What does it actually take to predict a disaster? As wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and other disasters intensify, one climate scientist has become one of the most trusted voices helping the public make sense of it all before it happens.

In this episode of Disasterproof, Kat sits down with Daniel Swain, the climate and weather scientist behind Weather West, to unpack what the science can actually tell us about disaster prediction, and what that means for preparedness. The conversation centers on the 2025 LA fires, where the conditions behind the disaster were forecasted days in advance. Daniel walks through what the science actually showed, and why accurate prediction didn't translate into readiness. From there, the conversation turns to what's ahead: a record-breaking Super El Niño that could make this coming winter unlike anything California has seen before.

The bigger thread running through it all is that climate change isn't a problem we solve with mitigation or adaptation, and treating either as optional leaves communities exposed. Seeing a disaster coming is only the first step. Being ready for it is a different challenge entirely.

Disasterproof is a series exploring the people, technology, and ideas building real resilience for communities facing climate-driven disasters.

Subscribe for more conversations on disaster tech and community resilience and follow Disasterproof on social media for updates on new episodes!

• Instagram: instagram.com/disasterproofteam
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/113534498/
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Chapters:

00:00 – Meet Daniel Swain: The Scientist Behind Weather West

08:35 – Predicting Disaster: What the 2025 LA Fires Taught Us

16:01 – Building Resilient Homes and Cities

21:47 – AI, Tech, and the Future of Disaster Forecasting

30:40 – Mitigation vs. Adaptation: What Do We Need to Invest In?

37:00 – How to Prepare for This Year's Record-Breaking Super El Niño

44:00 – The National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Science-to-Society Pipeline 

49:30 – Staying Optimistic in the Face of Climate Change

What happens when the systems designed to warn us about emergencies don't work? For millions of Americans, the answer is Watch Duty — the wildfire-tracking app that hit #1 in the App Store during the January 2025 LA fires.

Watch Duty founder John Mills may be the only founder who dreads growth: when your app tracks wildfires and floods, every new user is someone in harm's way. "It's not a success story," he says. "It's a failure story."

In this episode of Disasterproof, we go behind the scenes of Watch Duty, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit building a real-time early-warning network for communities facing wildfire and flood. Rooted in America's long tradition of citizen storm reporting, Watch Duty brings together volunteer reporters and local experts to track incidents, verify information, and help communities understand what's coming before it's too late.

We visit John at the off-grid Sonoma County property where it all started, meet the volunteers listening to radio scanners 24/7 across all 50 states, and hear from the firefighters who now rely on the app themselves.

Disasterproof is a series exploring the people, technology, and ideas building real resilience for communities facing climate-driven disasters.

Subscribe for more conversations on disaster tech and community resilience and follow Disasterproof on social media for updates on new episodes!

Instagram: instagram.com/disasterproofteamLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/113534498/X: https://x.com/disasterproofHQ

Chapters:
0:00 - The Failure Story Behind This Disaster Tracking App
1:33 - Tornadoes: A Citizen Alert Case Study
3:04 - Who is Filling the Gap in America's Emergency Alert System?
06:19 - How Watch Duty Turns Signals Into Community
09:21 - How Firefighters and First Responders Are Using Tech to Save Lives
11:10 - Disaster Tech's Unfortunate Growth Into Critical Infrastructure
13:10 - What a Resilient Future Looks Like for Disaster-Prone Communities

Billion-dollar wildfires are driving insurers out of California, leaving homeowners exposed just as fire risk climbs and disasters get bigger. The stakes go beyond who pays after a house burns down - it's about whether we can keep living in the places we love at all.  

Dan Preston, CEO of Stand Insurance, thinks the industry has it backwards. Instead of insuring homes and waiting for them to burn, Stand uses 3D modeling to find the exact points where a house is most likely to fail, without sacrificing the character and aesthetics homeowners want to protect. 

In this episode of Disasterproof, we visit a Stand-insured home in California to see fire-resilient design up close, and sit down with Dan to talk about turning insurance from a payout after disaster into the thing that prevents it. We also dive into Stand's expansion into hurricane country, and what it would take to build a world with less need for insurance. 

Hit subscribe here and follow Disasterproof on social media for new episodes!

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Chapters:

0:00 The wildfire crisis and California's housing crisis are intertwined

6:41 The most proximate stakeholder in climate resilience

10:00 What causes a house to burn down?

11:05 Wine country: Ground zero for California wildfire risk

11:40 Building a defensible space

15:16 Disaster resilience isn't one-size-fits-all

18:30 Modeling wildfire before it happens

19:29 Fencing, aesthetics, and the real cost of fire resilience

22:47 Tackling $100 billion disasters in Florida

25:29 The future of insurtech

32:13 Fire-safe gutters, vents, and defensible landscaping

36:00 From predicting disasters to preventing them

The Great Salt Lake has lost more than half its surface area since 1850, and the snowpack that's supposed to refill it is disappearing too. This past winter was the worst in at least 50 years, with precipitation increasingly falling as rain instead of snow.

In this episode of Disasterproof, we go on the ground with Rainmaker, a company using autonomous drones to seed clouds with silver iodide and coax more snow out of the sky. Rainmaker says it's the first company in history to unambiguously prove it's inducing precipitation, and it's now working with the state of Utah to try to reverse the decline of the Great Salt Lake within the decade.

Cloud seeding itself isn't new, the U.S. has been doing it for over 70 years. What's changed is the urgency, and the technology now being used to validate it. We also look at the Aral Sea's cautionary tale, and sit in on Rainmaker's "Save Our Snow" pitch to a room full of investors, skiers, and scientists who all want to know the same thing: can this actually work?

Chapters:

00:00 The Great Salt Lake's Vanishing Act

01:54 On the Ground With a Snow Scientist

04:04 70 Years of Cloud Seeding, Reinvented

05:55 Inside Rainmaker's Operations Center

07:16 How Silver Iodide Seeds a Cloud

08:32 A Live Flight Over a Cow Field

09:43 Proving the Precipitation Is Real

10:30 The Aral Sea's Warning

11:40 Project Save Our Snow

12:32 Q&A: Funding, Ethics, and Skepticism

14:38 Fact vs. Fear on Cloud Seeding

George Whitesides has spent his career on systems-level problems: NASA chief of staff, Virgin Galactic CEO, co-founder of Megafire Action, and now the U.S. Congressman representing one of California's most fire-prone districts.

In this episode of Disasterproof, we sit down with Whitesides near the site of the Sandy Fire to talk about what it actually takes to fix the wildfire crisis, from the five systems working against each other, to the "valley of death" stalling wildfire startups, to two bills moving through Congress right now. He also gets personal about evacuating his own home during the January 2025 fires.

Chapters

00:00 The cost of wildfires

00:34 Introducing George Whitesides

03:15 The wins that keep you inspired06:00 Why wildfire is "existential" for California

09:06 The five systems behind every wildfire

11:42 The one disaster we can get ahead of

12:28 Why new tech moves so slowly through government

14:19 What NASA taught him about build vs. buy

18:30 The "valley of death" for wildfire startups

19:38 A trillion-dollar problem, a broken budget

21:50 Inside the Acero Act and Fix Our Forests Act

26:00 Pitching a wildfire tech fund

27:50 What it's like to watch your district burn

In late May, the Sandy Fire broke out on a hot, windy afternoon in Simi Valley, California and grew to more than 2,000 acres and forced over 10,000 evacuations. When it was over, only one home had been lost.

California Congressman George Whitesides calls wildfire existential for the state, the defining risk of an era increasingly shaped by fire. The Sandy Fire is exactly the kind of threat he means.

In this episode of Disasterproof, we go on the ground with Whitesides and the Ventura County Fire Department to understand how. The answer is a layered one. Strict 100-foot defensible space requirements bought firefighters room to work. Remote sensing aircraft and satellite heat detection told them where the fire was moving. And when the wind reversed in the afternoon, air tankers and hand crews held the line on steep, dangerous terrain.

The Sandy Fire shows what is possible when preparation and fast response come together.

Chapters:

• 00:00 A Brush Fire off Sandy Avenue
• 00:58 Why Wildfire Is "Existential" for California
• 01:58 The First 30 Minutes of the Fire
• 03:17 Defensible Space and the Tech Behind the Response
• 04:18 On the Fire Line
• 06:05 The Case for More Fire
• 07:25 Still Playing Catch-Up

What does it take to build something that survives? In episode one of the Disasterproof Podcast, hosts Kat Mañalac and Bill Clerico sat down with Y Combinator co-founders Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston to find out.

From the 2008 financial crash to COVID-19 to the current AI moment, Paul and Jessica share how YC has weathered uncertainty, why they look for "cockroaches" in their portfolio, and how the founders who thrive are the ones who learn to get stronger from the chaos.

"There's always some kind of disaster going on. It's almost a rule of thumb at Y Combinator — just like in a hospital, there's always somebody who's coding." - Paul Graham.

"Adaptability is a really key trait to have always as a founder, but especially in these sort of unknown times when you don't know what the future holds" - Jessica Livingston.

Thanks to our partners the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Chapters

• 00:00 Welcome to Disasterproof
• 01:35 How to be an expert in a changing world
• 06:35 Building resilient companies: what YC looks for
• 16:00 What keeps YC resilient after 20+ years
• 24:03 Bill's wildfire origin story
• 27:45 Climate investing and the hard tech opportunity
• 35:38 Guilt vs. greed
• 39:55 Personal resilience and sticking to your North Star
• 47:00 Are you a prepper?
• 48:10 What do you hope for in the next 10 years?
• 51:32 What keeps you up at night? AI and climate change

Disasterproof Hosts: Kat Manalac and Bill Clerico

Co-Directors: Maya Craig & Nick Stone Schearer

Camera Operator: Isara Krieger

Sound Mixer: Myriam Boisselle

Editor: Nick Stone Schearer

In wildfire response, speed is everything. By the time firefighters reach many fire starts, the fire is already too large to easily contain. In 2018, the Camp Fire showed how quickly a small ignition can turn into a catastrophic disaster—destroying an entire town in less than a day. That is why many fire experts believe the most important window is the first few minutes after a fire is detected.

In this episode of Disasterproof, we visit Seneca and its founder Stuart Landesberg to see how autonomous firefighting aircraft could change that. Their drones are designed to launch quickly, find fires on their own, and suppress them before they spread.

At the test range, we watch the system in action—and explore a future where fleets of autonomous aircraft help protect communities from wildfire.

Subscribe for new episodes:  disasterproof.com 

Chapters
00:00 A first flight for a wildfire drone
01:08 The lesson of the Camp Fire
01:30 Why the first 10 minutes matter
03:10 Inside Seneca’s new firefighting aircraft
04:28 Preparing for the live fire test
05:01 How the aircraft suppresses fire
06:03 The autonomous flight test
07:12 Nature's sprinkler system
09:06 Seneca’s vision for wildfire response
10:43 A future of autonomous fire protection

Disasterproof Hosts: Kat Manalac and Bill Clerico
Director/Producer: Zach Both
Cinematographer: Matt Piniol
Assistant Camera: Colt Bradley
Editors: Josh and Amanda Deisler
Motion Graphics: Jules Verardi

Wildfires are putting more towns and critical infrastructure at risk every year. In 2024, the largest wildfire in Texas history spread rapidly toward the town of Borger until it reached the edge of town and just… stopped.

The town was spared because months earlier the Borger Fire Department had deliberately set fire to the land surrounding the town. This is called prescribed burning, an ancient land management practice designed to remove the vegetation that fuels catastrophic wildfires.

Today, the challenge is safely doing prescribed burning at the scale needed to protect modern landscapes. Luckily, there are people working to provide a modern solution to this problem.

In our first episode of Disasterproof, we visit BurnBot’s headquarters to meet CEO Anukool Lakhina and see the machines designed to make prescribed fire faster, safer, and more scalable. We also sit down with Archie Stone, the Wildland Fire Coordinator who advocated for the prescribed burns that ended up saving the town of Borger. Together, they make the case that the best way to fight fire is with fire.

Subscribe for new episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@disasterproofhq?sub_confirmation=1

Disasterproof Hosts: Kat Manalac and Bill Clerico

Director/Producer: Zach Both

Cinematographer: Matt Piniol

Assistant Camera: Matt Breetzke

Editors: Josh and Amanda Deisler

Motion Graphics: Jules Verardi