There is no such thing as a natural disaster. To say so would imply that disasters are inevitable, when really, human actions — or inaction— turn natural hazards such as hurricanes and wildfires into disasters. In her forthcoming book, Disasterology: Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis, Samantha Montano takes us through the years she spent coordinating volunteers in post-Katrina Louisiana and through her time researching disasters across the country. Montano, an assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, examines the many pitfalls of our current disaster management system up-close and lays out our vulnerability in the face of ever-increasing risk from climate change. Disasterology came out Aug. 3.

Southerly Gulf Coast Correspondent Carly Berlin sat down with Montano to talk about hazard mitigation as climate action, the fatigue of compounding crises, and how the media can better cover disasters. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Carly Berlin: You start the book by describing how you came to understand the ways that the environmental movement and the climate crisis and disasters are all intertwined. You write that "advocating for hazard mitigation and preparedness are just as much part of the climate movement as protesting oil pipelines," which feels to me like one of the theses. How did your work responding to disasters firsthand, and then later researching them, bring you to that conclusion?

Samantha Montano: When I went to New Orleans after Katrina, I was not thinking about [it] in the context of climate change. I still viewed climate change as being a purely environmental thing, affecting animals and glaciers, and not at all connecting that to tangible, disaster-related consequences. Those two things were completely separate in my mind. Even when I was in New Orleans and we were doing environmental or sustainability work, it was still all contextualized as "we’re putting solar panels on this roof because it’ll bring down the homeowner’s electric bill," not, well, this is also good for the environment.

Read the full article about disaster prevention and response by Carly Berlin at GreenBiz.