Effective resiliency planning must account for the socially vulnerable and the many ways that schools and health care facilities serve and connect those people to their community, according to researchers who examined the aftermath of the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, California.
Erica Fischer of the Oregon State University College of Engineering led a multidisciplinary team of researchers that investigated damage to the school and hospital facilities and the impact the damage had on the community’s recovery process.
The team published a series of four papers: the first three on civil infrastructure damage and the latest on the implications of the school and hospital facility damage. Researchers spent six months in 2019 interviewing 33 people representing 18 organizations in Paradise and surrounding Butte County, with a key takeaway being the complicated and longstanding mental health challenges enveloping the town’s school system.
Read More: Oregon State University
Camp Fire (Photo Credit: NASA)