Navigating the Wildfire–Pandemic Interface: Public Perceptions of COVID-19 and the 2020 Wildfire Season in Arizona

Abstract

COVID-19 has complicated wildfire management and public safety for the 2020 fire season. It is unclear whether COVID-19 has impacted the ability of residents in the wildland–urban interface to prepare for and evacuate from wildfire, or the extent to which residents feel their household’s safety has been affected. Several areas with high wildfire risk are also experiencing record numbers of COVID-19 cases, including the state of Arizona in the southwestern United States. We conducted a mixed-mode survey of households in close proximity to two recent wildfires in rural Arizona to better understand whether residents living in the wildland–urban interface perceive COVID-19 as a factor in wildfire safety. Preliminary data suggest that the current challenges around collective action to address wildfire risk may be further exacerbated due to COVID-19, and that the current pandemic has potentially widened existing disparities in household capacity to conduct wildfire risk mitigation activities in the wildland–urban interface. Proactive planning for wildfire has also increased perceived ability to practice safe distancing from others during evacuation, highlighting the benefits that household planning for wildfire can have on other concurrent hazards. Parallels in both the wildfire and pandemic literature highlight vast opportunities for future research that can expand upon and advance our findings.

A multi-country comparative analysis of the impact of COVID-19 and natural hazards in India, Japan, the Philippines, and USA

“…It is unclear as to whether COVID-19 has impacted the ability of residents in the wildland-urban interface to prepare for and evacuate from wildfires, and to what extent residents feel that their safety has been affected. Several areas with high wildfire risk also experienced a record number of COVID-19 cases [ 29 ].…”

Human Mobility to Parks Under the COVID‐19 Pandemic and Wildfire Seasons in the Western and Central United States

“…Our study is not without limitations. First, to explicitly understand how wildfires impact human recreation behaviors, it is critical to study the historical wildfire records locally, since people's attitudes to the fires can vary in space and time due to many factors like their experience with wildfires and education levels (Edgeley & Burnett, 2020 ). Second, the top‐selected model only explained 19% of the variance in the spatiotemporal patterns of the median of minimum dwell time at parks, indicating that there could be some other factors that might impact the time that people spent.…”

The effect of the Australian bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic on health behaviours in people with multiple sclerosis

“…During the Black Summer bushfires approximately 1.8 million people were evacuated, and an estimated 11 million people were impacted by the bushfire smoke, putting a major strain on the healthcare system ( Biddle N et al., 2020 , Duckett et al., 2020 ). The presence of multiple crises (such as pandemics, fires, floods, droughts, and conflict) threatening communities within a short time frame is a pressing threat to public health globally ( Edgeley and Burnett, 2020 ) as well as Australia ( Victorian Health Promotion Foundation 2020 ).…”