Dr. Samantha Montano

I do hope there are some more stories/videos coming out this month that focus on the last 20 years of recovery because that deserves narrative correcting as much as the response.

I hope it’s also useful in helping people see what happens when the federal government, and FEMA specifically, are not there to help in the middle of a crisis because ~gestures around~.

20 years post-Katrina this kind of accessible doc strikes me as useful in helping people get a basic education on what happened. Sorry to make you all feel old but my college freshmen were not even alive when Katrina happened.

Overall they did a particularly job selecting participants for the doc. The usual folks are there (Honore is particularly effective in this one) but Glover’s family, Marty Bahamonde were critical additions.

(Keep in mind the bar for effective Katrina docs is nearly on the floor for reasons I will never understand.)

It’s around 5 hours and still barely scratches the surface. There are times where they could have moved on faster to be able to include other issues and places where I think they needed to more explicitly say what was being implied. But overall it is good and I’ll be using it in class.

I will be honest that I felt it was still too sympathetic to NOPD. IMO, Compass doesn’t deserve a redemption arc. Instances of white vigilantism were included in meaningful, though incomplete, ways.

I’ve just finished and overall I think it is quite good. I assumed it was going to be about the recovery but it’s actually a play by play of the response from the perspective of survivors with a focus on correcting the narrative around the Superdome/ convention center.

I can’t begin to enumerate the ways the Corporation for Public Broadcasting made my life better, literally from my earliest memories until today. This is gut wrenching.

open.substack.com/pub/disaster...

Speaking of, did you know WA state just released its most accurate tsunami risk assessment to date? It concluded that a Cascadia Subduction Zone tsunami could cause 50,000–65,000+ casualties within the first hour. That's JUST from the tsunami.

Find more info & data here: mil.wa.gov/tsunami-reso...

Realizing my unexpected meltdown this morning over my to do list was my subconscious reminding me it’s August 1st.

Today is August 1.

Asking an academic how their book is going is a felony.

Every time I get down on myself for not getting more work done quickly I have to say out loud to myself that the old researchers all had secretaries AND wives and I’m doing this with just me.

Something I believe with my entire being is that all my problems would be solved if I had the ability to hire an administrative assistant.

“Locked in Kristi Noem’s dungeon”
😭😭

Top two Kerr County emergency officials say they were asleep as July 4 floods struck Their statements to state legislators marked the first time county officials have spoken publicly about what they were doing the morning of the disaster that killed more than 100 people in the county.

We got answers at a state hearing this morning about what the Kerr County Judge, who is in charge of emergency management, and Kerr County Emergency Management Coordinator were doing in the early morning of July 4 as floods rose.

They were asleep.

www.texastribune.org/2025/07/31/t...

I was very skeptical of this new Katrina documentary on Hulu (as I am of all disaster documentaries) but I just started watching and it opens with Malik Rahim.

COVID is the deadliest virus ever when they talk about the "lab leak" theory to gin up outrage, but just a mild little cold when they talk about masking and public health measures to gin up outrage.

Excellent article from @emfoxhall.bsky.social. Totally agree with @samlmontano.bsky.social about accountability and prevention of future events, why I wrote this analysis of the tragedy and will write more - we CAN save lives with better wx info AND emergency management.
substack.com/home/post/p-...

Slight risk of severe storms from Washington, D.C. to southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Marginal risk stretches across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast.

Slight risk of severe storms in parts of Wyoming, Colorado, and western Nebraska. Marginal risk extends from Utah to Missouri and into the Northern Plains.

A few severe storms capable of damaging winds are possible this afternoon across the Mid-Atlantic region. Other severe wind and hail producing storms are also possible across the central/northern High Plains. Visit weather.gov for the latest, local forecast.

As the floods hit, Kerrville officials’ messages show lack of information about what was coming Lawmakers plan to hear testimony Thursday in Kerr County. Questions remain about how state and local entities responded to flood warnings.

The work of investigating how a disaster happened and why a response unfolded in the way it did is not the work, as Greg Abbott says, of “losers”, it’s the work of accountability and prevention of future disasters. @emfoxhall.bsky.social

www.texastribune.org/2025/07/30/t...

I remain hopeful that @iaem-org.bsky.social & @nemareadynation.bsky.social have a media plan & political strategy for distribution & advocacy. There’s a very specific policy window to get actionable results from this survey and it would be detrimental to the future of the field for them to miss it.

Also just absolutely shuts down these LinkedIn clowns who can can’t be bothered to read more than a two sentence AI summary. You have to read things to understand things, fools.

COLUMN: Argonne’s Emergency Management Report is One Step Forward - Who's Next? - HSToday The Emergency Management Community is all abuzz about Argonne National Laboratory’s “Emergency Management Organizational Structure, Staffing, And Capacity Study.”

Really phenomenal write-up about the Argonne Emergency Management Survey from Dan Stoneking. This one is more oriented towards folks in emergency management. He really nails the importance of this survey for making changes in the field.

www.hstoday.us/featured/col...

Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News

I just started reading this book but @equalityalec.bsky.social discusses this in the introduction. I'm thinking of assigning it in the film class, but it might be a better fit for crisis comms since it's focused on news media, rather than fictional stories.

bookshop.org/p/books/copa...

Some notes: The key really is the gravy consistency and angle of the slope.

Those are not just Dino nuggets, they are gluten free Dino nuggets. They taste exactly the same.

Lots of people have made something like this! You can search TikTok for other ideas.

Fear not, I was doing phone calls while making this. I can multi-task! lol

This is good.