It’s been a difficult start to the year in our corner of far Northern California, with record tidal flooding that inundated more than 40 homes in King Salmon Jan. 4-6, the same weekend as the fire in downtown Arcata. Just over a year prior on Dec. 5, 2024, our community experienced a magnitude 7.0 earthquake and tsunami warning — a stark reminder of the seismic risks our region faces. To the east, huge wildfires return almost annually, with the August Complex and Slater fires in 2020 burning through communities in Trinity and Siskiyou counties, killing three people and destroying hundreds of homes.While our geographic location has always placed us at risk of disasters, climate change will only make things worse, bringing sea-level rise and increased coastal flooding, wildfires of larger size and severity, and greater potential for extreme weather events.We are two faculty members from Cal Poly Humboldt who research community aspects of natural resource issues. Because of recent events, we have been documenting how disaster response and recovery does and does not work in our region. We hope to share some of what we have learned here.The general public may assume that after a disaster the government will provide relief and support. We might imagine that after a disaster teams of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) workers flock to a site to assist and Congress grants millions or billions of dollars to support recovery. The truth is that federal or state assistance following a disaster is rare in our region. Federal and state emergency declarations require that the disaster meet certain thresholds, often related to the financial costs of damage. Due to our rural location and comparatively lower property values, these thresholds, particularly at the federal level, are difficult to meet. If there is no emergency declaration, then the individual and public assistance programs offered by FEMA are not available to survivors.For example, the 2022 Rio Dell earthquake that severely damaged 25 percent of the city’s housing stock and caused $35 million in damage to the county did not meet the threshold for a federal declaration. Because housing and communities are so remote and dispersed in many of the wildfire-impacted communities in our region, very few fires meet FEMA’s threshold for assistance. The 2017 Helena Fire in Trinity County burned 72 homes in the town of Junction City, but was not declared a disaster. Federal thresholds would have required more than 400 homes to burn.Keep Reading
