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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 occurred to him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be so brutally depressing all the time. These days, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects with his work on UnDisciplined — Utah Public Radio's weekly program on science and discovery.