MIRIAM: Okay, a premise:
SAM: Not a single disaster in the history of the world has been natural.
MIRIAM: So that is Dr. Sam Montano - a professor and disasterologist.
Who I was lucky enough to go to highschool with. So when seeing people in person was still a thing,
we took a little time to talk about disasters.
SAM: The problem with using the term ‘natural disaster’ is really rooted in a confusion between
two terms: ‘Hazard’ and ‘Disaster.’ A hazard can be natural, a disaster cannot. An earthquake
itself is a hazard, but the actual act of buildings falling down, people being trapped, the
need for search and rescue, and opening shelters – that is what makes the event a disaster.
MIRIAM: This kinda just sounds like a semantic argument, but I promise, it really does matter.
How we define these kinds of events dictates how we think about, prepare for, and respond to them.
Natural implies that there was nothing to be done, its just nature. But - that’s not true,
there are entire fields of research and government agencies and community groups
dedicated to preparing for, responding to, and recovering from these environmental hazards.
SAM: Going back about 50 years, disaster researchers started
questioning if this term natural disaster is really reflective of what was causing disasters.
Disaster scholars like Dr. Susan Cutter, Dr. Ben Wisner, Dr. Dennis Mileti, explored what
it is that actually causes a disaster. MIRIAM: And a big part of that is–just
how much did people, often people in the government, screw up. Helpfully,
there is a kind of scale. So - all the big bads that can happen to us theoretically can
fall into one of these categories. Something on the smaller-side of the scale, like a water main
breaking and flooding your and your neighbors basements–really really sucks. But even though
that can feel catastrophic at an individual level it does not require a presidential
disaster declaration and FEMA knocking on your door like large disasters and catastrophes would.
And frustratingly, we know this, you don’t have to be a disasteroligist
to recognize that a superstorm needs a different response than a car accident.
But, misdiagnosing, calling a local emergency a disaster or inversely, not recognizing the
oncoming catastrophe in a weather event, happens all the time. Take Hurricane Maria for example:
NEWSCASTER: The winds are ferocious right now, gusting above 120 miles per hour.
MIRIAM: In September 2017, when Hurricane Maria came barreling down on Puerto Rico
the island was already dealing with a decades-long economic crisis,
the aftermath of extractive shenanigans from mainland based corporations,
and old and too-costly to maintain energy infrastructure. Ultimately,
more than 3000 deaths can be attributed to the storm, both from the hurricane itself
but also because many in Puerto Rico were without power or access to medical care for months.
SAM: Just about everything was working against Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria made landfall.
Puerto Rico had high levels of social, physical, and economic vulnerability before the storm ever
even happened. Then they were hit by a major hurricane. Puerto Rico suffered near complete
devastation of infrastructure and lifelines. On top of that the US emergency management system,
which is supposed to be there for these exact types of situations,
was already strained after having responded to a major disaster in Texas, Hurricane Harvey,
and Hurricane Irma in Florida just weeks earlier.
MIRIAM: As a result, Puerto Rico got less aid from the Federal Government than both
Texas and Florida. But also, they got less donated money as well - According to Vice,
the American Red Cross received $350 million dollars for rebuilding efforts in Houston,
compared to 9 million in Puerto Rico. This is probably due to a lot of reasons--but a big one
worth pointing out is that the national media wasn’t on the ground reporting in Puerto Rico
when the storm hit, didn’t expend resources to get island-based journalists on national TV,
and by the time they flew in a few journalists, the news cycle at moved on.
But the news media only shares some of the blame here, after all, I don’t think
news stories driving donations should be how we respond to the third-costliest cyclone on record.
SAM: At the heart of this failed response was the fact that Maria wasn’t just a regular disaster,
it was catastrophic in nature. And the US emergency management system
was showing up with our disaster plans, at best, not our catastrophe plans.
MIRIAM: It's these fundamental failings – that begin long before the storm hits,
or the pandemic starts, when communities are left vulnerable
to well-understood risks and hazards - that make all disasters not natural.
And–by calling these disasters ‘natural’ we let the people at fault off the hook.
Scientists have been warning of a global pandemic of this scale for decades,
the tools to protect us from deadly heat waves are readily available, and the problems with the
US energy grid and its vulnerabilities to storms are well known. Especially now, as we get even
better at forecasting and warning before a hazard happens--when people die or lose their homes or
lose their livelihoods that is because someone, somewhere decided it wasn’t worth protecting them.
And I’m going to go a little off brand here, because *waves hand around* this whole thing is
normally about climate change. But - while Sam’s here, there is one more thing we want to clear up.
SAM: In the past few years I’ve started to hear the term ‘climate disaster’
used by the public and in media.
SAM: In the same way that the term ‘natural disaster’ isn’t reflective
of what causes disasters, neither is the term ‘climate disaster.’ There is never one
cause to a disaster. By its very definition disasters are about an interaction between a
hazard and us. There is a lot encompassed within that ‘us’ part of the definition.
Everything from our physical, social, economic vulnerability to our politics,
our policies, and the capacity of our emergency management system to respond.
MIRIAM: Hurricane Harvey, which hit Texas and Louisiana in August 2017,
is a great example. We know Harvey was likely worse because of climate change–I
made a video about it actually. The warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico supercharged
the storm letting it suck up huge amounts of water that ended up flooding communities and causing
all this destruction. But, climate change didn’t create hurricanes, it just makes them worse.
SAM: There is value in linking these recent disasters to climate change – because
climate change is making them worse. But stopping climate change is not the only
thing we need to do to stop disasters. That’s why it’s important to make sure we’re thinking about
the emergency management system and what reforms need to made to that system
to better prepare ourselves for disasters.
I like to say that if we are the cause of disaster it means we are also the solution
to disaster. It is in understanding the human factors that manufacture
risk and create disaster that can lead us to advocacy and policy change
to actually prevent these disasters from happening in the first place and save lives.
MIRIAM: Dropping the ‘natural’ or ‘climate’ when we talk about disasters can change our perception,
letting us better understand the human factors that create disaster risks–which lead directly to
advocacy and policy change—and hopefully prevent disasters from happening in the first place.
Thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you have any
questions or comments feel free to leave them downstairs and while you're down there you can
check out the description where you can find links to all of Sam's social medias and her website.
And, if you want to hear more from her,
she's got a book coming out in August so hit that preorder link to order it right now!