153: Truth In The Eye Of The Storm, with Samantha Montano

Crisis leadership is about recognizing reality faster than everyone else. And telling the truth when it’s hardest. 

We sit down with Samantha Montano—associate professor of emergency management and author of Disasterology—to unpack what actually works when the stakes are life and death. From Katrina’s painful lessons to the East Palestine train derailment and the long haul of COVID, she traces a thread through delayed recognition, top-down blind spots, and the corrosive impact of mistrust.

Samantha breaks down the habits that separate effective responders from well-meaning bystanders: identify a crisis quickly, listen to the people closest to the ground, decide with clarity, and stay flexible as facts change.

We also talk about what we owe survivors after the cameras leave: rigorous after-action reviews that identify what failed—codes, policies, infrastructure—and commit to real fixes. Samantha shares practical ways to navigate the misinformation by pre-identifying credible experts and transparent sources before a crisis hits. There’s hope here too: a new wave of students stepping into emergency management with clear eyes about climate risk and a drive to build systems worthy of public trust.

If you care about disaster response, public communication, or leading under pressure, this conversation offers concrete frameworks and hard-won wisdom. 

Dr. Samantha Montano is an associate professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice and the Center for Climate Adaptation Research, and the author of Disasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis.

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/samlmontano.bsky.social

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 2:43 From Volunteer To Disasterologist
• 5:10 Recognizing A Crisis Early
• 8:20 Katrina’s Lessons And Leadership Gaps
• 12:40 Why Leaders Don’t Listen
• 17:15 Traits Of Effective Crisis Leaders
• 22:45 Trust, Mistrust, And East Palestine

Transcript

Samantha Montano: 1:15

Owe each other the truth. So when a disaster happens, it means that we have failed, and who that we is, I think is really important.

Manya Chylinski: 1:30

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, Manya Chylinski. My guest today is Samantha Montano. She's an associate professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and author of the book Disasterology: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis. We talked about crisis management now that we're 20 years after Hurricane Katrina and the Levy failure, and what it means to lead in a crisis and what you need to think about if you are a leader during a crisis. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Samantha, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited we're getting a chance to talk. Thanks for having me. First question at the gate, I ask everyone, what's one thing you have done in any area of your life that you never imagined you would do?

Samantha Montano: 2:23

Yeah, I think my entire career, um, I did not know that somebody could be a disastrologist. So this career has kind of been a bit of a surprise.

Manya Chylinski: 2:34

Okay. And I love that concept, disastrology. I just think that's so perfect. Um, well, let's dig into this. I mean, you and I are talking about crisis management and disasters and helping people after disasters. Can you tell us a little bit how you got into this?

Samantha Montano: 2:54

Yeah, so I grew up in New England, but I was in high school when Hurricane Katrina and the levy failure happened. And my high school was doing like a volunteer trip down to New Orleans to help out with the recovery. And I kind of tagged along on that. And I had never really experienced a major disaster or catastrophe, had really no sense of like what I was walking into, very naive. Um, and when I got to New Orleans, I was just completely shocked and horrified by the extent of the destruction and really how much help was needed, even you know, months after the storm and the flood. And so that kind of led me to doing disaster work. I started out, I moved to New Orleans, I lived there for many years, helping long-term with the recovery with various nonprofits, um, helped with the VK oil disaster response, went to Joplin after their tornado, some other disasters around the country, and eventually kind of took pause and said, we are not responding to these events as well as we could be. There's a lot of people who are not getting the help that is needed. How can we be doing this better? And so that led me to graduate school, where I got my master's and PhD in emergency management and have kind of since then been working on how do we make the system better.

Manya Chylinski: 4:22

Yes. And that is why I so very much respect and appreciate your work that how do we make the system better? Because you recognized that we can do the response, but if we're not doing it in going to use the word the way, we're missing a lot of what we need. You know, how do you think about? So take us kind of to that moment of crisis. What is most important for a leader to be thinking in those moments about how to respond and have that thinking before we're looking, how to make sure we're we're capturing what we need to be capturing?

Samantha Montano: 5:02

Yeah, I mean, I always think the starting point to responding to a crisis is knowing that you're in a crisis. And I know that sounds very basic, but um, oftentimes people who are in leadership positions tend to be the last ones to really realize how bad a situation is. And that is not good, right? You're starting from behind then. And so what I am looking at, like who is doing emergency response well, it's the people who know right away that there's a crisis happening. They know what to look for to know that there is a crisis happening. They know who the people are in a community to be listening to when they say there is a crisis. Yeah, so it just really starting with that, like understanding that you're in a crisis and then quickly being able to assess what are what is the like scope of this crisis? What is the most important thing that has to happen first? And how do we do that? Right.

Manya Chylinski: 6:05

And I so appreciate you mentioned knowing who do we need to listen to, who is saying something's wrong, who is saying we need help. And I just recently re-watched some of the documentaries about Hurricane Katrina and the Levy failure. And it seems to me that there were a lot of different constituencies who were ignored when this was happening.

Samantha Montano: 6:29

So yeah, I mean, that's really the perfect example, right? During Katrina, there were many people, including, I think personally, the head of FEMA at the time, Michael Brown, I think probably the president at the time, other people in the federal government who did not understand the extent of the crisis on the ground in New Orleans. I think that's been well established. Many of them have even said in retrospect they didn't understand it, right? But then you have other people who definitely understood the extent of their of the crisis right away, right? Um, New Orleans who were like on the ground in the city. There is uh somebody who worked from FEMA very infamously, was in the in the Superdome during Katrina and was emailing FEMA saying, no, like it's worse than you think, right? And he was being ignored. Um, you have journalists in that event who were on the ground reporting who understood the scope of the crisis. In terms of like a single leader who came in and I think demonstrated what I think of as being kind of like good crisis leadership, is General Russell Honore. He again like immediately came in, understood the situation, and said, you know, what's the most important thing we need to do? Let's do that, evacuate the superdome, and then go from there.

Manya Chylinski: 7:47

Where do you think it comes from that leaders don't necessarily listen to what's happening on the ground? So you mentioned the FEMA person at the Superdome who was emailing to say it's worse than you're than you're seeing, it's worse than you're imagining, but wasn't getting the response. What's the issue with people not wanting to or choosing to listen?

Samantha Montano: 8:10

Yeah, I mean, I I think there's a lot going on there, right? Like some of it, I do think some people are better in a crisis than like other people are. And that's just like, you know, that is what it is. But I think in many other cases, there is a lack of experience. There can be a lack of trust, just a lack of education. I think in all cases, that was what happened with Michael Brown. He did not have a background in emergency management. He had not responded to anything remotely the size of Katrine, like not even close. Um, and so I think there's like an element of if you don't have experience in these types of events, you're much slower on the draw to understand what exactly is happening, right? Not trusting the people you work with, trusting the communities you work in, like whoever that is, not feeling like you can uh act on the information they're giving you, even if you haven't seen it with your own eyes. All of those things, though, like comes with experience. Uh, and then the kind of final one there, lack of education, right? Where oftentimes people who find themselves in a leadership position in the middle of the crisis haven't actually been educated on like what to do in those kinds of situations, right? And so you're also working from a deficit in that way as well. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 10:00

And I imagine some people find themselves in leadership positions because they're filling a vacuum in leadership.

Samantha Montano: 10:07

Yes, that is definitely true. Um, yeah, I especially in emergency management. I mean, this is a very tough field to work in. Um, people burn out really easily and quickly. It's you're generally not paid very much, right? You have like horrible hours, you have to be on call 24-7, right? There's not like a ton of redeeming things about working in this field. And so, yes, there definitely can be a leadership vacuum uh that forms. There's also kind of another issue I see, which is that I think some people can be good leaders in non-crisis times and then not be a good leader in the midst of a crisis, right? Those are two very different contexts within which you're working. And sometimes that doesn't quite translate. And sometimes you kind of speed people freeze in that moment of not being able to like shift mentally into crisis mode.

Manya Chylinski: 11:08

Interesting. That's I think that might get at the heart of some of this. People can be wonderful leaders in ordinary circumstances and aren't the person you want in charge when things go wrong. Well, what are the leadership practices that make someone a good leader in a crisis?

Samantha Montano: 11:30

Yeah, I mean, I think there's like there's a lot of things that I see. Um, I think one is confidence, because you're oftentimes in a crisis working in a very short period of time where decisions need to be made very fast. And a lot of people are looking at you and acting based off of what you are doing specifically, like in kind of like an operational way. You have to be very confident in the instructions you give. There's not room to be wishy-washy here. There has to be complete clarity. I think you have to be very decisive, right? Once you have internally decided, you know what, this is what we're going to do, you've got to, you've got to stick with it, right? And follow that through. So there's like this confidence, decisiveness that has to happen. I also think it is, and and we know this from the disaster research, you have to be able to be flexible. You are in the midst of a crisis. And as you get new information in, you have to be able to throw the old plan out and come up with a new plan. Um, and so I always think the best leaders are the ones who know when you need to throw the plan out and do it live, as we say. And that is, I I never view that as being a sign of failure. I always view that as a sign of effectiveness, right? And then I think the other huge one for me is honesty. Uh, it is really tempting, I think, in moments of crisis, for leaders, especially politicians, to kind of lie or hold back or obscure what is happening from the public out of a fear they think they will cause panic or they think, you know, uh they're worried about how the public will react to something. And I think that time and time again, we've seen that that is the wrong thing. You have to be completely open and honest with the public about what is happening. Um, because the second you start lying about something, or the second you start withholding uh something, someone's gonna find out about it. And then you start breaking that trust with the public. So even if that information is not good information to be giving out or whatnot, I think the the people who go that route uh tend to be most effective. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 13:57

Well, you've mentioned a word that I just think is so important in so many of the areas that I think and talk about, and that's trust. And it's, you know, do people trust you to lead? Do they trust what you're saying? And as soon as that isn't true, I think that changes the whole nature of how you can respond and how people are going to be okay or not be okay.

Samantha Montano: 14:22

Yeah, I this is certainly true. I think one of the things that we don't necessarily do a great job of in emergency management is once that trust is lost with a particular leader, putting somebody else in charge right away. We tend to wait several days, like a week, to put somebody else in charge. And it's like, no, you have to do it right away. Yeah, there are recent kind of example of this, or somewhat recent example, I think, was in East Palestine, Ohio, with the Norfolk Southern Train Derailment. That was a situation where there were there was there was so much distrust happening between the community and the company, and then also like every single level of government, like all these different agencies that were involved, then like independent scientists who were involved. And there was just this like situation, which we often see in events where there are like man-made hazards involved, and like a company is responsible. Just this like completely like corrosive community that forms in terms of of not knowing who to trust and and not having that voice. Right.

Manya Chylinski: 15:33

And I had a conversation with another guest about how this country that we live in is a low trust environment. So we are not likely to trust people in most circumstances. And then when you throw in the stress of a crisis, it's even more important to be honest and trustworthy.

Samantha Montano: 15:54

Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is probably one of the biggest issues facing the field of emergency management right now is figuring out how to navigate an often untrusting public. And then also a public that is getting misinformation and disinformation just like thrown at them from every single angle. It just, it's really, really hard and it's really complicated. And opening a shelter and like getting people on buses to evacuate is almost the easy thing to do at this point. And it's this like trust and communication situation that I think is our biggest challenge. Yes.

Manya Chylinski: 16:35

Well, you know, we are 20 years after Katrina, Hurricane Katrina, and the Levy failure, and a few years out from the strange around that you were talking about. What do you think we owe each other in these kinds of situations? And what have you seen over the past that has changed in terms of what we owe each other?

Samantha Montano: 16:58

Yeah, I, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I think that we like owe each other the truth. So when a disaster happens, it means that we have failed. And who that we is, I think is really important, right? Is it that like the building codes weren't correct? Is it that we didn't do enough planning and there was a hazard that we didn't see coming, right? Is there some other law or policy? Did we not invest enough in our infrastructure? Did we build a bridge wrong, right? Whatever the case may be. And there's always more than one thing that has led to a disaster happening. And one of the things that is so critical is that we correctly identify what that was that failed so that we can fix it to prevent it from happening again, right? I think that's always the like perhaps the thing we most owe survivors is like making sure this does not happen to anybody else again. And so, in order to be able to correctly identify went wrong, we have to be really honest about what happened. And that I think is becoming much harder to do. Even when I kind of started in the field, um, I think after action reports tended to be a little bit more honest, and there was other efforts to kind of correctly identify what those factors were. And there's a lot of pressure now not to identify went wrong, to not make those changes, to even lie about what happened or obscure data that shows what has happened. And that I think is the thing that will like hurt us all the most in the long run is not being able to kind of figure out what went wrong and try to prevent it from happening again.

Manya Chylinski: 18:48

Right. And I'm thinking back to earlier, you mentioned difference in the media landscape. And we think about social media now and things get published instantly, which may or may not be true, may or may not be actual real video of the thing that just happened today. How, if you're dealing with a crisis right now, how do you manage or attempt to manage all of that misinformation with the truth that you are theoretically trying to get out there?

Samantha Montano: 19:21

Yeah, I mean, this comes back to having trust and like finding leaders who you trust to look for, right? Like I am at the point where I also on social media am like, is this true? I don't know in a disaster sometimes. And I always think, God, if I if I can't tell if this is true or not, after like 15 plus years of being in this field and like being on the internet watching disasters unfold, there's no way that like an average person is going to be able to tell. Um, and so my advice is to in moments of non-crisis, try to find the people who you trust or the organizations that you trust, right? So I always know I have a like a handful of meteorologists that anytime there's a hurricane, I go and look and say what like see what those five people are saying because they have a track record of being correct. And I understand their motivations for being in their jobs and all these things, right? And it's a lot of work to do that. But I I do think that's kind of the best way at this point is to seek out the people who have that longer history of being correct and are transparent about who they work for, how they think about things. I think that's where the best information comes from in a crisis.

Manya Chylinski: 20:38

I love that you said that because you are one of the people that I trust in a crisis. And then I will follow down the people that you have quoted and that you are saying know what they're talking about. So I have, without really realizing I have done it, identified those people that I trust in that moment and you and other folks too. But that's how you even came across my radar screen. And it's like, well, I trust her when something goes wrong.

Samantha Montano: 21:08

Yeah. And I, yeah, I I hear that from a lot of folk actually, which is very I'm I'm happy I can be that for people. It is kind of like an immense responsibility, right? And I think that's the other thing you need to look for too, is people who understand that they are in that kind of position and take it very seriously 100% of the time, right? Like you, what my research partner and I have a little thing that we say to each other often, which is we cannot be wrong because there are there are big consequences to that. So I think, yeah, leaders who understand the importance of that is um really important.

Manya Chylinski: 21:48

Well, speaking as someone who has unknowingly adopted this particular way of looking through the news, I also know that the people that I trust, yourself included, if you were to say something that was wrong, would as soon as you figured it out, say that it was wrong. So there's that ownership that also helps build trust.

Samantha Montano: 22:13

Yeah. And this is true of anybody in a crisis, right? You when something unexpected happens and you find yourself in a like life or death situation, you people tend to, we know from the research, make the best decisions that they can with the knowledge and the resources and like authority that they have. And oftentimes in retrospect, you look back and you're like, gosh, I should have made a different decision there or whatnot. But you're always doing that with with hindsight, with like much more information than you had at the time. And you're like, you can't be right 100% at the time. Like there's always going to be something that we get wrong. So yeah, that ownership piece is really important. That goes back to the like post-disaster analysis of figuring out what went wrong, how can we prevent that from happening again in the future? Um, there has to be a lot of transparency and ownership there.

Manya Chylinski: 23:10

Well, I think back to COVID, especially in the early days and how the information kept changing and how for some people that was just evidence, okay, we've learned something new. And for other people, it meant, well, they've not been honest at all. And I think I thought it was so interesting in the moment that I was seeing that dichotomy of people who accepted, okay, the science has changed, the information's changed, and others who thought that meant something somehow nefarious.

Samantha Montano: 23:45

Yeah, I, and that is that was certainly true during COVID, particularly because with COVID, you have a long duration response. So most disasters, right, the response, like the crisis period is over in like sometimes a couple hours, sometimes a couple days. Whereas with COVID, it lasted for oh, you know, over a year. And so you just have more time for getting new information, which from like a response perspective is great. Like you want new information, but like we want that to change. That means we're learning things, we're gonna like do things more effectively. Um, but I think people who aren't familiar with that uh didn't really know how to handle it in a way that tend not to be as big of an issue during those shorter duration responses because it's over kind of before there's time for them to think something sinister has happened.

Manya Chylinski: 24:38

Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, Samantha, I could talk to you for hours, uh, but we are getting close to the end of our time. So, you know, in light of the fact that we are 20 years after Hurricane Katrina and the levy failures and the things that we've learned, what is giving you hope about responding to crises these days?

Samantha Montano: 25:03

Yeah, um, I take a lot of hope from my undergrad students. I teach in an emergency management undergrad program. And we have like 90 new freshmen in our major this year alone. Um, and they are all like mostly like 18-year-old kids who are like really excited about working in emergency management, who are very concerned about things like climate change and want to try and work on addressing those issues. So it is a tough time to be in emergency management in some ways of right now. But there's also this kind of next generation that I get to work with on a regular basis who are waiting in the wings here to be able to take on those challenges.

Manya Chylinski: 25:50

That is exciting. And it's exciting to hear how many people are in the program.

Samantha Montano: 25:54

So yeah, yeah.

Manya Chylinski: 25:56

All right. I feel like we're about we're being taken care of. And as we wrap up, before we say goodbye, let it please let our listeners know a little bit more about yourself and how they can reach you.

Samantha Montano: 26:07

Sure. So you can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram and TikTok at Sam L Montano. I also have a monthly newsletter uh which you can find on Substack called Disasterology. And then I also have a website, disaster-ology.com, where you can find my book and links to like all kinds of other things that I have said on the internet that you can go read if you're interested.

Manya Chylinski: 26:34

Wonderful. Samantha, thank you so much for taking time today. I've really enjoyed our conversation.

Samantha Montano: 26:39

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Manya Chylinski: 26:40

Hey, and thanks to our listeners for checking out this episode of Notes on Resilience, and we will catch you next time.