Fire and outages: ‘This is probably the new normal’
Professor: A benefit of normalizing disruption — ‘social cohesion’
This one hit home.
For some Bay Area residents, the fires of the last few years have been worrisome but also distant — anomalous disasters that affected other people. But the Kincade Fire roaring through Sonoma County and the massive power shutoffs that accompanied it have made a visceral impact on many residents in a way that previous fires have not, bringing the realization that such disruption is set to become a regular feature of their lives.
“With the fires, being hit now with actual shutoffs, people are saying, ‘Oh my god, it’s
real,’ ” said Andres Quintero, a board member of the Alum Rock Union School District, which shuttered schools for a couple of days earlier in October when PG&E first shut off power in the area. He’s noticed, he added, a sense of helplessness among local families in recent days that didn’t exist in the past.
David Spiegel, associate chair of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford and an expert on stress and health, said, “It’s not some remote place when it happens in Vallejo.”
“I think it is touching people more personally, and the sort of fantasy that it’s not us and you can escape it is diminishing,” he said. “Denial doesn’t work that well when it’s happening all around you.”
The unease is compounded, Quintero and others said, by the feeling that PG&E, which has been blamed for deadly wildfires in the past, has failed to improve its infrastructure and technology quickly enough. The company’s recent statement that it could take a decade to reach a point where shutoffs aren’t necessary struck residents as particularly disheartening and frustrating.
“It does create a kind of hopelessness,” Spiegel said, adding that when such stressful scenarios play out, people can have trouble sleeping and their diets and exercise routines can suffer. “You can’t even see a way for it to get better.”
For some Bay Area residents, the recognition that wildfires would become an increasing threat came long ago.
Linda Brown bought her house in the Oakland hills six months before the deadly Oakland hills fire of 1991. The fire stopped a mile from her property.
Since then, Brown said, “We plan. We have a ‘go bag’ by the door.”
In anticipation of the power going out, she said, her family — including a brother visiting from Arkansas whose dreams of visiting Wine Country were summarily dashed by the fire — set up coolers and stocked up on nonperishable food and water.
Brown regularly takes free emergency response training through the city of Oakland and is in contact with local neighborhood watch groups and safety councils.
People, she said, need to know that “This is probably the new normal and to be prepared.”
Such “social cohesion,” as Spiegel calls it, is one potential benefit of the normalization of the disruption. It allows for a mutual recognition and sharing of stress, he said.
With the power shutoffs, “Everybody’s lives are really, really different,” he said. “I do think feeling sort of connected with a community of people who are dealing with it is important.”
Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, an associate professor at Stanford who works with the Wildfire Mental Health Collaborative, an initiative launched in response to the Wine Country fires of 2017, said it’s clear to her that even in the Bay Area, “People are starting to accept that this could be the reality going forward.”
The reminders, she said, are getting harder to ignore, with smoke from fires in the East Bay and North Bay wafting into Silicon Valley and power shutoffs affecting everything from school schedules to the functionality of vital medical devices.
In addition to offering mental health support to residents affected by the fires, her organization works to “create a collaborative model of mental health disaster response,” increasing training for therapists and developing a shareable menu of services available to everyone.
Quintero, the Alum Rock board member, noted that so many potential disasters are hyped and then don’t materialize. But now, he said, people are finally realizing that the warnings about the fires are something they need to pay attention to.
“It’s literally hitting close to home,” Quintero said. “Everyone’s kind of on their toes.”