Scientific American - USA (2022-03)

50 Scientific American, March 2022

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D

isaster researchers are

used to seeing train wrecks

coming. We study the worst

moments in human history—their

warning signs, failures, destruc-

tion, pain, corruption and injus-

tice—so that we can lessen the

hurt. But the scale of the pandem-

ic, and the response to it, shook

even the most practiced among us.

In the beginning, I spent hours

gaming out scenarios with other

researchers, trying to answer the

question everyone was asking us:

How bad is this going to be? Our de-

bates (“if this happens, then that

could happen”) were frequently re-

appraised as we learned more

about the how the virus was trans-

mitted—and watched politicians

mishandle the response. With ev-

ery wrong or delayed decision

made by the Trump administration,

We Didn’t

Get Serious

about the

Climate

Crisis

the scenarios narrowed until it was

inevitable that hundreds of thou-

sands of people in the U.S., if not

more, would die. We have become

haunted by the knowledge that the

worst could have been prevented.

For decades the U.S. has built

a  network for responding to acute

crises, with the Federal Emergency

Management Agency at the top.

Each state and territory has a

matching agency. The real heart

of  the system, though, is the patch-

work of local agencies. Our ap-

proach to disaster response de-

pends on sharing resources: When

one community is in crisis, help ar-

rives from other parts of the coun-

try to back them up. But when the

pandemic began, every part of this

system activated for a response si-

multaneously for the first time ever.

I held my breath. There was no

Emergency managers are

stuck reacting to a constant

march of disasters

By Samantha Montano

RECORD RAINFALL and deadly floods

hit New Jersey in September 2021.