Wildfire Smoke: Exploring How Community Capacity Can Increase Preparedness, Response, Recovery, and Resilience

The presentation will share an overview of the Smoke Ready Communities project with a focus on the research component.

Impact/Purpose

The purpose of the presentation is to share a project status update at the 2020 NACCHO Preparedness Summit. There is growing body of literature on the public health impacts from wildland fire smoke. Wildfire smoke can impact a community suddenly and intensely, even hundreds of miles away from a fire. Community leaders are already stretched for time and resources with everyday activities- and then smoke hits. When smoke events occur, there is a concentrated effort to find and disseminate the best information possible as soon as possible. EPA’s Smoke-Ready Communities (SRC) framework offers a structure for creating community-specific plans that integrate existing wildland fire tools and resources into strategies to reduce the health impacts of exposure to wildland fire smoke. This process framework is designed to simultaneously increase participating community’s potential to effectively respond to current and future complex environmental health issues (i.e. capacity), such that the community systems are minimally disrupted, and exposures are minimized to the extent possible, even in the presence of prolonged wildland fire smoke intrusion (i.e. resiliency). We will share the project development, implementation, and accompanying research that will inform a continuous improvement process for the framework. The SRC framework is designed to be tailored to individual community needs, which clearly vary. To support and facilitate the planning and customization, SRC includes technical and process-oriented resources on establishing a multi-sector, multiorganizational team, and leveraging that team to draft, implement, and revise a community response to smoke intrusion. These resources include recommendations for sectors that may be important to include in the process, how to coordinate and gather other community leaders in this meeting, a draft plan, and health risk communication and messaging guidance.

Citation

Hano, M. AND C. Baghdikian. Wildfire Smoke: Exploring How Community Capacity Can Increase Preparedness, Response, Recovery, and Resilience. 2020 NACCHO Preparedness Summit, NA virtual, NC, August 25 - 27, 2020.