Tagged With "Learn to Live With Fire"
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12 Myths of the Science of ACEs
The two biggest myths about ACEs science are: MYTH #1 — That it’s just about the 10 ACEs in the ACE Study — the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study . It’s about sooooo much more than that. MYTH #2 — And that it’s just about ACEs…adverse childhood experiences. These two myths are intertwined. The ACE Study issued the first of its 70+ publications in 1998, and for many people it was the lightning bolt, the grand “aha” moment, the unexpected doorway into a blazing new...
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8 Lessons for Building Resiliency After the California Wildfires
From City Lab: By RICHARD HEINBERG NOV 1, 2017 We need to get smarter before the next major disaster. My wife Janet and I voluntarily evacuated our house in Santa Rosa, California, at 4 a.m. on October 10. We live just outside a mandatory evacuation zone, but we opted to retreat from the wildfires raging nearby when we saw a bright orange glow on the horizon and a billowing plume of black smoke—both apparently headed our way. That morning, we bundled our four sleepy hens into the back of our...
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8 Lessons for Building Resiliency After the California Wildfires [citylab.com]
My wife Janet and I voluntarily evacuated our house in Santa Rosa, California, at 4 a.m. on October 10. We live just outside a mandatory evacuation zone, but we opted to retreat from the wildfires raging nearby when we saw a bright orange glow on the horizon and a billowing plume of black smoke—both apparently headed our way. That morning, we bundled our four sleepy hens into the back of our car and drove to the closest evacuation shelter. We were able to return home late that same day.
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A Forecast for a Warming World: Learn to Live With Fire [nytimes.com]
By Thomas Fuller and Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times, October 24, 2019 Facing down 600 wildfires in the past three days alone, emergency workers rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people in Southern California on Thursday as a state utility said one of its major transmission lines broke near the source of the out-of-control Kincade blaze in Northern California. The Kincade fire, the largest this week, tore through steep canyons in the wine country of northern Sonoma County,...
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How a natural disaster led one town to do something about its ACEs, past and future
Tracy Franke, principal of Darrington Elementary School, a K-8 school with 300 students, had heard about CLEAR, and called Dr. Christopher Blodgett, who runs the program, to arrange a visit from Turner. “We were hurting,” says Franke. “Our students and staff needed some tools to get through the trauma.”
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How Parents and Teachers Can Calm Kids' Getty Fire Anxiety [latimes.com]
By Sonali Kohli and Nina Agrawal, Los Angeles Times, October 29, 2019 During this Santa Ana wind season, 12-year-old Nicholas Ladesich tends to go to bed worrying about what might burn overnight. He often has dreams of waking up in his old house that burned down in the Woolsey fire last year. But he awakens instead in the living room of the one-bedroom guest house he shares with his brother and parents. He demands that his mom turn on the news to monitor possible fires while his 15-year-old...
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How Scientists are Coping With 'Ecological Grief' [theguardian.com]
By Gaia Vince, The Guardian, January 12, 2020 Melting glaciers, coral reef death, wildlife disappearance, landscape alteration, climate change: our environment is transforming rapidly, and many of us are experiencing a sense of profound loss. Now, the scientists whose work it is to monitor and document this extraordinary change are beginning to articulate the emotional tsunami sweeping over the field, which they’re naming “ecological grief”. Researchers are starting to form support groups...
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How to help children recover from the trauma of disaster [theconversation.com]
In any culture, children hit by a natural disaster will see family members undergo huge amounts of stress and worry. They may be forced to live in temporary accommodation, and experience many changes to their usual routines and social circles. And on top of all this, many treasured possessions – including family pets – may be lost or damaged forever. For many children, this can result in high levels of anxiety and emotional trauma . This can inevitably lead to changes in a child’s behaviour,...
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How Two Local Communities Are Fighting Back Against the Trauma of Global Climate Change
In Alertnet: February 24, 2018 By Ruben Cantu, program manager for community trauma, mental health and violence prevention at Prevention Institute , and ITRC Steering Committee Member Found at: https://www.alternet.org/environment/global-climate-change-causing-local-trauma-heres-how-two-communities- We must build resilient communities before disaster strikes. Communities around the globe are feeling the effects of climate change, from scorching heat waves and out-of-control wildfires to...
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Hurricane Florence first responders receive free trauma/resilience training
In a webinar offered this morning by Elaine Miller Karas , executive director of the Trauma Resource Institute in Claremont, CA, leaders from several North Carolina ACEs Connection communities affected by flooding and other damage by Hurricane Florence learned more about trauma response and how to better help their communities find resilience. Karas, who was delivering her Community Resiliency Model (CRM) training at Duke University in Durham, NC, offered the free training and provided...
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Hurricane Michael: Children Face Stress Of Upended Lives [health.wusf.usf.edu]
When Tiffany Harris and her two children emerged from their hotel after Hurricane Michael roared past, her 3-year-old son pointed to a sea of fallen trees and shattered buildings. "It's broken. It's broken, Mommy, fix it," she recalls her little boy Amari begging. Harris, who lives with her boyfriend, two children, plus her sister and her four children near Panama City, soon learned their town house was uninhabitable. Everything was a total loss after Michael powered inland across the...
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In California’s wildfires, a looming threat to climate goals (calmatters.org)
Beyond the devastation and personal tragedy of the fires that have ravaged California in recent months, another disaster looms: an alarming uptick in unhealthy air and the sudden release of the carbon dioxide that drives climate change. “The kinds of fires we’re seeing now generate millions of tons of GHG emissions. This is significant,” said Dave Clegern, a spokesman for the state Air Resources Board, a regulatory body. The role of wildfire as a major source of pollution was identified a...
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ITRC Announces Fall 2019 Free Webinars on Building Transformational Resilience for Climate Traumas
To Register for Any of the Webinars Below Go to the Link on ITRC Website: http://www.theresourceinnovationgroup.org/ Introduction to Transformational Resilience for Climate Traumas Date : Thursday, October 31 from 12 noon--1 pm Pacific Time (3-4 pm Eastern Time) Although it is difficult to accept, humanity is in the midst of a civilization changing event. The more frequent and extreme disasters and toxic stresses generated by human-induced climate disruption are aggravating the existing...
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ITRC Announces Spring 2020 Free 1 Hr. Webinars
Introduction to Transformational Resilience for Climate Traumas, Toxic Stresses, and Other Emergencies Date : Thursday, April 30 from 12 noon--1 pm Pacific Time (3-4 pm Eastern Time) Click here to register for this webinar The Coronavirus pandemic is causing significant stress and disorientation. The adversities provide a glimpse of the personal mental health and collective psycho-social-spiritual problems that will emerge as the climate emergency worsens. Although it is difficult to accept,...
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L.A.'s increasingly hot and dry autumns result in 'these near-apocalyptic fires' (latimes.com)
Autumn has seen excruciatingly little rain, intensely low humidity, record heat and powerful winds that sparked what is so far the second largest wildfire in modern California history. "There is some evidence that the autumn on average in Southern California is going to be drier as the climate warms," UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said. The record warmth in California "is clearly a symptom of climate change," Swain said. "The likelihood of seeing record warmth and record heat waves is...
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Making the Connections Between Climate Change and Sexual and Relationship Violence
“Human relations were laid bare and the strengths and weaknesses in relationships came sharply into focus. Thus, socially isolated women became more isolated, domestic violence increased, and the core of relationships with family, friends and spouses were exposed” – written in response to a major flood in Australia (Dobson, 1994, p. 11). Racism. Sexism. Classism. Immigration status. Violence against LGBTQ communities. These are just a few of the various forms of oppression that the...
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Microsoft Wants to Pit AI Against Climate Change (insurancejournal.com)
Microsoft announced earlier this month that the tech giant is broadening its AI for Earth program and committing $50 million over the next five years “to put artificial intelligence technology in the hands of individuals and organizations around the world who are working to protect our planet.” “At Microsoft, we believe artificial intelligence is a game changer,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer wrote in a recent blog announcing the funding . “Our approach as a...
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‘None of us will ever be the same’: Survivors of 2017 Tubbs Fire face long-term trauma [Sacramento Bee]
BY PANCHALAY CHALERMKRAIVUTH pchalermkraivuth@sacbee.com August 3, 2019 Robert “Priest” Morgan hasn’t slept without a cocktail of pills since the night he says God kicked him in the head to wake him up – the night he opened the front door of his Santa Rosa mobile home to see a fire engine, a few people running up and down Sahara Street and screaming. “The sky looked like the Fourth of July,” he said. “The entire park except for my street was an inferno.” It wasn’t Independence Day – it was...
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One of the most overlooked consequences of climate change? Our mental health
Ecoanxiety. Ecoparalysis. Solastalgia. Call it what you want— when it comes to climate change and mental health, the future is now. By Lawrence A. Palinkas , the Daily Climate Hardly a day goes by where we aren't reminded that the Earth's climate is changing and that we are responsible for much if not most of that change. The findings of one study after another are punctuated by breaking news or the direct experience of wildfires, hurricanes and floods that forced thousands of people to...
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OUR FUTURE AFTER THE FIRE: NON-PROFIT DONATES $1 MILLION TO HELP FIRST RESPONDERS WITH TRAUMA (Action News)
By Jafet Serrato, Oct 24, 2019, for Action News BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - The North Valley Community Foundation has been working on choosing where vital grant money should go after the Camp Fire. David Little is the executive vice president of the organization. "We are both giving direct assistance to fire survivors who need it, through our partners on the ground but also giving to agencies who need help in the longer term," Little said. The Butte County Sheriff's Office is one of those...
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Overcoming a Lifetime of Trauma, Then Facing a New One: Wildfire [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
KQED News Monday, November 19, 2018 Sabrina Hanes has faced a lot of trauma in her life, most of it in her childhood. As part of her healing, she moved to a Northern California town called Paradise. There she built strength and community, but that was upended when the Camp Fire tore through Paradise, burning her home and turning her life upside down. I followed Hanes through her daily routine in Paradise last summer, to learn how she’s developed resilience. I then caught up with Hanes after...
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Predicting community resilience and recovery after a disaster [Blogs.CDC.gov]
After 9/11, I was asked by the Baltimore City Health Commissioner to help prepare the city for a radiation terrorism event, because my entire career up until that point had been in radiation-based medical imaging. I didn’t know anything about public health preparedness at the time, but I found it very fulfilling to work with the city health department and other first responders, especially fire and police. Public health preparedness science and research is more than multi-disciplinary, it’s...
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Preparing People for Climate Change in California: Sonoma County Listens and Shares
Last summer Bob Doppelt asked me to join a planning committee for a conference on climate change . I was surprised to be asked as my recent professional expertise is tied to addressing childhood adversity. Bob changed my perspective on the relevance by saying, "Adversity and trauma are the social side effects of climate-related disasters. Imagine the social-emotional impacts on Katrina survivors." The connection was a glimmer in my mind, but I agreed to support a California conference .
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Put down the self-help books. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour (theglobeandmail.com)
The science of resilience is clear: The social, political and natural environments in which we live are far more important to our health, fitness, finances and time management than our individual thoughts, feelings or behaviors. When it comes to maintaining well-being and finding success, environments matter.
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Recommendations for preventing & healing pandemic generated mental health and psychosocial problems
Attached is a set of ITRC recommendations for swiftly organizing community-based initiatives to prevent and heal pandemic-generated mental health and psychosocial problems. If you find the recommendations helpful, please initiate the creation of a resilience coordinating council in your community or region. Please also pass the document on to other organizations and individuals that might find it useful. Thanks--and stay healthy during this stressful time, Bob Doppelt
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Register now: Free ACEs Connection Webinar on the Human Impact of Climate Change
A year after 85 people died in the wildfire that swept through Paradise, CA, and nearby towns, one of the town’s survivors will talk about how she and others are using resilience practices in their recovery from the trauma. On Wednesday, Nov. 13, Paradise resident Kelly Doty will have a conversation with Elaine Miller-Karas, who developed the Community Resiliency Model (CRM). Doty, who lost her home in the fire, and Miller-Karas will discuss resilience education skills designed to help...
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Rising from the Ashes: How Trauma-Informed Care Nurtures Healing in Rural America [The Rural Monitor]
By Jenn Lukens April 17, 2019 It was late July 2018 when the Mendocino Complex wildfire broke out in rural Lake County, California. It burned more than 450,000 acres and destroyed 280 structures before it was contained. Ana Santana managed to fill some storage bins with sentimental items – her kids’ blankets, pictures, and art projects – before fleeing her home. Santana is the facilitator of the Lake County Children’s Council and Program Director for Healthy Start Youth and Family Services ,...
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Sonoma County Resiliency Collaborative A Practical Approach to Post-Wildlife Resilience and Wellbeing
The traumatic events of the North Bay wildfires affect our emotional and physical health, social functioning, and overall well-being, both as individuals and as a community. Unresolved, they can damage our health and limit our potential to rebuild a strong community. Join diverse Sonoma County leaders and representatives to participate in dynamic workshop where you will practice tools for effectively addressing personal and team stress after the fires, network with peers, and learn about an...
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Sonoma County’s parklands are already showing signs of recovery from fire (sonomanews.com)
Nearly every tree species affected by the Tubbs and Nuns fires has a strategy for returning. Some, such as coast live oak, have thick bark and may still be standing with green canopies hanging over blackened understory in places such as Sonoma Valley Regional Park. Trees in this condition will be helped in the years to come because the competition around their bases is gone. If burned, coast live oak have an amazing ability to sprout from the trunk. This can happen as quickly as two months...
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Sonoma’s Hanna Institute awarded $650k grant [SonomaNews.com]
Consultant Robert K. Macy, Hanna Institute Assistant Director Nick Dalton, and Hanna Institute Interim Director Brian Farragher inside Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma, CA. ______________________ After the October fires, the Community Foundation of Sonoma County co-sponsored a survey of local nonprofit organizations to gauge the effect that the disaster had on the people they serve and their organizational capacity to provide services in response. Throughout the “2018 Wildfire Response Survey,”...
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Study: Pennsylvanians who live near fracking are more likely to be depressed
The Dailey Climate by Kristina Marusic Jul y27, 2018 Stress and depression are higher among those living closest to more and bigger wells. People who live near unconventional natural gas operations such as fracking are more likely to experience depression, according to a new study. For the study, which is the first of its kind and published today in Scientific Reports, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University looked at rates of depression in...
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The Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative (CRC) first Quarterly Adaptation Exchange in 2018
The Capital Region Climate Readiness Collaborative (CRC) conducted our first Quarterly Adaptation Exchange in 2018 on how Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and trauma can be a detriment to an individual’s physical, social, and mental health that has lasting effects into adulthood. Climate impacts and an individual’s and/or community’s capacity to respond to trauma with resilience is intrinsically tied to access to a support system, resources, and past traumas. The reality is with Climate...
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Tomorrow's Doctors Will Diagnose the Mental Toll of Climate Change
The Daily Dose, July 22, 2019 by Carly Stern https://www.ozy.com/fast-forward/tomorrows-doctors-will-diagnose-the-mental-toll-of-climate-change/95540 First-year medical student Anna Goshua was interviewing an emergency room physician in March to learn more about the job when she heard about a patient who had come all the way from Puerto Rico to that ER in Massachusetts for health care. Hurricane Maria had wiped out all prospects of the patient seeking care at home. A surprised Goshua pored...
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Transformational Resilience Train the Trainer Opportunities in San Francisco
Applications Now Open for Nov 15-16 Transformational Resilience Intensive Train-the-Trainer Workshop The ITRC is offering a Train-the-Trainer Workshop on Transformational Resilience for climate change aggravated traumas and toxic stresses workshop. The workshop will be held November 15-16 in San Francisco. This will be an intensive 2-day training offered in cooperation with the SEI Resilient Community Fellows Program. It is open to a maximum of 20 people who want to learn how to apply...
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Trial by Fire: MARC Sites Collaborate on Trauma-Informed Disaster Response
By @Anndee Hochman During a December 2017 convening in Philadelphia, several leaders from Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) realized they had more in common than a passion for building resilience in their communities. They all hailed from places that had recently been scorched or flooded by natural disasters: wildfires in California and the Columbia River Gorge, hurricanes in Florida, the lingering residue of 2012’s post-tropical cyclone Sandy in the Northeast.
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UC Berkeley Event: Climate Climate Change: The Defining Health Challenge and Opportunity of the 21st Century
This coming Wednesday, The Lancet Countdown will release its first annual report tracking climate change and health indicators across five key domains (including Mental Health) on November 1 ( live in Berkeley , or via Livestream ). (Report attached below.) All of the speakers could and should be invited to the upcoming California Preparing Individuals for Climate Change Conference. Unfortunately, I am unable to attend. Climate Change: The Defining Health Challenge and Opportunity of the...
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Using the Climate Crisis as Catalyst to Increase Wellbeing
I wrote this article for Meeting of the Minds, which brings urban leaders together. It explains the recommendations of the ITRC for using the climate crisis as a transformational catalyst to enhance personal, social, and ecological wellbeing. Found here: https://meetingoftheminds.org/building-transformational-resilience-to-cope-with-climate-disruption-28559 A year after Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, many residents continue to struggle with mental illness. One suicide...
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Webinar: Building Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses
Live Webinar: Building Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses Monday, October 28 th , 2019 12:00-1:30 PM PDT You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: The Human Impact of Climate Change
Recorded live November 13, 2019. Find the slides attached below. Speaker: Elaine Miller-Karas, MSW, LCSW, Executive Director and Co-founder, Trauma Resource Institute. Guest: Kelly Doty, MA, Strengthening Families Program Manager, Youth for Change Host: Carey Sipp, Southeast Community Facilitator, ACEs Connection. Climate change emergencies are real and the human toll during and in the aftermath impact children, teens and adults. This webinar will hear from Kelly Doty, a survivor, who lost...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses with Bob Doppelt
Recorded live October 28, 2019. Find the slides attached below. The webinar recording: You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming toward us and why prevention is the only realistic...
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Webinar Slides and Recording: Transformational Resilience for Climate Change Traumas and Toxic Stresses with Bob Doppelt
Recorded live October 28, 2019. Find the slides attached below. The webinar recording: You will learn: how climate change creates personal, family, and community traumas and toxic stresses; how those traumatic stressors trigger feedbacks that expand and aggravate ACEs and many other person, social, community, and societal maladies; why current approaches are woefully inadequate to address what is already occurring and rapidly steaming toward us and why prevention is the only realistic...
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A place called home: A year after the Tubbs Fire, displaced families can finally look ahead [SF Chronicle]
About this series: One year ago, more than a dozen fires shot to life in the North Bay. One of them, the Tubbs Fire, would become the most destructive wildfire in California history. In the year since, The Chronicle’s Lizzie Johnson has spent hundreds of hours with two couples to report this series, witnessing some of the most intimate, heartbreaking and joyous moments as they rebuilt their lives California was on fire again. Through this past summer, blazes raged across the state. They...
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After the wildfire: treating the mental health crisis triggered by climate change
Note from ITRC Coordinator Bob Doppelt: This story illustrates exactly why we organized the ITRC. Post trauma treatment is completely insufficient to address the traumas that lie ahead as temperatures rise. Prevention , by building widespread capacity for Transformational Resilience for all types of climate impacts--is the ONLY viable solution. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 2017, thousands of homes in Santa...
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An Aboriginal approach to mental health is helping farmers deal with drought (qz.com)
In 2018, a study from the University of Newcastle in NSW found that farmers in rural parts of the state experienced “significant stress about the effects of drought on themselves, their families, and their communities.” Other research suggests that income insecurity related to drought increases the risk of suicide among farmers. Throughout Australia, rates of suicide have increased dramatically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over the past 30 years. The rise is due to...
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Announcing CRI's Newest Trainings- July and September!
CRI is excited to announce new trainings! We will have online trainings in July, and an in-person training in September. July Online Trainings CRI Course 1 LIVE WEBCAST: Trauma-Informed Training A dynamic 2 part six-hour LIVE WEBCAST course, Course 1 introduces CRI’s capacity-building framework for building resilience, KISS. Knowledge, Insight, Strategies and Structure describes our community’s learning and movement from theory to practice and how to implement evidence-based strategies into...
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As California Fire Seasons Worsen, First Responders And Their Loved Ones Navigate Difficult Terrain (capradio.org)
As California fire seasons worsen, organizations serving first responders are trying to spread the word about the need for mental health services. And they’re encouraging family members and loved ones of firefighters to seek help, too. “It’s that vicarious trauma,” said Cal Fire Battalion Chief Nikole Schutz, speaking during last year's Camp Fire. “Seeing things on social media or being exposed to it all the time, knowing they’re gone for a length of time, just those exposures or the...
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California Blazes Are Part of a Larger and Hotter Picture, Fire Researchers Say (kqed.org)
The speed and ferocity of the wildfires raging through Northern California's wine country have caught many residents off guard and left state officials scrambling to contain the flames. But for fire researchers, these devastating blazes are part of a much larger pattern unfolding across the Western United States. So far this year, fires in the U.S. have consumed more than 8.5 million acres - an area bigger than the state of Maryland. The cause is hot, dry conditions nationwide. Heat records...
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Climate Anxiety
I worked on David Attenborough’s documentary. The grim reality gave me climate anxiety Liv Grant For the BBC’s Climate Change: The Facts, I met those living on the frontline. I struggled to cope with what I learned Sun 28 Apr 2019 11.56 EDT Last modified on Mon 29 Apr 2019 06.42 EDT W e live in a time of loss. Wild places dwindle, the animals and plants that live in them disappear. Climate change is now a certainty, and it will without a doubt lead to the loss of land, species, and ways of...
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Climate Change Isn’t Just Frying the Planet—It’s Fraying Our Nerves “We kind of lose our cool.”
Rowan Walrath, Feb 18, 2019 Mother Jones Over the last year, Rebecca, a 35-year-old woman living in Washington, DC, had been losing sleep over the seemingly endless flow of apocalyptic environmental news. She fretted about the Trump administration’s loosening of emissions regulations and the United Nations’ dire predictions about climate change. In October, she sought help from a psychiatrist who put her on an antidepressant. “It sort of saps your emotional reserves,” she says, “this...
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Community After Disaster, a Therapist’s Musings
Here in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties, the entire community experienced prolonged and extensive hyper-arousal – days on end of watching and wondering where the fires would burn next, and far too many sleepless nights. According to the literature on disasters, what follows is a brief honeymoon period, characterized by community cohesion and gratitude. Sonoma County showed up for each other in major ways in the past couple of weeks, and the outpouring of gratitude to the first responders...