ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the challenge and the question of whether catastrophe ever leads to good policy and whether people, in people's humanity, ever learn the lessons of the past or are condemned to repeat them. It attempts to answer by looking at some historical events within the disaster policy domain. Four intersecting shifts in the past century have contributed to how the current disaster policy domain functions: growth in the role of government at all levels, an increase in technological hazards and disasters, development of an increasingly litigious and blame-oriented society, and an increasing media-driven politicization of disaster events. The future poses more challenges for the disaster policy domain: Catastrophes grow more complex as technologies advance and society becomes more interdependent. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the emergency management system reasserted itself and reform implemented at the DHS through the Post Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act: Punctuated equilibrium and institutional forces illustrate Newton's Third Law at work.
