University of British Columbia sociology professor Kathryn McConnell studies how neighborhoods change following major wildfires. She researched why residents of Paradise, California, chose to stay or leave following the 2018 Camp Fire.
Households with more financial resources were better prepared to return and rebuild, but there were other factors such as job availability and age.
"Some folks, especially older folks I spoke with, didn't have the appetite to go through the rebuild process and preferred to relocate to a different place, also where they weren't navigating living in a construction zone," McConnell said.
"Also, initially, there were some concerns about toxicity that comes with its own really complicated set of logistical details after, and I would say, like, very fair ongoing concerns of residents as they decide, 'Do I want to move back to this place?'"
McConnell called for more community-scale fire mitigation efforts, like buffer zones, particularly in areas where people don't have a lot of money to invest in fire preparation themselves.
"One of our takeaways from the paper was that buildings in close proximity to each other, so in dense neighborhoods, were especially susceptible to being destroyed because of this house-to-house burning that's much more common in wind-driven fires, as I understand the fires on Maui were," she said.
"This is a question, I think, for planners and engineers, is like, how do we have better design and better sort of preparation for dense neighborhoods."
It’s believed that thousands of Maui families have moved off-island since last year’s fires. It's unclear what that means for the rebuilding process.
This interview aired on The Conversation on Aug. 6, 2024. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. on HPR-1.
Further research by Kathryn McConnell:
- "Rare and highly destructive wildfires drive human migration in the U.S." | Nature.com
- "Post-wildfire neighborhood change: Evidence from the 2018 Camp Fire" | ScienceDirect
- "Population Change in Wildfire-Affected Areas in the United States: Evidence from U.S. Postal Service Residential Address Data" | Springer Link (paywall)
