CSU's The Audit

Transcript

(Lightly edited for clarity)

Intro: In 2020, after burning for three months, the Cameron Peak Fire scorched more than 200,000 acres, making it the largest wildfire in Colorado history. The fire forced the evacuation of over 6,000 residents and destroyed 469 structures.

Anne Mook, senior team scientist at CSU's Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, along with Pilar Morales-Giner, a postdoctoral researcher at Spain's University of Granada, wanted to look deeper into the impacts of the fire, using the Cameron Peak Fire as a test case. The researchers explored how wildfires reshaped both our emotional and practical connections to our communities.

What they found is that while the scars of wildfires run deep, so too are its ability to influence adaptation, build resilience and offer insight into how communities can better prepare for and recover from natural disasters. Five years later, and more than a thousand miles away from Larimer County, a series of devastating wildfires continues to burn in Los Angeles.

Today, I'm speaking with Mook and Morales-Giner about how wildfires can damage – but also rebuild – our sense of place, as well as what communities like LA can learn as they begin to recover.

Host: Your recent research explored how wildfires reshape people's emotional and practical connections to their communities. Specifically, you interviewed Larimer County residents, local leaders and environmental organizations to learn how the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire impacted them. What made you want to focus on this topic and why in particular this fire? Pilar, let’s start with you.

Morales-Giner: One of my dissertation main topics was how change disturbs the places where we live and how this disruption affects how we connect to the same places. I first did fieldwork in which I looked into how the populating communities, basically communities that are losing a lot of citizens, are affected by climate change. And this was here in Spain.

Through these interviews, I noticed that when I asked questions about climate change, people would answer by pointing out very specific physical landmarks and how climate change affected what these landmarks mean to them. For example, people will say, I experienced climate change, and I know it because 30 years ago when I was a child, I was able to play in that specific creek that is over there and have water. And now the creek is completely dry.

And so, moving forward to 2020, I learned through relatives that had been evacuated about these fires, the Cameron Peak Fire. I became very interested in wildfires. As you know, wildfires are part of the natural regeneration cycle of the forest, but they are also becoming more intense due to climate change and other human actions. And particularly the Cameron Peak Fire was at the time, and I believe this to be the case, the largest Colorado fire in history in terms of the acreage burned. It was also a very long fire in terms of the time spent because it lasted over three months.

I started thinking about this fire, and seeing my relatives being evacuated over several weeks, I started to ask myself questions about this sudden and immense change and how was it affecting what this area means to people in relation to my other research I did in the past. What can we learn from these meanings and how they're changing? I wanted to talk to people affected by the Cameron Peak Fire, and I mostly talked to residents in rural areas in Larimer County affected by the Cameron Peak Fire, but also to organizations that worked in the area. We were still in COVID alert back then, so I talked to them over the phone. And in these interviews, I literally asked them about what the places where they live or work mean to them and how they have changed over time.

Host: You talk a lot in the research about the idea of place attachment. What does that mean? I mean, I'm assuming we're talking about more than just liking where you live.

Morales-Giner: Right, attachment or place attachment, it means what connects us to spaces and what that place means. Place meanings are the specific representations of places we're attached to. In this study we argue that we build this over time, these meanings over time, and that they change from one individual to another.

But there are also patterns in these meanings because at the end of the day, in one way or another, place meanings are usually connected to physical marks or emblematic places, specifically. What we argue is that there are different types of place meanings. Some of them are attached or connected to what makes a place ideal. We feel that through affection. For example, aesthetic meanings, calm meanings.

People in the interviews will talk to us about how the place where they live is calm, and it's sunny and peaceful, and so that's not necessarily surprising. But there are also some other meanings that are more connected to practical knowledge, and these are channeled through what we call place awareness. They talk about what specific challenges or meanings in the area people learn over time. For example, in the case of the participants in this interview, it was a challenge related to, for example, water scarcity, wildfire danger, access challenges. Basically, they are working hard to live in the mountains.

Host: Why is our sense of place so important? Why did you want to focus on that concept?

Morales-Giner: They are part of what we are, right? Because we are very connected to the spaces we live in, and we develop narratives over time about these places. They are extremely important, especially in the face of disasters that affect these places. And I can think of a few reasons why. The first one is the mental health consequences of disasters. When someone loses their home in a fire, most people understand how this is a tragedy that affects mental health.

But in addition to that, in addition to this tragedy of losing a home, when a fire burns an emblematic community building, for example, or a trail or a forest that we usually go to, this also affects what connects people to places. And at the end of the day, it also – being aware of these meanings, it brings us to be more empathetic towards these people that are being affected by these disasters that we are increasingly having all over the world.

On the other side, over time, people can redefine what, for example, beauty means, how communities in rural Colorado were talking about how the place is scenic to them and beautiful. But once they were affected by the fire, not immediately but maybe after a few weeks or months, people talk about how they observe natural regrowth after a fire and appreciate the context of that nature growth in contrast with what was burned, and observing these contrasts can be a reminder of wild-fire danger and inspire fire mitigation efforts, for example.

Then the third thing that I think sense of place and place meaning is of particular importance is because the idea of the practical knowledge – water scarcity, wildfire danger, access challenges, hard work, these are crucial to help communities mitigate and adapt to disasters.

If we understand people's practical knowledge about a specific physical landmark, for example, then we can more effectively work on engaging communities for mitigation and restoration efforts and even relate them to more global problems such as climate change. Beyond or even more than just trying to educate communities about what climate change is or environmental threats are, I think it's also important to work on providing spaces for communities to talk to each other and to transmit these place meanings and exchange ideas about what places mean to them and how they change, and especially to try to have different groups of residents talking to each other, for example, intergenerational groups or long term residents versus seasonal residents as well.

Host: You also found some interesting results in how people saw the role of climate change related to wildfires, as well as potential lessons in how different forest management efforts could help mitigate the risk of wildfires in water scarce locations such as Colorado and California. Anne, let’s start with you.

Mook: I think it's really important to recognize that wildfires are not isolated events. They are really connected to global climate change. Some of the things that you see more connected specifically to Colorado and California is that we see change in precipitation, and we see that we have more plants and trees dying, so more fuels in the forests. We also see more water scarcity, all these kinds of things and increasing temperatures. This really increases the risk of wildfires both in Colorado as well as in, for example, California.

One of the funny things that we found is that we hear a lot of connections people are making between the changes that they see locally. A lot of the people in our study have mentioned things like, hey, the seasons are getting shorter, we don't have as much snow anymore, or I used to do this polar plunge, but you know, the waters are just not as cold anymore as they used to be. They really see these local changes, but some people but not everyone are connecting that as well as to these global changes in climate change. So, what can we do about it?

One of the obvious things that we often as a whole community talk about is how can we mitigate climate change, how can we reduce carbon emissions, things like that. But those are things that are not very tangible for the average person. But what we can do in these forested areas or even these urban areas in Los Angeles is really think about some of the strategies of reducing the risk of wildfire, very much connected to what Pilar was just saying.

For example, we could be thinking about thinning the forest, removing some of those fuels and fuels, when we talk about fuels, are like those trees and branches and things that are easily flammable. We could do some of those controlled burns that reduce that risk as well. We can also think about maybe some restorative practices. We can think about what can we do to improve the quality of our soil. We can replant some native vegetation. We can also really think about how can we maintain biodiversity after a fire. So maybe replanting some new species back.

Part of it is not just about how we are going to manage the forest, but obviously we know that a lot of environmental problems, whether it's on a local or on a global level, are induced by humans. So, what can we do? We can really educate our populations, the local residents who are already really aware as well as the visitors that we have in these forests, about what we can do to prevent forest fires from happening. We can also have our local organizations and people really think about these fire mitigation techniques that we were talking about and really build that community around reducing fire risk and care for a local place. This is obviously slightly different in Colorado as it is in Los Angeles. Colorado is a very rural place, a very densely forested place.

In Los Angeles, it's obviously much more urban. But we still can really think about what can we do to reduce these risks in places such as Los Angeles as well. For example, there are things we can do to reduce fire hazards by removing dead trees, removing dead branches, things like that, but also maybe putting in firebreaks within the city that can more easily stop fires from spreading while also maintaining hopefully a lot of green spaces that connect us to our locations.

Host: Was there anything that surprised you in the results from your interviews when you were talking with people?

Mook: A lot of people were really connecting the fires to things they had observed themselves locally within the place where they live. People have been talking about, hey, you know, there's not as much water anymore around as there used to be. There's not as much snow in the mountains as there used to be. They can very easily make those connections like, hey, these are things that increase our risk of fire. We see a lot more beetles in the forest that are killing some of our trees that we didn't have before.

But at the same time, everyone is different, and different people have maybe said different things, but, well, maybe a part of the people that we interviewed could make that connection through climate change. A lot of people were much more focused on these local aspects of climate change rather than these more global aspects, really thinking about how does global warming affect the risk and the frequency and intensity of wildfires.

We know that the overall temperature is a lot higher. Obviously, this is going to be linked to higher risk of wildfire that is going to evaporate more of the waters around us and things like that. It is much more that people are thinking about what is happening on the local level than being invested in what can we do to reduce climate change on the global level.

That is equally very important in reducing any type of environmental hazard. A lot of these things, we talk specifically about fires, but I think a lot of our findings could be very similar in the case of floodings and hurricanes and tornadoes and those kinds of things that are also connected to climate change.

Host: You mean, the increase in natural disasters that we're seeing?

Mook: Yes.

Host: How did you see the Larimer County community responding to the Cameron Peak fire? And what lessons from your research do you think would apply to LA and other wildfire prone areas?

Mook: I think one of the things that we have seen is that there is also hope after a wildfire, that there's some resilience in these communities. For example, there's really a bit of mobilization after the Cameron Peak fire to improve wildfire preparedness and recovery efforts. There's more of these projects. People suddenly think about controlled burns.

Controlled burns often are considered really scary, especially in areas where we have not done this a lot, as people may not be aware of, for example, in much of the West part of the United States, including Colorado and California, many of the forests are publicly owned and they're managed by the Forest Service. This is very different from Georgia and Florida, where Pilar and I have lived and worked, where almost all the forests are private and where controlled burn is considered a very positive thing to improve soil health and make trees grow faster.

There's a little bit of difference in forest management strategies. These things that initially were very much met with resistance, we are scared of these fires, now are much more embraced, and people are learning. These are practices that have been used for a very long time, for example, in the U.S. South, but also by the Native Americans, for example. These were very well-known practices.

At the same time, we have been really investing in getting people together, which makes connections, but also really educates people about what are some of those strategies that we can do to prevent, but also how can we recover. What kind of things can we plan, what kind of buildings can we rebuild and how can we get back together where we have this opportunity for collective actions, which is not only good for the practical aspects, but also to rebuild community and improve our emotional response to these kinds of things.

So, I think if we think about Los Angeles, obviously Los Angeles is a much more urban fire. I think one of the big comparisons that we may want to think about is the Cameron Peak Fire was about 200,000 acres. Los Angeles right now is just under 50,000 acres. So, the acreage of what happened in Colorado is much larger. But if we look at specifically the human destruction, in Colorado no lives were lost and a little under 500 buildings were destroyed. In Los Angeles, I think 27 people so far have died, and we have almost 15,000 buildings destroyed. So, there's a bit of a difference there.

But I think what we can really learn about this is that we can educate residents about why there's some better fire resistant landscaping, what kind of plants do we want to plant, what kind of materials do we want to use to reduce the risk of wildfires, and also, how can we get together people and communities and policy makers to make this happen. Our study also really emphasizes not just that we have these physical impacts, that we suddenly don't have these beautiful forests and that we don't have these buildings and our houses and churches and schools and kinds of things that we are very connected to, but that it also really affects our emotional well-being.

Part of the lessons that we learn is that we really can think about how we can recognize emotional distress, that there are real mental health challenges. And that way we want to think about what resources do we want to make available for people to address the anxiety associated with evacuation and the grief of what they may have lost in their communities. So really building that support.

The other thing is really leveraging local knowledge. As we've seen in our study, people really notice what happens and what changes in their local forest – that the seasons are different, that there is more or less precipitation, that there's more or less snow, that certain plants are more prone to wildfires – and really incorporate that knowledge to enhance community networks and preparedness and think about how can we rebuild and after recovering, have some hope that we have a certain level of influence on how these fires will affect us in the future.

The last thing is really thinking about community resilience. Obviously, when people lose their home, a lot of people get displaced. When there's evacuations, people are suddenly not with their neighbors and friends anymore. But at the same time, even though in some ways wildfires and natural disasters can be very divisive, we also see people come together to rebuild homes, to rebuild community buildings like schools and churches. This coming together really strengthens social bonds and really helps communities rebuild and find some of that resilience.

Host: What would you say are the key takeaways from your research for communities such as LA, which are facing increased wildfire risks?

Mook: One of the things that people really have to think about is that we are going to see more wildfires, increased frequency, but also the intensity of that. As a community and as policymakers, we really have to think about what can we do to reduce that risk. Our study is really at the intersection of what does place attachment mean, what can we do about climate change, how can we better manage our forests and how can we build community resilience, which I think now is more critical than it has ever been.

By learning from studies like ours, we could really develop these strategies to help communities adapt while also really thinking about how can we preserve those connections to the places that they care about, both in the natural beauty as well as the people in the community that made those places so important. Resilience is not just about your building, but it's really about reimagining some of those connections to the places that we call home. If we better understand place attachment and address climate change and improve forest management, we can hopefully help communities adapt to wildfires or other natural disasters and really think about what makes those places meaningful.

We all know that the situation in Los Angeles is very difficult for people right now, and wildfires are incredibly disruptive for people's lives and have a negative effect on people's mental health. There's also this message of hope that these kinds of events can be a catalyst for growth and unity and building new and stronger connections with our environment.

Outro: That was environmental sociologist Anne Mook and Pilar Morales-Giner speaking about the impact wildfires have on our sense of place and what insights past wildfires can teach us about preparing and recovering from natural disasters. I'm your host, Stacy Nick, and you're listening to CSU's The Audit Podcast.