The Government Fix for

Disaster Response

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[00:00:04] Amanda Renteria: Today, we’re talking about the government fix for disaster response. When you hear the words “disaster response,” what images come to mind? Maybe you envision downed trees, flooded homes, newscasters struggling to get the words out as heavy winds swirl around them. Well, turns out responding to disasters is not just about what happens in that moment while the hurricane rages or fires blaze. Welcome to The Government Fix. I’m your host, Amanda Renteria. I’ve worked on Capitol Hill, in the classroom on Wall Street. Now, I’m the CEO of Code for America, an organization focused on using tech to improve public services and make government work well for everyone.

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[00:00:52] Amanda: We know at Code for America, it’s not just about responding quickly. It’s about creating systems ready to respond in the moment. Today’s guest understands that, too. Samantha Montano is a disaster researcher and expert in emergency management. She’s the author of Disasterology, which builds on her own academic experience, engaging with disasters firsthand, as well as her academic expertise.

Samantha looks beyond the immediate moment that disaster strikes towards a way to build a more resilient preparedness network, as well as long-term strategies to help communities rebuild. This is The Government Fix for Disaster Response. Welcome, Dr. Samantha Montano. A lot of your experience was really, early on, your experience in Katrina. Can you take us back to that first trip to New Orleans as a high-schooler, and how was it that you found things different than you expected to find, and what really pulled you into this work?

[00:01:56] Dr. Samantha Montano: When I was in high school, we had an opportunity, as many people across the country did, to go down to New Orleans and volunteer, help with the recovery efforts. You see these things on TV. To actually physically be there and see the extent of the destruction, to look down a street, and for as far as the eye can see, just see these monstrous piles of debris, it completely altered my understanding of what disasters or, in this case, a catastrophe is, and really, ultimately, how much help is needed, not just during the response when all the life-saving things are happening, but also for years and years, in some cases decades, into the recovery.

[00:02:40] Amanda: When you went down as a high-schooler, had you done any work in disaster relief, or had you studied it? What did you know before even getting down there? Then I’m curious, on your ride back, what you processed in that moment.

[00:02:55] Dr. Montano: Yes, I really didn’t have much disaster experience at all. [chuckles] I went to a Jesuit high school, so we had a lot of education on the concept of social justice. That was my framing going into it. What I saw in New Orleans was clearly an injustice, and much of that damage and impact was rooted in social injustice. Pretty immediately, when I was there, it was clear to me that I personally felt like I wanted to do more to help, and that spending a week there was nowhere near enough, and that it was really this all-hands-on-deck moment. I decided to move to New Orleans. I lived there for four years, working with different recovery nonprofits on all aspects of the recovery.

[00:03:49] Amanda: I think it is interesting, right? It’s in the news cycle, comes on, comes off, and yet there are years afterwards where it really does take a reinvestment in what’s happening in the community, just even for the community themselves to know, “Hey, we see you. We’re here with you.” I think one of those things that I have loved about your work is that not only did you go down there and you were in it on the front lines, but you also coined some terms that has really opened up a dialogue so people could understand this work. You wrote a book called Disasterology and coined the term “disasterologist.” For folks who are listening in, they might not know those terms. How do you define that? You just said a little while ago, justice. What is disaster justice?

[00:04:35] Dr. Montano: Yes, so when I got to grad school– so I spent several years doing this disaster recovery work around the country. When I got to grad school and was actually, for the first time, getting a formal education in emergency management, I was excited about what I was learning because it gave me a vocabulary for what I had seen in a lot of the work that I had actually been doing in New Orleans.

I had a bit of an epiphany of, like, “Oh, wait, people have been studying this for a century.” We actually know a lot about disasters, and we know a lot about what the best way for communities to recover is, but that information does not seem to be making it into practice and onto the ground. Because of that disconnect that I saw, I was excited about sharing what I was learning in grad school.

I started a blog where I really, truly was just writing, like, “Here’s what we talked about in class today,” so that my other friends doing this work could follow along. There was a lot of, like, “I don’t really get it. What is emergency management? Are you a firefighter? What does that mean?” I started using this term, “disasterology,” to describe it. It’s a term that was referenced one time many decades ago and buried in an academic article somewhere.

Really, disasterology made it easier for people to understand what it was that I was doing, which was studying disasters. The term caught on and stuck, and is really the way I’m using disasterology is to describe the very broad field of disaster research. There are tons of people in all different disciplines who study disasters, and that combined effort is what we could call disasterology.

[00:06:39] Amanda: I really love that you have coined a term, but that you also talk about it in real time. I think so much, having grown up in the Central Valley of California, a very rural town that faces a lot of drought and different things because it’s very ag-oriented. We’re very tied to the land and what happens to the land. Oftentimes, people feel quite invisible there.

The idea of being able to talk about it and continue that dialogue, how important it is, not just for people to understand what’s really going on on the ground and what’s really happening to real people, but as much for the people themselves to be seen as well. One of the things that we think about, talk about at Code for America is, how do we make sure that people are seen? Not just in a disaster, but I’m curious to hear your perspective on what can government do to make sure they actually see these communities before disaster strikes?

[00:07:35] Dr. Montano: Yes, it’s a great question. Part of what we study in emergency management is not just the response and the recovery, but also what we do to prevent disasters from happening and what we do to prepare for them, so the before side of things. There is no community in America that does not need to do more mitigation and does not need to do more to prepare.

Certainly, it’s a case that some communities need to do more than others, have a greater vulnerability, greater risk, and that makes things complicated if you’re FEMA or if you’re the federal government, because there is so much need across the country, particularly in the context of climate change and our increasing risk across the country. One of the things that FEMA has done in the past is have mitigation grant programs that help to identify mitigation projects across the country that need to be done, whether it’s helping with updating building codes or building a flood wall or what have you. Through those grants, they have looked different and evolved over time.

That’s one way that the government can identify, what are the communities that are in need? There are requirements for communities to have hazard mitigation plans, which helps to ensure that communities are actually looking at what their risks are. FEMA or other government agencies can use those to start trying to figure out what needs to be prioritized here in terms of funding. It doesn’t work quite as well as I just described it, but that’s the underlying theory there in terms of what government could do is identify what those mitigation projects are across the country, prioritize based on need, and start getting that funding out the door to state and locals.

[00:09:35] Amanda: I’m excited to see that you are part of being on the front lines and continuing to do the research around it, because the quicker we learn, the better government will be. We all will be as a community when disasters happen. It is true. We are seeing more of them all across the country in places we never imagined we’d see them. This work is so incredibly important.

We also recognize in our work at Code for America that government services are particularly harder in more marginalized communities. I’m wondering whether you have seen that as well. If you could just unpack it a little bit of the differences when a disaster hits communities that have a little bit more resources versus others, and what we can really do to design it so it actually helps both of those kinds of communities equally when disaster strikes.

[00:10:25] Dr. Montano: Yes, so this is a common refrain that you’ll hear, especially from politicians in the midst of a disaster, is that disasters don’t discriminate. The research very clearly shows us that that’s not true. They do discriminate. When you look at why that is, it’s rooted in the pre-disaster vulnerabilities of communities. Some communities have more money, which means they probably have better infrastructure that can better withstand a hurricane or a tornado, or what have you.

If you have wealthier people who live in that community, then they have probably done more mitigation efforts on their property, built their homes in ways that can better withstand those hazards. If you have people who live in your community who have money, that means they also have money to do things like evacuate and to go foot the bill for two weeks in a hotel. They have those kind of resources when they actually need to respond to these types of events.

They have the money to stockpile food and water and the other kinds of supplies you might need during a disaster. If you are in a community that does not have money that has been historically marginalized, that is working through being ignored by your local or your state government, and your infrastructure is failing, and you don’t have public transportation, and those basic social systems haven’t been invested in, then you are going to likely experience greater impacts.

That same storm that hits a wealthier community is probably going to cause less damage as compared to that same storm hitting a poorer community. What that means is you are already starting from behind. If you are a community that is more politically powerful, if you have a lot of wealthy white people who live in your community, you’re probably going to get more media attention. There’ll probably be greater support coming in because you’ve gotten more media attention.

We know that’s associated with things like donations to nonprofits and whatnot. Then once you get into recovery, things can get even more severe. Again, if you are somebody who has millions of dollars in the bank, then you can afford to walk away from your house and go buy a different house. Whereas if you are a renter or you are somebody who is living paycheck to paycheck, you do not have the money to rebuild.

That leads to a situation in recovery where you have more compounding impacts. I think if you take an equitable approach to emergency management, you would see that the communities who have greater need are getting more assistance. That’s not really happening. There’s been some reviews of some of the previous mitigation grant programs in FEMA, and you can see that there’s more money going to whiter, wealthier communities.

A large part of that reason is inherent to this idea that communities need to apply for those grants. If you are a poor community without the people working in your emergency management agency, you don’t even have enough people to actually apply for those grants to compete to get them. All of these inequities pile up onto each other across the entire disaster life cycle.

[00:14:05] Amanda: We see that too on our tech side of the work. When COVID hit, we could see what cities and counties really had technological capabilities and which ones didn’t from the very beginning. Getting out resources was much easier, of course, in those areas who could invest in good infrastructure before anything even happened.

[00:14:25] Dr. Montano: Right.

[00:14:26] Amanda: On the backside of that, it also means it’s a little messier to fix it because you’re starting with a system that’s a little outdated, or it’s not right for the community that’s there, or it’s not really built for the community that’s there. Now, they’re under stress. I think everyone always talks in a disaster, “Time is not the time to be trading business cards in the business world,” because people are all just acting in the same way.

It’s really hard in those moments to say, “Oh, the infrastructure’s not there, but let’s try and put it together now in this moment of crisis.” As I think about the recovery, that leads me to, “Wasn’t ready before. Now, how do we make sure to take the lessons learned and truly invest?” In your experience of going to New Orleans and really staying there afterwards, when I think about how government needs to show up both in the crisis, but then in the recovery to really be there to help people at their moment of need and on a going-forward basis, do you have any real-world examples of– and I know this podcast is government fix, but any examples of a failed disaster recovery?

[00:15:35] Dr. Montano: Yes, I think there’s a lot of examples.

[00:15:39] Amanda: That makes me sad to hear.

[laughter]

[00:15:41] Amanda: I’m like, “No, don’t say that,” but it’s true, right? This is in the spirit of learning.

[00:15:46] Dr. Montano: It is tough because I think has a recovery failed is not necessarily a yes-or-no question, right? Different people are going to have different opinions about whether or not a recovery has been successful. I think it is the case that in many communities across the country, you will find disaster survivors who say, “I have a failed recovery. My community has a failed recovery.” You will also find people across the country who say, “Yes, I’m good now. I’ve moved on. Things are fine. My community is fine.”

It is a mixed bag. It was just the 20-year anniversary of Katrina, and so that is very fresh in my mind. I was down in New Orleans this past summer, just before the 20-year anniversary, and driving through the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, which is a historically Black neighborhood that was particularly affected by Katrina and had a lot of attention on it afterwards. When you drive through the Lower Ninth now, there are people who have rebuilt and are back in their houses, and the school is rebuilt. There’s all of these things that are back in that particular neighborhood.

Also, though, when you drive through, lot after lot that have no house on them. They were torn down, and nobody has come back to rebuild. That, I think, is an example of, in some ways, yes, it was successful. Some people came back. There was a period of time where it was not immediately clear that that was going to actually happen based on how the government was funding the Katrina recovery. There’s also a lot of people who didn’t come back. Many of those people wanted to come back and couldn’t get the resources to do so.

When I think about recovery, I tend to not think about putting things back to normal. One, just because normal is what got you into the disaster in the first place. We always want to make those positive changes to reduce risk. It’s more, I have found about, and research supports this, is getting people back into some kind of a routine that they’re okay with, right? That’s going to look radically different for everyone.

[00:18:06] Amanda: Yes. It’s interesting hearing you talk about this because I was wondering, for folks who experience or people who experience a disaster and you’re part of the recovery team or the government or infrastructure team, how much do you think about the future? Sure, there’s some sort of rapid response, but in the recovery process, how much do you think about, “Let’s put these things back to where they were,” versus, “How do we make them better?” How does one government leader, how should they think about that?

[00:18:39] Dr. Montano: This is why I think recovery is actually the hardest thing we do in emergency management. In many ways, response is the easy part. I think ideally and from a theoretical perspective, you want to make as many changes in terms of reducing risk as possible in the recovery, right? Logically, if you have to rebuild your entire house, why would you not rebuild it to be more resistant to the next hazard?

The problem is that when you bring that into practice, you start running into some pretty massive barriers really quickly. One, you have a knowledge issue. Most people would not know even where to begin with rebuilding their house, let alone figuring out, “Oh, how do I raise it 15 feet off the ground or make all of these other changes?” There’s a knowledge issue. There’s also primarily a financial issue.

It is already incredibly expensive to rebuild your home. Raising it up off the ground makes that even more expensive, right? People already are struggling and, in many cases, cannot find the money that is needed to rebuild. To say now, you have to also do all this extra stuff on top of it is impossible and overwhelming to many people. There also is a mental side of this, too. A lot of people who have been through a disaster have been traumatized by that event.

They do, in their minds, they want to go back to normal. They don’t want to make changes. They want things to go back to the way they were. There can also be some barriers there that need to be worked through. That’s at the individual level. When you back up and you look at this from a community level or from the perspective of a local or state government, you have similar issues. If you’re the mayor of a town, you need to try and figure out, like, “Who do we go to for advice on what mitigation we should be doing?”

At the same time, you’re trying to figure out everything about the recovery. You also have the same funding issue. Where are you going to find the money to do community mitigation projects? There’s also this time crunch, right? The longer people are in recovery, those impacts start piling up. We really do want people to move through that recovery as quickly as possible. However, it is possible to do. It requires doing some things ahead of time, though. One of the things we know from the research is that communities who have pre-disaster recovery plans, often that integrate into their mitigation plans. You can hit the ground running, right?

[00:21:32] Amanda: Of those places that do have mitigation plans, how close do you follow those in an actual disaster? I know they help because you have a plan, but do they deviate when, all of a sudden, now, you’re in the moment?

[00:21:45] Dr. Montano: They can. Yes, of course, they can. The benefit of having these plans isn’t always necessarily what exactly is written on the page. It’s that you’ve gone through the planning process, which involves thinking about these things, kind of that simple, but also meeting with the various stakeholders who would need to be involved in that. You start to have an idea of, “Oh, we talked to that engineer,” “Oh, we talked to that planner,” and you already have those contacts pre-disaster that you can rely on.

[00:22:18] Amanda: I was thinking about when you were saying, “How do you make sure that you can put some processes in place?” I suspect if you wanted to do some changing of your house or things like that, the unglamorous processes have a role here, right? The insurance battles, contract shortages. In that moment, what have you been able to flex, or what can the city or the county or the state flex in real time to help you move quickly, and also in a better way? Those are all just logistical systems around the whole piece. I’m interested to hear your experience with that. I would love to hear a successful disaster recovery story that you’ve seen and the lessons you drew from that.

[00:23:09] Dr. Montano: All of these processes that need to be in place ahead of time are related to having strong local emergency management agencies that have enough resources to do these things, like having plans in place ahead of time, having a plan for how you’re going to open the permit office back up in your city as quickly as possible. Those are all things that fall within the purview of emergency management, and that emergency manager should be doing.

Unfortunately, across the country, most emergency managers are not planning for recovery in their communities. The reason for that is that they don’t have the resources to do it. There was a new study that just came out from Argonne National Labs that looked at the capacity of local emergency management agencies across the country. Frankly, it’s a pretty dire situation. We have a lot of part-time emergency managers in communities that need more than a full-time emergency manager.

We even have some communities that are relying on a volunteer emergency manager. There’s just no possible way that they’re going to be able to do that, preparing for recovery that we know is necessary to speed up these recoveries. Now, in terms of a community that recovered well, I think you can look at other places in New Orleans. If you go walk around uptown New Orleans, you wouldn’t know Katrina happened 20 years ago. Whereas when you walk through the Ninth Ward, you know it happened, right? Of course, that’s talking about physical recovery. There’s economic recovery, mental health recovery, social recovery. Those might look different from place to place.

[00:25:00] Amanda: 20 years ago, you were there. Now, you’re going back, and you’re looking at these different communities. What is different today of emergency management that wasn’t there 20 years ago in Katrina, that is probably the biggest difference you see now as people navigate disasters?

[00:25:19] Dr. Montano: If you’d asked me this a year ago, I would have had a very different answer, right? After Katrina happened, there was an acknowledgment in the field of emergency management. That emergency management had failed, and that FEMA, in particular, had failed, as I think has been well established at this point. The people who work in emergency management, they are passionate about emergency management. It’s a very hard field to work in. If they’re in it, they want to be there.

The failures of Katrina were something that many people in our field took very personally and said, “This is my guiding light. We’re never going to let this happen again.” It’s also an event that inspired many people, not just me, to become involved in emergency management. Based on that idea of Katrina’s response as failure, the field has made tremendous changes. It has become much more focused on the need to address vulnerable populations.

People who have different needs than we had traditionally been planning for. There are widespread conversations about the need to create more equitable recovery programs, total support for increasing mitigation funding across the country. Also, laws and policies changed at the federal level, state, and local levels across the country as well. Unfortunately, in January, we started to see all of those efforts from the previous 19 years start to unravel.

In August, on the 20-year anniversary, the headline story about it being the 20-year anniversary is that FEMA is back to how it was when Katrina happened, and that we are not ready to respond to another event like Katrina. A lot of those efforts that had been put into changing the field for the better have just disappeared overnight. I think maybe one good thing is that we still have the knowledge of what we need to do better, which we didn’t necessarily have in the same way in 2005. Unfortunately, we are in a really tough position right now that looks remarkably similar to the pre-Katrina situation.

[00:27:43] Amanda: What are your suggestions for those mayors or for those governors to really think about this shifting landscape so that they can prepare now for disasters, given the changes that are happening at the federal level?

[00:27:56] Dr. Montano: I think governors and mayors need to make sure they have an emergency manager and be staffing out those emergency management agencies because those are going to be the agencies that are making the decisions in the absence of FEMA being there. FEMA always is the support coming in, not the decision-maker. They are going to be on their own. That extra help is not necessarily coming at this point. Staffing emergency management agencies with state and local funding.

Many of those agencies are staffed using federal funds that have either been lost or are potentially at risk. The other thing that state and local governments broadly need to be doing are creating rainy day funds so that they have money set aside if they need it in an emergency. I recognize that that is a hard ask, especially now with state budgets probably getting thrown up in the air and shook all up, given the loss of federal funding, but that really needs to be a safety net.

I think at the individual level, it is important more than ever to do what you can to prepare yourself for disasters, all the normal advice you hear, like signing up for alerts, having extra days of food and water, having an evacuation plan for yourself, those types of things. Obviously, people have different resources and whatnot to do that. It really is more important than ever. That expectation that FEMA is going to come in and save the day was always a bit [laughs] over-general for what actually happens. Especially now, it just isn’t realistic that that is going to happen. I think people do need to rely more on their local communities than has necessarily been the case in the past.

[00:29:52] Amanda: Yes, not only local communities, but their own household, their own neighborhood. We often tell our kids this. I’m married to an Eagle Scout, so he’s very prepared. He went through a course to make sure he’s very prepared. Then you try it out. Apparently, our alarm system is different. Our alarm went on upstairs. Both my kids got out and went to the point that they were supposed to meet us. Then we’re there for 30 minutes. We’re like, “Where’s Mom and Dad?”

[laughter]

[00:30:22] Amanda: From there, we learn that our wiring wasn’t quite right. [chuckles] When our 15-year-old runs in, he’s like, “What are you guys doing?” I do think a lot about that. As the landscape is shifting on us from government or what government can do, how are we all ensuring that we’re not only educating families on how to do it, but run through the trial, see what’s missing? I know we all are really busy, and you never have time to think about it.

What I’m hearing from you, Samantha, is just how important that is so that we can be ready for those moments. Also, do it with your neighborhood. Do it with other folks. Ask the state. See the policy. What can be done, too? Some of this, I think, we’re all probably going to need to roll up our sleeves a little bit and ask more of, how do we do it now together so that we are better prepared? One of the things that has me thinking is we are going to face this a little bit more with climate change, and are seeing that. Have you seen technology at all help change, or has it evolved, or does it need to evolve as we think about these disasters going forward?

[00:31:30] Dr. Montano: It’s a great question. For a long time, I was a huge advocate of emergency managers using social media more. During Hurricane Helene, I made a comment on Twitter saying, “This is Twitter’s last disaster.” That was clear at that point forward that the disinformation/misinformation on there was just so extreme that it wasn’t going to be useful anymore.

Right now, in terms of social media, which, again, has been for the last 15-plus years, such a critical aspect of how we respond to disasters, we’re in a weird place where it’s not really clear what’s going to happen and what the best way of using social media in these instances are anymore. We’re in a holding pattern there. In terms of broader kinds of technology, certainly, things like warning systems are saving lives all over the world.

That is one of the main things we credit with lowering disaster death tolls in many parts of the world. There are all of these positive things that technology can bring us. At the same time, I always tell my students, “I need to know first that you can respond to a disaster with a pencil and a piece of paper because we’re dealing with situations where technology may not work by the nature of the event that happens.” It is a weird situation where, yes, if you can use cool tech and it works, great, but you also need to know how to do it without it.

Harvey was an interesting case because that was a massive storm. A lot of people kept internet, kept cell service, kept power even during the storm, which allowed for communication to happen. Again, Twitter was so helpful here. You have people posting their addresses saying, “Okay, our street’s filling up with water. We need somebody to come.” You have all the formal search-and-rescue teams, but also volunteer search-and-rescue teams that are coming to help.

There was a couple of folks who made a website called CrowdSource Rescue in the middle of Harvey that still exists and is used today, which is a platform to coordinate search-and-rescue resources with people who need rescue. That was an amazing example of technology, communication all coming together. Was it perfect? No, of course not. It’s never perfect in an event of that size. You see how having people be able to have something like Twitter to post that and share that information is incredibly valuable.

[00:34:16] Amanda: I think about just these platforms and systems that have now come up and the idea that when you’re in that moment, I’m not sure it’s part of our plan to go, “Oh, don’t forget to let folks know on whatever social platform you have, where you are, what your situation is.” That is one tool that is now out there, but it is a little scary with mis and disinformation.

[00:34:40] Dr. Montano: I was going to say, too, the comparison to Harvey was then Hurricane Maria, a couple of weeks later, where all of Puerto Rico loses power. We didn’t even hear from people in Puerto Rico, in some cases, for days, in some cases, weeks. They were reliant on ham radio operators and using the radio in Puerto Rico to send messages across the island. It also took people flying from the mainland in with satellite phones for the mayors across the island. It took a long time for that equipment to actually get into, especially the remote areas.

[00:35:20] Amanda: Yes. It’s one thing we think about in our work at Code for America is, “How are we reaching folks?” Because if we can reach folks in the everyday for food assistance, how do those lines stay robust and resilient in times when a lot of these communities who already feel left out in that moment, how do we make sure we build those pathways going forward? After 15-plus years of doing this work, and you’ve been studying it, and you’ve been all over this, what keeps you hopeful?

[00:35:49] Dr. Montano: I have the great fortune of working with people who are just at the start of their careers in emergency management, who are really excited about joining the field and helping people who are worried about climate change, who understand these equity issues, and are really excited and interested in trying to find unique ideas for solving these problems. They keep me hopeful. The next generation is coming. [chuckles]

[00:36:20] Amanda: Samantha, that keeps me hopeful, too. I know my kids definitely think they can do emergency management better than us as parents-

[00:36:28] Dr. Montano: Good, do it.

[00:36:30] Amanda: -given our experience.

[laughter]

[00:36:32] Amanda: You’re right, exactly. We’re all going to be in good hands. I’m for that. My last question that we like to ask all of our guests is, if you had a magic wand to change one thing about how government works, what would you fix first?

[00:36:49] Dr. Montano: Yes, great question. We really need to change the way we’re approaching emergency management to one that really emphasizes people’s needs. Throughout our recovery programs, our mitigation programs, if we really zero in on what are the needs of actual communities, which looks different across the country, and how do we get funding to them, resources to them, I think we’d be in a much better position, not only in emergency management, but have healthier communities more broadly.

[00:37:25] Amanda: I couldn’t agree with you more. I think there’s so much we can do together. I’m just excited to have been able to spend some time learning with you. I hope all of our listeners tune in and make sure they make those plans, understand what they need to do, have an exit strategy, and all those kinds of things. I think the big lesson here is what works, not just for government, but really, even at home, is, what is your plan so that you know what to do in those moments? I appreciate the work that you do and for being with us today, Samantha. Thanks so much.

[00:37:56] Dr. Montano: Thanks for having me.

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[00:38:02] Amanda: Today’s conversation with Dr. Samantha Montano revealed something crucial. Emergency management is so much more than the images we see on TV. It’s not just firefighters battling flames or rescue teams in flood waters. It’s about the unglamorous work that helps before a disaster strikes and the long road of recovery that follows. What struck me most was Samantha’s point that recovery isn’t about returning back to normal. Normal, after all, is often what got us into trouble in the first place.

Real recovery means building something better, something more resilient. That’s exactly what we do at Code for America. We reach toward innovation and create systems that actually serve everyone. We know you can get really powerful results by just getting everyone in a room together before a project even starts. That helps folks not just reimagine a system, but to reimagine what working together means.

I hope you’ll consider having those conversations. Run those fire drills. Know your evacuation routes. Because in a shifting landscape where federal support is less certain, our local communities, our own preparedness matters more than ever. The next generation is going to play a key role. As Samantha said, her students keep her going. Honestly, that gives me hope, too. That’s all for today on The Government Fix. Thanks for listening.

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[00:39:35] Amanda: This podcast is brought to you by Code for America, the country’s leading civic tech nonprofit for over 15 years. We believe that government can work for the people, by the people, in the new digital age. We work with government at all levels across the country to make the delivery of public service better with technology. We partner with community organizations and governments to build digital tools, change policy, and improve programs. Our goal? A resilient government that works well for everyone. Learn more at codeforamerica.org.

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If you listen to The Government Fix, chances are you’re an innovator, a problem solver, the kind of person who thinks outside the box. If that sounds like you, then Code for America Summit is the one event you absolutely cannot miss in 2026. We’re having our annual conference in Chicago on May 7th and 8th, and we’d love for you to join us. To find out more, visit codeforamerica.org/Summit2026. We can’t wait to see you in Chicago!

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