Amanda Ripley Author of The Unthinkable

I just got back from the one conference I go to every year. About 400 disaster experts get together near Boulder, Colo., and consider the country’s hazardscape.

Each time, there is a lot of lamentation about all the deaths and losses that could have been avoided from the year gone by. ("Natural disaster” is not a phrase you hear in that crowd, since they know most disasters could be turned into mere emergencies with foresight and money.) It’s a thoughtful, passionate group of academics and government types who are well-accustomed to suppressing their rage.

Here are some of the more surprising revelations I picked up while I was there:

* Climate Change & Disasters: Disasters have become more frequent and more costly, as I’ve mentioned before. But very little of that increase is due to climate change, according to an analysis by political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr. It’s almost entirely due to development near water. In other words, we’ve built bigger cities near water and stripped away the natural protection that used to be there. So if you took the hurricane that hit Miami in 1926 and replayed it today in Miami, the same hurricane would create 1.5 to 2 times the losses--of Hurricane Katrina (the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history). So the weather is less important than the way we have changed the planet on the ground.

* Politics & Disasters: There are 50% more flood declarations in a presidential election year, according to Pielke.

* The Candidates & Disasters: At a panel on which presidential candidate would do a better job on emergency management, the one certainty was that we still know very little. What would Barack Obama or John McCain do to fix FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security or to prepare the country for the next Katrina? Each candidate has potential strengths, but since this is not a major issue for voters, we really don’t know much yet.

I asked the panel members what they would like to ask the candidates at a debate. The best response I got was from Beverly Cigler at Penn State, who suggested asking Obama and McCain: “What is homeland security?”

* Hurricane Katrina: As you might expect, there was much despair over the pace of recovery of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Katrina. “Delays of every organization have had such a dampening effect on the recovery of social services, neighborhoods, congregations,” said Shirley Laska of the University of New Orleans. “I’ve come to think that the bureaucracies have become numb to what delay means.”

* The Next Disaster: As for the future, there were dire predictions about the fate of Sacramento, which has one of the highest risks of levee failure in the country. And the earthquake experts were mumbling that California residents should now expect to be on their own for 7 days after the Big One--not 3, as has been long publicized. Those are warnings worth listening to, depressing as they may be. The first year I went to the conference, there was much talk about how New Orleans was sure to be destroyed by a hurricane. Katrina happened the next month.

There was also a lovely BBQ on the last night in the mountains. So it wasn’t all bad.

keep the garbage! That was the genius idea of Steve Kurtz and his artist friends after his house in Buffalo, NY, was seized by the FBI four years ago in a bioterrorism investigation that led no where. Now he has put the things the FBI left behind on display in an art gallery in Buffalo. The exhibit will probably tour New York City and Berlin, as well.

I recently spent the day with Steve for a Time.com story. First, we took a tour of his house, pausing to notice any remaining evidence of the raid ("See that?” said Steve, pointing to scratch marks on the inside of his attic door, “That’s where my cat was clawing at the door while they searched the house.” Note: the FBI says agents dutifully fed and watered said cat during their search.)

Then we went to the nearby gallery where his exhibit was on display. Staring at the tower of empty pizza boxes and energy-drink bottles, many thoughts enter your mind: How can the government cause such havoc in a person’s life with so little to go on? Where is the accountability when the case is ultimately dismissed by a judge? And finally, why are there no coffee or caffeinated soda bottles in the FBI’s garbage?

That last one didn’t make it into the story. But it was weird: hundreds of water and Gatorade bottles, no caffeine. Steve speculated that maybe FBI agents aren’t allowed to drink caffeine. I asked the FBI spokesperson in Buffalo, and she disabused me of that particular notion. Agents are indeed allowed to drink caffeine, she said. But after hearing Steve’s story, you do start to think that anything might be possible.

Click here for a video that Steve and his art ensemble put together about the raid.

Why do we experience each disaster as if it were our first disaster?

Each time, reporters like myself cover floods and fires and storms as if they have never happened before...as if we aren’t wearing the exact same Wal-Mart slicker we got two years ago in Florida. We survey the damage, we speculate on the causes and we scour the government for someone to blame.

We treat regular people with the same fresh eyes, marveling at their resourcefulness each and every time. I noticed a classic example recently in the New York Times:

“...’The entire governmental system broke down; we had to rely on ourselves and our neighbors.’...Residents ran tabs at local stations to pay for gasoline for fire engines....The owner of a hardware store refused payment from volunteer firefighters for crucial supplies....A fire chief’s wife grilled steak fajitas for a crew of inmates....’This community of rugged individualists pulling together is part of the reason we love where we live,’ said Deborah Cahn, who with her family owns Navarro Vineyards. ‘But isn’t this what government is supposed to do?’”

Is this what government is supposed to do? Really?

Because history (recent and not) tells us that government, especially in a federalized system like ours, is just not going to wow you in a major calamity. The first responders are, almost always, regular people. Your friends, your neighbors, your family and hordes of strangers.

Maybe it’s time we started noticing the pattern. Maybe it’s time to spend our homeland security money inspiring and training the people who are guaranteed to be there first, every time. 

...is the seat you can get out of the fastest. So the aisle seat near an exit row is slightly safer than other seats on the plane, on average, according to a study out of the University of Greenwich in the UK.

The flurry of recent media attention focused on this particular finding, but the broader implication is that anything you can do to increase your speed of exit (from counting the number of rows to the exit to familiarizing yourself with how to open the exit door) could also boost your odds.

In fact, the study is riddled with provocative findings--including the revelation that people will go to great lengths to stay with their loved ones during a plane evacuation.

So if family members are sitting rows apart, they will try to get to each other. That’s why a lot of computer models of airplane evacuations are so wildly off the mark: they don’t usually take into account the complex dynamics of actual human beings.

What makes this work so valuable is that it is based on the behavior of real people in real planes. Ed Galea, who worked on the study and helped me with the book, looked at thousands of passenger accounts from 105 plane accidents and assessed how regular people perform in the worst of times.

The Unthinkable has officially launched in the US and the UK, and I’m proud and relieved to report that the reviews have been generous and positive so far. From O Magazine to FOX News to the Times of London, people have been captivated by the storytelling and the science in the book, just like I was while working on it. I have thought for a long time that this was a strangely unexamined part of the human condition, so it’s nice to see that other people agree.

Just as importantly, I’ve gotten a lot of thoughtful notes from survivors of all kinds of disasters who say the book really resonated with their own experiences. If you’re like me, and you have the nerve to sit on the sidelines and write about the trauma of others, you are perpetually grateful for the patience and openness of survivors. I keep a part of my office wall dedicated to their notes.

Meanwhile, members of the military, police officers, firefighters and other emergency types have also been very excited about the book, which is reassuring for two reasons. First, I relied on emergency professionals heavily to write the book, so I am so glad they are happy with the finished product. Secondly, one of the main themes of the book is that regular people matter more than anyone else in a disaster. So it’s good to see that no professional rescuer or government official has felt slighted by this claim so far. Quite the contrary: the experts seem to wholeheartedly wish more civilians knew what they know.

Here are some photos from the book launch party, which was held at the little-known, but totally cool DC Fire & EMS Museum (soon to be open to the public) in Washington, DC. Many thanks to TIME Magazine and the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency for co-sponsoring the party, and to Walter Gold and the Museum for being such gracious and enthusiastic hosts.

Also, a huge thanks to Chris Usher, an incredibly talented photographer who normally takes pictures at places like the White House and disaster scenes but very kindly came to my little party and made the nice picture above (of me and Time writer Michael Weisskopf).

P.S. I’ve got a book reading coming up at 7 pm on Weds. July 2 at Politics & Prose, a great book store in Washington, DC. Please come say hi if you are around.