Coping with interface wildfire as a human event: Lessons from the disaster/hazards literature

Abstract

The human community impacts of wildland fire is an understudied area. This article reviews the human disaster and hazards literature in an attempt to discover lessons applicable to understanding the social impacts of fire in the residential/wildland interface. It is argued that those literatures are potentially very useful in developing an understanding of wildland fire as a human event. A number of lessons are derived including why people tend to be unduly optimistic in the face of environmental hazards such as fire and why the characteristics of the affected community are at least as important as those of the fire in understanding social impacts.