Aug 2, 2024 · 41 minA conversation with Jennifer Gibson, who coordinates post-wildfire response for the National Park Service. This episode was recorded in May 2024.
Headwaters is created by Daniel Lombardi, Gaby Eseverri, Peri Sasnett, and Madeline Vinh.
Glacier Conservancy: glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: www.instagram.com/stella.nall/
Climate change in Glacier: www.nps.gov/glac/learn/nature/climate-change.htm Whiskeytown National Recreation Area: www.nps.gov/whis
---
TRANSCRIPT:
---
Lacy Kowalski: Headwaters is brought to you by the Glacier National Park Conservancy.
Peri Sasnett: This is Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. My name is Peri, and I find the ecology and politics of wildfire endlessly interesting. However, I also recognize that wildfire can be challenging and scary to live with, and at times even deadly. And all of this is made worse by a warmer climate. For this episode, my co-host Daniel interviewed Jennifer Gibson in the spring of 2024. She's the post-wildfire coordinator for the National Park Service. She tells a gripping, emotional, and frankly stressful story about when the park unit she was working at burned almost entirely in a matter of days during the 2018 Carr fire. You probably remember hearing about that fire on the news, and just for clarity, it spelled C-A-R-R, not like a car that you drive. That fire eventually burned 230,000 acres and killed eight people. [mellow beat begins to play] And this story is not as unique as you might think. In 2022, 95% of Sunset Crater National Monument burned. That same summer, a wildfire burned over 95% of Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site. A year later, three national parks in the famously wet Pacific Northwest all had their largest fires on record: Olympic, North Cascades and Redwood. So this conversation is about one person surviving a deadly wildfire. But it's also about how the National Park Service is surviving in a new reality of wildfire, accelerated by climate change. [beat plays for a few seconds and resolves, marking a transition into the interview]
Daniel Lombardi: Jennifer Gibson, welcome to Headwaters. Thanks for coming on. Maybe start with just telling us what's your job.
Jennifer Gibson: Hi. Thanks for having me. My job now is the National Park Service's post-wildfire programs coordinator. So I'm based out of the National Interagency Fire Center. My job now is to assist and help parks in recovering from wildfire. And that's essentially overseeing the Burned Area Emergency Response program.
Daniel: What did-- what was your title during the Carr Fire at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area?
Jennifer: The Chief of Resources and Interpretation.
Daniel: We're talking specifically about the Carr Fire in Northern California. But this story, as dramatic and shocking as it is, it could very easily happen pretty much anywhere in the American West. Of course, it could happen here in Glacier National Park. Obviously, we have big wildfires here, but the kind of unprecedented, fast moving and property and life threatening wildfire that you're describing, there's no reason that couldn't happen here in Glacier.
Jennifer: Yeah, it can happen in Glacier. It can happen in North Cascades. You know, it could be another Whiskeytown or, some parks are burning down, like 70% of Lassen Volcanic National Park burned in the Dixie Fire, 80% of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation burned in the Woolsey Fire. Look at Lava Beds. So 70% of Lava Beds burned in 2020, the remaining 30% burned in 2021.
Daniel: And we're not necessarily pinpointing any one of these fires and saying this is, this burned the way that it did because of climate change. But larger, more frequent, more intense wildfires is exactly what we expect in a hotter climate that we now have.
Jennifer: Yeah, Whiskeytown had the hottest days on record and the lowest fuel moisture for 1000 hour fuels on record. It's not just one thing. When it comes down to it, it's this... Is it climate change or is it everything coming into an alignment with climate change as a contributing factor? And that could be a really dangerous combination, because I really don't think I don't think science is keeping up with the changing environment. I don't think our management and policy is keeping up with the changing environment. I feel like a bunch of us resource staff or park staff, all of us together, interpreters, whomever, facility managers, we're all standing here now in this age, 2024, and we're watching our parks rapidly change around us. Like, I think this cohort that we have now working in national parks, we are definitely challenged with this whole new unexpected thing called climate change. And with that's intermixed with all these other factors. I feel like we're witnessing the change in our national parks.
Daniel: Yeah. The entering, into a, not a new reality, but a, an unstable and ever-shifting reality. [beat plays to mark a transition] So Whiskeytown has kind of a funny name. What-- what is Whiskeytown, really simply? It's, it's a national recreation area, part of the Park Service.
Jennifer: It is. It's a unit of the National Park Service. It follows the mission of the National Park Service. It is a recreation area, so it's really like the, it's like Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It's really about recreation for the local visitors.
Daniel: And living there for 20 years, it probably became like a pretty important place to you to.
Jennifer: Yeah, I lived, one mile from the park boundary, so I had a really short commute. So my weekends, if I wanted to get a hike in, if I wanted to go botanizing, kayaking, I always went up to the park. The whole community loved Whiskeytown.
Daniel: For someone who doesn't-- isn't familiar with Whiskeytown, one of the key features is a large dam and a reservoir, a huge lake right in the middle of the park unit. There's a lot of urban areas right next to the the park unit, and it's all a pretty mountainous, forested area.
Jennifer: It is extremely diverse. It goes from 600ft in elevation, up to 6200ft in a really short distance. So it's really steep. So it goes from oak woodlands and grass up to subalpine fir, like Red Fir forest and montane chaparral. It has old growth forests and spotted owls in the higher elevations, but in the lower elevations it has chaparral and chamise and things that you would see at Santa Monica mountains. So that's one of the reasons why I love that park so much, because it was so incredibly diverse.
Daniel: It's basically like all of California smushed into one park unit.
Jennifer: Yeah, totally. And it was great. Like really crazy biotic assemblages living together in the same location, like Pacific giant salamanders and whiptail lizards, like something from a, Pacific Northwest meets the desert, you know, in the same campground. So it's, it's a really cool place, but it has waterfalls, lots of biking trails, lots of hiking trails, kayaking. It's-- it's a really nice place.
Daniel: So we're going to talk about what happened at Whiskeytown in 2018, which was a big wildfire. Just big picture, this was one of the larger fires in California history. What's wild is it's moved down a lot of notches on that records list since then. But this happened in 2018 and it burned-- this is in Northern California around the town of Redding. When did the Carr Fire start for you?
Jennifer: It started the day of initial attack in July 2018. It was hot. We were on the, I think, July in Redding and Shasta County, we were at, triple digit weather, like, it was hot even for Redding for July. About 1:00, 1:30, we heard over the radio that there was a fire near Carr Powerhouse Road, which is next to our historic district, the Tower House Historic District, which is like a concentration of your most important cultural resources, layers of history there, prehistoric, historic.
Daniel: So it's July 2018. The temperatures are getting up into the low 100 degrees. It's very hot. I'm imagining it's not cooling off a whole lot at night.
Jennifer: I think it was like 113, 114, we were bumping up against the highest temperatures ever recorded in the park.
Daniel: Wow. So it's very hot, very dry. And you hear on the radio, okay, there's a fire. And I bet-- I'm guessing that at that point that wasn't unusual. You've heard a lot of fires come in over the radio, maybe even some that summer. And so you go to check it out. At that point, everything feels routine, I guess.
Jennifer: Yeah. No, we -- it was something we do regularly, like, you know, there's fire. We could stand on the highway, tie in with the duty officer, make sure, you know, just be there if they need information, not get in the way. We give them advice if they need it. This is what we do. But this one just went completely sideways. Seeing fire taking off so... spreading so rapidly and erratically, the weirdest thing that I saw was fire zipped around a hillside sideways. Like fire goes uphill, right, naturally, and it follows winds. And it wasn't really that windy out, but it went around sideways, and I'm like, well, that's really weird. And then the fire spotted into this historic orchard where we have these really old orchard trees that were planted in the 1800s so they're unique heirloom varieties. And all of a sudden I started watching them burn and I'm like, oh my God, it's like 20 years of restoration, if not more, trying to save these orchard trees and stabilize them, and we've been working so hard, and we'd just grazed this whole area with goats to keep the weeds down and for fire suppression. And I was standing there on the highway going like, is this really happening? And then it burned down a historic structure that we just restored. And then it spotted behind me on the other side of the highway where that historic house is. It's one of the oldest homes in Shasta County. This was not ever something I could fathom happening at such a rapid pace. And there's water drops, dozers are being pushed, helicopters were overhead... And yeah, within the, the first couple hours it was completely chaotic, like there was nothing we could have done to stop that fire. I think the hard part was, there was a seasonal, she was screaming into the radio, like, "somebody get my therapy dog!" And we're like, oh my god, her therapy dog's in park housing, which is up the canyon. And two of the guys I work with, they went up there, kicked the door down, grabbed the dog -- they got the therapy dog right before the building burned down. And it was it was really, really intense -- like, all the things that I could never, ever wrap my head around were happening so fast. And that was the first hour of the Carr Fire. I'm not proud of a lot of the decisions that I made, but I never thought I would be pushed into making rapid fire decisions like this.
Daniel: So right away, one of your biggest concerns is that because of where the fire starts, some historic buildings, some Indigenous archeological sites, you know, a historic orchard, and park housing, you know right from the start that all of those are threatened by this fire. And so you're making calculations and decisions about how to protect those resources from the very start.
Jennifer: Yep. Yeah. Correct.
Daniel: And some of those choices are hard. Like, I imagine when you're fighting fire, you don't usually want to just, send the bulldozers and all the heavy equipment in right away, because those are obviously destructive in their own way. But if it's a choice between bulldozers or burning up in a fire, you pick the bulldozers. And so that was one of the first hard choices you have to make, it sounds like.
Jennifer: Yeah, so in urban interface parks like Santa Monica Mountains and Whiskeytown, you know, working with bulldozers is a part of, of life. Like you, you have to accept some level of impact to protect communities. So it's-- it's life and property first. More wilderness parks, you know, like parks with sequoias, it might be... life and sequoias might be your priority.
Daniel: That's the kind of decision that you're actually probably used to making. You've been around fires you, and usually you have hours, if not days, to kind of think through the balance between bulldozers and letting a certain area burn or not, like there's usually more time. But in this case, it went from thinking about those questions to then almost instantly it just being about putting the fire out as fast as possible because things were burning so fast.
Jennifer: Yeah. No, the whole park burned in three days, three operational periods. We lost structures, park housing, infrastructure, the community on of French Gulch lost homes, the community of Old Shasta was wiped out, the um, Keswick was wiped out like, by the F3 fire tornado went through Keswick, and then the west side communities. It was completely devastating. And then never could have imagined a F3 fire tornado going into a community, a town where there's homes and a Chase Bank, you know? [laughs in disbelief] So that's unimaginable to me. But again, you know, keep in mind also that the Carr Fire was just, what was it, 4 or 5 months right before the Camp Fire and the Woolsey Fire. And these were other destructive fires. And the Camp Fire was far more destructive than the Carr Fire. So the Carr Fire should have been a wake up call for everybody else. But it caught those communities off guard, too.
Daniel: Yeah. So you said that those first few hours were a literal whirlwind. What happened next?
Jennifer: You know, I had to regroup with my staff. And almost everybody is a qualified and experienced Resource Advisor. So they knew-- they're experienced with fire, they knew what to do. They put on their Nomex and-- but for some reason, throughout the fire, like we kept thinking that we would catch it. Because resources were not limited, like there were no other fires going on in the area. So Redding has like, you know, you have Cal Fire, you have Redding smokejumpers, hotshots, Forest Service, you have all these resources right there in Redding. And so when resources aren't limited, you know, you kind of think like, well, you know, you can throw the world at this thing and we can get it out. But we did. We threw the world at it. And it was we could not put that fire out. And, we launched dozers immediately. And I kept thinking to myself, like, well, we'll catch it, we'll catch it. And, it ended up like each time we, we couldn't catch it. And, we were completely shocked. And I was just completely like, each time I went home, at the end of the day, I'm like, I should start making piles to evacuate, you know? So I would make piles and, but I'm like, "we'll catch it. This can't be." And it was this, state of disbelief, I think. But, I think the third night, about 10:00 at night, I had a coworker call me, and he's like, Jen, you have to go to Whiskeytown Dam. You have to see this. And, I'm like, "it's 10:00 at night. It's hot out, like what's happening?" So I drove up to the park and went to the dam, and there was like hundreds of people on the dam, visitors like-- and they're all out there watching the fire blow up, and it's nighttime. So this is when you have-- the humidity's supposed to go up. Fire behavior is supposed to go down. You're supposed to have some nighttime recovery. But it was still really hot. It was probably like 110 at night. And the fire was plume-dominated fire behavior at night. Like it was behaving like it was three in the afternoon. And my neighborhood was quiet, and I made some piles. I called my neighbor, I'm like, "hey, you guys should think about making piles. I don't-- I think we got another day or so to evacuate. But, you know, this isn't looking good." And I went to sleep and then, about two in the morning, a friend of mine, he's working dispatch for the park, he called me. It's like-- so nobody shows up. You don't get a sheriff doesn't knock on your door. This guy called me and says, "Jen, you need to evacuate now." And I went outside and it was like, a war zone. And there's, like, embers raining down. I could hear propane tanks blowing up. The lights were flickering and the sky was, like, seething. Like like somebody was using a massive giant bellows to just stoke the fire because the whole sky was covered with smoke and this weird orange haze. But it was just like going up and down, and I was like, what the hell's happening? Called my neighbors, they're like, "we're packing." And, then I just grabbed all that I could, and, and my chimes were like, ding ding ding ding ding ding ding, just the chimes hanging on the deck were just, like, going in circles. It was really bizarre. I went inside, I said goodbye to my house, said goodbye to my house plants. Which is a really weird thing to do. I watered them all and I'm like, "I'll be right back, guys, hang in there." And I thought my house would make it. I really did. And at this time I'm really worried about park staff because I, you know, we already lost seasonal housing and I'm like, where is everybody? You know, it's four in the morning. I called her administrative officer. She's like, "I got tabs on everybody. Don't worry. Just get out of there." So my dog and I, with my great grandmother's table, evacuated to a motel. You know, leaving the driveway, I said goodbye to my neighbors and hugged them and showed up at a Motel 6 in Redding and-- with a bunch of other disheveled people, like at four in the morning, just like they're in shock, you know? And I know that they just evacuated. So we were all checking into hotels. So at this point, a significant portion of the west side of Redding evacuated to the east, to evacuation shelters, friends homes, you know, motels. But, you know, we thought that like, you know, maybe everything was going to be okay. You know, maybe the house will make it. You know, "I've been burning piles around my house. It's in good shape, it'll make it." It is just being in a state of shock.
Daniel: Wow. Over the course of those first few days then the fire, you know, is potentially moving towards your own home and you're in a state of kind of disbelief that it could burn your own home.
Jennifer: Yeah. We evacuated the north side of the park where the fire was. But on the south side of the park we still had visitors. We still had people in park housing. But we thought there was no way the fire was going to cross the lake. Well, sure enough, there was a fire, mini fire tornado or vortex set up, and it lay down horizontally across the ground, according -- I wasn't there -- and spotted across the lake. So this launched a massive evacuation on the south side of the lake of people that were camping and on that side and park housing units. And this was important because I to me, a lot of the law enforcement personnel, a lot of us lived in Old Shasta. We lived on the boundary of the park. They had to make a choice between evacuating, helping their-- their spouses and families evacuate, and they had to make the choice to evacuate visitors. So I think that was really hard on a lot of those emergency responders being at that point. And then they had to clear all those people off the dam who were watching this. It was, again, you know, we never knew this would happen. Yeah.
Daniel: So we talked about, those first hours, we talked about the intensity and challenge of the first few days, and then how on the third and fourth day, people are evacuated, housing is being burned down, and there are vortexes of fire, basically conditions so hot and intense that there's tornadoes made of flames burning and spotting across the entire lake. And the fire is beyond apocalyptic. It's it's really into something new.
Jennifer: When I evacuated the motel, it was, you know, you didn't sleep. You know, you show up at your motel at four, you're like, what is happening? And then, that morning was all about like, "where-- where are the interns? Where are the seasonals? Are they okay?" We got them into hotels. Like, where is everybody on the west side of Redding? Like, you know, people that live there. Is everybody okay? So the park's in a shambles. And I heard that the fire had passed through my neighborhood, but my house had made it and my neighbor's house hadmade it. And I was like, "all right, I did it! You know, like, all my fuels treatments, weed whacking, all my work, you know, I was like, I knew it, I knew I could make it." And so that day was really about sitting and waiting, having park meetings, seeing where everybody's at and trying to get an Incident Management Team in to help, and watching the news and texting. So there's like group texts of park staff going back and forth. And, and it wasn't until like the evening, like the fire activity picked up again and the lights in the motel started flickering, you know, and then the power went off, and I'm like, oh my God, what the hell's happening out there? And I went to another location I saw that had power and air conditioning. And I was watching the news and I could see-- and there's my neighborhood, like where my house is, my neighbor's house is -- it's a crown fire. And people are texting me like, "Jen, your your street's on fire on the news" and the local State Parks superintendent, she's out there hosing down State Park, you know, buildings. And it was pretty traumatic. And people had to evacuate a second time in Redding. So this was another wave. So people in evacuation centers had to evacuate, people in homes that evacuated. So people had to evacuate the second time, I had to evacuate a second time. And that's one of my lessons learned. If you evacuate the first time, don't unpack, because you might have to evacuate the second time. And I got with my dog in my car, and I got on the I-5 and it was packed with people, like it was jammed. And I looked up and I could see that fire tornado. And that's when I really thought -- like it was totally irrational, like, but maybe I was just so exhausted, I had so much adrenaline in my blood, and I really thought that that tornado was going to get me. And I was stopped in traffic on the highway. And that's one of my things, you know, like I get stuck on a highway in traffic when a fire comes. And so I managed to get on an off ramp. And then going north on I-5 was a lot clearer. And I made progress. And I just kept driving. And each hotel they were were packed with people, like there was no vacancy, especially no dog friendly vacancy. So I just ended up driving all night. I drove all the way to Oregon, and it was on that drive that I found out that I lost my house. A firefighter checked on my property and he's like, "Jen, it's gone." And he sent me a text with a picture of it on fire. And, you know, it was good that he let me know. And I'm like, I was just in shock. So it was-- finally made it to Oregon, made it to a safe space.
Daniel: Wow. So it only took a matter of days. But all of Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, this entire park unit, the whole thing burned, right?
Jennifer: Yeah. 97% of the park burned. So the final statistics were 47 structures destroyed. A third of the park staff lost their homes. And then there was significant damage to the concessionaire operations and to a... we have an environmental school, an environmental camp. So all in all, the Carr Fire was 229,000 acres. 1604 structures were lost overall, and eight fatalities.
Daniel: So I'm guessing then the next several weeks were a continued state of anxiety and chaos for you. But of course, it doesn't end there. A lot of your work, I think, then was on the aftermath of the fire and, okay, what happens now that the fire's out?
Jennifer: So the hard thing is that when you have a fire in your park, you're going to sprint. Like you're going to sprint as hard as you can, and you're going to run as fast as you can. But there's like a finish line. You know, it's like you're gonna just -- you're going to just exhaust yourself to that finish line. Once you cross that finish line, the post-fire world is a marathon. Whiskeytown has significant infrastructure. We have the dam infrastructure with Bureau of Reclamation. We have the telecommunications site for the sheriff's office at the top of the peak, highest mountain. And then we had, a major highway goes through the middle of the park. And then we have Pacific Gas and Electric. So we had all these power lines, we have all this infrastructure, and they all had to get online. And to do that we needed to be Resource Advisors again. Even though it's an emergency, you need some level of compliance a little bit, you know, to make sure there's no prehistoric site there you know. You know, I just-- my first day back after I found out my house burned and we had a meeting of the archeologists, myself, and our acting superintendent. And here's this room full of engineers, you know, highway engineers, there's like 25 of them, and they're like, "we've got X amount of million dollars to install these structures to protect our highway, and you guys need to do the compliance." [laughs incredulously] So it's like, so we, we we really kept going and going and going. It was really hard to stop and process.
Daniel: Yeah Jen, talk to me-- talk to me about the mental health impacts of going through something like this. For you, but for the, for the community and for the staff of a national park. What's that like?
Jennifer: It's like the grief that keeps on giving. It's layers and layers of grief. It's grieving my house, my memories and my property that I love so much. Grieving my park and you know, the restoration, all that work put into that park and places that I loved. Grieving my community, my neighbors all moved away. Like grieving with them. You go to all their going away parties, and then you get tired of it. And then park staff start to leave, so you're you're going to they're going away parties. [laughs] And everybody processes it very differently. And that has to be okay. Like, I, saw some people got very emotional right away and they wanted to talk to CISM right away. I couldn't talk to the Critical Incident Stress Management people because I felt like if I took that moment, I wouldn't be able to put myself back together again and keep going. I had to keep going. And we were so busy with trying to get power up and internet up and back in our offices and, utility companies and get the BAER implemented, it-- it took us until we got a superintendent, a permanent superintendent showed up, and he was like, "wow, this-- these people need help." And so he got-- he called EAP, Employee Assistance Program, and he got a clinical psychologist to come and talk to us as a group. And it was like the first time in nine months -- nine months -- that we all sat together as a, you know, employees, and talked it out. And she got up there and she was like, "well, all the other agencies like Cal Fire, the Sheriff's Department, PG&E, all these different entities and agencies, they got employee assistance like the week after the fire. Why did it take the National Park Service nine months? And we were ground zero. We were the most impacted. So that was I think a real important point to me is, you need to get that help in soon.
Daniel: You know, one thing that struck me that you said was that it felt out of control, it felt chaotic, and that maybe even you're not proud of all of the decisions that were made, but that that is the result of the chaos in a moment of such intensity like that. Maybe that's one of the lessons that you have taken from the fire in general, is what's possible in those first intense hours.
Jennifer: We were completely caught off guard. And I don't know if it's complacency, like, you know, you know your park, you know your ecosystems, you know your fire, and you think you know what's going to happen. But it's one of those situations where everything went sideways, like what you knew was no longer reality. And that, to me, is a really good lesson learned. And it translates well over to other parks where, some parks have been doing fire/climate scenario workshops, where they're trying to really think like, what is the worst thing? And the worst thing that can happen, like happened to them that year. Like Lassen had the Dixie fire, Sequoia has lost 20% of their monarch sequoias. Like these things are happening this year, not 20 years out. And so the Carr Fire to me was the worst thing that could happen. Like it was unimaginable, not even 20 years out. It would be like, oh God, I couldn't even fathom having this happen to my park. But it did. It happened in 2018. And that's one of the things that's consistently happening in national parks with not only just fire, but other climate-related disasters. We're completely being caught off guard time and time again.
Daniel: Wow. In your most climate apocalyptic vision of the future, you never thought that the Carr fire could happen. Like it-- that was that was your worst case scenario, darkest imagination of what the future might be. And then it actually happened.
Jennifer: You can see, like what's happening in Yosemite National Park, where there's actually parts of the park that's type converting due to the frequency of fire. And what happened at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks is also really relevant in that, you know, I think they did climate/fire scenario planning in the late 2000s, maybe 2018, 2017. I'm not sure of the year. But again, they did that thing of "what's the worst thing that can happen to the sequoias? You know, they're pest resistant. They're fire resistant. What's the worst thing that can happen?" And it was like, "well, they become susceptible to pests, and then they become susceptible to fire." And then sure enough, you know, they had the Castle Rattlesnake Complex, I think 2020, I believe. And that took out a significant portion of the large monarch sequoia trees. And then they were like, oh my God, we gotta do something. And then in 2021, they didn't have a chance to strategize, come up with a plan. In 2021, it took out another big chunk of large monarch sequoia trees, which are supposed to be fire resistant. And so 20% of the large trees are dead, like they're a thousand year old trees. And they've survived tons and tons of fire, and we're watching them just disappear. So the park is taking some radical actions. They're being really proactive, and they're really trying to hold the ground on the remaining sequoias. And I'm really-- and so is Yosemite, with their groves.
Daniel: So this is a case study of these, just the really big sequoia trees. And people didn't think they were susceptible to wildfire because they have such thick bark and they're adapted to it. But now we're seeing with climate change, the conditions are just different that the fire is happening in. And it turns out these big trees, they can be susceptible to wildfire. And in recent years they have been and they have been lost.
Jennifer: Yeah. And it's, you know, two years. Like, you know, 2020-2021. Like that's a short time frame to come up with a quick strategy. All right Park, what are you going to do? [laughs] How are you going to hold the line and save the rest of them? You know it'd be nice if you had ten, twenty years to develop a plan and a strategy. But parks are having to pivot pretty quickly and decide what ecosystems, what resources are priorities, what are they going to save and what can you save and then what you can't. So similar to like, probably like glaciers. What can you do?
Daniel: I mean, it sounds like the advice you would give is that like, you're trying to tell people this is a wake up call. Everyone needs to be paying attention and ready to move way faster than they think they need to move. What-- I mean, is there other advice, or is there another lesson that has come across in watching these fires for you?
Jennifer: To me, I-- after the Carr Fire, like I had this sense of panic and urgency where I want to see, you know, people take fuels reduction and defensive space seriously. It's been hard because after going through something like that, oftentimes people perceive you as being like, "well, she's been traumatized. You know, like this is just her processing." I'm like, no, like I think the Park Service needs to invest in preparedness, response and helping parks recover. We have great people working in preparedness, but it's typically in law enforcement or in fire. But it needs to be an interdisciplinary approach. And I'm a fan of facilitated scenario planning workshops where everybody's at the table and you run through scenarios of it, whether it's flooding or fire or whatever. You run through scenarios to make sure you have evacuation plans. You figure out where the gaps are in your plans, and your weaknesses, and you address them. And then make sure you're all on the same page with your priorities. Like if if you did have to evacuate your park. And again, it has to be top down and a priority from your superintendent, all the way up to your regional director and the director. I think another thing parks can do is invest in your Resource Advisor program. If you care about your natural and cultural resources in your park, and you're a fire park, or have the potential of fire, the best thing you can do is get your staff trained, send them out, get them experience. If you talk to these people that have gone through the Camp Fire, or firefighters who have seen fire severity change across the West, I'm sure they will say the same thing. It's just like, I feel like it's Groundhog Day, right? Like park after park is just-- we're doing the same thing every day. Are we getting more prepared? Are we getting better at responding? We need definitely need to get better at helping parks recover. But I don't, you know-- we need to start moving in those directions a lot quicker.
Daniel: This should be a wake up call. They should be expecting the worst case scenario. Jen, I'm curious if you feel like you're healed, if you have fully processed the Carr Fire, or if that's an ongoing thing. And then I'm also curious if, you know, helping other parks and talking to other parks about their intense fire experiences, if that's been a helpful process or, or not so helpful in your own kind of coming to terms with with wildfire.
Jennifer: I think trauma is a bad thing in general, but it's made me wiser or wary. I'm all about being prepared. And going through any sort of traumatic event, it could be like a loss of a loved one, you know, or, whatever it may be, it's horrid, absolutely horrid. But there are moments of beauty and love intermixed, which makes it a really complex emotion. So the strong bonds that I formed with the staff at Whiskeytown going through this with them will always, forever be there. My neighbors and my community, they will always be my neighbors. We'll always reach out to each other. We always send Christmas cards or holiday cards. We're always there for each other. We have this common bond now that we went through something and we made it together, and I think that's the beauty in it.
[beat begins to play]
Daniel: Jennifer Gibson, thanks so much for sharing your story. This has been really valuable.
Jennifer: Yeah, thanks you guys for doing this. I'm so impressed. And thanks for listening.
[music plays under the credits]
Peri: We spent most of this episode talking about a national recreation area in California; Whiskey Town. They have lots more details about fire and climate change on their website, nps.gov/WHIS you can learn more about fire and climate change on Glacier’s website too, nps.gov/GLAC. It is worth underlining how easily this story could be about any other national park, including Glacier. Wildfires burn here almost every single summer—most recently, we had quite intense fire seasons in 2015, 2017, and 2018. Famously, the Sprague fire burned down part of the beloved Sperry Chalet in 2017. A key partner in helping rebuild the Sperry Chalet was our non-profit partner, the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Beyond fire, the Conservancy helps Glacier with many sustainability efforts: from solar panels on park buildings to storytelling projects like this one, the Conservancy is doing critical work to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. You can learn more about what they do and about how to get involved at Glacier.org. This show is created by Daniel Lombardi, Michael Faist, Gabi Eseverri, and me, Peri Sasnett. We get critical support from Lacy Kowalski, Melissa Sladek, Kristen Friesen, and so many good people with Glacier's natural and cultural resource teams. Our music was made by the brilliant Frank Waln, and the show's cover art is by our sweet friend Stella Nall. Check out Frank and Stella's work at the links in the show notes. Besides sharing this episode with a friend who might appreciate it, you can help us out by leaving a rating and review in your podcast app. Thanks for listening.
