Documenting non-governmental organization (NGO) participation and collaboration during community recovery from wildfire

Existing research indicates that NGOs can serve important roles during recovery from wildfires and other hazard events. Yet less work explores the specific, place-based conditions that influence NGO participation in the recovery process, or the specific tactics they might use when facilitating the transfer of knowledge and resources that meet emergent recovery needs. The research presented here advances understandings of organizational responses to wildfire by investigating the roles and capacities of NGOs to facilitate place-specific recovery efforts across temporal scales. It draws on 61 interviews with 79 residents and professionals involved in recovery from the 2020 East Troublesome Fire in Colorado to examine the roles, capacities, and strategies deployed by NGOs to meet emergent short-term and longer-term community recovery needs. Participants articulated how pre-existing relationships and knowledge of unique, place-based local conditions allowed NGOs to mobilize effectively in the aftermath of the East Troublesome Fire. NGOs established a structure to share responsibilities and channel information or resources about recovery that translated to longer-term capacity for addressing site-specific issues arising from the fire, including extended rebuilding times, a lack of short-term housing, and resident wariness about engaging with federal recovery assistance. Our findings suggest that articulating local organizational capacities before fire events can increase the effectiveness of NGO recovery responses by strategically positioning them to adapt in response to unique, context-specific needs of local populations. Likewise, incorporating knowledge of local conditions into recovery planning efforts can help facilitate collaborations between NGOs and extra-local entities, thus improving the cohesiveness of disaster response.