Implications of the California Wildfires for Health, Communities, and Preparedness Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
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3 Populations Impacted by Wildfires
3 Populations Impacted by Wildfires
Pages 17-32
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From page 17... ...
Many communities and populations are especially vulnerable to wildfires and other disasters, including low-income communities, migrant populations, indigenous populations, communities of older adults, and communities of color. Speakers on a panel that looked at populations impacted by wildfires examined the features of these communities that put them at a disadvantage in preparing for and responding to wildfires and at steps that could be taken to reduce these vulnerabilities.
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From page 18... ...
In California, the Human Services Departments are responsible for the care and shelter of people during evacuation, deploying staff to shelters to help set them up, to do assessments, and to make sure people get the services that they need. Chavez's department was therefore involved both in the immediate response to the fire and in efforts to mitigate long-term impacts to vulnerable populations.
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From page 19... ...
The fires exposed vulnerabilities in the community, which has caused people to rethink what the county ought to do moving forward. Chavez asked, "Can the county help create a community that not only provides greater opportunities for vulnerable populations but mitigates the long-term impacts of trauma?
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From page 20... ...
For example, the summit revealed the need to build 30,000 units of housing in Sonoma County to meet the needs of people in the community. "This is an example of the kind of positive responses that can come out of a disaster in bringing people together and reimagining new ways of building communities." "While the fire did not discriminate, the recovery process cer tainly did, depending on where you were situated and the kind of resources that you had." -- Oscar Chavez A NATIVE AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE ON WILDFIRES From the perspective of indigenous communities, fires are part of a sacred way of understanding the world, observed Don Hankins, professor of geography and planning at California State University, Chico.
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From page 21... ...
. "We, as indigenous people, have been here dealing with this since time immemorial, and we have been able to adapt through climate change to bring fire to this landscape to make it resilient." Today, wildfires are having calamitous impacts on many communities, including Native communities, Hankins observed.
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From page 22... ...
. Native people need to be able "to get out there and do the type of fire that we know we need to be doing." California's AB 32 fund for carbon offsets that are being used out of state and out of the country "needs to be spent locally so we can help protect our forests." "We, as indigenous people, have been here dealing with this since time immemorial, and we have been able to adapt through climate change to bring fire to this landscape to make it resilient." -- Don Hankins GETTING SERVICES TO VULNERABLE POPULATIONS The Mixteco/Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP)
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From page 23... ...
TABLE 3-1 Demographics of Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties Population Latino White Non-English Immigrant Noncitizen Santa Barbara County 442,996 45% 45% 40% 23% 15% Ventura County 847,834 42% 46% 39% 23% 12% Oxnard 206,732 74% 14% 68% 36% 22% Ventura (city) 110,153 35% 56% 27% 15% 8% Santa Barbara (city)
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From page 24... ...
The air quality was poor, yet many people had just bandanas or a medical mask to cover their faces, not the N95 masks that are recommended to prevent inhaling smoke. Because of drinking-water contamination, city municipalities were putting out boil water advisories, but that information also was not getting to vulnerable communities.
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From page 25... ...
Much of the funding came from the United Way, the Red Cross, and other organizations that had relief funds available but did not have the language access and trust that MICOP did. Along with partner organizations, MICOP also founded an UndocuFund modeled on the Sonoma County UndocuFund, which supported a coordinator and six outreach workers who also acted as interpreters.
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From page 26... ...
As a public health officer, Miller is a coordinator of ambulance strike teams, and about an hour and a half after the fire started he got a call asking for 6 ambulance strike teams, or 30 ambulances, to go to Paradise to evacuate Adventist Feather River Hospital and a number of skilled nursing facilities in the area. In such circumstances, he noted, "traffic will be worse than you have ever imagined." Even outside an evacuation zone, places that should take 10 minutes can take hours to reach.
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From page 27... ...
The county lost about 24 percent of its skilled nursing facility beds, and it lost an acute care hospital with 18 percent of its acute care beds. The infant delivery rate for the larger hospital in Chico went up by 44 percent, and emergency room visits went up by 40 percent, which created a need for increased staffing.
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From page 28... ...
"All those things are available to us if we take advantage of them," Miller concluded. "The impacts on Chico represented 15 years of projected growth, and it happened overnight." -- Andy Miller DISCUSSION Governmental Restrictions on Housing Costs David Eisenman, professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine and the Fielding School of Public Health at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
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From page 29... ...
Also, in some rural or conservative areas in California, such laws might not be widely supported. Protecting Vulnerable Populations Winston Wong, medical director of community health and director of disparities improvement and quality initiatives for Kaiser Permanente and moderator of the panel, asked specifically about how both governments and community-based organizations can protect vulnerable populations.
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From page 30... ...
Let's work together and figure out what we need." Still, more collaboration would be useful, she added, citing cultural competency, disaster relief planning, and long-term recovery as areas where her organization could be a valuable resource. Hankins mentioned the trust responsibilities that government agencies have to tribes, though many times "agencies do not quite understand what that means." Because of their self-determination, tribes have the ability to set forth ways of doing things on their ancestral land.
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From page 31... ...
Despite the advice given, Richard Jackson, professor emeritus at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA and a member of the planning committee, pointed out that many first responders, such as those involved in the terrorist attacks of 2001, do not wear masks. "Telling people to do things does not work sometimes when you are dealing with such a mass psychological trauma," he said.
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