Flashpoints between wildfire recovery & mitigation in northern California

Abstract

In recent years, wildfires in the western United States have become more challenging to manage, with extreme wildfire behavior, larger fires, and longer fire seasons contributing to rising losses. Community and government leaders are realizing that suppression alone is untenable for future wildfire prevention and seek a wider range of risk reduction strategies from the community to the household levels. Simultaneously, these leaders are faced with the challenge of expeditiously rebuilding communities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), sometimes after multiple fires that have occurred in quick succession. Although the post-fire recovery period offers opportunities to create safer, more fire-adapted communities, the dual goals of wildfire mitigation and recovery are often at odds. This study investigates changes in the post-fire policy environment across three California counties impacted by recent destructive and repetitive wildfires. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with government officials, wildfire professionals, and informal community leaders, we identify key tensions and synergies, or “flashpoints,” participants encountered when addressing risk reduction and recovery simultaneously. These issues emerged across three policy priorities: housing reconstruction, vegetation management, and economic recovery. Despite a largely shared view of wildfire as a chronic hazard, participants identified ways that risk reduction conflicted with the pursuit of housing restoration and economic development. Synergies included alignment between ecological recovery goals and risk reduction and instances of compromise in housing restoration, plan integration, and new partnerships forged in recovery. Based upon our findings, we discuss opportunities for advancing recovery and mitigation together that could translate to post-wildfire learning elsewhere.