Implications of the California Wildfires for Health, Communities, and Preparedness Proceedings of a Workshop (2020) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 The Trials of Recovery
5 The Trials of Recovery
Pages 57-70
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 57... ...
• Long-term recovery represents the majority of the costs of wildland fires, and states and local communities bear much of this burden. (Schmidt)
|
From page 58... ...
It funds the T emporary Assistance for Needy Families program, Head Start, and a variety of other programs. When there is a natural disaster, the Office of Human Services, Emergency Preparedness & Response within ACF serves families by working to connect emergency management to the provision of human services, explained Byron Mason, the office's deputy director.
|
From page 59... ...
In California, the Health and Social Services Recovery Support Function had been activated since roughly January 2019 with partners coordinating across agencies, "recognizing that all our social services programs, in many cases, touch the same families." These programs were typically created by different pieces of legislation, which results in different statutory authorities for eligibility. As a result, the agencies had been coordinating across programs and across departments, "recognizing, again, that it is one family that needs our support." The benefit of the Immediate Disaster Case Management program is that people do not have to tell their stories to multiple agencies to finally get to the right place.
|
From page 60... ...
Greater c oordination of these programs in the future will better address the mental health needs of people who have been displaced and traumatized, he said. "All our social services programs, in many cases, touch the same families." -- Byron Mason RECOVERY AND ADAPTATION IN NORTH CENTRAL WASHINGTON STATE The centerpiece of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy is "To safely and effectively extinguish fire when needed; use fire where allowable; manage our natural resources; and as a nation, to live with wildland fire" (DOI and USDA, 2014, p.
|
From page 61... ...
The After the Fire Toolkit and unmet needs roundtables are two examples of communities working actively to reduce the impact of wildland fire at the local level. Linkages among the Okanogan Conservation District, other Okanogan County recovery organizations, and the Chumstick Coalition formed the basis of the Washington State Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network.
|
From page 62... ...
The third lesson is that cross-sector leadership provides opportunities, as does honoring communities as knowledge holders and empowering their recovery rather than treating it.
|
From page 63... ...
assistance stands down." -- Annie Schmidt ACCESSING THE RESOURCES OF A LOCAL UNIVERSITY Megan Kurtz, lecturer in the Recreation, Hospitality, and Parks Manage ent Department at California State University, Chico, has also m served as the university's campus–community liaison for the Camp Fire. Being a community liaison "has given me a unique perspective of how a university should be looking at responding when a disaster hits the community that hosts an institution," she said.
|
From page 64... ...
Many of its professors and lecturers have incorporated the Camp Fire into their curricula and disciplines. For example, many aspects of the fire have connections to the Recreation, Hospitality, and Parks Management Department, which prepares future community leaders, Boys and Girls Club directors, executive directors, and other professionals.
|
From page 65... ...
For other people, too, reminders of the trauma occur every day, including questions about paperwork, debris removal, rebuilding, research, documentary film crews, and family and friends moving away. The recovery is making good progress, said Kurtz, "but we need to talk more about where people want to be in recovery, healing, and resiliency." People naturally want things to return to the way they were -- only better.
|
From page 66... ...
"We need to talk more about where people want to be in recovery, healing, and resiliency." -- Megan Kurtz DISCUSSION The Need for Trauma-Informed Services At the beginning of the question-and-answer period, Eisenman asked about opportunities to bring trauma-informed principles, which have become common in the social services, into long-term recovery programing, policy planning, and community engagement. Kurtz responded that Chico State engaged with an expert on trauma for an entire day early in the recovery process, "and hopefully we will be able to do something again." The focus of that conversation was students, but other people would have benefited from the conversation as well.
|
From page 67... ...
"Whether it be a Cascadia Subduction event, a tsunami, an earthquake, a geologic hazard, a volcano, or a wildland fire, east or west of the Cascade Mountains, this need for interwoven connections between us, innovative partnerships, and broad-based resilience is very common." Schmidt also observed that recovery is a multiscale problem. The Washington State Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network is disseminating best practices and knowledge about recovery among its members to make sure that those pieces are not lost at the community level.
|
From page 68... ...
Addressing the Social Determinants of Health In response to a question from Octavio Martinez, executive director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and associate vice president in the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, and a member of the Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity, about the opportunities that natural disasters create to address previously existing social determinants of health, Mason pointed out that, particularly with the Immediate Disaster Case Management program, the individuals who are marginalized prior to the disaster tend to be the individuals most supported after the disaster. Also, it can be difficult for officials from Washington, DC, to come into communities as outsiders, so they build relationships with faith-based groups, with community action agencies, and with other organizations to give them a voice.
|
From page 69... ...
Kurtz pointed to what forest therapy can do for people who have experienced disasters, especially wildfires, "to learn not to be afraid of the places that you want and love to live, to understand how being in the trees helps you." Academic institutions can help by taking a cross-disciplinary approach that looks at mental health, public health, and recreation together as parts of recovery. Chico State, for example, has an ecological reserve that it can use for this purpose, including some land burned by the Camp Fire.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.