It’s not just the homes and contents lost, it’s the PTSD, depression and anxiety that’s left behind
Panicked residents fled burning homes and abandoned their cars on blocked streets, running through flames down the main roadwayA home destroyed by fire in Thousand Oaks, California, the US, in November 2018. Picture: REUTERS/ERIC THAYER
In California, communities haunted by wildfire losses and new fire threats, the damage has not been only physical. Anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges linked to the fires are growing — and residents say they fear more trauma is ahead. Today only about 10% of the 27,000 people who once lived there remain. Some moved just up the road to the small mountain community of Magalia and others to bigger cities nearby such as Chico and Sacramento. But many left the area altogether after the fire destroyed almost 18,800 structures, more than half of them homes.
California has long suffered seasonal wildfires, but longer dry seasons and more powerful winds — which scientists link to climate change — are helping make the blazes far more destructive, raising risks — and fears.Rebecca Schmidt, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, has studied mental health among pregnant women during wildfires ever since 2017 blazes tore through the state’s Napa and Sonoma wine regions.
In Sonoma County, where the Kincade fire burned nearly 32,400ha before being extinguished during November, officials are considering asking residents to vote on a 0.25c sales tax to fund mental health services. County officials there also recently declared a climate emergency in an effort to make climate risks a top priority in policies and decision-making.
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