In the two years I worked in fire recovery, I began to see the lived experiences of people like Betty, Carol, Francisco, Tommy, and Wendy as being trapped in a slow-moving landslide that was inevitably pulling them down. On any given day, the movement was almost invisible. But over time, the distance they had fallen was clear. The social problems that defined their lives were slowly destroying them all (Kristoff and WuDunn 2020). The fire changed that, for a while, anyway. Like extreme heat used to cauterize a wound to stop it from bleeding, the fire stopped the slide but didn’t end it entirely.

In this section, we look at sets of social problems. First, we look at the stories of Tommy, Wendy, and Carol to examine the impact of harmful drug use, compromised mental health, and being rural to understand disaster recovery. Then we look at Fernando’s story and the impact of racism on recovery. Finally, we connect climate change, COVID-19, and Christmas in a final way of discussing social problems and disaster recovery.

Harmful Drug Use, Mental Health, and Houselessness in the Country

Carol’s Story Continues

For many people in Otis, daily life was already a struggle. Sometimes not having a car prevented people from going to the doctor. Other times not having the internet prevented filling out paperwork requesting government support. The disaster made life even more complicated. Disaster survivors must interact with dozens of programs and people to get the services they need. Each of these programs has complex deadlines. Failing to meet them can result in losing both money and other recovery services. Recovery was difficult for every survivor, but even more difficult for Carol.

On one hand, Carol’s life improved immediately after the fire. At first, she found herself going where people told her to go moving from one evacuation site to another. When she heard about extra food being delivered to the Church of the Nazarene, she’d get there as quickly as she could. She couldn’t carry much, but not much would fit in her tiny hotel refrigerator, either. She lived in a fire survivor hotel, pictured in Figure 14.9, for over a year and a half. At that time she experienced stability, which was unusual for her. Her health improved, until it was time to make decisions.

The largest decision was about where she wanted to move. Her time in the hotel as post-fire housing as provided by the state of Oregon was running out. Carol needed to decide where she wanted to go. But she couldn’t decide. Like many people who experience harmful drug use and many people who experience disaster, her ability to make decisions was impaired (American Psychological Association 2013, Carpenter 2001). It was clear Carol needed help

Mental Health in a Rural Community

We know that disasters challenge the mental health of survivors (Turner 2021). These struggles range from dealing with the shock of losing everything they own, to disillusionment with the recovery process. They face the trauma caused by triggering events, such as news of other wildfires or even anniversary observances. We also knew that existing mental health issues and wildfire mental trauma would be complicated by substance use disorder. As we discussed in Chapter 12 the combination of mental health issues and substance use disorder is even more difficult to treat.

We worked with the Red Cross and the state of Oregon to find money to fund mental health services. However, there were no mental health professionals available to hire. Like the shortage of healthcare providers that we discussed in Chapter 13, our rural county lacks mental health services. We are part of a nationwide shortage of mental health professionals, particularly in rural counties (Morales, Barksdale, and Beckel-Mitchener 2020).

Our response was to roll up our sleeves and create services. We funded numerous art therapy workshops for survivors, some of whom continued for over a year (Figure 14.10). We connected kids with a summer camp for disaster survivors, and we supported group counseling events. We also worked with Lincoln County Mental Health to fund a mental health outreach worker. She was hired to give fire survivors someone to listen to them. Despite her background in mental health, she was not a trained counselor. She told people this, and for most, it didn’t matter. They valued her simply for her ability to listen and, when she could, help them navigate what government and nonprofit resources were available.

In the spring, Carol even went to see her. They made some progress, but the outreach worker was candid with me. There wasn’t much she could do. Carol needed help she was not trained to provide. When Carol was asked to leave the shelter, she ended up leaving Lincoln County. All the outreach worker could do was wish her well and call me to say that she had left. What we could do to create services for mental health services wasn’t enough, and the failure still stings.

Houselessness and Disaster Recovery: Tommy, Wendy, and Carol

In Chapter 6, we explored some of the social factors that increase houselessness. Housing in Otis was even more fragile. According to data gathered by Echo Mountain Fire Relief, almost 70% of the homes burned in Otis were owned by their residents. On the face of it, this seems like it indicates housing stability. Many of these homes were very old mobile homes that were uninsurable. It is estimated across Oregon that more than one-quarter of the modular homes in use are so old that insurance providers will not insure them (Oregon Housing and Community Services 2022). In Otis, where 90 percent of the homes that burned were modular, that would mean 60 to 70 families who went from home ownership to owning nothing literally overnight. The lack of insurance payouts slowed recovery for many Otis residents.

However, recovery was even more difficult for Wendy and Carol. Tommy’s daughter, Wendy, was a person who had couch-surfed in Otis in her youth. Then she moved away. Over the years, her dad had begged her to return, so he could get her the help she needed. A few weeks before the fire, she finally agreed. Even better for the both of them, he’d been able to make arrangements with his buddy to move his daughter home—on what turned out to be the day of the fire. Tommy’s friend was on his way west back to Otis from Salem when the road was literally closed 20 miles ahead of him because of the fire. That he wouldn’t have a home for either of them within 24 hours was tragic. That this bad timing would, in the end, prove to be the most critical part of Wendy’s recovery story, is even more so.

Because Wendy was not technically residing with her father on the day of the fire, she was not eligible for government assistance as a resident of Otis. Wendy was one of those that FEMA considered “pre-disaster homeless” and told her she was ineligible for help. Neither she nor Tommy knew this right away, of course. When they were eventually reunited at a fire evacuation hotel in Lincoln City in the days following the fire, both of them listed his address in Otis as their legal home. For nearly a year, they both progressed through the fire recovery process as two separate cases, with both receiving housing and food.

During this time, disaster case managers worked with fire survivors. Their role was to support survivors in accessing the services and resources available to them so that the survivors could recover (Catholic Charities 2018). They always asked: “What was your legal address at the time of the fire? Were there any other family members living with you at the time of the fire?” Wendy told them she lived up Panther Creek with her father. Tommy told them he, too, lived up Panther Creek alone. His daughter was going to move in.

The Disaster Case Manager interviewing her noticed the discrepancy in their stories. She returned to Tommy and asked him to explain the difference, but first, they told him why it mattered. If Wendy was not living with him on September 7, she would continue receiving assistance. Tommy would not lie.

Three days later, Wendy moved out of the fire survivor hotel. The community that she’d helped move into the building now helped her move out. She packed every last thing she could fit into her car. She wasn’t sure where she was going to go, she told her friends wearily. As her friends watched her leave, one said, “I think she’ll be dead within a week.” Thankfully her father wasn’t there to hear it. He was in his room, still thinking about the lie he could not tell.

Carol, too, was starting to answer questions about her legal address at the time of the fire. Unlike Wendy, it was not verifying a date that would determine what aid Carol received. Instead, it was verifying an address. Carol had no proof that she’d lived in any specific place in Otis. Yes, she’d been in Otis for years, but in the year since her divorce, it had been largely spent on couches. Many of the people Carol “rented” from were renters themselves. Government regulations do not allow paying rent to another renter as a legal form of establishing an address. She had her driver’s license, which showed her address, but it was too old to be acceptable proof to FEMA.

Carol’s abusive ex-husband eventually signed and notarized a document stating that Carol had lived on their property. This document is proof of a lease, putting a monthly monetary value of $100 on the yardwork that Carol had done. Once the Disaster Case Manager received the document, Carol was allowed to stay in the fire survivor hotel.

Many families were just like Carol, Tommy, and Wendy. They were walking a tightrope of stability. It was so tenuous that after the fire, they couldn’t successfully prove to FEMA that they deserved help. The fire destroyed what fragile stability they had. Many people failed to recover.

Racism and Solidarity

Some residents of Otis experienced racism before, during, and after the fire. However, recovering from the fire also created solidarity. Let’s learn more.

Fernando’s Story Continues

Fernando was more fortunate as he prepared to seek resources to move forward. His previous work with the county gave him some familiarity with governments and how they worked. Still, he did not know how to start. That thought alone cost him hours of sleep. He was sad, anxious, and depressed. It is not easy to get up each day when you have no idea if any government agency—anyone—would be there to help you and your neighbors in a small, devastated town.

Amidst these sleepless nights and uncertain thoughts, he discovered something else. He could not stand still, waiting for help. He had to have the courage to seek help not only for himself but for other Latino families. Working for their recovery was his distraction from his depression and sadness. By staying focused on finding resources not only for himself and his family but for the entire Latino community, which had the least amount of help, he would find his motivation to get up each day.

This is what would guide Fernando through the next two years. Journeying from his own devastating experience, Fernando was able to keep his faith as he moved forward. This journey connected him with generous people he would have never otherwise met. Grateful that an experience that began in tragedy would ultimately show him that after the darkness, there is always a light of hope.

Despite this hope, racism was present. One FEMA assessment shows that People of Color are likely to be discriminated against during disaster recovery (FEMA National Advisory Council 2020). In addition, from literally the first moment the fires began, the political discourse that had been accelerating against People of Color since the election of 2016 was on full display.

For example, local nonprofit and government leaders had become aware of a concerning incident in Jackson County, Oregon, the site of the Almeda Fire. This fire also happened on Labor Day weekend (Jefferson Public Radio 2021). In this fire, 2,600 homes were destroyed. Most of them belonged to Latino families. In the very first days following the fire, local nonprofit organizations stepped up to provide meals and water to displaced families. They welcomed any volunteer who would help. Among those who answered their calls for assistance were members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). It is not known what their intentions were. However, they kept their badges and occupations hidden. When they were discovered, they were asked to leave.

Perhaps that’s why, even as White families in Otis were comfortable with telling FEMA about the casual living arrangements they had with other family members, some Latino fire survivors chose not to. This choice meant no access to up to $7,500 in immediate aid, to say nothing of tens of thousands of dollars in long-term aid. To trust the government with the identities of which family members lived with whom, especially those who are undocumented, was simply too big of a risk.

But why did telling FEMA about family structure matter so much? We know from Chapter 7 that Latino families are more likely than White families to live in multigenerational households (Landale et al. 2006). It is also common for adults from the same generation and their children to live together, siblings and cousins all sharing and contributing to the same household. However, FEMA rules basically meant anyone not living in a “traditional” family of parents and children stood to lose out. As is often the case, this hurts People of Color more.

Despite these racist barriers, Fernando kept showing up for his community. When he came to The Grange in the earliest days of fire relief, he often did two things. When he arrived, he usually brought items from the store and used The Grange’s kitchen to make lunch for the volunteers. Before he left, he got a copy of every form he could in both English and Spanish to give out to his community.

Solidarity in Action

You might expect that the political polarization that was common in the United States in 2020 would derail disaster recovery in Otis. But that’s not what happened at all. The Volunteer Clean-up was instead born of celebrating diversity, as pictured in Figure 14.11.

“The Volunteer Clean-up” —its description would ultimately become its proper title—started with Corey Rivera, a local minister of an evangelical church who was also a manager at a local landscaping company. With those tools and heavy equipment to get the work done, he asked those homeowners near him at the bottom of Pony Trail Lane if he might help them out, too. Pony Trail Lane was a small-loop road on the slopes of Echo Mountain. Every home on this road was destroyed. There were plenty of people to help. Many of them were not evangelical Christians, while others wouldn’t apply “Christian” or even particularly religious to their identities.

Officials from the county planning department had heard about the local pastor working with equipment on loan from work to start a volunteer clean-up of his neighbors’ properties. They were not happy. Regulations and laws, they said, prevented such activity. Only authorized contractors, the kind that were still months away, were allowed to do such work. The pastor needed to stop.

The pastor said he had no intention of stopping. He knew the law: a property owner has the full legal right to clean up their own property. In addition, if he was doing it strictly as a volunteer, he was allowed to help his neighbors, too. So he kept right on going. By the end of the week, it was clear the volunteer clean-up had started to become something more.

Among those who came to help was the leader of what became the Cascade Relief Team, a Black man from the Portland suburbs, helping bring needed supplies to the clean-up. Members of The Grange were there, bringing out what supplies they could. And me, an LGBTQIA+ journalist and activist, came to help generate more donations to keep the machines fueled and people fed. This volunteer cleanup was sustained by Community Organizations Active In Disaster (COADs), local groups of community organizations that coordinate emergency human services while working in concert with partner agencies, including the local emergency management agency and social service agencies, during all stages of a disaster. COADs are part of the community impacted by the disaster, focusing on providing and sustaining relief efforts (Montgomery County Government 2023).

Fire survivors came, too. Some were leaders, like the president of The Grange, who had lost her home in the fire. Others had no affiliation. They just wanted someplace to go and feel like they were helping others, even as they could not help themselves. Everyone was welcome, which was good because everyone was needed. New leaders emerged, and other equipment was brought in, even as the minister and the first group of volunteers had to return to their jobs. Off of Pony Trail Lane, one of the first home sites to be cleaned up was Fernando’s. The leader of the crew was wearing a “Trump 2020” hat.

In the end, the effort cleaned nearly 100 lots at no required expense to fire survivors. Tommy and Wendy, as well as Betty, were among those property owners. What the volunteers accomplished was more than cleaning. It had the potential to be life-changing. For Betty and Tommy, this collaborative and accelerated process meant they were able to sell their properties far sooner than would have ever been possible. Betty was even able to pay off all her back taxes, giving her both time and resources to choose what she would do next. For Fernando, whose lot was among the first to be cleaned, it gave him a clean piece of land on which to place a trailer for his family. He got a six-month head start on getting out of the motel and rebuilding his home.

Remember, this story began with a discussion about how racial relations in Otis had been changing since 2016, and indeed building across the country as the 2020 election approached. The Volunteer Clean-up was not just a distraction from national events. It countered it, even as divisiveness continued to grow in the country. For even as a contentious national election wrapped up, a mob invaded the US Capitol, and another impeachment trial began, the people of Otis stayed together. As one story put it: “A minister, a black guy, a transgender chick, and a Trump supporter walked into a town…to help save it” (Denis 2020). If you would like to read this story or watch the short video, access them here: After Echo Mountain Complex Fire, Otis leads renewal with small hands and huge hearts [News Article and Video].

Heather McGee, who wrote The Sum of Us, would call this multi-racial, multi-party, multi-political party group, and their success part of the solidarity dividend, which we discussed in Chapter 1. Because people who would normally be at odds came together, community recovery began. Everyone benefitted, particularly the most vulnerable people.

This is not to say everything went perfectly, nor that everything is now. When some Latino families tried to use the Grange services, they experienced racism. Long before 2016, many Latino families found Otis a challenging place to live. Drawn to the area for many of the same reasons of space and economics as White residents, these similarities weren’t enough to make them neighbors and friends. Trump flags and chants of “send them back” may have gotten bolder and louder following 2016, but the sentiments had been there for decades, and they still are.

Climate Change In Otis

As we talked about in Chapter 8, human-caused climate change impacts people differently, based on their social location. North Lincoln County is no different. However, we’ll start the story of climate change for Echo Mountain Fire survivors at the end, not the beginning.

Summers in Oregon are getting hotter. The Oregon coast’s summer temperatures generally peak between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The summer of 2022, however, did not spare Otis, with temperatures reaching 90+ degrees Fahrenheit (Accuweather 2022). For hundreds of Otis residents who’d returned home in the last year to live in new manufactured homes and trailers, the temperature inside their homes could reach over 100 degrees. Miserable to be sure, but how is this an injustice?

Environmental justice can mean access to shade. In Otis, there was no shade for these new homes. Every tree that had provided such protection had been destroyed in the fire. With its lack of tree cover, Otis was now like many communities with low SES, with 25 percent less shade than more typical communities (Leahy and Surkez 2021).

Environmental justice can mean access to cooling. Air conditioners were also in short supply, as they are for most people with low SES. Across the country, more than half of residences with low SES occupants have no air conditioning (US Energy Information Administration 2011). In Otis, air conditioners were rare, even in the new homes and trailers.

Access to shade and air conditioners isn’t typically how we define environmental injustice. However, inequality in social class made a difference. Wealthy Otis residents could buy air conditioners after the fire. Lower-income Otis residents could not.

Betty’s Story Continues

We see more typical environmental injustice when we look at Betty’s story more carefully. Suffering from COPD, Betty’s daily life in Otis was impacted in numerous ways that tied into her low income. She lived on a dirt road. The dust made it difficult to breathe when a car drove by as she sat on the bench in her garden. Her decades-old mobile home let in dust no matter how tightly she closed the doors or windows. Even before the fire, Betty’s house wasn’t healthy.

Then the fire came. We can see the devastation of wind and smoke in Figure 14.12. By the time Betty evacuated, she had been breathing smoke for hours. As Betty fled her home, she could barely see outside to reach her neighbor’s car. As they headed out, there was no setting on the car’s vents that could keep out what Betty was breathing into her lungs. She would say later she could almost feel the smoke attacking her COPD-damaged lungs.

Betty was not alone in this regard. For the elderly, children, and people with pre-existing health conditions of all kinds, wildfire smoke can cause serious illness (D’Evelyn et al. 2022). Indeed, when scientists look at those populations most impacted by wildfire smoke across the nation, it reads like a description of Otis: “Populations more vulnerable to smoke exposure include people in low-income communities, people living in homes with poor air filtration systems, (and) people experiencing homelessness.”

Climate change affects everyone, but the wildfires in Otis affected some people more.

Responding to Climate Change and Disaster

Just a few lots down from Betty’s old garden, however, a new garden began to grow. The president of The Grange set aside a piece of her property for what would become an example of environmental justice unlike any in the 1.1 million acres of burned Oregon. They called it “Landscaping with Love.” Within a matter of months, the site held a greenhouse, as shown in Figure 14.14 a. In the greenhouse were vegetable seedlings and other baby plants for fire survivors. Next to them were gardening tools of all kinds, everything from spades to wheelbarrows, and books on how to use them.

Outside were more plants, everything from the smallest flower to a sprawling rhododendron bush, to sapling trees. There were even pre-assembled garden boxes, and demonstration gardens in a few of them. Each variety of plant was chosen not just to demonstrate what would grow but also to show how people could replant their yards, making them more fire-resistant in the future (Lehman 2021). All of this was free. If a fire survivor needed help replanting their lot, the services, expertise, tool rental, and plants were at no cost to fire survivors. Fernando took some plants home on one visit. Dozens of his neighbors did the same. In this way, not only did Echo Mountain and Panther Creek begin to be replanted with more fire-safe plants and vegetation, but also in a more environmentally sustainable one, too.

Now, was this posted on the door? Was “combating climate change” splayed across the Landscaping with Love Facebook page? It was not. But planting wildfire and drought-resistant plants was doing exactly that. They called it “doing the right thing” as they acted to strengthen environmental justice.

Here, “#OtisStrong” meant environmental justice.

COVID-19 and Christmas

COVID-19 came to Lincoln County in the late winter and spring of 2020. By the summer of 2020, tourists were told to stay home. Lincoln City was closed.

On a personal level, COVID-19 had already impacted some fire survivors’ lives in ways that might have gone unnoticed if the fire had not occurred. With money tight, some Otis residents decided to reduce their level of fire insurance or forgo it completely. What in one month had seemed a calculated decision to save some money for a few months now would impact them for the rest of their lives. Beyond the individual stories, however, the presence of COVID-19 also played a massive role in both the immediate and ongoing response to the fire.

Prior to COVID-19, disaster response normally entailed placing displaced residents into congregant living facilities, such as cots in gymnasiums or sleeping bags unrolled on the floor at a local church. With COVID-19, this was impossible. Instead, families were booked into area hotels, like the one in Figure 14.9. In this sense, the evacuees of the Echo Mountain Fire were lucky. Lincoln City itself is home to thousands of hotel rooms. With few exceptions, many of the local fire survivors could be housed in the hotels of north Lincoln County.

This made an enormous difference. As the evacuation orders were lifted, those whose homes had survived could be home in minutes. Survivors who lost their homes only had to travel short distances to work on their property.

Even though survivors were often housed together, COVID-19 caused isolation. Survivors were discouraged from visiting the rooms of people who were not part of their immediate family. Their former neighbors and life-long friends might literally be in the same building as them, but to stay safe from the virus, they could not see each other.

Betty, for example, didn’t know that for the first eight months after the fire, her former neighbor had been living just two floors below her the entire time. As discussed earlier, this social isolation only made worse the ongoing mental health crisis that was occurring within the population of fire survivors. One fire survivor celebrating his 30th birthday wanted nothing more than just to eat a steak. He couldn’t get one. Every restaurant in town was closed, and there was no open grilling allowed in the hotel parking lot. He was alone, just like every other survivor, in one way or another. Echo Mountain Fire Relief changed that.

Celebrating Christmas: A Radical Act of Social Justice

While the Echo Mountain Fire was the smallest in Oregon, by Christmas time, it was one of the most well-known. Our hometown Volunteer Clean-up had put us on a lot of people’s philanthropic radar, and they wanted to help. Churches inside Lincoln City wanted to make cookies, civic clubs from throughout Lincoln County were willing to give gift certificates, donations of toys were collected by our neighbors to the north in Tillamook County, and across the country, someone in North Carolina wanted to send quilts.

We decided to have a Christmas party as a way of combating the social isolation of the fire survivors. This decision met with controversy. Working together doesn’t mean that everyone agrees. It means that people and organizations continue to work to build community in the midst of disagreements. When people disagreed with me, I said two simple words: “George Floyd.”

COVID-19, fire relief, #Black Lives Matter, George Floyd, and Christmas parties: these things might seem totally unrelated. But as we discussed in Chapter 9, thousands of people marched in support of Black Lives Matter, even with the virus raging. For some, the need to protest White supremacy and police violence was more urgent than staying quarantined (Diamond 2022). In the case of fire survivors, the need to connect and celebrate was more important than the protection of quarantine. That’s why I decided to organize a Christmas party for fire survivors.

At the party, I saw fire survivors there I had not seen in weeks. Fernando and his family were there, along with a few other Latino fire survivors. Tommy and his daughter were there, too, as was Carol. Even when I am saddened to think about how Carol and Wendy had to leave the hotel, I take some solace in remembering their smiles that night. I think it was the first happy and community Christmas any of them may have had in years, which of course, is why we did it. They needed to know they were not alone. And for one night, they were not (and as far as we know, no one got COVID-19). Celebrating Christmas was a radical act of social justice, continuing to weave the threads of community healing together.

Licenses and Attributions for The Interconnected Social Problems of Wildfire Recovery

Open Content, Original

“The Interconnected Social Problems of Wildfire Recovery” by Bethany Grace Howe is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Figure 14.10. “Media for the Art of Healing Groups for Echo Mountain Fire Survivors” by Kimberly Puttman is licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 14.13. “Otis Junction, Oregon” by Visitor7 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

All Rights Reserved Content

Figure 14.9. “Giant Mural of Two Octopuses” by Amber Deyo, The News Guard is included under fair use.

Figure 14.11. “Photo of the Volunteer Clean Up” by Abigail Dollins, The Register Guard is included under fair use.

Figure 14.12. “Chinook Winds sign, with smoke filled sky” © Matt Brandt Photography for Cascade Relief Team is all rights reserved and included with permission.

Figure 14.14a. “Landscaping with Love Greenhouse” by an unknown photographer for Cascade Relief Team is all rights reserved and included with permission.

Figure 14.14b. “Landscaping with Love Community Event” by author unknown for Cascade Relief Team is all rights reserved and included with permission.

Figure 14.15. “Photo Lincoln City COVID-19 Vaccine Clinic” by Oralia Mendez, Oregon State University is included under fair use.