Fire as a Galvanizing and Fragmenting Influence on Communities: The Case of the Rodeo–Chediski Fire

Abstract

Large wildfires that burn through the ''forest-residential intermix'' are complex events with a variety of social impacts. This study looks at three northern Arizona community clusters directly affected by the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski fire. Our analysis suggests that the fire event led to both the emergence of cohesion and conflict in the study area. Community cohesion was evident as residents ''pulled together'' to rebuild their communities. Examples of cohesion included managers of local businesses staying during evacuation to provide for the needs of firefighters, providing shelter and cleanup help for burned-out neighbors, and the emergence of locally based assistance groups. Several types of conflict rooted in blaming and distribution of firefighting and disaster assistance resources were found: cultural, local versus federal, community versus community, intracommunity, and environmental. We suggest that these responses are most usefully understood using the lenses of social psychology (attribution theory) together with sociology (structuration theory). Issues and dynamics that resulted in controversy or were seen as locally constraining and those that resulted in cohesion tended to relate to specific local impacts and how outsider actions were either consonant or dissonant with the application of local knowledge, local autonomy, and locally desirable outcomes.

Re-envisioning community-wildfire relations in the U.S. West as adaptive governance

“…Key strands of scholarship include research on the perceptions, values, and motivations of individual WUI residents (e.g., McCaffrey 2006, Absher et al 2009), community-scale processes and intercommunity variability (Carroll et al 2005, Paveglio et al 2009, 2012, 2015, Newman et al 2013, and analyses of policies, budgets, organizational culture, incentives, and other institutional dimensions (Davis 2001, Wise and Yoder 2007, Nowell and Steelman 2013, Spies et al 2014). An overall conceptual shift from fire preparedness to fire resilience and the promotion of fire-adapted communities has introduced concepts from social-ecological system (SES) resilience theory to the body of wildfire scholarship.…”

Communication, Sense of Community, and Disaster Recovery: A Facebook Case Study

“…SoC encompasses members' feelings of belonging, the belief that members matter to one another and to the group, and encompasses the existence of a shared faith that members' needs will be met through their commitment to be together (McMillan and Chavis, 1986). Second, SoC has a history of informing understanding of effective communication in disaster readiness and recovery settings (Paton et al, 2001(Paton et al, , 2014Carroll et al, 2005;Brenkert-Smith et al, 2006;Keller et al, 2006;Hodgson, 2007;Cottrell et al, 2008;Paton and Tedim, 2013).…”

Capacity to adapt to environmental change: evidence from a network of organizations concerned with increasing wildfire risk

“…People may reduce within-group relationships in response to stress to protect limited information and resources and increase ties outside their group with others to connect with nonredundant resources (Ramirez-Sanchez and Pinkerton 2009). Natural hazard events also influence social structure, in some cases leading to social cohesion within communities (Dynes 1970, Dynes and Quarantelli 1971, Drabeck 1986, and in other cases leading to social conflict (Cuthbertson and Nigg 1987, Carroll et al 2005, Tierney 2007, Yoon 2009), especially in economically and socially stratified groups (Cutter 2006) competing for resources (Peacock and Ragsdale 1997). Institutions and policies can impose social structure on people, shaping the kinds of social processes people engage in, for example, by bringing people who otherwise would not associate with each other together in patterns of interaction that promote social cohesion or learning (Mandarano 2009, Muñoz-Erickson et al 2010.…”