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This week we will discuss what is a relatively understudied component of wildfire management--human recovery and change after wildfires. We will also discuss ways to monitor or respond to human impacts after wildfires, including different types of impacts across populations.
Please submit at least three discussion questions based on the readings for the week. Feel free to link your comments and/or questions to other topics we have covered in class, or any important considerations of wildfire management you feel that we have not yet addressed. Finally, consider how we carefully weigh the benefits and negative outcomes that can come from wildfire. How do our approaches for wildfire management reflect those realities?
Please submit your comments by noon on Monday. That will give our discussion leads adequate time to prepare for their duties.
Edgeley 2022
ReplyDeleteThe paper mentions how post-fire recovery assistance has been honed at different scales, including by past disasters in California and beyond, like with Hurricane Katrina on the east coast. Subsequently, I am pondering how distinct regions with their own parameters, such as population density, may lead to variation in interviewee responses. I would be interested in exploring this further within future research. However, I am not sure how well the results can be quantified even if the disaster type was the same, as their magnitudes will likely differ. Do you see any other drawbacks or challenges?
Edgeley and Paveglio 2017
The paper says that future investigation into the “social lifespan” of wildfires or other hazards on perceptions of risk or recovery is needed. Other than the factors that affect social lifespan mentioned in the paper, I think there are others that could use further research. For example, how may outmigration from an area post-disaster affect the social lifespan of that disaster? Are there any others that you can think of?
Mockrin 2022
The paper denotes how areas such as California are witnessing record-setting wildfires, with some years experiencing multiple. In addition, how these circumstances may further complicate adaptive recovery and long-term research. Tying this information into the “social lifespan” of wildfires may prove to be a good research outlet with numerous questions. For instance, how do recurring wildfires influence the social lifespan of each wildfire? How is the presence of multiple wildfires perceived by interviewees? Are there any other questions that you think are worthy to ask regarding this?
Edgeley and Paveglio 2017
ReplyDeleteI was very happy to read this article and learn about the term ‘hybrid hazards.’ This is a concept I’ve thought pretty extensively on yet never could put into words. How might the recovery process be perceived differently in a natural disaster than a hybrid hazard? Should any steps of the recovery process be different depending on the type of natural disaster?
Edgeley 2022
Structuration theory supports the claim that adaptive capacity is just as much of an organizational constraint as it is an individual limiting factor. Smaller, local response agencies that might have a better understanding of locals wants, needs, feelings, etc tend to be less of a ‘powerhouse’ than the large disaster response agencies with more resources. And this in turn tends to cause a disconnect. Some of the individuals felt that leadership was lacking. This got me thinking about perhaps how some individuals’ responses might be emotionally charged and not the most accurate representation. I’m wondering about within all of this disaster response if there is a team that tends to emotional and mental issues associated with the disaster. What if smaller, local organizations focused more on emotional and mental support and larger disaster response organizations headed more on the clean up side of response.
Mockrin et al. 2022
I was really impressed reading the data sources and analysis section. I think the authors did a phenomenal job helping me understand this portion of the paper. This is normally a section where I really struggle reading and writing. They gave me some great ideas and I liked the flow chart image they created as well. I thought it was an interesting approach to try and better understand what influences adaptive or maladaptive long term recovery.
Edgeley 2022: A quote from this paper really stood out to me- “Our goal is to stop the emergency, to make sure they are well enough to move forward into whatever their new normal looks like.” Is this the new normal though? If we were better about proactive land stewardship rather than “suppress, suppress, suppress” then respond, this wouldn’t have to be the case! Then also factoring in climate change, our entire fire and vegetation regime is shifting- how can we ensure our communities’ perception shifts along with that to better understand and incorporate more holistic fire management into our larger land management plans so we don’t keep perpetuating the problem?
ReplyDeleteEdgeley and Paveglio: I’ve always personally seen wildfire from a response (detection and suppression), prescribed (and cultural use of fire), or ecological restoration viewpoint, until in recent years when I have also been an evacuee due to wildfires. It was interesting to think about it instead from a recovery standpoint as detailed in this paper, which made me really think about the scalability of organizations’ response. How might we promote better scalability of and coordination between organizations response in our own communities? Communities always tend to “band together “ in times of crisis, but how can we ensure things are set up to function well ahead of time, particularly in rural and underserved communities where certain groups of people may frequently be left out?
Mockrin et al. 2022: How might we be able to better utilize the ever-increasing wildfire frequency (as mentioned in California, for example) to shift the social perception of and impacts from wildfires?
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ReplyDelete1.Edgeley (2022) highlights a perceived lack of leadership among interviewees. What governance models are typically used in wildfire response and recovery - hierarchical, network, or polycentric? If the current model is primarily a network, how could it be transitioned to a more polycentric approach?
ReplyDelete2. How could shifting the narrative to emphasize the cost of recovery rather than suppression influence public attitudes and perceptions of wildfires?
3. While risk mapping is often used in planning and prevention, how central is it to wildfire recovery and response? Could bringing it into the recovery phase more intentionally help build trust and support for long-term resilience, especially in vulnerable communities?
Edgeley:
ReplyDelete"Interviewees described the lower income and resource access in Paradise and other Ridge communities as a product of growing cost of living in Chico; many had been pushed out of more urban areas as housing demand grew and gentrification became deep-rooted." Knowing that one communities population is beginning to migrate to another results in a more mixed interviewing pool. When interviewing these individuals was a distinction made or noted on how long residents had lived in or around the area? Could newer community members be skewing the results if this wasn't accounted for?
Edgeley and Paveglio:
"Locals' disappointment surrounding fire suppression also stemmed from pre-fire expectations that the DNR would prioritize private property when determining how to allocate their firefighting resources." How is this information properly presented to the communities; do they know this is the case prior to evacuation? Should wildfire fire fighters mainly focus on containment instead of worrying about structure to prevent this place of conflict? Is that a possibility?
Mockrin:
"Although these were nationally significant wildfire events, we found a lack of systematic data on long-term human system recovery, including housing reconstruction". What available data is there on this information? When reconstructing these homes and buildings, What is the process like? After these events, do we see a change in the structure of these communities, meaning, does it shift from scattered homes in the WUI to more centralized neighborhoods?
Edgeley:
ReplyDeleteThis paper reminded me about a discussion from several weeks back, a missing data point in several of these papers being that there wasn’t backup data to see if thoughts and feelings had changed post-fire. It’s definitely an area that needs more attention. though, I’m wondering how long we wait after fire to get that information. Right after, everyone is extremely emotionally exhausted, evident by the 2018 camp fire with significant damage & loss of life, and all of their resources are towards recovery. However, if we wait too long to gather the data, can we trust their memory when emotional aspects are such a heavy factor in this type of situation? How long is too long to wait and how soon is too soon and be deemed disrespectful? And then, adding into that the fact that sometimes the financial or emotional impact of recovering is too much, and individuals move out of the area and have no traceable way to be surveyed. Depending on how intensely different individuals were impacted, all worldly possessions and loved ones lost, that is going to be some intense trauma for professionals to try help than many areas the resources aren’t there for that. and in most cases, the professionals that are responding aren’t capable of handling that situation, which could be why some individuals in the paper felt like the leadership wasn’t good. I think this is another aspect where we’re gonna have to look into blending sociology/humanities with emergency response and with fire management/mitigation.
E. & Paveglio:
As with everything, no community is going to completely agree with leadership or have the same response about the experience. Dissatisfaction could be because of a power trip or personal bias with someone else being so thankful that somebody cared enough to help that they’ll give positive feedback. Knowing people who have gone through massive environmental disasters and had to deal with the state and government agencies complicated processes or failing to fulfill promises, I can definitely see the issue with agencies like FEMA and the lean towards volunteer organizations being preferred. My lived experience as a volunteer, organizations come into rural underserved areas and go above and beyond what they’re called to do but federal agencies, at times, will not fulfill what they’re supposed to have been created to do. It gives me ivory tower vibes… where an agency and people whose lives look nothing like locals, have no understanding of the environment that they’re coming into, or even what’s important, telling them how it should be and what’s “actually” important. Kind of like last week’s paper where the fire managers didn’t speak with the locals and decided what they thought were important structures and financially severely hindered those farmers. It definitely pushes me more the thought that more focus should be on state and local agencies being the main disaster relief, and less money being funded into the federal aspect that doesn’t have an understanding of the local peoples. With more revenue in the state, there should be a caveat of a portion is for the research, and how to help, and how to shift the public perspective to allow Pre-fire management in areas that do not accept it. But then that brings up a whole other issue of how will the states fairly allocate that money???
Mockrin:
ReplyDeleteThis page made me think about the recovery post fire, when we’re going into an area, cleaning it up, and then assisting people to rebuild… aren’t we just setting them up to experience more tragedy? I mean once a wildfire burns through. It’ll be a little while before it hits the area again, but unless the aspects that allowed this to occur or altered, it’ll just be a never-ending feedback loop. For instance, the recent historic flood in my town, has prompted the county to buy people out of their homes/property and areas that have reoccurring devastating floods. As a lot of times these people don’t have insurance (because it will not cover because they are in a disaster prone area) and a lot of times they could not economically relocate on their own as their property is generational, and it could not be sold for gain because of the area that it’s in and so they’re stuck in this devastating cycle.
Mockrin et al.:
ReplyDeleteCould impacts to agriculture and timber products, "loss of the landscape", and place attachment all be examples of how human and ecological systems (and recovery processes) interlock? Also, I'm curious what people think about the definition of recovery provided in this paper: "post-fire changes to human or ecological environments that reshape vulnerability for the next wildfire event". One detail I found interesting was that shortly after the Bastrop fire only 40% of households intended to rebuild or repair, but 4 years later this number was 91%. What changed during this period?
Edgeley and Paveglio:
Would better engagement between communities and IC teams (as we discussed last week) and/or pre-fire roundtable type initiatives that allow people to communicate with agencies about their priorities, capacities, etc. help set expectations and limit the potential for conflict and blaming behavior during and after a fire event?
Edgeley:
There's not really an "IC" team for recovery, so who should lead the process? It seems like a level of organizational chaos follows wildfires because no one is quite sure what their role should be and processes/strategies/protocols haven't been determined in advance. Could this be incorporated with risk assessment and mitigation planning? E.g. representatives from local, state, and federal agencies participate in laying out their capacities and determining what their roles will be if a fire happens.
Edgeley 2022: What strategies can local organizations implement to document their recovery experiences and lessons learned after wildfires, so that this knowledge can be utilized in future disaster responses?
ReplyDeleteEdgeley and Paveglio 2017: How do people cope emotionally after losing their homes to a wildfire, and in what ways do those feelings influence their expectations and experiences when seeking help from federal assistance programs?
Mockrin: Are there cases where easements have failed to protect land as intended?
Edgeley:
ReplyDeleteThe article states that the large scale, bureaucratic nature of federal and national recovery response results in a "rigidity trap". Can you think of an organization or company that operates at a large scale but succeeds in remaining flexible? If so, what could national and federal recovery organizations take from this?
Mockrin:
Communities impacted by wildfire may be fearful and resistant to Rx implementation. I think this is a good example of the interplay between social and ecological factors...Short-term community safety (i.e. fire exclusion) involves tradeoffs like missing out on the use of Rx to achieve fuels reduction and meet ecological objectives. Burn managers should be able to weigh the long and short term social impacts of their decision making against the potential ecological benefits. Additionally, trust in agency representatives as well as the education piece are critical when implementing burns in the wake of negative wildfire impacts to a community.
Edgeley and Paveglio:
Regarding the current FEMA funding allocation system: How could disaster impacts be measured more objectively? Can wildfire impacts be measured like other disasters or would separate metrics be needed? Within wildfire, should rural vs. WUI disaster impacts be measured differently?