iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 13h

If someone gave me a magic wand to fix one thing about emergency management I would be extremely tempted to use it to get everyone in emergency management off of LinkedIn.

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Elizabeth Wrigley-Field @wrigleyfield.bsky.social · 18h

My Minnesota friends have already seen this, but I keep thinking about it and want more people outside our state to, too.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 18h

I am working on a project that requires me to summarize major disasters in U.S. history in 2-3 sentences which should be the easiest thing in the world but is instead the hardest thing I have ever written. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO SUMMARIZE LOVE CANAL AND THE GREAT DEPRESSION IN TWO SENTENCES.

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Eos @eos.org · 01/10/2026

“If, as the memo implies, [FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton] is expecting FEMA to start operating under this definition, then everything at FEMA would change,” says @samlmontano.bsky.social. eos.org/research-and...

eos.org

A Redefinition of “Emergency Management” Could Upend FEMA’s Mission - Eos

Last week, FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton issued a memorandum outlining the agency’s scope and essentially redefining “emergency management.”

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Mike Stucka @mikestucka.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

FEMA's new director, previously ousted for saying the agency shouldn't exist, now appears to be saying the agency should have no role in mitigation or recovery. Also, that the Red Cross, power company etc. have no role in emergency operations. eos.org/research-and... w/ @samlmontano.bsky.social

eos.org

A Redefinition of “Emergency Management” Could Upend FEMA’s Mission - Eos

Last week, FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton issued a memorandum outlining the agency’s scope and essentially redefining “emergency management.”

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Reposted by Dr. Samantha Montano

Kevin Essington @kevinessington.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Important thread for people who care about taking care of communities after hurricanes, floods, fires etc…

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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

do men understand the extent to which women are ready to burn it all down right now

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This feels like a scene from a 1980s comedy where a total loser gives himself a pep talk in his bedroom before going to high school where he gets shoved in a locker and everyone just laughs because he’s so sniveling.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Every clip of this I see is worse than the last.

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Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I haven't seen any news coverage yet of Cameron Hamilton's announcement that he has re-defined the entire field of emergency management to include only preparedness and response activities related to coordinating police, fire, and EMS. Seems like something that should get some attention.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I simply will not be acknowledging Hamilton’s pronouncement of a new, very bad, definition of emergency management. Have a nice day!

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

How is it only the second anniversary of Hurricane Helene. That feels like an entire lifetime ago. This administration has absolutely shattered my perception of time.

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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.

Screenshot of BBC article: OpenAI bots (struck through) meddled with multiple US government agency sites

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Saeed Jones @theferocity.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

We can’t allow this man to get within striking distance of a viable presidential candidacy.

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Joseph Britt @zathras5.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Weekend listen: It turns out there is a science of disasters. @samlmontano.bsky.social takes us through it on The Weather Geeks podcast — in particular how human factors can make some areas more vulnerable, and prolong the effects of disasters for many years. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

podcasts.apple.com

What is Disasterology?

Podcast Episode · Weather Geeks · September 16 · 43m

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I always forget that children's entertainers make a shocking amount of money. Like, of course she is very wealthy! I just get tricked by the overalls!! Anyway, good for her.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The fact that this is imaginary is perfect. The whole premise is based on a fantasy that the optimal form of public education is the midpoint of a polarized society. Just split the difference between the science of climate change and the lobby of denialism.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It really seems like a shocking number of people do not know what the term “human extinction” actually means.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’ll never understand academics who feel weird citing themselves. I live for citing a long history of my work. They are receipts! I love receipts. I read it like, “As I already told you bitches here, here, here, here, here, and here dating back 15 years…”

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Ed Sheeran would one hundred percent hide a zombie bite.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

The only thing that baffles me about this situation is that Ed Sheeran did all this with a tour full of Irish people. I guess "Mr. Culturally Irish" has never met an Irish person? What did he think was going to happen here?

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 14/09/2026

Glad folks are appalled by photos of the "phone booth" cage under an awning, but pls understand: This IG report is likely part of a cover-up. Amnesty Int'l interviewed detainees EIGHT MONTHS AGO who said the cage was half this size (couldn't stand up), had no awning, w feet chained to the bottom.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We have a new article out in the Journal of Emergency Management titled "Building the knowledge base of professional emergency managers: Education, training, and experience". If you can't access it I'm happy to send it to you!

The field of emergency management has been
professionalizing for many years, and there is now
a growing expectation that professional emergency
managers in the United States will have a broad
knowledge base acquired through a combination of
education, training, and experience. The concepts
“education,” “training,” and “experience” have not
been well-defined, however, leading to confusion about
what each contributes. This paper offers definitions of
each concept and introduces an illustrative figure that
shows how they function collectively to support the
knowledge base of professional emergency managers.
A series of interrelated measures is provided that sug-
gest how the field can better support the advancement
of emergency management education, training, and
experience. Finally, the need for further clarification
about what professional readiness for practice entails
is discussed in this conceptual analysis.
Key words: education, training, experience, profes-
sionalization, higher education

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ashley fairbanks @ziibiing.com · 12/09/2026

i am incredibly excited to share our research about how paying people’s rent through mutual aid made an impact on minnesota this year we accidentally collected more data than anyone ever has for an effort like this, and can very seriously say we prevented an eviction bubble that everyone expected

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

👏👏👏 www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

Federal judge rules Trump plan to cut FEMA by 50 percent was unlawful The judge said the plan, put together by DHS, appeared as if it was “pulled from thin air” and would impede FEMA’s ability to fulfill its legal obligations to respond to natural disasters.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

It is weird to me that the majority of conversations I’ve seen in emergency management about AI are about how emergency managers can use it to help manage emergency supplies in warehouses, etc. and not about wtf these tech bro freaks mean when they say “make humanity go extinct”.

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Bryce Maschino @bmaschino.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

"The report was released Friday, about an hour before a legislative committee charged with reviewing budget requests met to discuss the Florida Division of Emergency Management’s ask for an additional $250 million to pay already overdue bills."

orlandosentinel.com

Florida disaster agency projects $1.5 billion deficit, gets extra money for immigration

The extra $250 million will pay for overdue bills, including those for immigration enforcement activities.

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11/09/2026

bang up work from the Michael Whatley campaign!

Whatley tweet with graphic saying "WE WILL NEVER FORGET SEPTEMBER 1, 2001"

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Reading posts today and so many people’s brains are still broken. Yikes.

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Deanna Something @deannatheanalyst.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I was in college when 9/11 happened, and I had a history prof who said something like "sounds awful fascist" when the news broke about the creation of DHS. I was surprised by the candor, but then I had a poli sci prof discuss the dangers of the Patriot Act. They were both right.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

You cannot understand emergency management today without understanding how the Bush administration & Congress took advantage of the post-9/11 shock to create the homeland security apparatus.

Just a few months later, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers and the window was opened for the largest reorganization of the federal government since the National Security Act of 1947. US emergency management was turned upside down, as reckless policy decisions that contradicted decades of disaster research and emergency management expertise were imple-mented. 402 The cataclysmic post-9/11 policy changes laid the groundwork for the failed response to Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure only a few years later, 403 and still contribute to slow and ineffective responses today.

The most significant of these changes was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. A month after 9/11, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) cosponsored a bill that took inspiration from the concept of the National Homeland Security Agency, proposing the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As had happened when Representative Thornberry introduced nearly the same bill in the House months before, hearings were held, but no vote taken. The Bush administration, with support from the Hart-Rudman findings, presented a similar bill to Congress in June 2002. With pressure from the White House, the bill finally passed, and DHS was created. FEMA was subsumed by DHS along with other agencies, including the Coast Guard and Secret Service. In the reorganization, FEMA lost its status as an

independent, cabinet-level agency. Across the country, emergency management agencies got whiplash. 404
As this drastic reorganization and refocus of the federal government was underway, Congress wanted answers about the circumstances that led to the 9/11 attacks including an analysis of how intelligence agencies had failed to communicate with one another before the attack. Most relevant for emergency man-agement, Congress also wanted a better understanding of the effectiveness of the response at the Pentagon and in New York City. The answers to these questions were compiled into the 9/11 Commission Report released in 2004.405 The 9/11 Commission's findings concerned many emergency management ex-perts. 406 The Commission found that the immediate life-saving response measures conducted at the Pentagon had been success-ful. On the contrary, they criticized the response measures in New York City as uncoordinated.

This conclusion ran counter to the findings of disaster researchers in important ways. Disaster scholars documented first responders running into the towers, despite knowing they might never run back out. Inside the towers, people banded together to help each other out of the buildings, carrying coworkers who were disabled down dozens of flights of stairs, resulting in upward of sixteen thousand people evacuating in just 102 minutes.
Those who died were largely located on the floors above where the planes collided, making evacuation impossible.
Those who escaped the towers found people outside ready to guide them out of the dust. Local businesses opened their doors to offer refuge, and others handed out water or bandaged

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James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

For the past two years I've been tracking every bill proposed in state legislatures across the country to figure out what Republican plans for the future are. The answer, based on these 1,182 bills, is that they want to repeal the 20th Century heartlandsignal.com/2026/09/09/b...

heartlandsignal.com

Proof from the states: the right wing attempt to repeal the 20th century – Heartland Signal

Republicans are in Dallas this week making the case that the other side is the extreme one. We read the legislation they introduced in all 50 states and built a searchable record of what we found: 1,1...

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

NYC releasing the documents that show city officials lied to the public about the air quality post-9/11 and evidence being published that show Netanyahu ignored specific warnings about Oct 7th ON THE SAME DAY is wild stuff y'all.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

I guess we're doing 9/11 posts early this year. The thing that I have the hardest time conveying to my emergency management students when I teach the 9/11 response (they were not born yet) is that it simply broke everyone's brains.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

"Never-before-published documents show that TigerSwan sought to use social media to identify and exploit divisions between the Standing Rock movement and the mostly white surrounding communities."

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

SORRY BUT I JUST WENT TO LOOK AT THE COVER... "THE POPE OF FEMA" There's no fucking way.

A cover of a book that is 100% AI-generated that reads "Texas Flood: Power Money, Politics, History, Bureaucracy, and tragedy" by David Richardson -- the pope of FEMA. The photo is of a thunderstorm over a shreded Texas flag and flooded streets/houses.

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Dr. Samantha Montano @samlmontano.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

One problem with the myth that Florida is exceptionally good at emergency management is that other states think they should copy them. Here's an example re: Florida's approach to insurance which is absolutely screwing disaster survivors over. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

“Premiums are lowering because we’ve enacted real reforms and withstood the pressure to reverse course,” DeSantis said in a January statement. He cited premium reductions of 8.2% for Florida Peninsula customers, an 8% reduction at Security First and a 5.1% reduction at Universal Property & Casualty Co.
But according to Insurify, on average, premiums in Florida have gone up 14.3% since the reform went into effect, and they’ll continue to rise. The site projects a 2% increase this year. In fact, higher insurance costs are one of the reason's making Miami more expensive than New York City.

And states are paying attention to the new playbook. Since Florida passed the rules, Georgia, Louisiana, North and South Carolina have also considered similar measures aimed at reducing litigation against insurers, making it more enticing for the companies to turn a profit and stay in the state.

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