Everywhere Insiders 64: Disaster Preparedness and Governance

Irina Tsukerman is a New York-registered human rights and national security lawyer, geopolitical analyst, and journalist. She earned a B.A. in International/Intercultural Studies and Middle East Studies from Fordham University in 2006 and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2009. She is president of Scarab Rising, Inc., editor-in-chief of The Washington Outsider, and fellow of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs and the Arabian Peninsula Institute. Her work focuses on foreign policy, information warfare, security, and Middle Eastern affairs. She serves as Written Content Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s Science and Technology Committee.

In this interview, Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Irina Tsukerman discuss how natural disasters expose weaknesses in infrastructure, governance, and emergency preparedness. Their conversation examines Himalayan flooding, disaster risks across Latin America, illegal mining, organized crime, and political polarization. Tsukerman emphasizes early warning systems, international cooperation, resilient infrastructure, and institutional competence. They explore how geography, corruption, and geopolitical tensions complicate humanitarian responses, while distinguishing legitimate security objectives from ineffective or disproportionate implementation of policies and interventions.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Welcome back to Everywhere Insiders with the Washington Outsider, Irina Tsukerman, and me, Scott Douglas Jacobsen. Today, our source is AP News. We are starting with some of the top stories, statistics, and commentary from AP. Naturally, we have had the immense and rapidly unfolding tragedy in Nepal and Tibet, with catastrophic floods killing more than 390 people and leaving more than 1,400 missing at the time of the initial reporting. As with any major natural disaster, these were preliminary numbers and were expected to change as search and rescue operations continued. At the time, those were the reported counts of people killed and missing.

A newly formed lake was also posing a further flood threat, while hundreds of foreign nationals and pilgrims were among those reported missing following the flash floods along the Nepal-China border. What are your thoughts on this particular natural disaster? It hit the news cycle very quickly and quite recently.

Irina Tsukerman: The situation appears to be a combination of natural factors aligning at particularly bad timing, producing tragic results, together with human vulnerabilities and preparedness failures. The natural factors that are largely beyond anyone’s immediate control include a major high-altitude collapse involving glacier ice, bedrock, and debris.

These kinds of slope failures do occur in mountainous regions, although some are far more destructive than others. There is also the extreme vertical relief and the confinement of rivers within steep Himalayan valleys. All of these factors are dangerous enough on their own. However, shortcomings in preparedness, infrastructure protection, land-use planning, and early-warning capacity can compound the consequences.

There were several areas of vulnerability. Settlements and infrastructure were exposed in high-risk terrain, and the available warning time was extremely limited. People had very little time to evacuate or otherwise prepare.

First of all, this was not simply a conventional monsoon flood of the sort that occurs periodically in the region. The seismic event was also initially interpreted incorrectly. The U.S. Geological Survey first reported what appeared to be a magnitude 4.4 earthquake, but later concluded that the signal was generated by the collapse itself, which registered as a magnitude 5.2 seismic event. In other words, an earthquake did not trigger the collapse. The collapse generated the seismic signal.

The initial event was enormous in scale. Available satellite and seismic evidence indicates that a large mass of bedrock and glacier ice broke from a high mountain slope and fell approximately 1,200 metres into the valley below. The resulting movement of ice, rock, debris, and water generated the magnitude 5.2 seismic signal and contributed to the catastrophic flooding downstream. Scientists were still reconstructing the precise sequence, including whether debris temporarily dammed a river before the accumulated water surged downstream.

The debris flow and flood ultimately travelled approximately 100 kilometres downstream. Because of the geography in that area, the Himalayan valleys are narrow, and the terrain tends to confine material rather than allowing it to spread widely across the landscape. Once the debris entered the valley and river system, it was channelled downstream through steep, confined terrain.

Essentially, once the material entered that system, the physical structure of the valley and the river channels running through it concentrated the moving mass and directed it toward populated areas downstream. The precise sequence is still being reconstructed, but the collapse involved large quantities of ice, rock, debris, and water entering the river system and producing a fast-moving debris flow and flood.

The flood did not carry only small debris. It carried large boulders, vehicles, parts of buildings, bridge components, sediment, and increasing amounts of water along the way. According to reports, the Trishuli River rose by as much as nine metres within approximately 30 minutes. That is an extraordinary development based on the observations available.

Normally, when people think of flooding in this region, they may think of heavy rainfall, rising rivers, and inundation. Here, however, the disaster involved a coupled debris flow and flood generated by a major slope failure involving a glacier. It was therefore not simply a conventional river flood. The rapidly moving mixture of water, ice, rock, sediment, and other debris greatly increased its destructive power.

People living well downstream from the initial mountain-collapse zone also had to evacuate rapidly. Because the debris flow and flood travelled through existing stream and river channels for nearly 100 kilometres, communities far from the original slope failure were exposed to danger. The speed and unusual nature of the event also left very limited warning time in some areas.

The flow also increased its volume and destructive capacity as it travelled downstream. It was not carrying only the rocks and ice released in the initial collapse. According to the USGS, the debris incorporated additional material and water as it moved through the river system. As it travelled downstream, it picked up sediment, rocks, rubble, and other material, producing a fast-moving flood laden with boulders and debris.

That, in itself, created a cycle of additional slope failures, producing smaller collapses along the riverbanks. With every kilometre, more material accumulated and added to the destructive mass. As bridges, roads, hydropower installations, and buildings were damaged or destroyed, they contributed further debris to the flow. The USGS reported that the moving mixture picked up additional material and water as it travelled downstream through existing stream and river channels.

The other issue is that this was an interconnected river system. The disaster was not confined to the original valley where the collapse began. The debris flow and flooding travelled nearly 100 kilometres along the Lende Khola and Trishuli river system, affecting populated areas far downstream, including the Nepal-China border crossing.

So, the initial mountain failure in one place became a much broader river disaster. What happened in that valley did not stay in that valley, to put it simply. Water, mud, rocks, and other debris were carried far downstream, affecting communities and infrastructure well beyond the original collapse zone. Bodies were also recovered downstream as search and recovery operations expanded across the affected region.

There are many border facilities, settlements, roads, trekking routes, hotels, and other infrastructure in that region. Hundreds of foreign nationals were also present, including tourists and pilgrims travelling through the Nepal-Tibet border region. Early missing-person figures were necessarily provisional because authorities were still identifying victims, locating stranded people, and reconciling reports from different jurisdictions.

That made it difficult initially to establish exactly how many people had survived, how many remained stranded, and how many were genuinely missing rather than appearing in duplicate or incomplete reports.

Another major problem was the destruction of transportation infrastructure. AP reported that approximately 40 kilometres of roads and 35 bridges had been destroyed. That meant rescuers and relief supplies could not easily reach some affected areas. The more infrastructure that was destroyed, the less capacity governments and humanitarian organizations had to reach stranded people or respond to further hazards.

It became a self-reinforcing cycle of destruction and isolation. In steep Himalayan terrain, roads, bridges, border crossings, and hydropower facilities can function as critical links between communities. Destroying infrastructure at one of these geographic choke points can isolate entire areas rather than just a single settlement.

The early-warning problem was also broader than simply having people living outside areas normally considered vulnerable to a mountain collapse. Nepal’s difficult terrain and limited emergency infrastructure can impede rapid warning, communications, and disaster response, especially in remote valleys. On the Tibetan side, access to timely and independently verifiable information has also been more restricted.

They also lack sufficiently developed systems that can move information quickly upward to government authorities and downward to communities during a critical event. Effective early-warning systems depend on monitoring networks, including satellites and seismic and hydrological sensors, as well as rapid communication among different agencies and across borders.

But think about a river rising by approximately nine metres in 30 minutes. That is an exceptional rate of change. If authorities spend an hour trying to determine what is happening, the evacuation window may already have closed for some downstream communities. While officials are still trying to understand the event, people may already be trapped or killed.

Essentially, the problem is a lack of sufficiently rapid information, warning, and communication. The irony is that I know someone in India who works in precisely this field. Because of longstanding geopolitical tensions in the region, however, companies with government or defence-sector connections cannot necessarily gain access to the communities, companies, or government agencies that could benefit from their technology. There is distrust, competition, and political sensitivity surrounding the sharing of information and technology.

There are organizations that specialize in providing near-real-time information about catastrophic events, whether geopolitical crises or natural disasters. That capability exists. Tragically, not every government or community has equal access to it.

Jacobsen: This news item is a good nexus between natural disasters, or what are sometimes called acts of God, and human structures, which we might describe as semi-permanent, as well as our ability to adapt within a reasonable amount of time during an emergency.

If we turn to the news cycle in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are several examples involving this interaction between natural hazards and human actions. We are going to spend quite a bit of time on Latin America this week, just as a heads-up. Bear with me here.

All right. Colombia has experienced a major earthquake, with substantial casualties reported in the affected region. Parts of the Caribbean have also been experiencing drought, including serious water-supply pressures in Puerto Rico. In Hawaii and across the Pacific, tropical weather systems have posed additional hazards.

Brazil, meanwhile, has faced considerable pressure on its natural resources, particularly in the Amazon. This predates the Bolsonaro years and reflects a much longer-running debate over conservation, development, mining, and the protection of the Amazon. More recently, attention has also focused on deposits of rare-earth elements and other critical minerals in Brazil. Among the strategically important rare-earth elements are neodymium, praseodymium, terbium, and dysprosium. That level of precision is not especially relevant to either of us conversationally, but it is relevant for textual accuracy.

In addition to illegal gold mining in Peru, including in parts of the Peruvian Amazon around the protected Tambopata National Reserve, there are comparable concerns elsewhere. As you may know, Ghana has faced a major problem with galamsey, the local term commonly used for illegal or unregulated small-scale mining. Chinese nationals have at times been implicated in illegal mining operations there, alongside Ghanaian actors, although it would be inaccurate to describe the problem as exclusively Chinese-driven. The environmental and social consequences have become a major issue within Ghanaian politics and civil society.

In Peru, authorities have also increased enforcement actions, including military and police operations, against illegal mining. There are related governance and Indigenous-rights disputes across the Amazon, some of which have reached Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court. That is part one. Quite a lot is happening.

Part two concerns the militarization and internationalization of anti-gang and anti-cartel policy across the Americas. Some gangs and criminal organizations now function as heavily armed territorial actors. The United States has increasingly discussed the use of military and security tools against transnational cartels and organized crime. There are legitimate security reasons for stronger action, although the legal framing, proportionality, and wisdom of particular measures require scrutiny. Some of the underlying premises are reasonable, but implementation matters enormously.

The United States has also been expanding security cooperation and military engagement in Latin America. Colombia remains a major U.S. security partner, particularly in counter-narcotics and counter-organized-crime efforts.

Colombian armed groups have also adopted newer methods of warfare, including the use of drones, while child recruitment remains a documented problem among several armed organizations. The combination is disturbing. In some respects, it reflects the rapid battlefield adaptation seen in Ukraine, where inexpensive drones have transformed aspects of combat. The recruitment and exploitation of children by armed groups, meanwhile, has parallels with practices used by organizations such as Boko Haram in Nigeria, although the Colombian context has its own history and dynamics.

Lastly, the U.S. Treasury has imposed sanctions targeting cocaine-trafficking and money-laundering networks with links extending through Ecuador and other parts of the region. U.S. authorities have also continued targeting financial and logistical networks associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.

So, in the first category, we have a series of natural disasters and environmental crises producing terrible human conditions. In the second, we have organized criminal activity, armed groups, trafficking networks, illegal resource extraction, and serious human-rights abuses, followed by state efforts to counter them.

Those state responses may be justified in their basic objective of combating cartels, armed criminal organizations, trafficking, and rights violations, while still being poorly designed, disproportionate, or ineffective in particular cases. The intent and the execution have to be assessed separately.

What are your thoughts about these two regional contexts? There are probably too many different events here to comment on each one individually.

Tsukerman: There are broader patterns that are helpful for understanding why governance and development challenges have been so persistent across parts of Latin America, although the region is extremely diverse and there are important national exceptions. These are technical terms, of course.

In terms of natural disasters, some of the vulnerability is related to geography. Many countries in Latin America are located in areas prone to earthquakes, volcanic activity, hurricanes, floods, droughts, landslides, and other climatic or geological hazards. Human settlements and major cities also developed long before modern understanding of seismic fault lines, floodplains, or other risk factors. As a result, large populations sometimes became concentrated in geographically vulnerable locations.

That makes major relocation or wholesale urban redesign extremely difficult. In that sense, there is a historical dimension to the problem. Much of the original settlement pattern cannot simply be reversed. This is precisely where international support can be useful, particularly in helping governments reduce exposure to known hazards.

Now would be a good time for the international community to provide support for moving away from historically established but risky practices toward more resilient approaches. That can include stronger infrastructure, improved building standards, better land-use planning, rapid-response systems, evacuation planning, early-warning technology, and the sharing of disaster-management best practices.

The international community is well positioned to provide technical expertise, financing, and institutional support in these areas. But it still requires sustained engagement, political will, and competent implementation by Latin American governments themselves.

The other issues are less easily explained as historical misfortune or natural tragedy because they involve political choices, institutional weaknesses, organized crime, corruption, and failures of governance.

There are significant governance problems across parts of Latin America, alongside high levels of political polarization and populism in some countries. Governments of both the left and the right have, at various times, relied heavily on emotionally charged appeals and promises directed toward particular constituencies. Some administrations have been more effective than others, and the region is too diverse to treat all governments alike.

Still, populist politics can create incentives to focus on winning elections through powerful rhetoric while neglecting the more difficult work of institutional reform, public administration, infrastructure, security, and long-term economic development.

This is also why there has been so much political volatility in countries such as Brazil. We have seen populist leaders on both the left and the right rise in succession, alongside recurring corruption scandals and institutional crises. There is less tolerance for failure, but there are also fewer broadly centrist or technocratic options capable of attracting large constituencies. Voters can end up choosing between competing forms of populist governance rather than between clearly differentiated models of competent administration.

You have Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, whose earlier corruption convictions were annulled by the Supreme Court on jurisdictional and procedural grounds, allowing him to return to electoral politics. On the other side, Jair Bolsonaro was convicted for his role in an attempted coup and is serving a lengthy prison sentence. His son, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, is now running for president in the October 2026 election and has emerged as Lula’s principal challenger.

There is considerable speculation that a Flávio Bolsonaro administration would seek some form of legal or political relief for his father, although what would actually be constitutionally or legally possible would depend on the circumstances at the time. Jair Bolsonaro disappointed some of his own supporters by failing to deliver on various campaign promises. Flávio Bolsonaro is, of course, a different political actor, but political dynasties do not necessarily produce better governance simply because the candidate is a new member of the same family.

A great deal of how governments respond to natural disasters also depends on the institutions and administration in office at a particular moment. Governments across Latin America have developed different relationships with the United States, China, and other external partners. Some right-of-centre governments have traditionally maintained closer security relationships with Washington, while some left-wing governments have cultivated stronger economic relationships with Beijing. Those alignments, however, do not by themselves determine whether a government can deliver basic services competently.

Corruption and institutional weakness remain serious problems in parts of the region. Regardless of who is in office, there can be a major disconnect between national policy and the capacity of local governments and communities to deliver emergency services, maintain infrastructure, and implement disaster planning. This helps explain why similar natural hazards can produce very different outcomes depending on preparedness and institutional capacity.

The recent disasters illustrate that difference. The Colombian earthquake was serious, but the June 2026 earthquakes in Venezuela were substantially more destructive. By late June, the confirmed death toll in Venezuela had risen above 1,700, with many thousands still missing or unaccounted for.

Venezuela’s longstanding problems with infrastructure, public services, economic deterioration, institutional weakness, and political isolation complicated the response. Those vulnerabilities were built up over many years and cannot be repaired through a few policy changes or outside interventions.

The current Venezuelan authorities have begun cooperating with the United States on measures such as stabilizing the country’s electricity system, including rehabilitation of existing generating infrastructure. Whether interim President Delcy Rodríguez’s government has the political will and institutional capacity to pursue deeper reforms remains an open question.

Natural disasters expose these weaknesses very quickly because they test whether a government can communicate, evacuate people, maintain transportation networks, distribute aid, restore electricity, and coordinate emergency services under extreme pressure.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Irina.

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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a Writer and Editor for The Good Men Project with more than 2,000 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343; 978-1-0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018-7399; Online: ISSN, 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719-6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing comprised of more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications, in more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic, media, and research institution fellowships, and currently serves on numerous international boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), and Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20-0708028), and others.