Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire by Haisu Huang A dissertation accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Dissertation Committee: Jill Ann Harrison, Chair Richard York, Core Member Jocelyn Hollander, Core Member Kristin Yarris, Institutional Representative University of Oregon Summer 2024 2 © 2024 Haisu Huang This work is openly licensed via CC BY 4.0. 3 DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Haisu Huang Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Title: Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire This dissertation explores the lived experiences of wildfire disaster survivors, through ethnographic methods including 84 interviews and two-year participant observation. This dissertation extends sociological inquiry to an understudied population—rural communities—in the field of environmental justice, with a focus on the survivors’ decisions around home during and after the fire crisis. This dissertation focuses on how place shapes disaster experience, with attentiveness to variations based on class and place attachment. Although class backgrounds greatly influence the survivors’ recovery choices, they are not the only factors motivating the survivors’ responses and behaviors. This dissertation sheds lights on the possible non-economic reasons for their choices to increase the understanding of the vulnerability of the rural population. A central goal of this dissertation is to emphasize the importance of place as an axis that structures experiences and social relations in the context of disaster recovery. The rural place characters meant a different kind of social norm under which the survivors operated, largely shaped by how they were connected to place. Such varied connections to place in turn affect their perceptions of home, as in when home is safe or unsafe, when one should hold on to their home and when to give up, where to reestablish home after disaster, and ways to come up with creative solutions to home, such as informal housing like RV homes. This dissertation concludes that the survivors’ experience is culturally and structurally shaped and place specific. Its primary contribution is to foreground the meaning of home during climate crisis, connecting social inequalities in disaster recovery with the 4 characteristics of place. The findings contribute to environmental sociology, rural sociology, and sociology of place, demonstrating how place shapes experiences of recovery and rebuild, and how gendered care, residence time, and the informality of housing in the rural space influence the experiences of evacuation and recovery. 5 CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Haisu Huang GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin, China DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Sociology, 2024, University of Oregon Master of Science, Sociology, 2020, University of Oregon Master of Fine Arts, Creative Writing, 2013, City University of Hong Kong Bachelor of Arts, English, 2003, Harbin University of Science and Technology AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Environmental Sociology Climate Disasters and Recovery Energy Transition and Work Qualitative Methods Empowerment Self-Defense PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, University of Oregon, 2018-2024 Lecturer, Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, 2014-2016 Lecturer, Dalian University of Technology, 2004-2010 GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Marquina Faculty-Graduate Student Collaboration Award, How Place Matters in Post- Disaster Residential Mobility: A Case of Oregon’s Wildfire, University of Oregon, 2024 Betty Foster McCue Graduate Scholarship, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2023 Dissertation & Thesis Award, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2023 Leon Culbertson Scholarship, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2023 6 Critical Research in Sociology Award, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2023 M. Gregg Smith Fellowship, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2023 Wasby-Johnson Dissertation Award, Disaster Survivors’ Journey Back Home: An Ethnographic Study of the 2020 Holiday Farm Fire, University of Oregon, 2022 PUBLICATIONS: Huang, Haisu. 2021. “Workers’ Acquiescence to Air Pollution: A Qualitative Study Of Coal Miners in China.” Society & Natural Resources 36(9):1028–44. 7 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the individuals who participated in this study. Your time, openness, and insight made this project possible. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Jill Ann Harrison, for guiding me throughout my time in graduate school. Your support and encouragement, often through weekly check-ins, empowered me, a first-generation student, to move forward with clarity and complete this research in confidence. Your expertise, insights and constructive feedback with care have been instrumental in shaping this dissertation. I am profoundly grateful for the members of my dissertation committee: Richard York, Jocelyn Hollander, and Kristin Yarris, for your time, advice, and critiques. Your input has greatly enriched the quality of this research. Special thanks go to the Department of Sociology and College of Arts and Social Sciences, and the Office of Student Financial Aid and Scholarships, whose financial support made this research possible. Your generosity is deeply appreciated. Thank you, Nickolas Theis, Liudmila Listrovaya, and Meredith Jacob, who generously provided your feedback on my chapters as part of the Environmental Sociology peer review group. Thank you, Kindra De’Armen, Natasha Nickson, Dawn Harmann, Christine Capili, and Keya Saxena, for writing with me. Your encouragement and feedback have been a constant source of motivation. A big thank you goes to Michelle Jacob for hosting the Auntie Way Writing Retreats. Your training of self-care-centered writing routines and advising of environmental justice for Indigenous rights critically informed the writing of this dissertation. Thank you, Mike Murashige, for providing me with effective writing tools to enhance the strength of my writing. Your presence empowered me as a writer. 8 I would like to thank my American family, Ellen Scott and Baoying Scott, for sharing your home with me. Your love and care powered me through the writing of this dissertation. I also thank my parents, Zhibin Huang and Xiaoning Zhang, for your unconditional love. I have done many things that went against the traditional Chinese norms, including filial piety, but you never stopped supporting me. Thank you, my brother Haihao Huang, for being my best friend and companion. You are my home! I wish to thank Heido’s old friends: Peter, Lucy, Rae and late Bennie, for your furry love. You brought me so much happiness and joy as I was writing this dissertation. I smile because of you. Lastly, I would like to express my appreciation to all those who contributed indirectly to this research, including Tien Liang, Spring Atman, Shin Shin Tang, Mary Ann Petersen, and my Sangha at Zen West. Your support and encouragement have been invaluable. I am deeply thankful for your presence in my life. Thank you all for being a part of this journey. 9 To the collective self. 10 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................ 14 Understanding Climate Disaster as Disruption of Home ............................................ 16 Ontological Security 17 Place and Home 19 Home in Disaster Recovery 23 Rural Communities in Disaster Recovery 24 The McKenzie River Valley ........................................................................................ 26 Methods and Data ........................................................................................................ 29 Data Analysis 34 Chapter Outlines .......................................................................................................... 35 CHAPTER II: CARE DURING CRISIS ................................................................................ 39 Background: The Day of the Fire ................................................................................ 44 Responding to High Wind: “Taking It in Stride” 45 Hesitancy to Leave Home 46 Early Preparation for Evacuation 48 The Fire Is Here—The Evacuation Experience ........................................................... 54 Staying Behind: “I don’t know what I was doing. But I felt like I was doing something” 58 Discussion .................................................................................................................... 60 CHAPTER III: AFTER FIRE: WHERE IS HOME? .............................................................. 65 Economies and Emotions in Disaster-induced Migration ........................................... 67 House and Home in Disaster Recovery ....................................................................... 68 The Returnees .............................................................................................................. 70 The Relocators ............................................................................................................. 77 11 The Re-orientors 83 Discussion .................................................................................................................... 89 CHAPTER IV: AFTER FIRE: LIVING IN RECREATIONAL VEHICLES ........................ 93 Vehicle Living and Homelessness ............................................................................... 96 Trailer Living in Disaster Recovery ............................................................................ 97 Case Study Background: FEMA Trailer Facts, Observations, and Reactions ............ 99 Economic Factors: “RV is some people’s only option” ............................................ 101 Non-Economic Factors: “It was more of a community happiness” .......................... 104 Stress Associated with RV Living ............................................................................. 108 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 116 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION ............................................................................................. 119 Contributions ............................................................................................................. 120 Environmental Justice for Rural Communities 120 Foregrounding Place in Social Inequalities 121 Rethinking Disaster Recovery 121 Methodological Contribution 121 Limitations and Future Research ............................................................................... 122 Recommendations ..................................................................................................... 123 Clarify the Definition of Disaster Survivors 123 Implement Disaster Recovery Governance 124 Regulate Property Investment After Disaster 124 Degrow Extractive Industries 124 Final Thoughts ........................................................................................................... 125 12 APPENDIX: INTERVIEW GUIDE ...................................................................................... 127 REFERENCES CITED ......................................................................................................... 129 13 LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1.1. Reference map of the McKenzie River Valley ................................................................. 28 4.1. Three types of RVs ......................................................................................................... 101 14 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION The Pacific Northwest is known for its vibrant old-growth forests, nature trails, rivers, mineral hot springs, mushrooms, and salmon, to name just a few. The McKenzie River watershed is one such popular place, where wild fish like steelheads and salmon live. It supplies drinking water for the Springfield and Eugene metro areas. Known as the “sportsman’s paradise” for fishing, hiking, and boating, amongst many other tourist attractions related to the McKenzie River that flows through, the valley is a well-known place for outdoor lovers. People who move here often call themselves lucky. As a river resident named John Vincent put it, “People come up and they would spend thousands of dollars every year for vacation. And we’re just living here, like we’re on vacation all the time.” Their sense of pride is undeniably attached to the qualities of place. Thus, the McKenzie River Valley is ideal for city retirees like John, often wealthy, to spend the rest of their life in nature, or at least part of their retirement if they have second homes elsewhere. Working- class households raising children, and professionals who work remotely, also find the McKenzie an ideal place to live, mostly for its adjacency to nature. But in addition to the love of the recreational qualities of the place are the hard-hit communities that were once thriving from supporting natural resources projects such as logging. Following the completion or decline of those projects, these communities are now supporting the tourism, mainly for the purpose of survival. This surviving part of the McKenzie River Valley is concentrated in the town of Blue River, named after the river running through its community. Blue River came to develop when white settlers—workers and their families—migrated to the area for natural resource extractive activities such as mining, logging, constructing dams, and related employment such as jobs in sawmills, the forest service, construction companies, schools, and other supporting businesses like restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and motels. Even though timber activities have 15 continued, employment in timber has reduced following the automation in logging operations as well as stricter timber regulations. As such, the town of Blue River has experienced brain drain, becoming a legacy community, tucked in at the rural, forested McKenzie River Valley. An old-timer resident Allen Bells described Blue River as a “ticky tacky” place, “a home for people that can’t afford it” (Interview, 2023). “More low income to no income type folks in this town,” said Allena Beecher (Interview, 2022), a newcomer self-employed entrepreneur. “There was a lot of drug addicts, a lot of alcoholics,” said Renee Anderson, an old-timer renter who grew up mostly homeless on the river. “It attracts people that are trying to get away or to live in the woods” (Interview, 2022). To Nora Helms, a newcomer renter, Blue River is a place where “people have new names new identities.” But most of the river residents can agree that Blue River is also a “peaceful” and “quiet” place with “a lot of fresh air” and “space,” and that it is “a lot of less stressful,” as shared by another old-timer resident, Jack Wimbledon (Interview, 2011). In many ways, Blue River struggled with poverty and other consequences like those of deindustrialization—like drug and alcohol abuse and mental illness issues. Unfortunately, adding salt to the wound, a catastrophic wildfire named the Holiday Farm Fire broke out on September 7, 2020. Burning a total area of 173,000 acres, the fire destroyed over 500 homes, including most of the Blue River town. During the first day of the fire, at its peak of spread, the fire was consuming 324 acres or 245 football fields every 60 seconds (NWS Portland 2022). This rare but potentially more frequent ecological tragedy presents an opportunity to query into the experiences of the fire victims. How would an already stressed rural town like Blue River recover from this climate catastrophe? How did everyone else in the valley experience the displacement and recover from such a traumatic event? This dissertation answers these broad questions by examining the lived experiences of the wildfire survivors in the McKenzie River Valley. Specifically, I ask: What was it like for 16 them to experience the emergency evacuation? How did they recover from the fire displacement and the loss of home, not just physical structures but also their sense of place and security? And more broadly: How does place shape the process in which survivors attempted to restore a sense of home? In answering these questions, I am attentive to variations in people’s experiences of the fire, as well as in their long-term recovery. While wildfire survivors shared similar stories, there are variations that reflect both class and place attachment, and these variations are the focus of this work. These are stories in which the survivors’ experience with the fire challenges the current practices in disaster recovery, which prioritize housing and economic development. To be home again means to have both a physical home and support for social connections and emotional well-being. Understanding Climate Disaster as Disruption of Home This dissertation approaches home as both a physical and emotional boundary where the dwellers can feel safe and secure while conducting daily routines (Borchard 2013; Kusenbach and Paulsen 2013). Climate disaster, on the other hand, is an event that threatens, violates, and sometimes destroys such home boundaries. Under such climate threats, people are forced to make decisions to defend their boundaries and rebuild in case of loss of home. Such responses, as we already know, vary depending on an individual’s social location, such as race, gender, class, age, and health. But as research shows, place, as a spatial and cultural context where home is embedded, also influences people’s behaviors (Gieryn 2000; Paulsen 2004). For example, people of different place-based identities, living in places of different property laws and regulations, can operate differently towards environmental changes that negatively affect one’s home (Harrison 2020; Herbert and Orne 2021). This section will elaborate on the link between home as a source of ontological security and the role of place in understanding home. I then move on to discussing current research on home in disaster recovery, and specific challenges rural communities face in the context of disaster. 17 Ontological Security The concept of ontological security is grounded in the human experience of being real, alive, and whole, with unquestionable identity and autonomy (Laing 1969). Such an individual, in Laing’s (1969) words, has “a firm core of ontological security.” An ontologically secure person can gratifyingly relate themselves to others, while an ontologically insecure person is distracted with maintaining themselves. They respond to ordinary circumstances of life differently. As Laing (1969) puts it: If a position of primary ontological security has been reached, the ordinary circumstances of life do not afford a perpetual threat to one’s own existence. If such a basis for living has not been reached, the ordinary circumstances of everyday life constitute a continual and deadly threat. (Laing 1969:42) Even though Laing (1969) developed this foundational understanding of ontological security for psychotherapists in their care of the schizophrenic patients, environmental sociologists have successfully extended this concept to the understanding of individuals’ experience impacted by external factors, particularly the consequences of advanced capitalism and the institutions of modernity (Banham 2020; Giddens 1990, 1991). Modern industry produces both “goods”—better quality of life for most people, and “bads”— environmental hazards, climate change, vaccine-resistant disease, in additions to social ills such as unemployment and lack of health care (Taylor‐Gooby and Zinn 2006). The pursuits of “goods,” mostly driven by endless growth of capitalism generate “bads” as unwanted side effects. As such, nature becomes industrialized, resulting in manufactured uncertainties— risks as a result of more and better knowledge, as well as the inability to know (Beck 2000). Mega-risks, which knew no geographical or socioeconomic limits, threaten every citizen (Beck 1992; Giddens 1990, 1991), challenging their ontological security, or “the confidence that most humans beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of the surrounding social and material environments of action” (Giddens 1990:92). 18 In the context of disasters, the survivors’ experience of sudden evacuation from their home, loss of home and making their way back home can be understood using the lens of ontological security, which emphasizes the need to experience oneself as a whole (Giddens 1984, 1991; Laing 1969). Routines and norms block an individual from feeling anxious towards unpredictability, and these norms that are often taken for granted in one’s interaction with the external world foster ontological security (Banham 2020; Giddens 1991). A key element to ontological security is the notion of trust, with which one feels confident about the social and natural environment. The development of trust chases away anxiety and despair, which means that having a high level of ontological security allows individuals to fulfill social expectations, believing that their positions in the world will remain stable (Banham 2020; Giddens 1991:38-55). Social scientists have used ontological security, inherently a mental health framework (Laing 1969; Padgett 2007), to understand the lived experience of disaster survivors (Haney and Gray‐Scholz 2020a; Hawkins and Maurer 2011). In Erikson’s (2006) work on the survivors’ experience of the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood, after the initial “blow” of the flood, the survivors experienced the second trauma—the loss of their community, an integral part of the identity of the rural Appalachian survivors. Displacement like this threatens the displaced on the existential level that results in ontological insecurity (Farbotko 2019). Such needs to address ontological insecurity began gaining some attention in the official disaster response, such as in the Stafford Act, which dictated federal funds for mental health assistance following the 1972 Hurricane Agnes. As Hawkins and Maurer (2011:146) posit in their work with the 2005 Hurricane Katrina survivors, “the protracted mourning process of the loss of ontological security may increase psychological distress in ways that are not being captured by the standard models of disaster research,” and “the losses associated with disasters go beyond the physical and 19 financial” (2011:154). More recent research uses ontological security to explore experiences in different social groups, as well as identities associated to place—such as gender—where women appear to be more disrupted than men in regard to the loss of familiar landmarks and the loss of routines (Haney and Gray‐Scholz 2020a), and work identity that motivated the disaster survivors to stay in the disaster site (Harrison 2020). However, by and large, the field of ontological security in disaster studies has remained underutilized. This dissertation focuses on the process of restoring ontological security among the rural wildfire survivors. I explore the distinct ways they decided where they chose to settle their post-disaster home and a creative type of home that has emerged onto the disaster recovery scene—vehicle living. I argue that these unique choices by the survivors are in part shaped by place. Besides class differences, place factors such as identities, property laws, and culture pull and push the survivors into and out of place. In the following, I will discuss place in depth and consider how it has informed sociological research on the study of ontological security and home. Place and Home Ontological security extends to place, with which an individual builds relationships to practice routines, to build community, and to create an identity for the continuity of the self, as well as to maintain the constancy of the social and material environment (Banham 2020; Gieryn 2000; Hawkins and Maurer 2011; Padgett 2007; Paulsen 2004). We tend to announce who we are by the place we come from or live in, in part because place offers desirable identities (Gieryn 2000:229; Paulsen 2004:247). In Gieryn’s (2000) comprehensive review of the sociological studies of place, he succinctly critiques the absence of place in dominant social science research—quantitative and survey research, for example, which emphasizes traditional sociological variables such as race, class, and gender, as in census data and atlas descriptions. This approach misses the nuances of place in the experience of the people in the 20 place. Gieryn argues that we cannot equate place to place with similar variables. “Place mediates social life” (Abu-Lughod 1968, cited in Gieryn 2000: 467). It plays an active role in securing tradition as well as expressing class inequalities. Place is at once a geographic location, material form, and “the cultural conjurings of them” (Gieryn 2000:468). As a conceptual tool of actualizing ways to study place, “place character” (Paulsen 2004) came into play as a mediation between place and social action. As Paulsen (2004:245) defines it, place character is “a set of patterns in meaning and action that are specific to a distinct locale.” It combines geography, structures, and people, as well as imagination, which is particularly evident for places with rich history. Place shapes behaviors through its character, which influences who resides in the place, what resources and goods flow into the place, how social actions are carried out, and what the actions are oriented towards. For example, rural areas tend to have a more difficult time accessing resources, not only because they are geographically isolated but also because of the cultural identity, or rurality, established by the unique qualities of the place such as history, supporting industries, and poverty (Flint and Brennan 2007; Lunz Trujillo 2022; Rivera and Kapucu 2015; Sherman 2021; Tickamyer and Duncan 1990). In a study of the Appalachian residents’ experiences with the Federal Emergency Management Agency after flooding in 2012, researchers described the rural towns in southeastern Kentucky as “a place that binds people together with a powerful sense of ‘being home’ among the deeply rutted dirt roads leading into hollows that shelter entire families” (Oppizzi and Speraw 2016:600). In such a place, the residents often lack understanding of rules and eligibility for federal disaster assistance, leading them to feel devalued and “written off [by the agents] from the start” (605). The gap between resource recipients and distributors thus hinders the flow of disaster recovery resources. 21 Differing from sense of place, or the understanding of place, place character emphasizes social actions based on the material conditions of the place and the interpretation of the conditions, wheareas sense of place, or “a collection of symbolic meanings, attachment, and satisfaction with a spatial setting held by an individual or group” (Stedman 2002: 563), remains “short of the active element” (Paulsen 2004:245). However, despite the different approaches to the study of place, both see place attachment as an important element in the experience of place. As “a bond between people and their environment based on cognition and affect” (Stedman 2002:563), place attachment facilitates a sense of security and well-being (Gieryn 2000:481) that is crucial to identity (Stedman 2002). In their research on rurality and place attachment, Husa and Morse (2022) find that those who grew up in rural America tend to value the contentment of rural living, connection to family, desire to raise children, appreciation of the culture, and the natural environments, and that these values may not be shared by those from urban areas. Environmental sociologists also argue that decisions regarding place cannot be solely made on the physical and financial levels, as place attachment is a significant predictor when it comes to deciding whether to stay or leave a disaster-affected place (Haney 2019; Morrice 2013). Similarly, Harrison (2020) found that notions of place are deeply integrated into identities of people through the work that they do. Despite experiencing economic, emotional, and physical hardships following the BP oil spill disaster of 2010, shrimp fishers were generally forgiving and supportive of BP, despite blaming them for their hardships. The work of both fishing and oil are related to the unique environment of coastal Louisiana, and are central to the livelihoods and identities of both people and the community. Remaining supportive of oil production, despite suffering from its consequences, served to restore ontological security after disaster. 22 Central to place attachment and its role in maintaining one’s identity is the feeling of home (Windsong 2010). Home is something that can function as a trust-based boundary. Home is a constant space for practicing routines, feeling in control, and building identities (Dupuis and Thorns 1998). The concept of home as a source for people to feel ontologically secure is further extended to the outside of a physical home—relationships with one’s social network as well as relationships with the nonhuman, such as forest as a place (Banham 2020). As revealed in Banham’s (2020) case study, in which forest serves as an ontological symbol, home extends to the “ontological understandings and considerations of the future.” Perceptions of future, together with the practices of routines, control, and identity construction at present, are the key elements of the bargaining chips for an individual to feel balanced on their ontological continuum of security and insecurity (Bondi 2014). Home not only refers to a physical, tangible object, but also has important social and symbolic dimensions (Kusenbach and Paulsen 2013), and both are fundamental to one’s ontological security (Borchard 2013; Kusenbach and Paulsen 2013). Boccagni and Kusenbach (2020:3) succinctly summarized this idea when they noted: Home is both an emotion and a place imbued with meaning generated through the everyday life routines enacted in it, the sense of protection and intimacy it emanates, and the largely positive memories of the past (and possibly future aspirations) it may elicit. Taken together, home is more than a shelter, because of its geographic dimensions of connecting to the place and the society (Goyer 2016). People make sense of home through their pursuits of stability in both physical and emotional structures of home, which is made possible through their material and interpretative experience of place. To better understand one’s decisions for home after a disaster, I argue that it is important to consider the experience of home and the aspiration of home for the future, all connected to their relationships with place. 23 Home in Disaster Recovery One key debate in research on disaster recovery regards the differentiation between home and home ownership. The structural commitment of home ownership shifts the burden of responsibility for citizens’ welfare away from the state and its institutions and onto the individuals, their home, and their nuclear family (Mallett 2004). In doing so, both the building and real estate industries, and governments with particular social agendas, gain from this ideological agenda to increase economic efficiency and growth. FEMA’s approach to disaster recovery assumes “homeownership, high computer literary, nuclear family status, the ability to navigate bureaucracy, and access to insurance and other resources enabling households to return to their pre-disaster economic status and lifestyle” (Mueller et al. 2011:293). Among the marginalized groups are lower-income renters, who are routinely left out, as FEMA’s recovery framework is centered on wealthier homeowners (Laska, Howell, and Jerolleman 2018). In the book Markets of Sorrow, Vincanne Adams (2020) critiques the disaster recovery process after Katrina as “a privately organized, publicly funded bureaucratic failure” in which public funds were funneled through for-profit companies, who then distributed it to the victims of disaster. Not only are for-profit companies winning in disaster capitalism (Klein 2007), but nonprofit sectors such as charities and faith-based groups also emerge to make use of federal funds to the extent that economy dictates needs, instead of otherwise. Researchers have also critically examined the ways that FEMA’s approach to disaster recovery may be biased and may exacerbate existing inequalities (Emrich, Aksha, and Zhou 2022; Howell and Elliott 2018, 2019; Reid 2013; Verderber 2008a). Worry, economic instability, and loss of ability to make long-term plans are commonly felt by survivors who attempt to navigate the FEMA systems (Reid 2013). In Browne’s (2015) ethnographic study 24 following one large African American family’s recovery experience after Katrina, disaster survivors experienced challenges and stress from living in FEMA trailers without access to a kitchen to cook traditional food. The exacerbation of trauma through the engagement process leads to further disengagement and a reduction of agency (Laska, Howell, and Jerolleman 2018). As a whole, this research reveals inequalities in disaster recovery under the notion that having a home equals owning a house, even though research has shown that “feelings of at- homeness, is not synonymous with home ownership” (Windsong 2010:205). With an explicit focus on home, this dissertation joins this discussion on home and home ownership in disaster recovery, furthering the argument that disaster recovery appears lopsided with its current material recovery approach, calling for a paradigm shift from its housing-centric model to a model that is oriented to the restoration of a sense of home. Rural Communities in Disaster Recovery This dissertation refers to the following definition of environmental justice specific to wildfires: when all people, especially those that have not been historically engaged, consulted, and meaningfully involved in governance processes that affect their environment, are inequitably located in high fire risk areas and/or under conditions that make them more susceptible to prolonged exposure to wildfire impacts, smoke or post-fire hazards such as flooding. (Thomas et al. 2022: 3-4) Rural communities are one such understudied field in environmental justice. Research has shown that after a disaster, rural areas tend to experience greater difficulties in accessing resources (Oppizzi and Speraw 2016). Furthermore, pre-existing inequalities that exist in many rural communities tend to be reproduced in disaster recovery outcomes (Dye et al. 2021). For example, in a study of the experiences of rural Appalachian residents with FEMA agents in a 2012 flood, Oppizzi and Speraw (2016) found that rural residents often lack understanding of rules and eligibility for federal disaster assistance. The 25 vulnerability in rural areas is further worsened by poverty, geographic isolation, and low resource availability. Rural identities also contribute to delayed or, sometimes, rejected resources. For those with such identities, a psychological attachment to the rural place often leads to a distrust of experts, or anti-intellectualism (Lunz Trujillo 2022). Rural identifiers often believe that outsider experts and intellectuals devalue and dismiss their experiences, and that intellectuals and experts from the cities look down on rural areas and stereotype the rural populations as undereducated, ignorant, and, therefore, inferior. The resentment that many from rural areas feel perpetuates isolation from urban-affiliated professionals, experts, and the federal government (Cramer 2016, Hochschild, 2018; Wuthnow, 2019, cited in Lunz Trujillo 2022). Due to the failure of key institutions, people in rural spaces dismiss their dependency on institutions (Sherman 2021). The victimhood of rural residents is particularly salient among the ranchers, loggers, and farmers, whose beliefs that resources are limitless meets governmental regulations for land and water. For these reasons, disaster recovery in rural areas relies heavily on local groups such as faith communities and on individual efforts, thus making marginalized groups even more vulnerable. While we know much about the limitations the rural communities face in the context of disaster recovery, how people living in these communities bounce back from disaster remains understudied (Pellow 2016; Thomas et al. 2022). Further, few studies examine ways that wildfires are affecting people’s homes (Thomas et al. 2022: 12). My dissertation fills this gap by investigating the rural survivors’ decisions around home. The decisions include those made during the emergency phase of the fire and those made during their long-term recovery—how they reestablished their post-disaster home after experiencing a catastrophic wildfire. I next describe in depth the research site, the McKenzie. 26 The McKenzie River Valley The McKenzie River Valley runs through the Willamette National Forest, in the eastern part of Lane County, Oregon. The valley has seen her days with floods, snowstorms, and, more commonly because of her forested location, wildfires. Wildfires are a natural and common occurrence in the forest. However, more recently, as a result of climate change that has brought hotter and drier weather to the area (Koffel 2021; Rattner 2020; Reilly et al. 2022), they have become a greater concern for residents as more evacuation orders were made and private properties were burned. Smoke from the fires naturally became one of the characteristics of the McKenzie River Valley, and the rest of Oregon, as everyone breathes the polluted air. In addition to wildfire, the valley has experienced other changes related to human activity. Mining for gold in the old days created hollows in the forest. Dams for hydropower and flood control forever changed the course of some underwater activities, such as the life cycles of salmon. Even though mass production of timber dwindled following changes of markets and regulations, such as the protection order of the spotted owl, timber businesses— especially those on the private lands—are still active. Clear cut and tree farms patched the forested area on the McKenzie. This uneven patchwork of timber management not only is aesthetically affecting the valley, but also has real impact on the safety of the river residents. Once facilitated by favored weather conditions, wildfires can spread quickly on these artificial forest lands, giving less time for people nearby to prepare to escape (Harris et al. 2021). Along the river or the Highway 126 exist eight unincorporated communities—Cedar Flat, the closest community to the city proper of Eugene and Springfield, then Waterville, Leaburg, Vida, Nimrod, Blue River, Rainbow, and the McKenzie Bridge. Originally, it was home to the Indigenous people, the Kalapuyan Tribe. Both the settlers’ invasion and disease 27 chased out the Indigenous population from the area (Beilharz 2014). The modern-day white settlers mainly have relied on private property ownership and income from working in the mines, dam construction, timber industries, and forest services. More so, the white settlers and their practices with the land, largely driven by the extraction of natural resources for profit, shaped the whitening process of the rural land, making today’s rural spaces dominated by white communities (Hormel 2024; Sherman 2021). The McKenzie in this case study is no exception. Being the most densely populated community among all, the town of Blue River— named after the river that empties into the McKenzie—was the most vibrant when workers employed in those nature exploitation and alteration industries frequented the area. But it has since gone quiet after labor was no longer attractive, following both automation of the timber industry and the decline of mass timber activities. Like other small communities in deindustrialized areas in the country, Blue River experienced brain drain. Young people found it easier to be employed elsewhere, especially if they had no elders to care for at home. More so, informal housing—such as manufactured homes, mobile homes, and trailers that used to accommodate workers who had since left the area—attracted in-migrants looking for affordable housing. The community in general had been aging and poor, and for some, that is sad and depressing. Despite these downward social conditions, Blue River and the majority of the McKenzie River Valley remains attractive to tourists, rich professionals who call the valley home or own second homes there, and an ideal place to retire. They were drawn by the natural ambience of the McKenzie River and the Willamette Forest, and for some, they moved to the area to raise their kids in a close-knit community. But this was brought to an abrupt end on the night of September 7, 2020. 28 A wildfire broke out near the small community of Rainbow and was rapidly spread westward by the high wind from the east. Known as the Holiday Farm Fire, as it was named after the Holiday Farm property next to the alleged starting point of the fire, it burned through the majority of the historic town of Blue River, along the McKenzie River Valley, to the forested area of Leaburg. Days before the fire, red flag warnings that indicated high fire risk were issued statewide (NWS Portland 2022). The weather was hot, dry, and windy, setting a perfect condition for wildfires. Once the fire was ignited, for 58 days, the fire burned a total of 173,393 acres, destroyed more than 450 dwellings, displaced over 2500 rural residents, and killed one person (NWS Portland 2022). (See Figure 1.1 below.) Throughout this dissertation, I will use “The McKenzie,” “The McKenzie River Valley,” and “The Valley” to refer to this area, as these are expressions commonly used by the residents when they describe their home. Figure 1.1. Reference map of the McKenzie River Valley (InciWeb. 2020). 29 Methods and Data For this dissertation, I used ethnographic methods to examine the lived experience of wildfire survivors, from the moment of evacuation to the third year after the fire. Ethnography is well-suited to investigate the survivors’ experiences in this case study for several reasons. First, to write about people’s experiences, especially the experience of the people whose culture is different from mine, it was best to do so in a way that allowed me to experience, on a deeper level, the place where they lived. I was born and raised in China, where forests are mostly nationally owned, so it was important for me to visit and spend time in homes that were part of a forest. I wanted to spend as much time as I could with homeowners to fully understand their sense of pride for owning a piece of private property and the link between their desire to own and the pursuit of independence. I admit that after a few years of living in the US, I felt the temptation of purchasing a home in order to achieve the supposed American dream, as these two are often closely related, so I can to some degree relate to the survivors’ desire to prioritize properties in their disaster recovery. Second, given that place played such an important role in this research, it was important for me to establish various connections to the place and the people. Ethnography “invokes the self and rich description and interpretation as a means to knowing” (Stephen and Speed 2021:134). And as I spent more time in the McKenzie community, I increasingly noticed the similarities of Blue River to my own hometown in China, which is a small coal mining district in a mountainous area. Like Blue River—a town that used to thrive on the now-deindustrialized logging industry—my own hometown was also impoverished in the exiting process of the coal industry. As a child from a long-established family in my hometown, I am like many who left Blue River for better education and employment in order to escape poverty. But even though I and many of our neighbors left, my family never did. It would be nearly impossible to persuade my parents to live elsewhere because from both their 30 words and my observation, they do not feel they belong in any new places. To them, no matter how depressing my hometown may seem to others, my parents feel at home there. They have their communities—relatives and friends. They know who lives in which building and what their stories are. They can easily afford the lower cost of living with their retirement pension. Also, they often refer to the mountains and rivers when they talk about my hometown, just like the old timers in the close-knit community on the McKenzie. As a newcomer to Blue River, I experienced being both a renter and the owner of an RV home. I can relate to some of the feelings among some of my research participants, such as the precarity of renting. I was evicted once when I rented a space to park my RV home in Eugene, because a neighbor who had a history of not getting along with my landlord reported my residence to the county. When the county officials came, they notified me that full-time RV living on that property was not permitted, but implied that they would not have enforced this rule if my neighbor had not complained. When my research participants shared their concerns of potentially being evicted in their RVs, it reminded me of the weeks after I was evicted. I could not immediately secure a long-term RV space to call home, so I travelled around in my RV, worrying how I was going to continue my school without a long-term place to park my home. Luckily, an RV space was open soon before the new school quarter began, but the stress and anxiety I felt at the time still feel real. This experience is consistent with what I observed in my fieldwork, that many renters and RV living survivors worried about the stability of their home, which was often out of their control. As a former homeowner in China, like many of the newcomer homeowners on the McKenzie, I was also driven by economics when I purchased my home as a newcomer. My first thought when considering the purchase was to use it as an opportunity to accumulate wealth. I also took advantage of the reputation of the place being coastal and international, an enjoyable place to live. My then-social network was the work community through my 31 university teaching job and communities outside the place like my family, but much less with the old timers in the place, just like most of the newcomers on the McKenzie. Taken all these together, both my professional and personal experiences strengthened my understanding of the survivors’ recovery experiences, and my relationship with the McKenzie. Working as a cashier at a local general store provided me with a rare opportunity to experience the business side of the McKenzie community, where I regularly interacted with both residents and tourists. Among the locals, I observed patterned differences of consumption habits between old timers and newcomers. For example, the store where I worked sold products such as herbal tea drinks and organic foods with vegetarian and vegan choices, catering mostly to middle-class newcomers and tourists who preferred healthy diets, arts, and live music. Customers who preferred bars with alcoholic drinks, and country style dining with formal meals like steak and briskets, mostly patronized another café nearby, which was owned and supported by old timers. Word spread quickly after I began working in the store. I had customers who came to the store to talk with me about my research and their experiences. Through conversations like this, I secured interviews and had a convenient venue to meet up with my research participants who chose the store for follow-up interviews. Knowing many survivors left the McKenzie after fire but maintained remote connections with the community, I recruited on a popular online community bulletin board. As soon as I posted my recruitment information, I received endorsements from community members whom I had met in person. One response went like this: “FYI folks - I think I first crossed paths with Haisu at the Blue River Park where she was one of the folks who helped plant. Then I crossed paths with her at Finn Rock Reach (once again volunteering). And also at Valor Farms. I enjoyed my chats with her.” Supports like this helped me find several fire survivors who privately messaged me to schedule interviews. 32 Ethnography also provides opportunities for me to follow the changes my research participants experienced over the years. I repeatedly interviewed many of them during scheduled and spontaneous visits, during which I observed changes of their decisions regarding their home and these changes are critical in understanding the struggles of the disaster survivors. For example, among a small group of survivors, in my first rounds of interviews and visits with them, it felt that they would never leave the river, or they would not return to the river after they had left. But a year or two later, I was informed that they were going to do the opposite, either return or leave after their initial decisions. These changes are important data to understand recovery, which would not have been captured if I had not invested in building relationships through spending a substantive amount of time in the field. During the two years intensive fieldwork on the McKenzie, like the survivors in my study, I also experienced changes in my life, which in turn enriched my understanding of their experiences. For example, as I was interviewing my research participants about their process of losing home and rebuilding, I was also grieving over the loss of my own home due to the sudden end of a long-term relationship and rebuilding my own sense of home. I vividly recall the words of a research participant during an interview, “Wildfires are like divorce, you never think it would happen when you are married.” Interviews like this can often go off the topic but digress often turned out to be a great way to build rapport and trust. When appropriate, I shared my personal experience with my research participants who then were generous with their time listening. From them, not only did I learn about their fire stories, but I also learned ways to bounce back from my own personal struggles with their wisdom. I regularly received phone calls from them, checking on me to see how I was doing. They also invited me to their homes for holidays and festivals, or simply when I needed to rest. I risked sharing my vulnerability with my research participants. In return, I felt accepted by them. 33 I conducted the fieldwork during 2021 through 2023, when we witnessed lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic and the suffering of the minority groups as demonstrated in the Black Lives Matter movement, amongst many other challenges that disproportionally impacted the disadvantaged groups. As a member of the Black, Indigenous and the People of Color (BIPOC) with an international background, such expansive exposure and immersion in my primarily white study community during heightened political divide in the country would not have been my priority without training in Empowerment Self-Defense (ESD). I do not have a black belt as it is not the purpose of the training. Instead, ESD focuses on theories and discussions on the feminist approach to gender-based violence, and the hands-on practices of tools to help trainees to effectively set boundaries to prevent potential violence from occurring. Physical defense is one component in the training where I learned essential methods to stop and keep distance from aggressors. As part of ESD training, before I entered my research field, I also took trainings in crisis de-escalation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). These trainings empowered me to engage my fieldwork with confidence. In all, through these ethnographic efforts in data collection, I spoke with 74 fire survivors and 10 disaster recovery associates. The disaster recovery associates are officials and representatives from disaster recovery organizations, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), state long-term recovery groups, and local disaster relief centers. Of the 74 survivors, 44 were women (59%), 29 were men (39%) and 1 identified themselves as being genderless (1%). About 89% of the fire survivors were white, with the rest consisting of Hispanic, Black and American Indian, each taking up 3%, and 1% is Asian, which was representative of the demographics in Lane County (Census, 2022). About 20% of the interviewed survivors had annual household incomes under $25,000, 150% poverty based on the federal poverty guidelines (2024). 34 In my interviews I asked questions in four primary topical areas. First, I began with the biographies, such as where they were born and raised, school, work, and what brought them to the McKenzie River Valley. Then I proceeded by asking about the fire—what happened the night of fire, and how and where they sheltered. I asked them how they decided to rebuild or move away, what the rebuilding process was like, what resources were available to them, what their experience was interacting with the agencies provided those resources. Then I asked how they managed stress in the recovery process, what support they received, and what resources they wished to have (See Appendix for Interview Guide). Each interview ends with how they think about the future of the place and their advice to others as someone who’s experienced the fire. Each interview took at least 90 minutes, some as long as three hours. This study received the Institutional Review Board’s approval at the University of Oregon in August 2021 (ID#: STUDY00000184). All research participants were given an opportunity to identify a pseudonym they would like to use in my dissertation, and for those who did not, I developed one. Data Analysis I used the Otter.ai software to transcribe the interviews and the Dedoose qualitative data analysis software to code the transcriptions and fieldnotes. Informed by grounded theory methods (Charmaz 2006), I used an iterative approach (Tracy and Tracy 2013) to refine analytic categorization, in which both class and place attachment appear the most influential in the survivors’ reports. Class is mostly indicated in homeowner insurance, income levels and employment, while place attachment is shown in the survivors’ place-based identities: old timers who lived in the community for more than 20 years, and newcomers less than five years on average. I engaged in a reflexive process of focused coding and memo writing during which I reviewed the transcripts multiple times to ensure the quality of my analysis. I 35 used both open coding and codes informed by literature and my interview guide to identify core themes. Chapter Outlines This dissertation explores the lived experiences of the wildfire survivors, with a focus on their decisions on home during and after the fire crisis. I will build my case through three empirical chapters. In chapter two, I describe the survivors’ experience with the fire—the emergency phase of the disaster. A central theme in these accounts is the changing perceptions of home and gendered care response to crisis. Despite red flag warning of extreme fire danger, due to exceptionally dry and windy weather, most fire survivors decided to stay home. Even after the power went out, most of them went to bed. Many of them had their phones either off or away from them. A few residents who packed earlier than others share the following characteristics: newcomer women, and men with caring roles in their family for either children, sick or elder relatives. Men in general showed less readiness in packing for emergency despite the warning signs they had already sensed. In general, they took wait and see response to the fire risk. Those who stayed or tried to stay behind despite the emergency evacuation order also tended to be men, either single or with spouses who relied on them for mobility. This chapter shows that risk responses and evacuation behaviors are associated with the survivors’ perceptions of both power and powerlessness, linked mostly to gendered differences in care. Gendered responses to emergency are largely shaped by the survivors’ care of their personal safety, the safety of their properties, as well as the well-being of their community. Their care during emergency, as indicated by the survivors’ experiences, is to a large extent shaped by the characteristics of the place. Chapter three follows the survivors to their longer-term recovery. I ask the following research questions: How did wildfire survivors decide where they wanted to settle after the fire? What factors did they consider in their decisions for home? And how did place shape 36 wildfire survivors’ experiences, actions, and outcomes as they attempted to rebuild their homes? The survivors’ choices as to where they wanted their post-disaster homes varied greatly depending on how they were connected to the place before fire, and how they reattached themselves to the place after fire, both affecting their economic conditions and social connectedness. Place tends to pull back the survivors who had land tenure as well as social connections with their chosen communities and to push out those who generally did not own land and are less socially connected in the Valley. Among the most struggling are the poor and isolated rural members of the old timer’s community and the newcomer renters in the Valley with weak ties to the community and precarious financial conditions. My final empirical chapter—Chapter Four—continues with the longer-term recovery, focusing on a marginalized yet popular home option—recreational vehicles (RV). In this chapter, 23 RVing survivors shared their experience acquiring their RVs, opportunities and challenges living in RVs and their aspired home after the RV phase. I ask the following research questions: What is the process for the fire survivors to remake their home in RVs? What affected the different experiences between the two groups of RVers? Further, how does RV living provide a sense of home for the RVers? If RVs are practical solutions to home after disaster, how may RV living survivors be better supported in the future? I find that RV living after fire is both an economic choice and a choice associated with the identities of the RV occupants. Such identities include old-timer identities with which the survivors feel at home for being back to their communities on the river, and RVers’ identities associated with mostly the experience of living the van life as they continued to recover from the fire. The rural full time RVers appear to be a distinct class of survivors, partly isolated from the organized disaster recovery. This dissertation contributes to three important areas of inquiries: understanding home in disaster, foregrounding place in social inequalities, and rethinking disaster recovery. The 37 primary contribution of this dissertation is the sociological documentation of the destruction and reconstruction of “home” for people in both the physical and symbolic sense. Specifically, it connects the history of the land with the current time rural inequalities and the suffering of the predominantly rural white population victimized by climate disasters. A central goal of this dissertation is to emphasize the importance of place as an axis that structures home experiences in the context of disaster recovery. The rural place characters, indicated in this case study of the McKenzie River Valley, meant a different kind of social norm under which the survivors operated as they experienced the extreme weather and the transformative wildfire. Such norms influence their perceptions of home, as in when home is safe, unsafe, when one should hold on to their home and when to give up, where to reestablish home after disaster and ways to come up with creative solutions to home, such as the RV homes. This dissertation illuminates how home remains a central struggle for the traumatized wildfire survivors as they figured out housing that fit their financial and cultural expectations. Home is an experience with both material and emotional dimensions. It is what makes us human. To rethink disaster recovery is to shift the current housing approach to the restoration of home, with considerations of the characteristics of the place. Such paradigm shift of disaster recovery will create opportunities for a more inclusive and trauma informed society as we move forward in the era of rapidly changing climate. Finally, this dissertation contributes methodologically to qualitative research in regard to positionality. As I demonstrated in the Methods and Data section, I began this research as a complete outsider to the community under study. With carefully crafted strategies to overcome outsiders’ barriers, in two-year intensive fieldwork, I felt accepted through my experiences with living and working in the community that the community members opened up to me, inviting me to public and private events, and their homes. This process enabled me to collect rich ethnographic data and built long-term relationships with key community 38 members, critical in understanding a diverse range of home experiences among the survivors. In turn, this project, which took three years to complete, was also life-changing for me who have willingly and unwillingly changed home in my 41 years of life. The personal stories of my research participants moved my understanding of home, which I will elaborate in the following three empirical chapters. 39 CHAPTER II: CARE DURING CRISIS Just like any other normal Labor Day. … We were all working at the [business] coz it was busy. It started out just like every other day, other than the fact that it was hot. And we hadn’t had rain, in a lot of days. It had been warm for a long time. Everybody was worried. But we had gone five years with fires all around us. But, that day was different. We went from straight clear blue sky with sunshine to socked in with so much smoke you couldn’t breathe. Everybody was like freaking out, losing their minds not sure what the heck was going on. And so we all just kind of, you know, kept going like normal, trying not to freak out because it was just, it was eerie. And but, again, we’ve been dealing with smoke all summer, because of all of the other big fires around us. We had probably 10 minutes because the fire was coming over the hill. I grabbed five family pictures off the wall, and my bag that my sister made for me [pause, voice trembling]. I left the house, locked the door [sound of swallowing tears], got in the car and started the convoy down the river with the rest of our family. We went to Thurston High School and sat in the parking lot from one o’clock in the morning, until I think they finally got us hotel rooms sometime around one o’clock that afternoon. Then we spent four and a half months there. —River, female, 40s, Blue River resident of 30 years, total property loss River is a second-generation Blue River resident, who moved from California with her parents when she was 13 years old. After high school, River stayed and helped her family with their retail business. She regularly interacts with residents in Blue River as well as the seasonal tourists from out of town. Over the years, River became a popular figure among locals, a living encyclopedia of Blue River. River’s name repeatedly came up as my research participants regularly recommended that I talk to her. I was initially hesitant to reach out to her because she had frequently been interviewed by media as a key participant in local recovery efforts. I did not want to crowd fire survivors like River with yet another ask to relive their fire experience—something that would risk retraumatizing my research participants. So I waited. In March 2022, nearly 18 months after the fire, I interviewed River on a quiet snowy morning in the trailer where she was working as a staff member at the disaster relief center. Inside the trailer, three other relief staff were working. River and I sat at the table across from the entrance, where visitors would also have 40 a chance to join our conversation. I asked how she felt about interviewing with me while sharing space with others. She said it would not be a problem. She then introduced me to her staff who were either related to her as family or longtime friends. I was struck by such high sense of trust among the group. Later, as I knew more fire survivors who were also old timers like River, I understood how closely connected they were to each other. Their old-timer identities meant a strong sense of belonging to the place that after the fire, many of them organized collective efforts to rebuild the place as well as their community. As River recounted her experience, she tried to hold back her tears. Each time immediately wiping her face dry, she continued regardless. The hardest part in each of my interviews was the recall of the day when the fire broke out. Recalling evacuation experience often brings out intense emotions by the traumatic fire event where the survivors were forced to leave their home behind, and some, like River, had to part with their loved ones who chose to stay behind to fight the fire. Under such extreme pressure that concerns life and death, the residents made critical decisions to ensure personal safety, and for some, the safety of others as well. Dislocated, disoriented, the survivors experienced a sudden loss of the familiar and routine. Such a sudden and unexpected loss constitutes a traumatizing experience. Research on this shows that “the illusion of permanence, predictability, and stability that is established through routines and the structuring of familiarity was unmasked. In the process, the ground of being for those directly (and in some ways indirectly) affected was both literally and metaphorically shaken resulting in a sense of disorientation” (Cox and Perry 2011:400). However, while River’s experience is commonly shared by many survivors, residents varied with regard to the way they had prepared for the risk of fire and the need to, or plans related to, evacuate. While many did not expect to be evacuated, some residents had packed early and were generally more prepared for emergencies. Some evacuated right away upon 41 evacuation orders or warnings from trusted sources including environmental cues, but some stayed. Despite extreme weather events and urgent warnings from the scientific community, not everyone took such warning seriously. Reasons for such inaction are complex. Research explains inactions towards climate crisis with social inertia, a concept that refers to “the interrelated cultural, institutional and individual processes that inhibit actions” (Brulle and Norgaard 2019: 887). Climate change inaction or denial is partly a result of avoidance of the systematic disruption of the cultural basis of a social order, or cultural trauma. To avoid traumatic experiences associated with actively facing climate change, people tend to uphold social order. Would this be also the case for the rural Oregon valley? What is their social norm when experiencing extreme weather like that on the Labor Day weekend of 2020? Why did the river community by and large stay home despite of the extremely high fire risk? How might we explain the variations of behaviors among residents regarding preparation and evacuation? This chapter addresses these questions through the narrative accounts of wildfire survivors’ evacuation experiences, from the moment when they felt unease about the weather, or risk perceptions, to the ways that they responded, or risk responses. Despite red flag warning of extreme fire danger, due to exceptionally dry and windy weather, most fire survivors decided to stay home. Even after the power went out, due to the high winds they had been warned about, most of them went to bed. Many of them had their phones either off or away from them. A few residents who packed earlier than others share the following characteristics: newcomer women, and men with caring roles in their family for either children, sick or elder relatives. Men in general show less readiness in packing for emergency despite the warning signs they had already sensed (Grajdura, Qian, and Niemeier 2021). In general, they took the 42 wait-and-see response to disaster risk. Those who stayed or tried to stay behind despite the emergency evacuation order also tended to be men, either single or with spouses who relied on them for mobility. To be sure, being prepared for a fire did not necessarily mean a greater likelihood to evacuate early. The official guidance on evacuation advises residents leave the area when they feel unsafe due to conditions in their area, even without receiving an evacuation notice (Lane County Evacuation Information). There are three levels of evacuation notices: Level 1—Be Ready, Level 2—Be Set, and Level 3—Go. Most residents, including the women who packed early, did not generally leave home until they received evacuation notices equivalent to Level 3, which meant they must leave immediately. Since many residents missed the emergency alerts that came over their phones, they relied on information from unofficial sources, such as neighbors, family, and friends who received evacuation notices, and some through the online local bulletin board. Additionally, they relied upon environmental cues, such as unusual noise from outside, the intense smell of smoke, and the sight of flames, which generally meant the fire was close to them. Since the whole community evacuated only when the fire danger was classified as level 3 emergency, there is a reason to suspect that place-based factor may have shaped the risk perceptions and evacuation behaviors of the valley residents. Such place-based factor includes the rural geography of the place, the history of the place, especially its extractive and fire suppression culture, which tends to reflect dominant forms of masculinity. Prior research on disaster risk perceptions in evacuation has been mostly written about experiences with hurricanes (Peacock, Brody, and Highfield 2005; Stein et al. 2013; Trumbo et al. 2013, 2016), with fewer on wildfires (see: Forrister et al. 2024; Gordon et al. 2010)). While the research on hurricanes can inform understandings of other disasters, such as wildfires, wildfires are in many ways different from hurricanes. For example, hurricanes 43 tend to have longer warning times and affect a larger land area (Kristiansson 2020; Kuligowski 2021). Besides, greater accuracy can be predicted for areas prone to hurricanes, but resulting from weather changes and landscape, prediction is difficult for areas vulnerable to wildfires (McCaffrey, Wilson, and Konar 2018). Among the limited research on wildfire risk perceptions, as Dye and colleagues (2021) demonstrate in their work on wildfire evacuation vulnerability in rural Pacific Northwest towns, wildfire preparedness is not simply a concern in high-frequency fire regimes, but also areas where wildfires are infrequent but of high severity. Places vulnerable to wildfires are usually located in remote, heavily forested, and mountainous terrain. The towns in Oregon’s Willamette valley are considered “areas of concern” for wildfire evacuation, particularly because of their poor road networks overlapping with other high fire hazards (Beverly and Bothwell 2011; Dye et al. 2021), and these areas are currently understudied. Disaster risk perceptions and evacuation behavior research also largely relies on quantitative and survey research, which tend to focus on traditional social determinants such as race, class, gender, and age, as well as residence time. For example, researchers have investigated factors that influence the time between risk perception and risk response including evacuation (Forrister et al. 2024; Grajdura et al. 2021; Sadri, Ukkusuri, and Murray-Tuite 2013). A common reason that extends this time gap is the “wait and see” risk response. Such delay is believed to improve the chances of both protecting their property and increasing the safety of themselves and their loved ones (Paveglio et al. 2014; Strahan and Gilbert 2021). People also perceive waiting and staying in place as low risk or a safer choice (McLennan, Paton, and Wright 2015). Gender research shows such time delay tends to happen among men with averagely more than 15 years residence time (Grajdura et al. 2021). While these findings offer important cues in understanding risk perception, risk response and other evacuation related behaviors, less attention has been given to subjective experiences 44 with wildfire disasters, that can inform our understandings of how other variables—notably place-based culture and identity—can shape behaviors and outcomes. This chapter examines the evacuation experiences of wildfire survivors. While these experiences are mostly in line with what has been previously found, I add to the conversations by focusing on the place-based considerations that shaped the survivors’ fire experiences and evacuation behaviors, including actions taken upon sensing fire risk. I find that gender is a significant factor. In the following, I will first show the general patterns of responses to fire risk among the rural residents in the McKenzie River Valley, paying attention to the variations of behaviors, in which women tend to be prepared more quickly than men. Then I move to the general patterns of evacuation behaviors, with gender variations where men tend to stay behind once evacuation order was issued. Background: The Day of the Fire On September 2, 2020, five days before the Labor Day Fires broke out—the Holiday Farm Fire being one of them—the National Weather Service (NWS) in Portland mentioned the potential for hot, dry and windy weather, and issued a Red Flag Warning, an official message to the public that indicates a high risk of fire and a higher likelihood of a rapidly spreading fire in the central and southern Willamette Valley including Lane County (NWS Portland 2022). On September 4, the NWS Portland shared an increased concern over social media about the high winds and low relative humidity. On September 5, Red Flag Warnings were upgraded with the winds continued to speed up to 75 mph north of Mt. Jefferson, with the relative humidity dropped to 8%, indicating significantly dry air. While actively communicating with the public about the fire danger, the NWS Portland office was expecting the fire weather to fully blow out on the September 7, which was Labor Day of 2020 (NWS Portland 2022). 45 Responding to High Wind: “Taking It in Stride” Back on the McKenzie River, most residents were aware of the strangeness of the weather, and some took notice of the red flag warnings. Yet, with varied degrees of worries and concerns, the majority of the residents went on about their day as a relatively normal Monday holiday, after responding to their best knowledge of what they should do to stay safe. Jack Wimbledon, an old timer of the McKenzie community, shared the following: We knew that there was a wind event and we knew that was coming from a predicted high wind. We get what we call the east winds every September, usually. And so they get strong. And so they come down from Central Oregon. And they can actually, you know, increase fire danger. I’ve worked in the woods back. There’s been many, many times I’ve been up high in the high country, cutting timber and we had to come home because the winds were so strong. And so we knew the wind was coming. We knew it was with the fuel load, and with the temperatures, and it was the so-called Perfect Storm opportunity. But with the wind, you know, I mean, you just take it in stride. So that night, the night the fire actually ignited, was about eight o’clock. We lost our power here, which is not unusual. But it was strong enough, when it sustained enough that I jumped. Usually what to do is I jumped in my pickup, and I went down and I go down the hill here and towards Finn Rock and just see if there’s any trees on the line. So I came home and I told Rose. I said, ‘Yeah, that’s a pretty strong wind.” When I got there, a few trees [were] falling down here. So we went to bed. I mean, what else are we gonna do? No television? No nothing, you know. So it was dark. It was just going to bed. 12:15 that morning, somebody was trying to pound on the front door here and it was Lane County Deputy Sheriff. He was screaming. He says, “Evacuate now! Go now! Go West!” Upon sensing high risk of fire, Jack, an experienced former timber worker and an old timer in the Valley, responded by following his routine going to check damage of power lines at his familiar location. His concern was the potential sparks from power lines hit by fallen trees by the wind. Upon seeing no damage to the power lines, he pursued no further actions except going to bed. Another resident, Bud Richardson, who also had prior experience with working in the woods, newcomer in the valley responded similarly by stopping where he thought he had done what he knew he should do. He said, The forecast that day was a Red Flag warning, which has an extreme fire danger. And then it was compounded with high winds. So everybody kind of was on edge. The conversation amongst some of the people that I know on the river and just coworkers 46 was I hope we can get through this day because of the forecast. And so everyone was actually kind of nervous because people were really concerned about the day because it was just high temperatures. It was hot, close to 100 degrees. And then the wind was going to blow from the east. Everybody was kind of nervous, but I went to work and kind of got it out of my mind. When Bud returned from work, he had dinner with his relative who left early because of the concern of smoke—“He’s got a small child. He wanted to get him inside because there was smoke,” said Bud. After the power went out about eight o’clock, like many residents on the river, he went to bed. He said, I had to work the next day. I had started a couple generators to keep the refrigerator and appliance freezers going. And then I decided since it was getting close to dark, I was going to go to bed. I went to bed that night about, it was early earlier than normal, about 8:30. Despite their prior experiences with fire and work in the woods, both Jack and Bud opted towards routines that felt familiar to them. Their routines, such as checking the conditions of power lines and using generators to keep appliances operating, are not out of the ordinary in rural living, where power becomes unstable during extreme weather. Such actions were out of care for the community, as in Jack’s response to check the power lines, and out of care for one’s home and well-being, as in Bud’s reactions. Nearly none of the residents living on the river anticipated in any way that the scale of the fire event would be so overwhelming that many of them would not be able to return in several months, or years. Hesitancy to Leave Home In addition to prepare for possible power outage, which is common in rural areas, another norm associated with rural living is when windy, stay home to avoid damages or injuries from fallen trees. Within the context of these norms, most of the survivors chose to wait and see inside their home. Janet, a newcomer resident who had close experience with the 2018 Terwilliger Fire also in the valley, had been following up with updates from both online and phone calls from 47 friends that alerted her and her parents that they should leave. But she decided otherwise. She said, Everybody that hears about the fire is telling my parents we should leave. And I’m saying we don’t want to drive that highway with all these trees coming down. And so we decide that we’re going to stay. And because, you know, at the time, when the power went out, it was five miles upriver. And so I just, I mean, I’ve stayed through fires closer than that, you know, like I said, the Terwilliger fire that was up there was closer to my house than that. So, I went to bed. Janet relied on her prior experience with another fire that was closer to her than five miles. Because she was safe then, she assumed she would be safe also through this fire event. Like other residents on the river, she did not anticipate the power of the high wind could accelerate a fire to burn so fast and with so much ferocity. In general, no one with whom I had interacted in this research considered an alternative scenario that the fire could indeed travel through the community, destroying everything in its way, an imagination that can feel traumatizing. The residents were meeting the social and environmental expectations of staying home during extreme weather. Leaving home was not a viable option for its known danger—the fallen trees. Such concern and care for safety out of the nature of the place shaped the collective action of staying home throughout the day of the fire, despite the official warnings of high fire risk. In other words, despite the fact that people are aware of the science behind the fire risk, and understand it, they carry on with their regular activities. For the rural valley residents, either with prior fire experience or not, they generally followed their routines and did what was familiar to them. Their concerns were mostly around personal safety from falling trees, so they stayed home. When power was out, they prepared to rest for the night. I repeatedly heard from many other fire survivors about their activities the night of the fire, like the one shared by Luna, also a newcomer having to work early morning shifts like Bud. She said: We were just having a normal night. I had been baking brownies and cookies all day to send out to family on the East Coast. And the wind started getting really heavy that night and I’ve gotten all the cats, made sure all four of them were inside and safe. And 48 then we lost power. I just made dinner right before we lost power. We had meatball subs for dinner that night. And the power went out and we just were used to the power going out, you know living out here. It’s pretty common to happen. Not necessarily during the summer as much as the winter. But it is what it is. We’re pretty just, pull out a book and some flashlights or a board game, you know, light some candles. We just chit chatted and hung out for a couple hours and decided we just go to bed early because I don’t know if he had worked the next day. I’m sure he did. But I had work. The next morning, I was supposed to go to [business name]. Before the residents learned about the fire that broke out on the river, they in general followed their routines. Such routines for the rural residents include sheltering in place or stay at home, to avoid danger from fallen trees, turning on generators to keep appliances running after the power was out, spending quality time with family on a holiday, and going to bed. The residents’ concerns were mostly around hazards from fallen trees, which meant staying home was safer than travelling. Despite her instinct that she should evacuate with her son, Joanna felt powerless, turning to her family for advice that she should stay home. She recalled her conversation with her relative: I said, [relative’s name], I think I should go. She was scared, too. She’s like out in the field with her husband. She says No. [Her husband’s name] says you need to just stay home because there’s a lot of trees on the highway and you don’t want to get out on the highway. He said the safest place where you’d be is at home. And I said, okay. Like Joanna, despite their instinct that a voluntary evacuation was the right thing to do, many survivors chose to shelter at home. They were following the norms of living that they knew of, in the rural forested area, which was to shelter in place and waiting out the crisis. The type of “wait and see” among the survivors, was an inaction—in terms of voluntary evacuation, after taking all the actions they could have—making sure their home was safe and staying inside. Home was a haven upon an unknown future, a choice that made the survivors feel less powerless, at least for the time being. Early Preparation for Evacuation While the majority of survivors reported they went to bed after the power went out, some did not because they anticipated emergency in case of a fire event. They packed early 49 and generally stayed up to date with information via phone or the Internet. And such prepared group tend to be mostly newcomer women and men with caring roles in the households. One household voluntarily evacuated before the first level evacuation order was issued, which I will discuss later in this chapter. A few residents—mostly women—reported that they packed early for evacuation and was ready to leave home when they had to. They kept up with both official and unofficial information from friends, family and neighbors and residents who posted updates online. Allena Beecher is one such early packer who immediately started packing upon the notification of the fire. I got to know Allena during a community replanting event in one of the local parks that were destroyed by the fire. In her early 60s, she had been living on the river for 10 years. She shared her decisions on the night of the fire as below: As soon as we heard that there was a fire in the Rainbow area, that’s when we decided let’s go ahead and pack up things. And just in case we have to go to town, because the wind, as we knew was blowing westerly. We knew it was coming our direction. So keep in mind, this is like eight o’clock at night, eight nine 10 11, 11:45 is when we left our house. So by 11:45, I had plenty of things packed up. I had everything I needed for my work. I had all my fine jewelry. I had my passports. I had all my backup drives for photos and things like that. I had all the clothes I needed for work for a good week or so. What else did I do that was important to me? But mostly it was things that I felt that I just couldn’t part with the most. And it wasn’t a total lot, but it was a lot of the key things, medications, things like that. As Allena was sharing her packing experience, I couldn’t resist remembering the voices of many others who barely escaped the fire, being forced to leave everything behind. I continue to feel puzzled about the clear contrast in preparedness between this small group of early packers, who are mostly newcomer women, and the rest who did not have a plan. As this puzzle continued to grow, it was increasingly clear to me that these individual behaviors of early packing or no packing explain the lack of organization in disaster preparedness in the rural valley. The residents’ well-being in emergencies like this is heavily reliant on individual responsibilities because there is little systemic effort to prepare the residents for emergencies like this, or at least the current system was behind the pace of the changing climate. 50 Miranda Brown, a newcomer retired resident had her to-go bag ready during the day and was ready to go when she had to. She said: I had sort of packed to-go bags before and so in the afternoon I was kind of ready for that and I think in the afternoon I did a bit of work thinking ‘Okay, it’s going to be windy, so making sure things were sort of ready.’ I was having trouble sleeping so I repacked my go bag that night, added hand sanitizer and masks, because my go bag had been packed before COVID and just sort of put aside. The reason I had to go bag is because George has been like super aware. We need go bags. We need this. We need that. We need all this sort of stuff. We went back to bed at like, I don’t know when. But 12:22, I didn’t hear the first alert come in on my phone. But I heard the second alert at 12:22, there was basically said, Level Three Go Now! And so, I’m grabbing my go bag. I’m kind of stressing because I want to go. George isn’t ready cuz unbeknownst to me he hasn’t packed his to-go bag! When I asked George what happened, he said, “I had developed a list, and gathered a bunch of the stuff on the list but did not take the last step and put it all in one place that was easily accessible. Miranda did, so she was ready to go. I wasn’t.” As I probed, George remained silent. The inconsistency between knowledge and action, like that of George’s is shared by many survivors who grew up in rural areas being familiar with preparing for emergencies. At home, they are used to preparing things for emergency use, with which they could stay home for a number of days when necessary, during an emergency. They may have practiced packing to go bags but since they rarely used them in prior emergencies, to go bags were more of a formality than being practical. Like mentioned earlier, their preparation was based on the shared expectations that home was safe during an urgent event like the fire. Frequently reported by the evacuated survivors was the thought that they would still have a home to return to after the emergency was gone, so until the last minute of evacuation, most of them did not pay attention to what they may need when they had to leave home. Some residents tuned in to the scanner mobile application on their phones to access live communications among firefighters. With the information from the live conversations among firefighters and first responders, these residents acted early. Katy is among those who used the scanners to keep up with the local firefighting information. She was alone juicing 51 pears that day. “I just remember it feeling so apocalyptic. I saw all this wind and all this dust, like, I’d never seen anything like it. It was kind of dark and I was getting, I was like, what do I grab, like pants?” After the power went out, she also lost water because her electrical pump stopped working. Her plan was to join her family at their house as they had a well for water access. We have an artesian well. Water automatically comes up out of the ground from the pressure. And so it’s really nice. And we have like food stored there. As I was gathering stuff, I was checking Blue River Bulletin Board about the power outage. I had run across the street where my brother was working at the store at the time, and I was like, I’ll see you at dad’s. So I ran back to my house, tried to grab clothes. And then that’s when I saw that there was potentially a fire that has started upriver. And so I got on the scanners on my phone. And I was listening to the scanners as I was driving to my dad’s house and it just started sinking in and how fast it was moving. When Katy arrived at her dad’s house, she put her phone on the only corner in the house where had cell service, then she saw how unprepared her dad was. She said: I got there and my dad was asleep on the couch with a candle burning. I’m like, ‘Oh God! He could have lit the house on fire.’ But I was like, ‘Hey, there’s stuff happening. I heard about the Delta campground. People are getting trapped there. And I was registering that it was really, really happening. And so I called my grandparents. I woke up my dad. Then, literally a minute later, I got an evacuation alert on my phone. They were evacuating. Like most survivors who recalled the day of the fire, Katy had a hard time believing it was real. “I saw this map where it was Level Three immediately.” she said, “I was like what is happening. And then I realized that there was potentially a fire on this side and potentially a fire on that side. And we’re in the middle of it.” Actively engaged in gathering information and trusting her instinct and reasoning, Katy organized her family to evacuate to safety before most of the residents on the river. While most of the rural residents considered their home to be safe in extreme weather, a few of those who lived in substandard housing, such as RVs, did not think the same. Concerned their home would be damaged by the trees, they evacuated early. Maria Cohn had 52 been living in an RV, and knowing her RV posed as high risk of personal safety in case of fallen trees on the roof, she organized others sharing the same property to evacuate. She said: It just was really windy. And I am a weather fanatic. So I was looking at the Weather Channel. And I knew it was coming. And I know that winds don’t come out of the east and that’s very strange. And September for winds to come out of the East, especially that strong because all weather comes from the west and it was just like, wow, what if a tree falls on the RV? We gotta go. We gotta go. We got to do something. So we went to the house. Nothing in my mind had thought of a fire. I was just thinking of trees falling because of the wind. You know, people get killed by trees falling on them all the time and they fall on their cars or whatever. And then a fire was up and then it was just such a whirlwind. Nobody had flashlight batteries. There was one flashlight with batteries. So that was difficult. Because we had to get two kittens, one cat, four children, five dogs and injured chicken and six adults and three trucks and get out of there. Sensing the strangeness of the weather, Maria was concerned about her immediate danger, trees falling by the winds that may destroy her RV home. Perceiving her home being unsafe, she risked leaving home, exposing herself to opportunities of fallen trees on her evacuation route, which many residents living in conventional housing tried to avoid. In general, women like Allena, Miranda, Katy and Maria stayed awake and acted sooner than most other residents. For different reasons, they connected the extreme weather with the potential loss of their personal belongings and safety, and followed up on this connection, without prolonged hesitancy. Their care of the safety of their own, as well as others, became a salient motivator to leave home. Even though such care was reported by mostly women, men also participated as active caregivers, and like those women, became early evacuees. Bart, a retired police officer in his 50s, originally moved to Oregon to care for his adult son who had been suffering from chronic respiratory diseases. Together, they moved to his newly purchased property on the river the year before the fire. After learning about the predicted high winds days ago, Bart had kept up with the local information. Bart’s most concern was access to water, because once the power went out, like the case for Katy who went to her family’s house for well water, he wouldn’t have running water. “No water was a big thing,” Bart said, “So I got on 53 Facebook and people were talking about the power out. And then somebody said there was a fire up about 20 miles upriver from me, east of me. It was windy. It was blowing really fast, like 40, 50 miles per hour gust.” On the scanner application of his phone, he tuned into the live conversations by firefighters and first responders for the fire. I heard a fire personnel say there was a flash fire, about five miles of river from where I live. And he said everybody on the north side of the river, west of this spot needs to evacuate. I decided we were going to leave. Access to water after the power went out prompted Bart to stay on top of the local updates, but it was the fire that later concerned him the most, because his son who relied on medical equipment such as oxygen would need more time to evacuate when the official notice was sent out by the county, for which Bart decided they were not going to wait. Bart had his neighbors in mind as he was leaving. He reached out to them, sharing his decision to leave, but they all decided to stay. As Bart shared his early evacuation experience, he repeatedly shared that his neighbors may have thought of him as a coward for leaving his property so early because it was an unmanly thing to do. But he insisted regardless of how others may see him, because his anxiety of being near the evacuation zone was too great fo