Natural Disasters: On Wildfires and Long-Term Recovery of Community-Residing Adults

Abstract

Wildfires trigger multiple challenges for community-residing adults, whether they live in the direct path of the wildfire or live in a nearby area. Few researchers have studied this type of disaster to explore the short-term effect of wildfires on the psychological well-being of residents, and fewer have continued to investigate the long-term impact of wildfires on the mental health of community-residing adults. This chapter begins with a brief review of the literature on the short-term and long-term impact of global wildfire events. Next, I present select data from research conducted in 2012, 4.5 years after the 2007 northern San Diego County wildfires, with 191 community-residing adults ranging in age from 30 to 94 years. This research provides new evidence concerning the long-term mental health consequences in relation to respondents’ age, gender, severity of exposure to the wildfire, and received social support. Analyses revealed that depressive symptomology differed among age groups, but no group showed high levels of depressive symptoms. Mental well-being did not differ among the groups with different exposure to the wildfire nor was the gender of the respondent a significant factor. Received social support differed between the severity of wildfire exposure groups with primary victims receiving more social support than secondary or non-victims. Implications of these findings for promoting interventions for community-residing adults’ long-term mental health recovery after a wildfire are discussed.