Social and Community Impacts of Fire

Local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play critical roles in providing immediate relief resources and long-term recovery support for communities after a disaster. Drawing on interviews with NGO representatives involved in three Northern California wildfires in 2017 and 2018, this study identifies challenges and opportunities for NGOs supporting wildfire relief and recovery.

This article identifies specific social characteristics in two wildland urban interface communities that may have significant impacts on the ability of those communities to adapt to wildfire.

US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives.

Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide.

In this report we provide a framework for assessing cross-boundary wildfire exposure and a case study application in the western U.S. The case study provides detailed mapping and tabular decision support materials for prioritizing fuel management investments aimed at reducing wildfire exposure to communities located proximal to national forests.

Wildfires pose a serious threat to life in many countries. For police, fire and emergency services authorities in most jurisdictions in North America and Australia evacuation is now the option that is preferred overwhelmingly. Wildfire evacuation modeling can assist authorities in planning evacuation responses to future threats.

People living in the Pacific Northwest confrontrisks associated with environmentalhazards such as wildfire. Vulnerability towildfire hazard is commonly recognized as beingspatially distributed according to geographic conditionsthat collectively determine the probabilityof exposure.

The overall objective of this paper is to clarify areas of debate, clearly define and contrast disparate approaches, and synthesize findings that may help address vulnerability to wildfires and other natural hazards.

There is a growing recognition that the social diversity of communities at risk from wildland fire may necessitate divergent combinations of policies, programs and incentives that allow diverse populations to promote fire adapted communities (FACs).