing rescue teams, of showing who medical people,
Speaker 5: anybody who is coming into a place where there's a tragedy,
Speaker 5: to be to be sure that they include that, because
Speaker 5: if you look for the helpers, you'll know that there's hope.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: I think about that quote a lot whenever a disaster
Speaker 4: happens and it's shared around. I mean, that's where that
Speaker 4: quote comes from, is that no matter how bad a
Speaker 4: situation is, there's always people there that are helping in
Speaker 4: various ways.
Speaker 2: And so that's kind of what your work entails, is
Speaker 2: helping and figuring out how to mobilize people to help more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So within the world of disasters, the part that I
Speaker 4: study is emergency management, So it's how we actually manage
Speaker 4: the disasters, Like how do we make sure that the
Speaker 4: right people are in the right places at the right time.
Speaker 4: How do we do things to prevent disasters from happening
Speaker 4: in the first place.
Speaker 3: What do we need to do ahead.
Speaker 4: Of time to make sure response and recovery to disasters
Speaker 4: goes well. How do we get communities recovered as quickly
Speaker 4: as possible?
Speaker 2: How do you define disaster and how do you define
Speaker 2: your role as a disasterrologist. I know you weren't the
Speaker 2: first person to necessarily utter the phrase, but maybe the
Speaker 2: first to take ownership of it since like the eighteen
Speaker 2: fifties or something.
Speaker 4: So there is is shocking, but there technically is not
Speaker 4: a consensus on a definition of disaster.
Speaker 3: But why not?
Speaker 4: There's like some different ones out there that people are
Speaker 4: kind of drawn to when I explain it, I think
Speaker 4: the easiest way to think about it is that it
Speaker 4: is when a hazard, meaning something that poses a threat
Speaker 4: to us, interacts with us, our communities, the things we
Speaker 4: care about to the point that we are overwhelmed, and
Speaker 4: so at that point that hazard has become a hazard event,
Speaker 4: and then hazard events kind of follow along. This spectrum,
Speaker 4: is one way to think about it. So you have
Speaker 4: emergencies on the low end, disasters in the middle, and
Speaker 4: catastrophes on the high end.
Speaker 2: So it kind of fades up like an ombre of horrors.
Speaker 4: And so in emergency management we study all three.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they kind of follow along this spectrum.
Speaker 2: So a catastrophe is worse than a disaster. Yes, So
Speaker 2: it's funny because we think of those words only in
Speaker 2: hyperbole of like I got a lot, it was a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: How do you feel about the show Catastrophe? Are you like,
Speaker 2: calm down quick aside? I love the show Catastrophe. It
Speaker 2: is wonderful.
Speaker 3: No, it's fine.
Speaker 4: Words have different meanings in different contexts, so okay, it's fine.
Speaker 2: As long as you know they're hyperbolic. Right, I have
Speaker 2: called my hair a disaster. So many times in my apartment,
Speaker 2: a disaster so many times, and it's a little different.
Speaker 2: And so when it comes to your role from a
Speaker 2: professional sense, how do you get a degree in it?
Speaker 2: How is that even structured? How are you teaching? It's
Speaker 2: the what's the academic aspect of it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Sure, So I did not know anything about emergency management.
Speaker 4: I did not know it was something you could get
Speaker 4: a degree in at all.
Speaker 2: Samantha did her undergrad at Loyola University in New Orleans,
Speaker 2: and one of her professors had gone to the University
Speaker 2: of Delaware, which is home to the Disaster Research Center.
Speaker 2: This is a real place, the Disaster Research Center.
Speaker 4: And so when I demonstrated this interest in disasters, she
Speaker 4: recommended that I look into grad school as an option,
Speaker 4: and so I started looking into emergency management programs for
Speaker 4: my master's degree, and there are at.
Speaker 3: That time, there was, you know, a.
Speaker 4: Bunch around the country of kind of varying quality, and
Speaker 4: so I kind of just picked what I thought were
Speaker 4: the top three and applied to them, and then I
Speaker 4: went with the one that gave me the most money,
Speaker 4: which was NBSU, And that is how I ended up
Speaker 4: in Fargo, North Dakota, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of disasters come through here.
Speaker 4: Tornadoes, yeah, we do have a tornado risk, but mostly
Speaker 4: it's the flooding from the Red River.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. So when it comes to disasters, what
Speaker 2: are some of the most common ones that start as
Speaker 2: hazards and end up disasters?
Speaker 4: So flooding is the most common one really around the world.
Speaker 2: Yep, really, I didn't realize that so quick. Aside, how
Speaker 2: many floods happen a year? What are we talking? So
Speaker 2: I live in a place where you have to remember
Speaker 2: to water a cactus. So I looked it up and
Speaker 2: a weather dot com article from twenty eighteen was titled
Speaker 2: not at all rosalie a concerning trend flooding deaths have
Speaker 2: increased in the US the last few years, and it
Speaker 2: said the average number of flood deaths used to be
Speaker 2: eighty six This is for the last several decades, and
Speaker 2: then it jumped to ninety five flooding deaths a year
Speaker 2: in the last ten years, and then over one hundred
Speaker 2: deaths a year in the past few years. So like floodwaters,
Speaker 2: it's on the rise now. In India right now, just
Speaker 2: this very monsoon season, one point two million people have
Speaker 2: been displaced and evacuated with over two hundred casualties. So anyway,
Speaker 2: floods not a good scene and what can be done
Speaker 2: about that?
Speaker 3: So there are a lot of things.
Speaker 4: So this is one of the key things we do
Speaker 4: in emergency management is look at what is what are
Speaker 4: the factors that are actually leading to this disaster happening,
Speaker 4: Because once you identify those factors, then you can start
Speaker 4: to try to do something about those factors. So in
Speaker 4: terms of flooding, there is a ton that we can do.
Speaker 4: Some of those things are related to kind of addressing
Speaker 4: the hazard itself. So mitigating climate change itself is going
Speaker 4: to pull back on some of that hazard risk in
Speaker 4: terms of flooding in various ways. So that is like
Speaker 4: one way you can drive at the cause of disaster.
Speaker 2: It's like fix climate change, easy peasy. But on an
Speaker 2: individual level, if you live somewhere that's say prone to flooding,
Speaker 2: you can raise your house, Samantha says, you can put
Speaker 2: up a floodwall or otherwise modify your own property. You
Speaker 2: can also go to Craigslist buy a helicopter and park
Speaker 2: it on your roof. Ps I just looked up how
Speaker 2: much does the helicopter cost and it's about half a
Speaker 2: million dollars. But if you don't mind a single seater
Speaker 2: without doors that looks like it's made out of plastic,
Speaker 2: you can find them on aerow Trader for less than
Speaker 2: a used audiwould cost. You probably need to take a
Speaker 2: how to fly a chopper glass first, so it's probably
Speaker 2: like harder than a stick shift, but I'm not a doctor.
Speaker 3: And then also, we can do things at a community level.
Speaker 4: So obviously communities build levies, build other kind of like
Speaker 4: bigger infrastructure projects. There's kind of a push now back
Speaker 4: more towards more natural types of mitigate, like you know,
Speaker 4: revitalizing wetlands and whatnot. You can do home buyouts. That's
Speaker 4: something we've done in Fargo along the river where you
Speaker 4: buy out people's homes and then turn that back into
Speaker 4: green space or a park or something so that when
Speaker 4: it does flood, it's not too big of a deal,
Speaker 4: it doesn't cause too much damage.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, lots of different things you can do.
Speaker 2: And what was your experience like in the aftermath of Katrina.
Speaker 2: I know that is a huge question. How would you
Speaker 2: quantify that? Because if it was a hurricane caused a flood, Yeah,
Speaker 2: how do.
Speaker 4: You Yeah, So when you go to New Orleans and
Speaker 4: you mentioned Katrina, you'll hear New Orleanians say something along
Speaker 4: the lines of Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure. And
Speaker 4: what they are getting at there is that, yes, there
Speaker 4: was a hurricane that was the initial trigger of everything
Speaker 4: that happened, but it was that hurricane interacting with a
Speaker 4: levee system that hadn't been maintained that and not maintained
Speaker 4: and not built correctly that led to the actual flood
Speaker 4: of the city. So this also gets at this other
Speaker 4: kind of common myth in the disaster world. We have
Speaker 4: this term natural disaster that we use all the time,
Speaker 4: but really disasters aren't natural. They're caused by decisions that
Speaker 4: we make and how we build and where we live,
Speaker 4: the policies that we have that are driving these things.
Speaker 3: And so we can.
Speaker 4: Have natural hazards, right, the hurricane itself maybe natural. The
Speaker 4: tornado itself is natural, but that point where it interacts
Speaker 4: with us, then it becomes you know, we're involved in
Speaker 4: that now. And so it's kind of if you look
Speaker 4: back at the way we've thought about disasters in the past,
Speaker 4: like way back we think about them as acts of God.
Speaker 4: Then we switch more to this idea of natural disaster,
Speaker 4: still removing human responsibility from those disasters that have happened.
Speaker 4: And so now there's this push among disaster researchers and
Speaker 4: others to kind of like pull back on that and
Speaker 4: acknowledge our our role in causing those disasters.
Speaker 2: In that it wasn't planned for properly, which then I
Speaker 2: guess would switch the hand to having more control in
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 3: Of how bad they are, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: How bad the impact is? Right? Did you ever were
Speaker 2: you ever raised with Sunday school like Noah's ark in
Speaker 2: the notion of floods? Like, was that something that stuck
Speaker 2: with you?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 3: I wasn't. We weren't religious growing up.
Speaker 4: But people often joke that Noah was the first emergency manager.
Speaker 2: So a huge vessel on the high seas wherein you
Speaker 2: are expected to bone a lot. So Noah, he was
Speaker 2: also the world's first cruise ship captain. When it comes
Speaker 2: to your work, how much of it is distribute water
Speaker 2: and getting places for people to stay, and how much
Speaker 2: of it is on the front end where you're trying
Speaker 2: to enact policy change and make sure that people are
Speaker 2: better prepared.
Speaker 4: So in the US, the way that generally we deal
Speaker 4: with disasters is that we're really reactive, So we wait
Speaker 4: until a disaster happens and then we're reacting to it.
Speaker 4: That's not good. We need to be proactive. We need
Speaker 4: to be doing things ahead of time.
Speaker 2: Okay, get ready for a list of four things. This
Speaker 2: is the base of disasterrology, the order through the chaos.
Speaker 4: So this might help we split disasters up into four phases.
Speaker 4: So you have mitigation, where you're doing things to prevent
Speaker 4: disasters from happening. You have preparedness where you're doing things
Speaker 4: to get ready to deal with the response and recovery.
Speaker 4: Then you have a response, which is that like seventy
Speaker 4: two hours where you're doing life saving tasks. That's probably
Speaker 4: like what you think of when you hear about disasters.
Speaker 4: And then there's the recovery process, which depending on the situation,
Speaker 4: can go on for months, years, decades.
Speaker 2: So mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
Speaker 4: So in emergency management we deal in all four phases.
Speaker 4: And obviously that is a lot, so it kind of
Speaker 4: depends on what community you're working in and like what
Speaker 4: the situation is. But emergency managers are doing a lot
Speaker 4: of their work in preparedness, They're writing plans, they are
Speaker 4: doing initiatives to help individuals in the community prepare for disaster. Right,
Speaker 4: they're doing all of those, like getting themselves ready for
Speaker 4: response and recovery, the actual distribution of water and getting
Speaker 4: people into shelters. All of that happens in this very
Speaker 4: small window of time again, like seventy two hours, sometimes
Speaker 4: a week, sometimes a little bit longer, and then you
Speaker 4: move on into recovery.
Speaker 2: Were you always very helpful as a kid? Were you
Speaker 2: always how many siblings do you have?
Speaker 4: I'm the oldest of for okay, all right, and I'm
Speaker 4: much older than them, So yeah, were.
Speaker 2: You always putting out figurative fires?
Speaker 3: And yeah, you could say that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So Has it always kind of been your nature
Speaker 2: to help out when you can?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. Side note, is this an isolated incident or
Speaker 2: do firstborns get more shit done? And just like helping people?
Speaker 2: I read up on one study done of men in
Speaker 2: the Swedish military and researcher doctor Sandra E. Black was
Speaker 2: looking into if birth order had an impact on non
Speaker 2: cognitive abilities like leadership skills, and she writes in one
Speaker 2: article about it, higher scores were assigned to those subjects
Speaker 2: considered emotionally stable, persistent, socially outgoing, willing to assume responsibility,
Speaker 2: and able to take initiative. She crunched the numbers. Later
Speaker 2: born children had systematically lower scores onto all of those attributes. Now,
Speaker 2: firstborn children tend to have jobs that require more sociability, leadership, ability, conscientiousness, agreeableness,
Speaker 2: emotional stability, extraversion, and openness. So firstborn kids tend to
Speaker 2: have important jobs like CEOs and lawmakers and politicians. What's
Speaker 2: doctor Sandra E. Black's steak in the game, you wonder, Oh,
Speaker 2: she's a firstborn. Hm hm huh. So I will now
Speaker 2: be pursuing my PhD on the thesis. So what if
Speaker 2: I'm the last born? Maybe I was too busy getting
Speaker 2: dunked on and being tricked into giving my toys away
Speaker 2: when my sisters lied to me. So I became the
Speaker 2: family buffoon to escape persecution. And that is why I
Speaker 2: work from pajamas writing content about lizard dicks.
Speaker 1: Okay, girls like swarms of lizards.
Speaker 2: Right, What is it like when you I think when
Speaker 2: people think about disaster recovery, they do think of that
Speaker 2: small window of time when you're on the ground and
Speaker 2: you're seeing things and you're helping out. Do you find
Speaker 2: that some people think that they're cut out maybe for
Speaker 2: this work, and it's just too difficult or too emotional
Speaker 2: for them.
Speaker 3: Maybe.
Speaker 4: I think, going back to that disaster bug thing, I
Speaker 4: think that people who like say they've caught the disaster
Speaker 4: bug are the people who are cut out for it.
Speaker 4: So I guess there is something about it that some
Speaker 4: people seem to be more capable of handling for extended
Speaker 4: periods of time.
Speaker 2: Going back to recovery, Samantha remember spent undergrad in Louisiana
Speaker 2: after Katrina and the floods, and this was a massive catastrophe. Again,
Speaker 2: eighty percent of the city flooded. Human bodies floated in
Speaker 2: the floodwaters for days at a time, infrastructure was out
Speaker 2: all over. People left and never came back. So for
Speaker 2: this episode, I went back and looked up some ap
Speaker 2: photos of the direct aftermath, and I literally cried over
Speaker 2: my laptop and then had nightmares. The scale of this
Speaker 2: tragedy was unthinkable. So what was her experience like there?
Speaker 4: So when I lived in New Orleans, I lived there
Speaker 4: for four years. I was going to college, so in
Speaker 4: some ways I was mostly living on campus in Uptown
Speaker 4: New Orleans. You know, you could walk around outside and
Speaker 4: not really know that Katrina had happened.
Speaker 3: In the past few years.
Speaker 4: There were like some signs here and there, but for
Speaker 4: the most part, things looked quote unquote normal. But because
Speaker 4: of the organizations I wor worked with and the other
Speaker 4: things that I did, I was regularly spending time in
Speaker 4: all different neighborhoods throughout the entire city. And you know,
Speaker 4: when you live in a place that is going through
Speaker 4: a recovery, especially of the size of Katrina's recovery, it
Speaker 4: affects kind of every aspect of your day, from you know,
Speaker 4: certain roads being closed down because they're still doing construction
Speaker 4: on those roads, or fixing the sewer lines for the
Speaker 4: first time since the storm like years later, or you know,
Speaker 4: trash and recycling not being back, or it being two
Speaker 4: to three years before the streetcar starts running again, right,
Speaker 4: Every different aspect of the city had to be rebuilt,
Speaker 4: and so you're operating within this space that is not
Speaker 4: operating at its full capacity, and so that kind of
Speaker 4: like that eats at you. That affects your daily life.
Speaker 4: And even I who was very much still removed from that,
Speaker 4: like I myself was not going through recovery. I myself
Speaker 4: was like living in like a place that was recovered.
Speaker 4: And even then when I left New Orleans, I like
Speaker 4: felt the difference of moving to Fargo and being in
Speaker 4: a community that was all put together and operating the
Speaker 4: way you expect a community to operate.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, it definitely eats at you.
Speaker 4: We also see that in the research in terms of,
Speaker 4: you know, people's mental health and the way that stress
Speaker 4: manifests during recovery. We see an increase in domestic violence,
Speaker 4: an increase in suicides during recovery among people who are
Speaker 4: going through that process. And yeah, it's extremely, extremely difficult
Speaker 4: to go through, particularly as a survivor of that disaster.
Speaker 2: Does it ever affect you to see how people respond
Speaker 2: to certain disasters as opposed to others, or how policymakers
Speaker 2: or political officials will respond to certain communities affected or
Speaker 2: certain disasters. Is that ever something that might get your goat?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I'm mad, like all the time. I'm okay, but
Speaker 3: I think you just constantly mad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Just a side note, So we recorded this
Speaker 2: in late April. The world had just watched France's Structural
Speaker 2: Jewel Notre Dame Cathedral burn in part to cinders and collapse.
Speaker 2: Over one billion dollars poured out of pockets, and the
Speaker 2: church reported that most of it was from small personal donations. So, okay,
Speaker 2: they raised a billion dollars very quickly. Fine, it's Europe.
Speaker 2: There are so many countries that would ship in. But
Speaker 2: I just read a recent Travel and Leisure article that
Speaker 2: noted an estimated ninety percent of the donations didn't come
Speaker 2: from Europe. They came from the US. So what about
Speaker 2: Puerto Rico, hobbled by Hurricane Maria. They got less help
Speaker 2: from the US federal government than Texas and Florida did
Speaker 2: for Hurricanes Harvey and Erma. And as for personal donations,
Speaker 2: folks gave about thirty two million to Puerto Rico as
Speaker 2: compared to that one billion for a Paris church. Hurricane
Speaker 2: Maria's death toll in Puerto Rico, which is a US territory,
Speaker 2: is estimated at three thousand and fifty seven people, So
Speaker 2: the death toll for the Notre Dame fire zero. Huge
Speaker 2: financial discrepancies there.
Speaker 4: Certainly, everything about disasters is is injustice manifesting, like who
Speaker 4: is affected most directly by disasters, which communities are affected
Speaker 4: in what ways they are affected, their ability to prepare
Speaker 4: for disasters, their ability to mitigate disasters, their ability to recover,
Speaker 4: their ability to literally survive disasters. All of this is
Speaker 4: tied to policies that are shaped by race, class, gender,
Speaker 4: and all of those inequalities come out in the middle
Speaker 4: of a disaster. And you know it's those inequalities exist
Speaker 4: in all four phases, but of course it's during the
Speaker 4: response that they are kind of most visible and in
Speaker 4: everyone's face.
Speaker 2: Kanye West sometimes just calling them out on a telethon
Speaker 2: George Bush doesn't care about black people back vintage Kanye West.
Speaker 2: That is, yeah, the golden days of yeasy, before red
Speaker 2: hats and proclamations that slavery is a choice. So next
Speaker 2: time someone gets unhinged on Twitter and pisses off huge
Speaker 2: swaths of the nation, you can ponder academically, is this
Speaker 2: a PR emergency, PR disaster or a PR catastrophe. And
Speaker 2: so when it comes to disasters, say coming up versus
Speaker 2: how they were ten, twelve, twenty years ago. I mean
Speaker 2: not to use the forecast with the word forecast two
Speaker 2: on the nose, but are we looking at more disasters
Speaker 2: and less preparedness so.
Speaker 4: We're definitely looking at more disasters if we are continue
Speaker 4: on the trajectory that we're headed.
Speaker 3: Based on a couple of factors.
Speaker 4: So one climate change to the number of people and
Speaker 4: where they are living, and three the way we're building.
Speaker 4: Those are the three kind of big factors that are
Speaker 4: going to be driving that increase in disasters. So it's
Speaker 4: a little bit difficult to tell, but generally that's the
Speaker 4: trajectory that we're on for sure.
Speaker 2: Let's touch on a few historical disasters, shall we.
Speaker 4: So I've started my understanding of disasters probably back like
Speaker 4: mid eighteen hundreds, like Great Chicago Fire, then going to
Speaker 4: like the Galveston hurricane of nineteen hundred, the San Francisco
Speaker 4: earthquake and fire in nineteen oh six, Mississippi River flood
Speaker 4: of nineteen twenty seven, the dust Bowl, and then kind
Speaker 4: of back up into more modern disasters.
Speaker 2: How is, how have disasters changed since ye old disasters
Speaker 2: as we might call them.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of things have changed.
Speaker 4: The first thing that's changed is the actual hazards that
Speaker 4: we have to deal with. So now we have more
Speaker 4: technological disasters, more like human made oil spills, chemical spills
Speaker 4: type of disasters.
Speaker 3: What we've also changed the way that we build.
Speaker 4: Like the things that we have in our community are
Speaker 4: just worth more now, and they're more complicated to put
Speaker 4: back together after a disaster happens, like putting the electric
Speaker 4: grid back together in Puerto Rico, right, Like, those types
Speaker 4: of things are more complicated and it takes longer.
Speaker 2: So what's changed in the last one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: years isn't just better architecture, technology, communication, transportation and like soap,
Speaker 2: but also an increase in government involvement, Samantha says.
Speaker 3: But we have FEMA now.
Speaker 4: FEMA wasn't created until the nineteen seventies. There were some
Speaker 4: offices that were a precursor to FEMA.
Speaker 2: And what happens when say, FEMA gets on the ground
Speaker 2: of a disaster, what type of organization is most effective
Speaker 2: in getting people help, what's the triage method and where
Speaker 2: do they start to assess and act on things.
Speaker 4: The response begins before FEMA gets So the first responders
Speaker 4: to any disaster the people who are in that community.
Speaker 4: So the survivors themselves, the traditional first responders, police, fire,
Speaker 4: et cetera.
Speaker 3: They're first there.
Speaker 4: The local emergency managers, state level agencies and offices are
Speaker 4: all there, and then the federal government comes in.
Speaker 2: So you might recall photos of the Katrina response. There
Speaker 2: were houses drifted from their foundations, apartments still standing in
Speaker 2: really lovely historical downtown architecture bore not only stains from floodwater,
Speaker 2: but also spray painted xes surrounded by numbers and codes.
Speaker 2: And these exes were kind of crudely slashed on thousands
Speaker 2: and thousands of house exteriors and they looked ominous, almost biblical,
Speaker 2: but you know, instead of Lamb's blood, it's just orange
Speaker 2: spray paint. And these exes served as warnings and heads
Speaker 2: up to other disaster relief workers. So upon entering to
Speaker 2: check out the building, one slash was made, and then
Speaker 2: after searching the property for survivors, the other slash was done,
Speaker 2: completing the X. So in the top quadrant was the
Speaker 2: date the structure was searched, and the western quarter notes
Speaker 2: who searched the property, and the right or the eastern
Speaker 2: quadrant noted what hazards like rats or structural instability was happening,
Speaker 2: and then the bottom section noted the number of living
Speaker 2: or dead found inside zero L zero dB means the
Speaker 2: place was empty, zero living, zero dead bodies. That number
Speaker 2: wasn't always zero, though, so Many survivors of Katrina kept
Speaker 2: the X markings that were on their homes even after
Speaker 2: they repaired all around it, and others had iron sculpture
Speaker 2: replicas made to endure and memorialize the event after the
Speaker 2: paint faded. Others kept that memory alive in the form
Speaker 2: of tattoos like that hurried spray painted X was transferred
Speaker 2: from their houses onto their skin via needle to take
Speaker 2: to the grave. I just you look at that, and
Speaker 2: it is incomprehensible sometimes to think of how much chaos,
Speaker 2: how much heartache, how much loss, how much just disbelief
Speaker 2: and denial, people must be in from a grief standpoint,
Speaker 2: and then to try to figure out where do we
Speaker 2: put people, what's safest, how many people are in this house?
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you even begin to tackle that?
Speaker 4: So, first of all, communities have plans in place ahead
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 3: They're not always great.
Speaker 4: Plans, but they have them, and anybody who's been involved
Speaker 4: in creating those plans theoretically knows what those plans are.
Speaker 4: There is a system that we use nationally to help
Speaker 4: try to organize and coordinate, and there is like a
Speaker 4: national framework for who is like which major agencies are
Speaker 4: in charge of different areas like sheltering versus search and rescue.
Speaker 4: So there's some breakdown in that sense. And also once
Speaker 4: we're talking about the big disasters here and you have
Speaker 4: that national involvement, you also have.
Speaker 3: Agencies and people that have worked together.
Speaker 4: Before on disasters, and so they have more familiarity with
Speaker 4: each other and they're bringing all their experience at past
Speaker 4: disasters into their response.
Speaker 2: So there's FEMA but also more grassroots efforts, Samantha explains.
Speaker 4: So what happens during disasters is that people look around
Speaker 4: and they see that help is needed, and they work
Speaker 4: together to address those needs. And so sometimes these emergent
Speaker 4: groups are like little search and rescue groups in a
Speaker 4: neighborhood that start going around knocking on doors to check
Speaker 4: on people. Sometimes it is a group of people getting
Speaker 4: together to open a shelter in a church that they
Speaker 4: weren't expecting to have to do, but there's a need
Speaker 4: for it, so they do it. We also have this
Speaker 4: convergence of people from outside of the impacted area coming in.
Speaker 4: Like within that convergence, you have volunteers coming from the
Speaker 4: outside area to kind of back up the survivors and
Speaker 4: help them address the needs. And so when a disaster happens,
Speaker 4: you have this formal system that's operating under this plan
Speaker 4: and like procedures that they've thought through, and then you
Speaker 4: have this informal system doing whatever they think needs to
Speaker 4: happen in the moment, and that can be very frustrating,
Speaker 4: as you can imagine for those in the formal system.
Speaker 4: I am more sympathetic to the informal system. I think
Speaker 4: they're great. They are really flexible because they don't have
Speaker 4: any rules or procedures that they're really following, right, They're
Speaker 4: really flexible and can meet whatever the needs are in
Speaker 4: that moment.
Speaker 3: And so when you.
Speaker 4: Look at a disaster that's happening and if you're having
Speaker 4: a sense from the media a response isn't going well,
Speaker 4: sometimes what's happening is that there's been some kind of
Speaker 4: breakdown in that formal system, and where people's needs are
Speaker 4: still being met, it's happening through the informal system.
Speaker 2: So sometimes these big systems get the attention while the
Speaker 2: more grassroots efforts pick up the slack.
Speaker 4: One of the key things about Puerto Rico is that
Speaker 4: because Puerto Rico is in fact, an island, the convergence
Speaker 4: from outside wasn't able to happen as quickly as it
Speaker 4: was able to in Texas during Harvey, or in Florida
Speaker 4: during Irma, or North and South Carolina during Florence. It
Speaker 4: just took longer for people from the outside to be
Speaker 4: able to get in. And so in Puerto Rico you
Speaker 4: saw this kind of break down in the formal system,
Speaker 4: but you also saw a breakdown in the informal system,
Speaker 4: which is less usual, and that helped contribute to kind
Speaker 4: of what people were seeing as they watched Puerto Rico unfold.
Speaker 4: And one of the reasons why it was so bad
Speaker 4: in terms of the response.
Speaker 2: I mean, if only they had more paper towels.
Speaker 4: They had these beautiful soft towels, very good towels. Puerto
Speaker 4: Rico had like almost everything working against them. Once Maria formed,
Speaker 4: they already were vulnerable in terms of the infrastructure on
Speaker 4: the island and the fact that they are more isolated
Speaker 4: than someplace like Houston. Then you had the added issue
Speaker 4: of the emergency management system already having been strained at
Speaker 4: that point.
Speaker 3: Harvey and Arma.
Speaker 4: Had both just happened, and I mean those were major
Speaker 4: disasters that took attention from everybody, and so by the
Speaker 4: time we got to Maria, everybody was tired. People were
Speaker 4: already deployed, resources were already used up. And then you
Speaker 4: add another layer of government dysfunction at multiple levels, and
Speaker 4: like at a hurricane, and you have what happened in
Speaker 4: Puerto Rico.
Speaker 2: What happens when the president gets in his helicopter, whatever,
Speaker 2: surveys something, scratches his chin, declares it an emergency. Like
Speaker 2: there's always that moment where they they have declared not
Speaker 2: an emergency, and you're like, okay, that must mean some
Speaker 2: paperwork gets shuffled.
Speaker 4: Differently, that's actually a really important thing to have happened.
Speaker 4: So the way that you kind of get FEMA involved
Speaker 4: and get the federal government involved more broadly in a
Speaker 4: disaster is that it has to be a presidentially declared disaster.
Speaker 3: So the governor of.
Speaker 4: The state has to declared an emergency and then they
Speaker 4: go through a process with FEMA of asking the White
Speaker 4: House to declare it a presidential disaster. So once the
Speaker 4: President signs that, FEMA and the rest of the federal
Speaker 4: government can become involved and start supporting that specific disaster.
Speaker 4: It has really really important implications for recovery. Specifically, in
Speaker 4: order to get individual assistance, like a homeowner get individual
Speaker 4: assistance from FEMA post disaster, you have to be in
Speaker 4: a county that received a presidential disaster declaration and has
Speaker 4: had met the threshold for all of.
Speaker 3: Those programs being opened through FEMA.
Speaker 2: And I noticed you use the word survivors. I haven't
Speaker 2: heard you use the word victim, which seems deliberate, and
Speaker 2: I imagine is there's a reason.
Speaker 4: Sure, So, oftentimes we hear survivors described as victims. I
Speaker 4: tend to use the word victims to describe the people
Speaker 4: who have died in the disaster, and use survivors for
Speaker 4: those who have survived.
Speaker 3: It varies. If I'm talking to somebody who has been
Speaker 3: through a disaster.
Speaker 4: I use the word that they use, So if they're
Speaker 4: calling themselves the victim, then I go with that. But
Speaker 4: generally I prefer survivors one, so that you can have
Speaker 4: that distinction between victim and survivor, but also in the
Speaker 4: way that it is empowering, I suppose.
Speaker 2: It seems to also pay some respect to the people
Speaker 2: who lost their lives as well. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people hear about disasters more in terms of the
Speaker 2: millions of dollars of property damage or how much it
Speaker 2: will cost to rebuild, but maybe don't always remember the
Speaker 2: number of lives lost. Is that in part of your
Speaker 2: work something that you try to shine a light on
Speaker 2: at all, or is that something that you feel should
Speaker 2: be considered.
Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly it's something to know and to be considered.
Speaker 4: I think talking about disaster deaths can be really complicated.
Speaker 4: This is another thing that kind of came to light
Speaker 4: for the public during Maria is who counts as having
Speaker 4: their death attributed to a disaster and who doesn't.
Speaker 3: There's some like.
Speaker 4: Legal and financial implications that are tied to that, but
Speaker 4: then there's also like who gets to decide if a
Speaker 4: death is attributed to that disaster or not? Because we
Speaker 4: know disasters are so complicated, right, and disasters to me,
Speaker 4: aren't just that moment of impact. The disaster is the
Speaker 4: whole thing all like through recovery, like that's all still
Speaker 4: the disaster is still happening, it's just manifesting in a
Speaker 4: different way. And so to say that somebody who has
Speaker 4: died from literally drowning in floodwaters, their death is obviously
Speaker 4: attributable to that disaster but then to me, somebody who
Speaker 4: has died of a heart attack from being so stressed
Speaker 4: out about the recovery process a week later, I mean
Speaker 4: that death is just as attributable to that disaster in
Speaker 4: my opinion. But again there's this like complicated legal situation
Speaker 4: that is going on. But yeah, we're not good at
Speaker 4: counting disaster deaths. It's really complicated. Some of it is
Speaker 4: like a logistics issue of this more of it, but
Speaker 4: like going to find bodies and like being able to
Speaker 4: actually like figure out who is missing. Of course, when
Speaker 4: you look back at certain disasters, you can see who
Speaker 4: in a community isn't counted among disaster deaths and who is,
Speaker 4: And so it's all just really calm implicated.
Speaker 2: And I understand that statistics for heart attacks after an earthquake,
Speaker 2: say spike a few days later, is that something that
Speaker 2: disastrologists look at or in hell, statistics like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly there are some researchers who look at that.
Speaker 4: Those would be under the heading of like indirect disaster
Speaker 4: deaths if they're counted at all.
Speaker 2: Okay, so quick aside, I remember years ago seeing an
Speaker 2: article about heart attack deaths after LA's nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: north Ridge earthquake, and I went and have found it.
Speaker 2: So the County corner found a five fold increase in
Speaker 2: heart attack deaths the day of the earthquake, and a
Speaker 2: week later the heart attack levels sunk back down to normal.
Speaker 2: And in an area like New Orleans with this catastrophe,
Speaker 2: like Katrina and the floods, the recovery process itself can
Speaker 2: be so stressful that Tulane researchers found an uptick of
Speaker 2: heart attacks a full decade after the event. And in
Speaker 2: Japan after the twenty eleven earthquake and tsunami, there was
Speaker 2: an increase in heart attack and stroke deaths for a
Speaker 2: solid month and for two weeks after Hurricane Sandy in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve, the areas of New Jersey that were most
Speaker 2: impacted sy a twenty two percent increase in cardiac related deaths. So,
Speaker 2: given that these casualties aren't always attributed to the disaster itself,
Speaker 2: counts are likely underreported. And just reading about this is wrenching.
Speaker 2: And what do you think people can do when we're
Speaker 2: watching the news and we're seeing long lines and people
Speaker 2: waiting to get clean water, and people who have been
Speaker 2: displaced and families that are sleeping in gyms, and what
Speaker 2: can a person do. I know you mentioned a lot
Speaker 2: of people kind of descend on the area, but you
Speaker 2: know through your work I've I've read also that that
Speaker 2: can displace people who need a place to sleep because
Speaker 2: there's all these kind of volunteers that now need a
Speaker 2: place to sleep. So what can we do when we're
Speaker 2: seeing this to help?
Speaker 4: So there are a lot of things that you can
Speaker 4: do to help. It kind of depends on when it
Speaker 4: is in relation to the disaster.
Speaker 3: And kind of where you are in relation to the disasters.
Speaker 4: So if the disaster has happened in your community and
Speaker 4: you see an opportunity to go volunteer and you can
Speaker 4: get there safely and you're not.
Speaker 3: In anybody's way and you're helping, then that is something
Speaker 3: that you can do.
Speaker 4: If you are away from the disaster when it happens,
Speaker 4: I usually recommend not going there right away. I recommend
Speaker 4: usually waiting more for the recovery and kind of let
Speaker 4: that immediate crisis subside before adding yourself to that situation.
Speaker 4: But you can donate money if you're able to. There
Speaker 4: are a lot of great national disaster organizations, but then
Speaker 4: there are also a lot of local nonprofits from that
Speaker 4: community that are going to be involved in the response
Speaker 4: and recovery for probably a longer period of time than
Speaker 4: those bigger national organizations. And so it does take some
Speaker 4: effort and some googling, but usually you can find some
Speaker 4: of those local nonprofits and usually any that are working
Speaker 4: in the community are going to be involved in some
Speaker 4: way if it's a major disaster. And then if you
Speaker 4: do really want to go volunteer and you're from further away,
Speaker 4: then there are usually opportunities to go volunteer during the recovery,
Speaker 4: again mostly through those national disaster organizations.
Speaker 2: And how do you feel about the way some disasters
Speaker 2: get covered on the news? Do you feel like it's
Speaker 2: good to expose them or are you like, oh, you're
Speaker 2: showing the absolute worst part on a loop to get ratings.
Speaker 3: So it's complicated.
Speaker 4: It is certainly frustrating at times to see you know,
Speaker 4: the classic weatherman like standing in the ocean as a
Speaker 4: hurricane is coming, right, that's frustrating.
Speaker 2: This na, this is as bad as it will be able.
Speaker 3: This thing is like founding us from behind.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, the media is a vital
Speaker 4: component of our overall emergency management system. They're providing life
Speaker 4: saving information to the people who need it. They're sending
Speaker 4: out warnings, they're disseminating information about evacuations, they're telling people
Speaker 4: where they.
Speaker 3: Can go to get help.
Speaker 2: Samantha says that the news media is also amplifying organizations
Speaker 2: collecting donations and they're shining a light on how their
Speaker 2: response is going and if governmental organizations are doing with
Speaker 2: they can.
Speaker 4: However, so the media loves to cover a disaster during
Speaker 4: the response and then they go away, and so local
Speaker 4: news outlets will obviously keep covering the recovery, but our
Speaker 4: local news media has taken a hit, and so we
Speaker 4: really need those national news outlets to be covering those
Speaker 4: recoveries into the long term. And it's difficult for them
Speaker 4: to do, and it's difficult to capture people's interests and attention,
Speaker 4: but it is so important because as a recovery goes
Speaker 4: on for years and years and years, that community needs money.
Speaker 4: They need that political pressure to again hold government accountable for,
Speaker 4: you know, giving the money that they've said that they're
Speaker 4: going to give and to do the projects that they've
Speaker 4: said they're going to do.
Speaker 2: And when you're teaching, what are your courses focused on
Speaker 2: how where do you even begin to look at this?
Speaker 4: So for our undergrads, they start out with like an
Speaker 4: intro to disaster class where we just kind of give
Speaker 4: an overview of everything, and then they take one class
Speaker 4: for each of the four phases Recovery, response, preparedness, and mitigation.
Speaker 3: They take like a social vulnerability class.
Speaker 4: They take a planning class, they take international emergency management,
Speaker 4: so all different classes.
Speaker 2: How do you yourself kind of keep mentally healthy despite
Speaker 2: maybe seeing some stuff that is difficult.
Speaker 3: Well, I compartmentalize.
Speaker 4: Okay, they don't necessarily know that that's a healthy approach,
Speaker 4: but that's what we've been doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just shut that off. Put a
Speaker 2: little box.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: The fire Festival doc. Did you see it?
Speaker 3: I did well to go to the fire festival.
Speaker 2: Could be amazing, could be a disaster island get away,
Speaker 2: turned disaster.
Speaker 3: Nightmare and paradise. There was no music.
Speaker 1: They were put into.
Speaker 3: Disaster relief tents.
Speaker 2: How'd you feel about the FEMA tents?
Speaker 3: And one a nightmare?
Speaker 4: So yeah, I saw a picture of the tents. I
Speaker 4: maybe it was even before the documentaries came out, I
Speaker 4: don't know, but I saw them and I.
Speaker 3: Was like gosh, this looks so familiar to me. Where
Speaker 3: have I seen those before?
Speaker 4: And I all of a sudden I realized and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: When I watched that documentary, I was like, there must
Speaker 2: be people in emergency management just losing their.
Speaker 3: Shit right now, I mean wild.
Speaker 2: I know what a vaca, a beach safari, I know seriously,
Speaker 2: disaster movies, yes, talk about them. You got a favorite.
Speaker 4: Let me start by saying this, I hate all Hollywood
Speaker 4: disaster movies. The one disaster movie that I like is
Speaker 4: Beast of the Southern Wild. It's not perfect, there are
Speaker 4: some issues, but I think that's the best one.
Speaker 2: You think it's the most well done?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Side note, I have not yet seen Bisa of the
Speaker 2: Southern Wild, but according to the YouTube link for the trailer,
Speaker 2: it's set in a forgotten but defiant bayou community cut
Speaker 2: off from the rest of the world by a sprawling levee.
Speaker 2: A six year old girl named Hushpuppy's life is changed
Speaker 2: by a fierce storm, and this tiny must learn to
Speaker 2: survive unstoppable catastrophes of epic proportions. So now I very
Speaker 2: much want to watch it, But there's one disaster movie
Speaker 2: I watched in the theater with two of my girlfriends
Speaker 2: while drinking Concession stand white wine, and I don't need
Speaker 2: to see that one again. So you haven't seen like
Speaker 2: san Andreas with the Rock?
Speaker 3: Oh, I mean I've seen them. My hate watch them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you see sant Andreas with the Rock?
Speaker 3: Yes? I did. We're gonna make it, We're gonna make it.
Speaker 2: And I was just like, is he surfing on a
Speaker 2: tidal wave?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Why is there an American flag at the end, it
Speaker 2: was Yeah, it's pretty bad. What do Hollywood disaster movies
Speaker 2: get wrong? Other than everything?
Speaker 4: So, uh, probably the biggest issue is that they perpetuate
Speaker 4: what we call the disaster myths m hm.
Speaker 3: So there are a series of myths about human behavior
Speaker 3: that will not go away.
Speaker 2: Boy howdy buckle up for flimflam.
Speaker 3: And Hollywood movie perpetuate them.
Speaker 4: So there is this myth that people panic during disaster,
Speaker 4: that it's like mass chaos and everybody's running around not
Speaker 4: knowing what to.
Speaker 3: Do, when in fact, people actually are quite calm.
Speaker 4: They make rational decisions based on the information that they
Speaker 4: have gathered around them, They help one another, they're pro social.
Speaker 4: Going back to that paradise built in hell idea and
Speaker 4: that they all work together. Related to this is like
Speaker 4: this myth that there's rampant looting during disasters.
Speaker 3: Stores looted, people stampeded, not does not happen. Research is
Speaker 3: like very clear on this.
Speaker 4: And so all of those Hollywood disaster movies, everybody's looting,
Speaker 4: everybody's running around panicked, freaking out, and.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the but there's usually a white heterosexual
Speaker 2: male that fixes things. So yes, of course, and then
Speaker 2: he always gets right at the end.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 2: Now, what do you do or how do you approach
Speaker 2: people who won't leave their houses? And I'm talking about
Speaker 2: my parents specifically, Nancy Larry. My parents are very smart
Speaker 2: but also stubborn, and historically it had been hard to
Speaker 2: get them to leave when a storm was headed their way.
Speaker 2: How do you how do you approach those How do
Speaker 2: you get people to leave for their own safety?
Speaker 4: Sure, so a couple different issues here depending on this situation.
Speaker 4: The first is if they are like physically, financial, et cetera,
Speaker 4: able to actually leave once you've addressed like all of
Speaker 4: those issues, and it's just somebody being stubborn, My go
Speaker 4: to is to tell them to write their social Security
Speaker 4: number on their arm in permanent markers so their body
Speaker 4: can be identified.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's tough, but hey that's.
Speaker 2: A good one.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What happens when you tell people that? Are they like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah there you you get a reaction? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is that smart to do in any emergency just in
Speaker 2: case to write your number? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean you could.
Speaker 2: You couldn't hurt.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: And let's talk about what's in your trunk? Does your
Speaker 2: car have an emergency kit in it? Are you the
Speaker 2: most prepared person ever? Or you like when it comes
Speaker 2: it comes?
Speaker 3: I am embarrassingly unprepared most of the time.
Speaker 2: Really, you don't have like a month of live water
Speaker 2: in your trunk and a flair No, certainly not.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on where I am at any given moment. Like, technically,
Speaker 3: you're supposed to have like a preparedness kit in your office.
Speaker 3: I do not have that at all. I mean I
Speaker 3: have like a preparedness kit at home, but I don't
Speaker 3: pay a ton of attention to it, which is a problem.
Speaker 3: That's bad. I should do that. I am like setting
Speaker 3: a very bad example. I learned it by watching you.
Speaker 3: The thing is, it really depends on your situation. So I.
Speaker 4: So just the fact of like having a preparedness kit
Speaker 4: does not necessarily mean that you are prepared for a disaster, Like,
Speaker 4: there are some things in there that could be useful
Speaker 4: to you when a disaster happens.
Speaker 3: But preparedness is much much more than that.
Speaker 4: It's also your social network and your like knowledge of
Speaker 4: disasters and hazards, and that your local knowledge of your community.
Speaker 4: All of those things are kind of just as important
Speaker 4: in different ways for actually having like the physical items
Speaker 4: stockpiled in your house. So again, you should like absolutely
Speaker 4: have a three day supply of water in your house,
Speaker 4: which I do. But you know, preparedness is more than
Speaker 4: just that.
Speaker 2: Do you ever watch Doomsday Preppers? Yes? I have are.
Speaker 2: Do you watch it like you guys know what's up?
Speaker 2: Or do you watch it and you say you've wasted
Speaker 2: so much dehydrated corn?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Look, my biggest issue with that show is that
Speaker 4: they pick one hazard to obsess over and prepare for,
Speaker 4: which like is fine, but it's usually not the hazard
Speaker 4: that they're most at risk for. There was one episode
Speaker 4: many years ago where they were preparing for like an
Speaker 4: economic collapse or something I think, and so they had
Speaker 4: all of this stuff stockpile.
Speaker 3: They had like a million.
Speaker 4: Guns in their house and I think they're like bars
Speaker 4: of gold or something. And then a wildfire happened and
Speaker 4: they had to evacuate their house on the show in
Speaker 4: the middle of the episode, and not like the things
Speaker 4: they had done to prepare were not useful in this situation.
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm a prepper, and that's why I'm
Speaker 2: a prepper. And that's why I am a prepper.
Speaker 4: And so this is what I'm saying, like, we need
Speaker 4: to take this broader view of preparedness. Right, there are
Speaker 4: some things that will help you in multiple hazards, right,
Speaker 4: Like having extra food and water in your house is
Speaker 4: like generally a good thing to do that'll help you
Speaker 4: in any situation in which you have to shelter in place.
Speaker 4: But to also kind of be thinking about how different
Speaker 4: different things are useful depending on what the situation is.
Speaker 2: A wheelbarrow full of gold ingots during a wildfire so helpful,
Speaker 2: just the worst. Can I ask you questions from listeners?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, but before we get to patron questions, a
Speaker 2: few words about sponsors of the show. But before that,
Speaker 2: these sponsors make it possible to make a donation to
Speaker 2: a cause of the ologe's choosing. And this week doctor
Speaker 2: Samantha Montano shows the Bill Anderson Fund and Bill Anderson
Speaker 2: was a scholar and a disaster specialist, and the Bill
Speaker 2: Anderson's Fund's mission statement reads, African American and other minority
Speaker 2: representation in hazard and disaster mitigation is very important. Research
Speaker 2: has shown that racial and ethnic minorities often have increased
Speaker 2: difficulty evacuating prior to a crisis and are more likely
Speaker 2: to experience disproportionate physical and financial loss during disasters. Our
Speaker 2: focus now is on students who are already enrolled in
Speaker 2: graduate school. So a donation will go to the Bill
Speaker 2: Andersonfund dot org. And now some words about sponsors making
Speaker 2: that happen. Okay, your disaster questions. Anna Thompson wants to
Speaker 2: know who establishes what is a disaster?
Speaker 1: What is just bad?
Speaker 4: So this ties back into the presidential disaster declarations. So
Speaker 4: in the US, if an event has that disaster declaration,
Speaker 4: then we consider it a disaster.
Speaker 3: That's like problematic in a few ways that are pretty obvious.
Speaker 2: What if someone's like, who is a real disaster and
Speaker 2: you're like, not yet, it's not official yet. You have
Speaker 2: to wait before you can call that.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I might tell and that on Twitter, but.
Speaker 2: It's like announcing a bregancy, not until we get the
Speaker 2: flyover question. So, how does the president declare something a disaster? Okay, well,
Speaker 2: the government of the state or the Indian tribal government
Speaker 2: has to request that something be declared an emergency or
Speaker 2: disaster and that it's exceeded their resources. They're like, this
Speaker 2: is above our pay grade, dude. And according to FEMA
Speaker 2: dot gov, the president can declare a major disaster for
Speaker 2: any natural event, including any hurricane, tornado, storm, high water, wind,
Speaker 2: driven water, tidal wave, tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption, landslide, mud slide, snowstorm,
Speaker 2: or drought, or regardless of cause, fire, flood, or explosion
Speaker 2: that the President determines has caused damage of such severity
Speaker 2: that it is beyond the combined capabilities of state and
Speaker 2: local governments to respond. So I guess this is where
Speaker 2: the presidential helicopter tour comes in and he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: who this sucks now. The next question was also asked
Speaker 2: by Lacy Gilbert and Steve kouasak Anna Thompson also asked
Speaker 2: who determines the levels for things like one hundred year
Speaker 2: floods or hundred year storms. How are people going about
Speaker 2: reclassifying them since they're happening more frequently.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this is a huge, huge, huge problem, not
Speaker 4: only in the US, Canada is going through it to
Speaker 4: right now other countries as well. So the way I'm
Speaker 4: going to simplify this, but the way that we usually
Speaker 4: talk about like one hundred year of floodplains has been based.
Speaker 3: On like historical records and based on whatever.
Speaker 4: That community looked like at the time that they drew
Speaker 4: the flood maps for that community. Of course, communities are
Speaker 4: constantly changing. Anytime you go cut down a bunch of
Speaker 4: trees and put pavement down, you have changed the flood
Speaker 4: risk in that area, and in the past, our maps
Speaker 4: haven't accounted for those changes. This is all like very complicated,
Speaker 4: and this is a problem one because people may not
Speaker 4: know that they are in a flood or they may
Speaker 4: not know what their flood risk is. It has implications
Speaker 4: for flood insurance and who needs to be covered by
Speaker 4: flood insurance. It influences all of the flood infrastructure that
Speaker 4: we build in a community. This is complicated to do
Speaker 4: across the entire country with everything changing all the time,
Speaker 4: and then you add climate change to it, which is
Speaker 4: changing the actual hazards, and you just like get this
Speaker 4: big mess. And so currently FEMA has a flood mapping
Speaker 4: program connected to the National Flood Insurance Program. They are
Speaker 4: constantly making changes, but.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like an evolving policy nightmare all the time.
Speaker 2: And now are they going to have to go up
Speaker 2: in category numbers for hurricanes at all?
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to talk to the meteorologists about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, I will I haven't done meteorology yet. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't mind if I do. Mary rose By first time
Speaker 2: question asker asked how has social media changed disasters? Okay,
Speaker 2: this social media question was also asked by Sydney Brown
Speaker 2: and Isabelle b Holper. You know she's thinking about things
Speaker 2: like the Facebook option to mark yourself safe when there's
Speaker 2: a flood, or how has increased communication helped or hindered it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so generally they are helpful.
Speaker 4: They do a lot of things like help us send
Speaker 4: out warnings, help communicate and keep people more up to
Speaker 4: date in terms of like official responses.
Speaker 3: But it's also useful to be able to have all
Speaker 3: of your.
Speaker 4: Neighbors on Facebook, and to have a Facebook group about
Speaker 4: your neighborhood. If you're evacuated from your house, as people are,
Speaker 4: you know, finding out information here and there, you have
Speaker 4: a place to kind of share all of that information.
Speaker 4: So they're also useful in that way when you get
Speaker 4: into the recovery, every community that has a disaster at
Speaker 4: this point has some kind of like Facebook group where
Speaker 4: people are sharing resources and talking about the recovery.
Speaker 3: It's useful for being able to gather donations.
Speaker 4: It's helpful in terms of people being able to see
Speaker 4: the damage and like kind of wrap their heads around.
Speaker 3: What has happened.
Speaker 4: So it's useful in all these different ways. Search and
Speaker 4: rescue also really useful. There are a lot of documented
Speaker 4: cases of people posting online saying I need a rescue.
Speaker 4: My phone won't dial out, but I can post here.
Speaker 4: There are obviously issues in terms of barriers in terms
Speaker 4: of who has access to social media. Of course, your
Speaker 4: phone needs to be charged and like working in the
Speaker 4: midst of a disaster for it to be useful, But
Speaker 4: generally I would say they're a positive contribution.
Speaker 2: Rachel wants to know how would we recover from nuclear fallout?
Speaker 2: So that's a pretty simple, easy question.
Speaker 3: I would move to another country. I'm kidding.
Speaker 2: Is there a real answer to this?
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I mean there's like the contamination zone,
Speaker 4: which then you just leave.
Speaker 3: But past that, I mean you would have to basically.
Speaker 4: You're dealing with like internally displaced people's situation then, so
Speaker 4: you're finding new places for people to live, and then
Speaker 4: past that, the recovery actually looks like pretty similar to
Speaker 4: as it would from any other disaster where you have
Speaker 4: to completely leave and start over.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, I think abandonment is pretty much they
Speaker 2: the name of the game, right, Yeah. Micah Eckert asks
Speaker 2: when disasters happened, what is the most helpful thing that
Speaker 2: people can do? In general?
Speaker 3: Donate money to local organizations.
Speaker 2: Sinney Brown wants to note what is the cost of
Speaker 2: disaster relief and how long does it actually take communities
Speaker 2: to rebound.
Speaker 4: It is a lot of money and it takes a
Speaker 4: very long time. It depends on the disaster. But I
Speaker 4: think in the past couple years, the US has had
Speaker 4: thirteen billion dollar disasters a year.
Speaker 3: You might need to fact check me on that number.
Speaker 2: Fact check this and it was fourteen very close fourteen
Speaker 2: different billion dollar plus disasters in twenty eighteen, killing at
Speaker 2: least two hundred and forty seven people and costing upwards
Speaker 2: of ninety billion dollars. Hurricane Michael did about twenty five
Speaker 2: billion in damages, Hurricane Florence was just under that a
Speaker 2: twenty four billion, and the California wildfires were also over
Speaker 2: twenty billion. So a chorus of experts and scientists have
Speaker 2: warned that these type of disasters are climate related. So
Speaker 2: unless things change with regard to global warming, the government
Speaker 2: will keep having to write these checks.
Speaker 4: And then that's just government. Businesses also donate money. There's
Speaker 4: nonprofits that are involved, Individuals are sending donations, foundations, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of money flying around, and we
Speaker 4: actually don't do a super great job of keeping track
Speaker 4: of all of that money. So yeah, it's difficult to
Speaker 4: keep track of all the different sources. And in terms
Speaker 4: of the length of recovery, it again depends on the
Speaker 4: resources you have access to and kind of how bad
Speaker 4: the damage that you've experienced is. So somebody who has
Speaker 4: a lot of money and a lot of resources can
Speaker 4: probably get through recovery somewhat quickly, whereas somebody who's you know,
Speaker 4: living paycheck to paycheck kind of gets thrown into this
Speaker 4: recovery system. To get a little bit of aid from government,
Speaker 4: to get at some support from nonprofits, they're reliant on
Speaker 4: their friends and families to help. You get really sucked
Speaker 4: into this cycle that can take many years if you
Speaker 4: know you ever get through it. There's no guarantee that
Speaker 4: you're going to recover from a disaster when it happens.
Speaker 2: A whole group of folks ask this next question, and
Speaker 2: they are Sydney Brown, Danny ce Ray, Kasha Deli Dames,
Speaker 2: Savannah Procop, Michelle Grondine, and Anna Elizabeth and a ton
Speaker 2: of people asked, what is the biggest disaster that scientists
Speaker 2: are anticipating? I mean, is it people running out of water?
Speaker 2: Is it super volcanoes, tectonic shifts, climate change, earthquakes, floods
Speaker 2: like all.
Speaker 3: Of the above, all of the above.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we're seeing more fires, We're seeing more hurricanes,
Speaker 2: more flooding. So obviously a drier climate and a winter
Speaker 2: climate depending on where you're at. Yes, so all of it, Yes,
Speaker 2: got it, just a more headway to the apocalyms it's great.
Speaker 3: Let's see.
Speaker 2: JSB says, I have seen various articles listing the US
Speaker 2: states least likely statistically to suffer a natural disaster. Do
Speaker 2: you think these have any basis in actual fact? And
Speaker 2: should I move to Ohio?
Speaker 4: Usually those types of maps are based off of which
Speaker 4: states have had presidential disaster declarations, so that's where they're
Speaker 4: getting those from. Usually, so yeah, sure, some states tend
Speaker 4: to have fewer disasters or less severe disasters than others,
Speaker 4: but again, changing climate, still some are safer than others.
Speaker 2: And Elizabeth Gable said, essentially, are there more disasters now
Speaker 2: or does it just seem like they're more disasters because
Speaker 2: we hear about them more.
Speaker 4: No, there are more disasters because there are more people
Speaker 4: to be in arms.
Speaker 2: Way, Oh, that does make sense. Yeah. We got a
Speaker 2: bunch of prepper questions from Savannah Procop, Kitty Halberson, Sydney B. Brendan, Dean,
Speaker 2: Claire Meyer, Ashley Theodora Visian, Jay Sarah Loquist first time
Speaker 2: question asker as well as another firster, JSP wants to
Speaker 2: know what are the skills it would be most useful
Speaker 2: in the aftermath of a disaster and says I'm skeptical
Speaker 2: of preppers with collections of guns and gold. But it
Speaker 2: would wouldn't be useful to know how to can food
Speaker 2: or sow or something.
Speaker 3: If it's like the apocalypse.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, no, I mean generally in the United States,
Speaker 4: the most useful thing is to have a savings account
Speaker 4: with a lot of money in it, or a really
Speaker 4: good insurance policy.
Speaker 3: Has that like other skills to have.
Speaker 4: I mean, if your house is destroyed, having some kind
Speaker 4: of construction experience is useful.
Speaker 2: So maybe fewer guns, more hammers. Yeah, learn to cook
Speaker 2: a squirrel. Elizabeth Holper and a few other people, including
Speaker 2: Stephen Kerrison, asked is AM radio still a good source
Speaker 2: to get information during a disaster if a cell phone
Speaker 2: tower fails? And where's Ham radio?
Speaker 1: During all this?
Speaker 2: Is anyone using Ham radio?
Speaker 3: Yes? Really?
Speaker 4: Yes, Yes, those are good sources of information if you
Speaker 4: have access to those type of radios.
Speaker 2: Okay. Side note, there's a rumor that Paris Hilton is
Speaker 2: really into Ham radio and as a whole room full
Speaker 2: of vintage equipment. And even if this rumor is fake news,
Speaker 2: I want you to know that I would read fan
Speaker 2: fiction about it.
Speaker 3: That's hot.
Speaker 2: Also, this next question is from someone you know, but
Speaker 2: also from Sarah Terry, Canon Party, Heather Shaver, May Merrill,
Speaker 2: Lily Hill, and first time question asker Liz Powell. Side
Speaker 2: note question for me, how screwed are we with a
Speaker 2: big in California? Or do you guys out here even
Speaker 2: like checking it, like when it happens, it happens, or
Speaker 2: are we like TikTok it's happening.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can't predict earthquakes, but yes, it is
Speaker 4: something to be aware of and pay attention to.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 3: Also new Madrid though, what is that New Madrid? Oh?
Speaker 2: No, what's that?
Speaker 3: There's a fault line in the middle of the country.
Speaker 3: Where is it goes through Saint Louis?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Keep joky?
Speaker 3: So okay, yeah, google that if you need something else
Speaker 3: to worry about.
Speaker 2: Oh I will, y'all, I check this out. And yes,
Speaker 2: in eighteen eleven and twelve there was a seven point
Speaker 2: nine earthquake followed by a seven point four aftershock. Those
Speaker 2: are huge Saint Louis floods and earthquakes and tornadoes. Man,
Speaker 2: it's a good thing. Y'all have toasted ravitiolis because that
Speaker 2: is some shit to deal with. Speaking of twisters, Leely
Speaker 2: Hill wants to know, is there something we can do
Speaker 2: to prepare for tornadoes? I lived in an earthquake zone
Speaker 2: when I was little, we stockpiled water, food, batteries in
Speaker 2: case there was an earthquake. But now living in a
Speaker 2: tornado alley as an adult, we don't do that, mostly
Speaker 2: just because a tornado would likely to suck up anything
Speaker 2: we stock piled and redistribute it to another town. So
Speaker 2: is there a way to prep.
Speaker 4: Yes, definitely, if you can have a tornado shelter put in,
Speaker 4: that would be the best thing to do.
Speaker 3: Depending on where you live.
Speaker 4: Sometimes there are like community shelters, like trailer parks will
Speaker 4: sometimes have like like a community tornado shelter, or you
Speaker 4: can have one in your house. Also making sure that
Speaker 4: you are tied into your community's warning systems so varies
Speaker 4: a little bit, but make sure you go onto like
Speaker 4: your city's website and usually there's some kind of like
Speaker 4: sign up for whatever their alert system is. And also
Speaker 4: just be aware if your town has tornado sirens like
Speaker 4: no to listen for those things.
Speaker 3: Like we do a monthly drill in Fargo, so people
Speaker 3: are like familiar with what it sounds like.
Speaker 2: Chrispher wants to know, not really question, but I would
Speaker 2: like it if she could speak about how severe PTSD
Speaker 2: can be in a survivor after experiencing a disaster. Do
Speaker 2: you see as part of people's recovery is dealing with
Speaker 2: the just the post traumatic stress of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so when we talk about recovery, we're including everything
Speaker 4: from like physical recovery, economic recovery, to mental health recovery
Speaker 4: as well.
Speaker 3: Again, it's going to vary.
Speaker 4: This is like one thing that we're becoming more cognizant
Speaker 4: of in the recovery process is accounting for mental health
Speaker 4: care throughout the event.
Speaker 2: This next question about asteroids was asked by Tyler Q
Speaker 2: and just Tyler Q. So I was mistaken. So Tyler Q,
Speaker 2: here you go, some people are asking about asteroids.
Speaker 3: We're screwed, man.
Speaker 2: That's that we're dinosaurs man. Lacy Gilbert wants to know
Speaker 2: how advanced are we in predicting natural disasters.
Speaker 3: It depends on the hazard. Doing pretty well.
Speaker 4: In terms of hurricanes, for example, if you compare now
Speaker 4: to the nineteen hundreds, we have come a very, very
Speaker 4: long way. It's one of the reasons that we've seen
Speaker 4: a decline in hurricane related deaths in the United States
Speaker 4: with a few exceptions, but then other hazards are more
Speaker 4: set and on set and are harder. Obviously, earthquake prediction
Speaker 4: is like a point of great focus and trying to
Speaker 4: figure that out.
Speaker 2: Seismologist doctor Lucy Jones, if you're out there, please talk
Speaker 2: to me. John Strowman asks how organize our response efforts
Speaker 2: in times of crises? Sometimes it seems like everything is
Speaker 2: a well oiled machine with multiple organizations working in tandem
Speaker 2: to fix broken lives. Other times it seems like a
Speaker 2: fully autonomous disaster in itself. So why is the management
Speaker 2: of a disaster also a disaster?
Speaker 3: That is a great assessment. Part of what people are
Speaker 3: kind of seeing when they.
Speaker 4: See that discrepancy is the difference between an emergency disaster
Speaker 4: and catastrophe. And once we get large scale disasters into catastrophes,
Speaker 4: that's where everything is just it seems like a shit show,
Speaker 4: particularly from the outside, and that's like part of what
Speaker 4: is making it a large scale disaster or catastrophe.
Speaker 2: It seems to me a lot of times when I
Speaker 2: see the aftermath of a disaster, it seems like water
Speaker 2: is one of the most critical things to be distributing.
Speaker 2: Is it difficult to truck in tons of palettes of
Speaker 2: bottles of water. Are there better ways to do that,
Speaker 2: like filling stations or I don't know, this is a
Speaker 2: super dumb question. I might totally cut it out, but
Speaker 2: it always just seems like how are they going to
Speaker 2: get all those bottles of water to people? And is
Speaker 2: there enough water?
Speaker 3: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 4: I hate to keep saying this, but it depends on
Speaker 4: the situation. So here's one way to think about this.
Speaker 4: So I talked before about convergence and how all these
Speaker 4: people come from the outside. In addition to people, there's
Speaker 4: also materials coming in from the outside, all different kinds
Speaker 4: of supplies. Some of those materials are like requested and
Speaker 4: planned for, right, So you'll have trucks coming in with.
Speaker 3: Water that someone somewhere has requested, and.
Speaker 4: They're coming in to some kind of distribution point that
Speaker 4: like generally is good and okay, fine, great.
Speaker 3: The problem starts to become when you have.
Speaker 4: Unrequested donations flooding into the community that's been through a disaster.
Speaker 4: So when people go to their closet and just like
Speaker 4: pull out any old clothes that they don't want, and
Speaker 4: they like, if you're in North Dakota and I go
Speaker 4: to the store and buy cases of water and put
Speaker 4: them on a truck to Texas.
Speaker 3: Like, that is not effective, That is not helpful.
Speaker 4: And so it's those unrequested donations that then like get
Speaker 4: to that community and then they sit in a warehouse
Speaker 4: and are never distributed or you know, it takes the
Speaker 4: community's recent sources to organize and donate or organize and
Speaker 4: distribute those donations. That's where things become much more complicated.
Speaker 3: And ideally after a.
Speaker 4: Disaster, you just like get the community's water system back
Speaker 4: up and running as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2: Speaking, which is Flint considered a disaster at this point?
Speaker 4: Or no, I would call it an environmental crisis. But
Speaker 4: that's like kind of a weird academic distinction that like
Speaker 4: maybe isn't that important for the actual situation. It's like
Speaker 4: definitely still within the realm of what I think about
Speaker 4: or would research.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 2: And then watching just one hundred million dollars from like
Speaker 2: Chanelle go to the fix the church is like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, last questions I always ask. I mean, I feel
Speaker 2: like this is absolutely the stupidest question to ask, the
Speaker 2: smartest person given the topic. But what's the thing you
Speaker 2: like the least about disasters? Like everything?
Speaker 4: I don't know, honestly, it's watching the same problems just
Speaker 4: happen again and again, like we know what the problems are,
Speaker 4: and like we know what's causing disasters, and we're just
Speaker 4: not we could we could like stop most disasters from happening,
Speaker 4: and we don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what top problems would you identify that are contributing
Speaker 2: to Like if you could wave a magic wand and
Speaker 2: to fix those problems.
Speaker 4: Okay, with a magic wand, I mostly I would change
Speaker 4: like where people are living, right, move them into less
Speaker 4: vulnerable areas to like wave a magic wand and just
Speaker 4: fund all of the mitigation projects that local communities want
Speaker 4: to do, right, Like people know their community's best, Like
Speaker 4: they're the ones who know what their communities need to
Speaker 4: be safe. And there are communities all across the country
Speaker 4: that have a plan written out, like they've done the
Speaker 4: research of what project needs to happen in their community
Speaker 4: to make them more resilient or to make them more
Speaker 4: ready to handle a disaster, prevent a disaster from happening,
Speaker 4: And very often the barrier is that they do not
Speaker 4: have the funding for it, or there's not political support
Speaker 4: for it, and so I think just like funding all
Speaker 4: of those projects would be great.
Speaker 2: Just bring insert chimes here, magic wands. Your favorite thing
Speaker 2: about your work.
Speaker 3: I think being able to.
Speaker 4: Have a platform to amplify the voices of survivors and
Speaker 4: to amplify those communities that don't get that media attention,
Speaker 4: even just acknowledge.
Speaker 3: I think sometimes that yes, I see what you're going through.
Speaker 4: This is a disaster. You're absolutely right. More people should
Speaker 4: be paying attention.
Speaker 3: Being able to understand what they're experiencing, I think is
Speaker 3: probably my favorite part.
Speaker 2: Did you ever think that you would be the world's
Speaker 2: foremost disastrologist.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm not the world's foremost disasterrologist probably, but.
Speaker 2: I mean I don't know of a lot of other people.
Speaker 2: You got the domain name, so well, that's true, Pierce
Speaker 2: the Veil's got nothing on you. Yeah, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean in terms of disastrology as a discipline and a disastrologist,
Speaker 2: it's like call of doctor Sam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just the loudest on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Well that's good. More air horns and bullhorns. You're doing
Speaker 2: great work. Thank you so much for letting me peppery
Speaker 2: with stupid questions and thanks for coming all the way
Speaker 2: to Fargo. I get to check off North Dakota on
Speaker 2: my list. I'm glad there are no tornadoes while we
Speaker 2: were here, though, yikes. So travel far and wide if
Speaker 2: need be, and ask the foremost smartest people your deepest
Speaker 2: down stupid questions, because we're all gonna die one day now.
Speaker 2: To learn more about doctor Montano, head to her website
Speaker 2: at disaster dashology dot com. On Twitter, she is Sam L.
Speaker 2: Montano and her bio says I'm not a regular disasterrologist.
Speaker 2: I'm a cool disasterrologist and that's very true and I
Speaker 2: love her for it. Okay, so we are at ologies
Speaker 2: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Aliward with one L
Speaker 2: on both. More links and attributions are always up at
Speaker 2: aliward dot com slash Ologies. There's a link to the
Speaker 2: episode page and the social media pages and the sponsor
Speaker 2: pages up in the show notes always. Thank you to
Speaker 2: Aaron Talbert and Hannah Liippo for admitting the Facebook Ologies
Speaker 2: podcast group full of very kind wonderfuls. Also hello to
Speaker 2: the reddit subreddit group. I don't know how reddit works,
Speaker 2: but I hear y'all are assembling there, Hi, feel free
Speaker 2: to hit up ologiesmerch dot com, including brand new check
Speaker 2: your Crevis's shirts and mugs and some Hey and Perbye
Speaker 2: shirts that are just up at ologiesmurch dot com. Thank
Speaker 2: you Shannon Felts and Bonnie Dutch of the comedy podcast
Speaker 2: You Are That for all the merch help. You're both wonderful.
Speaker 2: Thank you to assistant editor Jarrett Sleeper of the podcast
Speaker 2: Make Good, Bad Brain for assistant editing. Jarrett just put
Speaker 2: out an amazing episode with traumatologist doctor Nicholas Barr examining
Speaker 2: mental illness and mass shootings in case you like the
Speaker 2: debunking of flim Flam, so go check that out. And
Speaker 2: thank you to my own emergency manager editor Stephen Ray Morris,
Speaker 2: who helps me cobble these together every week and get
Speaker 2: them up as on time as possible for a couple
Speaker 2: of people with ten jobs. He also hosts the per
Speaker 2: Cast about Kiddies and c Jurassic Right, which is about dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: The theme song for Ologies was written by Nick Thorburn
Speaker 2: of the band Islands They Are So Good. Also, Happy
Speaker 2: belated birthday to my wonderful sister Sauce aka Celeste and
Speaker 2: to Bonnie Dutch, I am so happy you both around
Speaker 2: planet Earth. And happy birthday to my wonderful Palazete, who
Speaker 2: has been a friend since sixth grade and is best
Speaker 2: if you stick around until the end of the episode.
Speaker 2: You know, I tell you a secret, and this week
Speaker 2: the secret is that I'm in a hotel room in
Speaker 2: San Jose. I could not get the air conditioning to
Speaker 2: stop blastic on me. Maybe I'm tired, maybe it's day
Speaker 2: two of a no sugar diet, but I wanted to cry.
Speaker 2: And then I unplugged the entire air conditioning and it stopped,
Speaker 2: and I let out a Howard Dan noise like you are.
Speaker 2: And I'm just riding that high still even though it's
Speaker 2: been hours. So if you've ever given up sugar or
Speaker 2: cut carbs because of reactive hypoglycemia, please come at me,
Speaker 2: because I think this sucks at first, but please tell
Speaker 2: me that it gets easier by pachadermatologyology or do zoology, lithology, technology, meteorology, fatology, methology, zeriology, selenology.
Speaker 5: Lisa, are you getting used a camera that this cardader
Speaker 5: just came and erased the Hollywood side.
Speaker 3: The Hollywood side is gone.
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