After the Fire: Preparing National Park Staff for the Mental Toll of Disasters

By Julianne Reas, Wylie Carr and Kaylin Thomas, National Park Service Climate Change Response Program. First published in Park Science magazine, Volume 38, Number 1, Summer 2024.

National Park Service wildland firefighters in Yosemite National Park. Credit: NPS / Jonathan Shafer.

As climate change makes wildfires and extreme weather more likely and more severe, more parks are dealing with their effects on resources and staff. Parks use science-based tools such as scenario planning to anticipate the physical damage — but the mental and social consequences for their own people can be overlooked. Kevin Sweeney, an NPS fire communication and education specialist who has seen many disasters, asks what parks are doing to prepare staff mentally and emotionally to lose a piece of land they may have worked on for 30 years.

A lifetime's loss

Living in a park can be a lifelong dream, but in a disaster it means juggling many duties at once. Park employees are often first responders: they alert or evacuate visitors, colleagues and their own families, and work up to 16 hours a day on the response while trying to meet their own needs. Assessments and recovery can then take years, derailing other work.

Disasters commonly bring sudden displacement, loss of property, weakened community and social support, injury and death. A 2018 study of two million U.S. residents linked these outcomes with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression, substance abuse and suicide. First responders, exposed directly and repeatedly, are especially vulnerable.

• The Carr Fire, 2018. Jennifer Gibson, now the NPS Post-Wildfire Programs coordinator, was at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area during the Carr Fire — as of 2021 the most destructive fire in the agency's history. It killed four community members and three firefighters, destroyed more than 1,000 buildings and burned more than 97 percent of the park. A third of the park's staff lost their homes. Gibson describes employees evacuating several times while managing an incident in their own park, a workload that rises sharply afterwards, and the stress of mourning the land while rebuilding it.
• The Dixie Fire, 2021. From July to October it burned more than 73,000 acres — 69 percent — of Lassen Volcanic National Park, the largest single wildfire in the park's and California's history, at almost a million acres in all. It displaced staff and families more than once and strained local services. Employees watched their life's work — a plant species, a habitat, a project — burn in an afternoon, Sweeney says.

A burned sign at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area after the 2018 Carr Fire. Credit: National Park Service.

Burned Area Emergency Response scientists assessing threats at a campground and trail after the Carr Fire. Credit: NPS / Victoria Stauffenberg.

Rehearsed, but not for everything

Scenario-based climate change planning, adapted by the Park Service from military and business practice, explores the range of uncertain but plausible futures parks face. Several parks have seen their worst case arrive soon after:

• Lassen. Weeks before the Dixie Fire, a workshop to start updating the park's fire management plan imagined a large, fast fire burning most of the park at once — before the workshop report was even finished.
• Chaco Culture National Historical Park. In May 2023 a workshop considered rockfall; weeks later a cliff face collapsed, damaging prehistoric architecture, petroglyphs, pictographs and five public campsites.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park's May 2023 workshop (top) and the cliff collapse weeks later (bottom). Credit: NPS / Wylie Carr (top); NPS / Tanachy Bruhns (bottom).

In each case participants foresaw what the worst would look like, but they were readier for its operations than for its psychological and social toll. Gibson, who lost her home, neighbours and community in the Carr Fire, says knowing it could happen would have helped — not as despair, but as being ready.

Proven ways to prepare

Health effects of disasters can last months or years; acute stress that goes untreated beyond about 30 days can become post-traumatic stress, Gibson notes. Planning mental health care in advance, and providing it at the right time, helps.

• Coping skills and self-efficacy — the belief that your actions can lead to a good outcome — build resilience and preparedness. Critical Incident Stress Management and employee assistance programmes can help staff develop both.
• Hand off the asking. Too often, overburdened responders are the ones who must request mental health help for themselves. Scenario planning can assign that job in advance to people unlikely to be caught up in the incident.
• Community. Social cohesion improves mental health, preparedness and recovery. Sweeney credits leadership, the wider fire community, regional office support and the network of park people who had been through the same thing. Workshops, and tools like civic engagement, bring partners from many agencies, parks and disciplines together.
• Plan early and broadly. Aron Adams, chief of resource management at Aztec Ruins National Monument and Chaco Culture National Historical Park, says building the scenario workshop into wider planning gives managers common goals and possible solutions, and leaves staff better prepared.

Workshops can also be used to build community and prepare for disasters' effects on mental health. Credit: NPS / Amanda Sweeney.

The keys to recovery

People do recover, but it takes the ability to respond well and stay resilient. After the Dixie Fire, Sweeney says, there was no reset button: there will be grief, despair and adjustment, and different people need different things to cope.

After the Carr Fire, Gibson helped set up an agency-wide "one-stop disaster shop" so parks can learn from each other in planning for emergencies — with an interdisciplinary approach, scenario-based training, resource advisor guides and evacuation plans. The Park Service's Learning and Development division also offers a course on climate-smart recovery after natural disasters, through DOI Talent. Planning ahead for all of a disaster's effects — physical, social and mental — will help park employees keep their peace of mind.

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org, to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Sources

• Julianne Reas (climate change social science intern), Wylie Carr (climate change planning specialist) and Kaylin Thomas (science communication assistant), NPS Climate Change Response Program, "The Challenge of Disastrous Events Isn't Only Operational," Park Science 38(1), Summer 2024. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-challenge-of-disastrous-events-isnt-only-operational.htm
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.