fireforthebetter?

Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of talking with multiple individuals who were deeply affected by the fire or involved in the post disaster recovery effort.

From what they chose to focus on in our conversations, how they responded to certain questions, and the stories they told me, I have been able to form a better collective understanding of how different beings (non-human animals included) experienced the Camp Fire.

On this page I include two vignettes, informed by my fieldwork and conversations with community members, with which my goal is to shed light on how this fire changed some lives for the better.

<-- A glimpse of one surviving tree, the leaves turning bright red with the fall season. Amidst dozens of dying and fallen trees yet to be removed, perhaps it is a glimmer of (multispecies) hope. In the face of such destruction, what if we looked beyond humanity for lessons in resilience?

"Endings come with the death of a leaf, the death of a city, the death of a friendship, the death of small promises and small stories. The landscape grown from such endings are our disasters as well as our weedy hope." (Tsing et al., 2017)

#1

In my conversations with a veterinarian that helped in the immediate aftermath (with the North Valley Animal Disaster Group) and local animal control staff, I realized that some animals that the Camp Fire displaced may not have been so unlucky after all. While of course this fire destabilized these non-human animal lives in monumental ways, several of the surrendered companion animals showed signs of neglect and suffering that predated the fire. These animals, according to my interviewees, got a new lease on life. They received veterinary care and, if no one claimed them, were adopted out to the next qualified human awaiting a furry companion. In this way, these animals reaped unusual benefits in the face of disastrous conditions.

Here I suggest, much like the resilient tree featured on this page, that beyond humans there are stories of redemption, resilience, and prosperity even in the shadow of the Anthropocene. While it is not my intent to gloss over the immense suffering and trauma of the Camp Fire victims, I think that these stories deserve our attention and consideration. They are especially important when addressing how we choose to situate ourselves in our climate changing world.

Thanks to snowball sampling, I have been able to talk with five different people who lost their houses and all their material belongings in the Camp Fire. While it is by no means a universal experience, two of these people told me that their lives had changed for the better after 2018. After experiencing this traumatic event and being uprooted from everything they knew, these fire victims adopted an outlook on life that reflected its fragility. They know now, more than ever before, that stability and certainty are fleeting. One resident told me that, after the fire, he is less concerned about technicalities, and allows himself to live life on his own terms, travelling and taking opportunities without second guessing himself (like he did before the fire). The most truly important things have been revealed through a process of grief and (environmental and personal) transformation.

In the context of the Anthropocene—an increasingly fraught environmental landscape that is on track to witness more destruction similar to the Camp Fire—stories of post-disaster lives flourishing in their new realities offers a sense of hope. As mentioned in the quote I included on this page, what follows an ending (loss of a home, loss of community, or loss of environment) is both disastrous and hopeful.