Repeated wildfires put pressure on residents, making it difficult to recover peace of mind

By Jen Christensen, CNN

(CNN) — Kiley Patterson of Paradise, California, had to evacuate during the devastating 2018 Camp Fire and is working out some of the resulting anxiety by volunteering at a local large-animal shelter that was set up to help neighbors facing yet another wildfire threat.

“To say anxiety has been high is probably an understatement,” Patterson said. Her house survived the 2018 blaze, but her neighbors’ homes didn’t. Now there’s another fire – the Park Fire, one of the largest in California history – and although it hasn’t forced her to evacuate yet, she says she wakes up every hour to check.

“It’s the not knowing,” she said.

Sleepless, Patterson goes over lists of what she’s packed in her go bag just in case she needs to run again – and she is not alone.

“A lot of friends have the same anxiety of past Camp Fire issues,” Patterson said.

Fires aren’t just a physical threat to health and safety. Exposure can increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and substance use disorders, and sleep problems, as well as mental health problems that could last years.

The climate crisis continues to cause exponential growth of wildfires. Many more people must now deal with not just one fire but what seems like an annual string of them, and it’s taking a toll on their sense of mental well-being.

Sonja Bigalke-Bannan, a licensed social worker who provides trauma therapy to people who survived the Maui wildfires, said clients are having a hard time processing their feelings about more recent wildfires at the same time they’re dealing with trauma from last year.

“We try to manage and process trauma in the present. We seek safety and calmness as we process the past trauma, but when the body and the brain perceive the same patterns and messages that it is not safe in the present day, it can be extremely difficult to try to find safety and continue trauma recovery when we have similar conditions again,” Bigalke-Bannan said.

As of Friday, 94 large wildfires rages across multiple states, and 28 had evacuation orders, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Fires are now burning in Oregon, California, Idaho, Washington, Utah, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Wyoming, Nevada, Texas and Florida.

Matthew Plotkin, director of equity and advocacy at United Way of Northern California, said he’s heard from a steady stream of survivors being retraumatized by the current Park Fire.

“We’re seeing, sadly, numerous households that are now being impacted in repeat scenarios,” he said.

Friends who lost everything in the Camp Fire and built a home in another area in Butte County learned over the weekend that their new home was destroyed. A family he’d been helping Monday had the same experience.

“They’re back at square one again,” Plotkin said. “It takes a toll on a mental health level, for sure.”

A study of California residents published Friday said about half of the 24,000 Californians researchers spoke with had been affected by a climate event like a wildfire or flood, and of those, nearly 23% reported that their mental health was harmed. People in rural areas, like the ones Plotkin helps, were more likely to report that a climate event has had a negative impact on their mental health, in addition to people who were White, college-educated or female.

Even people who help others, like Plotkin, aren’t immune. When his wife called him in Washington last week to tell him about the Park Fire, he flashed back to all he was feeling during the Camp Fire, when he had to evacuate.

“Quite honestly, our entire county probably has PTSD,” Plotkin said with weak laugh.

When people do have post-traumatic stress and it isn’t well-managed, problems can become magnified.

“If people have lived through those experiences before, then with each subsequent year, there are just more triggers,” said Dr. Steven Sugden, who works at the University of Utah Huntsman Mental Health Institute and is on the American Psychiatric Association’s committee for disaster psychiatry.

Sugden said it isn’t just people who lose their homes who need help with wildfire-related mental health issues.

“We all inherit their smoke,” he said, like last year, when fires in Canada turned New York’s skies orange.

This wildfire season, he’s noticed many more people on edge. “The whole country gets affected by fire season, and I think it’s becoming more noticeable,” Sugden said.

Fortunately, Plotkin says that as wildfires have spread, mental health services have become more “entrenched” in disaster recovery efforts than they were in 2018.

“And I’m grateful for that, especially in our more rural areas,” Plotkin said.

The challenge, Plotkin said, is the national shortage of licensed providers, especially in more rural areas like his. His organization is one of many trying to provide trauma-informed training to laypeople like clergy and trusted community leaders to help fill in some of the gaps.

Having mental health experts and trained volunteers has been crucial to New Mexico’s response to wildfires, says Nick Boukas, director of the New Mexico Health Care Authority Behavioral Health Services Division for the state.

Through the end of July, his group has had more than 1,000 behavioral health encounters with residents that are related to wildfires. The outreach effort includes vital help from the volunteer Medical Reserve Corps that includes certified peer support workers who help screen evacuees for mental health issues right away at shelters in addition to talking with them and listening to their concerns.

“As you can imagine, when there’s wildfires, there’s a lot of concern because there’s severe uncertainty that goes into being displaced from your home,” Boukas said.

It’s important to bring help to evacuees where they are, because they won’t always seek it out on their own. “Trying to be proactive and let people know that we’re there to help support them from the behavioral health side but also what they might expect, because there was a lot of unknowns, and we have to make sure they are prepared for that,” Boukas said.

It’s also been important to set up mental health stations for firefighters and other first responders, says Bobbie MacKenzie, the Medical Reserve Corps program manager with the New Mexico Department of Health’s Bureau of Health Emergency Management.

“I think a lot of times, they get overlooked in their communities, seeing their own home burned to the ground and still have to buckle up and get back out there and continue their firefighting for the rest of the neighborhood,” Mackenzie said. Constantly seeing and listening to people’s sad stories, like the first responders do, can “also take a huge toll on somebody’s mental health and well-being,” she added.

Mental health services may need to be continuous to be most effective, Boukas said. Unlike with a sprained ankle that can heal in a few months, mental health care can’t just happen at shelters, “so that you can get back to a spot where you feel more comfortable dealing with what you’re dealing with,” he said.

Wildfires can also have indirect effects on mental health, creating uncertainty around added expenses, insurance claims, rebuilding, loss of income and a potential loss of friends and community as some people move away. “This is a long-term thing,” Boukas said.

It’s important that communities take care of each other too, experts said. It doesn’t always have to be formal help that boosts someone’s mental well-being. Friday’s study found that people directly affected by climate events were much less likely to report negative mental health effects if they felt a sense of trust among their neighbors or if they themselves reported that they were willing to help their neighbors.

“Checking in within our support networks just to see how people are doing, whether it’s related to all the fires or not, can really help people,” Sugden said. “We’re living in a time that’s already very contentious, and I think many times, just all that other general noise makes things worse.”

Individuals can also build their own resilience.

For example, one aging wildfire survivor told Bigalke-Bannan that he worried his go bag was getting too heavy. She had him write down what was in it so he could literally and physically figure out how to lighten his burden. It’s important to look at preparation for wildfires not from a “frightened lens,” she said, but more from a “taking charge of some of the situation lens.”

She’s pleased that her work with survivors has helped them identify their growing anxiety as the anniversary of the Maui wildfires nears next week, but she says the work is ongoing. She has been working with clients to help them develop a place of calm in their mind so they can step into it when they need to manage their feelings.

With the number of wildfires growing across the country every year, Bigalke-Bannan said, it is a practice most people will have to get better at.

“We’re just going to have to be very aware,” she said, “and very prepared for this.”

CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones contributed to this report.

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