Human Dimensions of Fire
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This review informs prevention decision-making by highlighting current best practices categorized under the four key approaches to fire prevention–education, enforcement, engineering, and administration–while simultaneously revealing themes and gaps that merit further attention. We focus on interventions that can reduce accidental or negligent ignitions within the purview of land management and fire prevention professionals. We conclude with a call to modernize the field of wildfire prevention social science that promotes the diversification of study locations, design, and prevention techniques studied. Improved research and documentation surrounding the outcomes of individual or combinations of strategies and the user groups they target can help transition anecdotal assessments of prevention effectiveness into empirically informed decision-making that supports more strategic administration.
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This Storymap is developed and maintained by the Wildfire Risk Management Science Team at the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station. Information presented here represents ongoing efforts of team members and their collaborators and partners at research universities (Oregon State University, Colorado State University), land managing agencies (The National Forest System, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and multiple state partners), and independent land and resource management partners. Additional support is provided by Wildland Fire Management Research, Development & Application Risk Management Assistance.
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Are you ready to help your neighborhood reduce its wildfire risk, but not sure where to start? This webinar is designed for established Neighborhood Ambassadors and community members who want to take the first steps toward organizing local wildfire preparedness efforts.
Join us to explore practical steps, discover helpful resources, and hear inspiring examples of how others have successfully mobilized their communities.
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Short-term fire risk reduction and long-term resilience objectives can be complementary within a landscape, but ecosystem resilience is not a guaranteed co-benefit when fire risk reduction is the primary objective. Rather, improving ecosystem resilience cannot be achieved quickly because many desired forest conditions require both deliberate strategic action to guide the location, character, and timing of management as a disturbance agent, as well as adequate time for landscape conditions to improve and resilience benefits to be realized.
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We merge property-level damages for U.S. wildfires with individual tax and Census data to understand the demographics of wildfire victims and the financial consequences of wildfire property loss. The data illuminate disparities in hazard and structure vulnerability. Occupants of destroyed homes have lower pre-fire income than those in surviving homes. Wildfires reduce earnings for occupants of destroyed homes by 10% on average in years following the fire and 40% of occupants are still filing taxes from a different county 3 years after the event.
Judson Boomhower is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research focuses on environmental economics, energy markets, climate risk and adaptation, and the design of environmental and energy policy. Judson is a contributor to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and a faculty affiliate at the E2e initiative. He joined UC San Diego after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He earned his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and BA and MS degrees from Stanford University.
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Wildfires can produce health impacts that persist for years in affected communities. This article describes an Extension-led study of health impacts in rural Oregon communities one year after a destructive wildfire. Data collection included key informant interviews (n=36), an online survey (n=80), and three focus group interviews with survivors (n=23). Mental health, exposure to contaminants, physical stress, food insecurity, and other issues were frequently identified health concerns. Survivors’ difficulties in dealing with housing displacement significantly exacerbated health challenges. We describe potential roles for Extension in addressing wildfire risk and mitigating health impacts, including a description of the Oregon Fire Program.
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The area burned in the western United States during the 2020 fire season was the greatest in the modern era. Here we show that the number of human‐caused fires in 2020 also was elevated, nearly 20% higher than the 1992-2019 average. Although anomalously dry conditions enabled ignitions to spread and contributed to record area burned, these conditions alone do not explain the surge in the number of human‐caused ignitions. We argue that behavioral shifts aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID‐19 altered human‐environment interactions to favor increased ignitions. For example, the number of recreation‐caused wildfires during summer was 36% greater than the 1992-2019 average; this increase was likely a function of increased outdoor recreational activity in response to social distancing measures. We hypothesize that the combination of anomalously dry conditions and COVID‐19 social disruptions contributed to widespread increases in human-caused ignitions, adding complexity to fire management efforts during the 2020 western US fire season. Knowledge of how social behavior changes indirectly contributed to the increased number of ignitions in the 2020 wildfire season can help inform resource management in an increasingly flammable world.
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With climate change causing more extreme weather events globally, climate scientists have argued that societies have three options: mitigation, adaptation or suffering. In recent years, devastating wildfires have caused significant suffering, yet the extent of this suffering has not been defined. To encapsulate this suffering, we determined impacts and effects of extreme wildfires through two systematic literature reviews. Six common themes of wildfire suffering emerged: environmental, social, physical, mental, cultural and resource suffering. These themes varied in scale: from local to regional; from individuals to communities; and from ecosystems to landscapes. We then applied these themes in the Las Maquinas (Chile) and Fort McMurray (Canada) wildfires. This highlighted several adaptation strategies that can reduce suffering, however our exploration indicates these strategies must address social and ecological factors. This analysis concludes that suffering from wildfires is diverse and widespread, and that significant engagement with adaptation strategies is needed if this is going to decrease.
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The population of the United States is aging as the Baby Boom generation grows older. In 2020, 23 percent of the U.S. population had reached age 60. The share of the population at older ages is forecast to increase to 26 percent in 2030 and 29 percent in 2050. Wildfire risks are also increasing, and older populations are especially vulnerable. This report found that most (87 percent) of the recent population growth in places with moderate-to-high wildfire risk has been among people over the age of 60. Already, the proportion of older people living in places with more wildfire risk is higher than in the population at large. In rural areas with the greatest wildfire risk, 35 percent of people living in those areas are over the age of 60. The number of older people exposed to wildfire risk is expected to increase as populations grow older and as wildfire increases in frequency and intensity.