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Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do
Knopf
August 2006
On Sale: August 22, 2006
304 pages
ISBN: 0307265269
EAN: 9780307265265
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
This important book by one of our leading experts on disaster preparedness offers a compelling narrative about our nationβs inability to properly plan for large-scale disasters and proposes changes that can still be made to assure the safety of its citizens.
Five years after 9/11 and one year after Hurricane Katrina, it is painfully clear that the governmentβs emergency response capacity is plagued by incompetence and a paralyzing bureaucracy. Irwin Redlener, who founded and directs the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, brings his years of experience with disasters and health care crises, national and international, to an incisive analysis of why our health care system, our infrastructure, and our overall approach to disaster readiness have left the nation vulnerable, virtually unable to respond effectively to catastrophic events. He has had frank, and sometimes shocking, conversations about the failure of systems during and after disasters with a broad spectrum of peopleβfrom hospital workers and FEMA officials to Washington policy makers and military leaders. And he also analyzes the role of nongovernmental organizations, such as the American Red Cross in the aftermath of Katrina.
Redlener points out how a government with a track record of over-the-top cronyism and a stunning disregard for accountability has spent billions on βrandom acts of preparedness,β with very little to show for itβother than an ever-growing bureaucracy. As a doctor, Redlener is especially concerned about Americaβs increasingly dysfunctional and expensive health care system, incapable of handling a large-scale public health emergency, such as pandemic flu or widespread bioterrorism. And he also looks at the serious problem of a disengaged, uninformed citizenryβone of the most important obstacles to assuring optimal readiness for any major crisis.
Redlener describes five natural and man-made disaster scenarios as a way to imagine what we might face, what our current systems would and would not prepare us for, and what would constitute optimal planningβfor government and the publicβin each situation. To see what could be learned from others, he points up some of the more effective ways countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have dealt with various disasters. And he concludes with a real prescription: a nine-point proposal for how America can be better prepared as well as an addendum of what citizens themselves can do.
An essential book for our time, Americans at Risk is a devastating and realistic account of where we stand today.
 Media BuzzLou Dobbs Tonight - April 30, 2009
Early Show - September 6, 2006
Diane Rehm Show - NPR - August 25, 2006
Good Morning America - August 22, 2006
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