Review by Booklist Review
Montano, who holds a PhD in emergency management, ably critiques how government officials manage, or, more often, mismanage catastrophes. What went wrong with the response to Hurricane Katrina? Montano blames underinvestment in infrastructure, racist housing policies, incompetence, and ill-advised post-9/11 changes that weakened the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). When the COVID-19 pandemic began, President Trump disastrously sent his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who lacked any prior emergency management experience, to FEMA to lead efforts to procure personal protective equipment. Unfortunately, disasters create new problems, and exacerbate old ones, such as food insecurity, unemployment, and homelessness. Ideally, federal leaders who know that, say, a levee system might fail would take immediate action rather than wait for a tragedy. Life is not ideal. After catastrophes, politicians always promise to do better, Montano notes. Alas, that's rarely the case. Is humankind prepared to manage the consequences of climate change? That remains to be seen. Is Montano giving up? No. She will continue to fight for "disaster justice" and a better-prepared world.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, debuts with a trenchant if uneven look at communities that are fighting for survival in the face of climate change. Montano's passion stems from a formative trip she took as a teenager in 2005 to help New Orleanians rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina--she returned there for college and was aghast that, years after the storm, the recovery effort was incomplete and relied on "voluntourism" groups to rebuild the city. Montano argues that America's national emergency system is based on a model of "limited intervention," and amounts to "cobbled-together, underfunded system isn't working." As a fix, she calls for "disaster justice" and encourages readers to get involved in politics and push for emergency management to be seen as a priority for politicians. Her indignation is paired with comprehensive research, but the narrative often gets bogged down in repetitively cataloging the author's experiences in, among other places, Louisiana, coastal Maine, and Texas--so much so that the disaster victims themselves feel conspicuously absent. Despite these missing voices, this is a great primer on the deficiencies of the country's crisis response apparatus. Agent: Tess Callero, Europa Content. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Montano debuts with a compelling account of her career: from a teen volunteering in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After witnessing firsthand the devastation in New Orleans, Montano sought to improve the way the U.S. handled increasingly frequent natural and man-made disasters. Her memoir takes readers through a history of federal responses to some of the earliest national crises, including the 1927 Mississippi River flood, the Dust Bowl, and the Great Depression; she notes these crises' disproportionate impact on marginalized communities. More recently, FEMA was established in 1979 to handle all phases of emergency management. When FEMA was placed under the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11, it muddied the mission and slowed response time, Montano writes. Turning her focus to the COVID-19 pandemic, she notes that the George W. Bush administration foresaw the disastrous potential of a pandemic and began preparations, but were those early efforts enough? VERDICT Linking climate change to the increasingly destructive natural disasters facing the nation, Montano's part-memoir, part-analysis book is an urgent call to take action.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An expert in disaster management explains her specialty. As a fiercely public-spirited teenager, Montano, who teaches emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, joined volunteers pouring into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although numerous writers have described the misery that she witnessed there, readers will encounter a few jolts. However, some may be surprised to learn that, more than 15 years later, volunteers still travel to New Orleans to work; although commercial and wealthy areas are up and running, poor, largely Black neighborhoods remain blighted. The experience inspired Montano to obtain an advanced degree in disaster management, and she delivers plenty of insights into 21st-century catastrophes. She writes that while Hollywood disasters happen fast, "every disaster you have yet to experience in your lifetime has already begun. The threads of risk are spun out over decades, even centuries, until they crescendo into disaster." In the past decade, we have experienced record-strength hurricanes, forest fires, and floods. These follow from the burning of fossil fuels, so climate change is far from a future problem. Like countless scientists before her, she notes that "it's not a question of if we will experience the consequences of climate change, but rather how bad it will be." The author offers lucid accounts of how people respond to disasters (they rarely panic--Hollywood gets it wrong again--but rush to help) and how expert disaster management can mitigate future disasters, relieve suffering when they happen, and manage future recovery. Although Katrina is center stage, Montano illustrates her points with other disasters, most of which received inadequate responses. Hurricane Maria, which ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, was far more damaging than Katrina, and government response was slower. It's hardly news that the Covid-19 pandemic was handled poorly, but Montano contributes more disheartening details. Most books on disaster end with hope, but the author will have none of it. She exhorts readers to take action but doesn't claim to see light at the end of the tunnel. Painful but essential reading. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
