Fires, hurricanes and polar apocalypses: is the US still unprepared for its disasters?

Temperatures dropped to 15 degrees below zero and the wind swept like a knife through empty streets, but New York City was spared the brunt of the "snowstorm of the century," in the words of Governor Kathy Hochul. Meanwhile, up to a quarter of all scheduled flights in the United States were canceled between Thursday and the weekend, grounding tens of thousands of…