American Scientist

THE DEVIL NEVER SLEEPS: Learning to Live in an Age of Disasters. Juliette Kayyem. 240 pp. PublicAffairs, 2022. $17.99.

I was first introduced to the study of disasters in 1999, when I joined the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as a graduate assistant. Back then, researchers would often refer to these calamitous incidents as “low-probability, high-consequence events.” Even for a newcomer to the field, the message was clear: Disasters don’t happen all that often, but when they do, they cause widespread damage and suffering.

In The Devil Never Sleeps, Juliette Kayyem takes that old saying, and the ideas underlying it, to task. She writes in the opening pages that “Disasters and crises are not . . . rare occurrences; they are standard operating procedure. . . . Once we can all accept this lived reality—that the devil never sleeps—then we can better prepare for when the next one comes because it will come, as will all the ones after that.” Her words reflect dire statistical trends such as those showing that, on average, a disaster happens every day somewhere in the world. The book also captures a more general shift in the study of disasters, in that they are no longer being treated as infrequent events that only temporarily disrupt the social order, but as commonplace events.

The rising number of disasters globally is being driven by a complicated web of forces related to global warming, infrastructure decay, unsustainable development in hazardous areas, population growth, technological change, and rising economic and social inequality. The book’s central thesis is that the sooner we accept the reality that we live in an era of recurrent disasters, the sooner we can ready ourselves to respond in a way that will make even the worst incidents somewhat less bad. Kayyem calls this consequence minimization, and she draws on her decades of crisis management experience to offer lessons on how to turn high-probability disasters into low-consequence events.

For Kayyem, disaster comes in an almost dizzying array of forms—from climate catastrophe and global pandemic to hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, wildfires, school shootings, terrorist bombings, oil spills, cyberattacks, and power grid failures. She refers to these widely varying events—whether it be the 2010 Haiti earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands of people or Jet Blue airlines doing a poor job of deplaning hundreds of anxious passengers during an ice storm—as the moment of the “boom.” Also in her framework, there are two moments; the before (“left of boom”) and after (“right of boom”).

In the United States and most other nations around the world, far more funding is committed to “right of boom” disaster response and recovery activities, rather than to “left of boom” prevention efforts meant to stop the disaster from occurring in the first place. To put it another way, government agencies dump much more money into fighting fires than into ensuring the conflagration never begins. Charitable giving operates in much the same way on a global scale, with an estimated 90 percent of disaster-related donations going toward emergency relief efforts.

Kayyem takes this lack of investment in disaster risk reduction as a given, and she does not dwell on how little is done to mitigate harm. Instead, her stated focus is on describing how we can brace for the many different disruptions that occur after disaster has already struck. The challenge with this emphasis, however, is that societal investments “before the boom” matter most in reducing the worst consequences. For example, if you live in earthquake country and want to save lives, perhaps the most important things you can do are to retrofit existing buildings and construct new seismically sound structures that will not collapse when the earth shakes. This is not to suggest that dedicating resources to rescue and response efforts is not important, but rather to underscore how crucial it is to focus on mitigation investments in order to truly minimize consequences. It would have dramatically strengthened the book if Kayyem had made this point about the linkages between the before and after times much more explicit.

To put it another way, government agencies dump much more money into fighting fires than into ensuring the conflagration never begins.

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The Devil Never Sleeps is organized around eight foundational lessons of disaster management that Kayyem argues can and should be implemented now, to help people ready themselves for this age of extremes. She frames each key principle in a straightforward way and buttresses her arguments with plenty of memorable examples. She writes clearly and retains a sense of humor, even as she addresses deadly serious topics.

Following the introduction, the first three chapters focus on cultivating a disaster management mindset (“assume the boom”) and on the basics of communication and emergency response. Kayyem makes an especially effective case regarding the need for unity of effort during a crisis. As she notes, these activities may be spontaneous, as when volunteers converge at the scene of a disaster, or they may be cultivated within and across governance structures to ensure that institutions can withstand a disaster, such as when the new leader of the Transportation Security Administration subjected the agency to a complete overhaul to encourage counterterrorism efforts and customer engagement.

The next three chapters are about how corporate leaders and government officials can institute best practices to limit harm once disaster inevitably strikes. Case studies drive home why relying on a singular “last line of defense” to avert disaster does not work. Here, Kayyem vividly describes failures, such as the reliance on a sole blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, and how the use of a lone evacuation route left residents vulnerable to injury and death in the catastrophic wildfire that swept through Paradise, California, in 2018. Because disasters often co-occur, this section of the book also highlights the need to minimize cascading losses in compound events. For example, during Hurricane Maria, a few dozen people likely died due to the direct effects of the storm’s lashing winds and torrential rains. Thousands more people—including a disproportionate number of older adults, people with chronic health conditions, people living in poverty, and people living in rural areas—lost their lives due to weeks-long power outages, road closures, and other response failures.

When people can barely make their monthly rent, it seems a little precious to discuss building bandwidth.

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The closing chapters include what might best be characterized as disaster success stories and offer suggestions for how professional disaster managers can learn from the last big event and prepare for the next one. For example, Kayyem recounts how the owners of the restaurant chain Chipotle effectively responded to what could have been a devastating E. coli outbreak by closing stores, working closely with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and communicating honestly about what happened. This and other examples in the final chapters demonstrate that consequence minimization is possible when decision-makers take the time to learn from past events and utilize those lessons in planning activities meant to reduce future harm.

The Devil Never Sleeps sets out to do two things: To convince the reader that disasters are now part of our normal, (un)steady state, and to make the fundamental lessons of disaster management accessible to everyone because “we must all consider ourselves disaster managers.” Kayyem succeeds wildly in showing how disasters can and do take many forms and can come at any time. But the book falls short in explaining how we all can truly adopt the recommended steps in the book.

Although Kayyem states that the book is for everyone, many of the actions described require power, access to resources, and decision-making authority. Kayyem acknowledges in the closing chapter that she is “well aware that the ability to prepare for disaster management is often the luxury of those with time and capacity. When people can barely make their monthly rent, it seems a little precious to discuss building bandwidth.” She does not, however, dedicate space in the book to exploring how the millions of people in the United States, as well as the billions globally, who are living in economically precarious situations can become “disaster managers.” This is a major omission precisely because people living in poverty, as well as other socially marginalized groups, are the ones who are most likely to suffer disproportionately when disaster strikes. Given the significant problems of structural racism and historic gaps between the rich and the poor, this is a significant oversight. Moreover, because so many of the risk-generating activities that occur in society—such as corporations that spew pollutants into the air and developers who build shoddy housing in floodplains— occur outside of the purview of average citizens, it feels all the more pressing to address who is actually responsible for managing the disasters that Kayyem so unforgettably describes.

The Devil Never Sleeps certainly opens up an important conversation regarding the impossibility of eliminating all risks in this era of recurrent disasters. It also highlights important steps that can and should be taken by professionals to minimize the worst consequences. Because Kayyem does not consider which people are most subject to disaster, this is a conversation that still needs to continue, given exactly how much is at stake.