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UnDisciplined: With natural disasters rising in frequency, the US needs to rethink emergency management

Moore, Okla., May 26, 2013 -- Volunteers with the Missouri Lutheran Church Disaster Response team are helping survivors clean up after the deadly May 20 tornado. Volunteers provide much needed personal services and are important FEMA partners in disaster recovery.
George Armstrong/FEMA
Moore, Okla., May 26, 2013 -- Volunteers with the Missouri Lutheran Church Disaster Response team are helping survivors clean up after the deadly May 20 tornado. Volunteers provide much needed personal services and are important FEMA partners in disaster recovery.

The recent disaster in Maui was the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, and the Biden Administration has promised billions of dollars to help Hawaii recover. But it hasn't promised a federal investigation — because we don't have a national disaster safety board.

Samantha Montano is a disasterologist from Massachusetts Maritime Academy and the author of the book "Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis."

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Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling <i>Lifespan</i> with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning <i>Longevity Plan</i> with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, <i>Superlative</i>, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.<br/>