The Long Haul: A Survivor/Practitioner’s Look at the Journey from Recovery to Mitigation to Planning

“What have been the effects on planning and mitigation in the communities affected by wildfire in recent years?”

“Could you talk about the demographics of the people affected and how many homes have been rebuilt?”

These were just two of the questions posed to my Executive Director and me this morning in an interview with a university research team from a joint research project between a state university Department of Emergency Management and Disaster Science and a WUI-researcher from the US Forest Service. This research team had requested time to talk with us “survivors” about possible changes to wildfire policy and practice related to housing recovery, land use planning and future wildfire risk reduction.

The first question seemed pretty straightforward, but it stunned me.  The speaker’s emphasis on the effects “from recent years” was so painful. Although the research team had included “our” September 2015 Valley Fire in their list of cases to investigate, the seemingly objective framing of this question belied a lingering sense of expectation that there would be little “real” information we could offer. Almost six years is too long really to be relevant, the interviewer seemed to imply – and that was so far from the truth.

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