Today’s Wildfire Wednesday comes to us from contributing guest Cora Stewart, Field Coordinator for the Forest Stewards Guild. Cora manages the Forest Stewards Youth Corps and Mentorship programs where she regularly mentors - and learns from - young people across the state. Learn more about Cora and her work.
Happy Wednesday, Fireshed Community!
Whether you're 18 or 80, you can probably close your eyes and vividly remember what it is like to be a teenager. It's a potent part of life - the unlimited energy, bottomless metabolism, fearlessness of pain, but also the big feelings that NOBODY understands. It is, without a doubt, a very impactful time for many people, and personal experiences during these years can change the way a person sees the world and themselves. That is especially true of collective hardships that destabilize your daily reality. This week's Wildfire Wednesday discusses how to be there for a young person who is going through, or has gone through, loss due to a natural disaster. Before jumping in, please be aware that this post details experiences of evacuation and losing cherished community and living spaces; this may evoke some uncomfortable feelings or experiences of your own.
This Wildfire Wednesday features:
How to be there for the young people in your life
Additional resources
- Cora
A Personal Story: Monsoonal Floods
When I was 16 years old, I lived and went to school by a river in a country called Niger. Most of the students lived on campus, away from their families. The grounds were beautiful, with mango trees, tortoises, and even some adorable hedgehogs. To me, it was home. There was no greater peace than sitting under those trees and feeling the warm breeze on my face.
Like New Mexico, Niger is very dry but has a monsoon season. This particular year, we had a heavy monsoon season, with much more rain than usual, and at first, it was a good thing. As it kept raining, the river got higher and higher, and eventually a dam upstream broke. As a result, 27 people died and the campus that I loved so much was at risk of flooding. The small community I lived with immediately huddled and started to work. We stayed up for the next three days, building sandbag walls and hoping it would prevent the water from reaching us. We gathered our belongings, prepared evacuation bags, and assisted the school with packing as many valuables away as we could in that short period of time.
On the third day, it became apparent that our efforts would not work and the school wall broke, causing the entire area to flood. We spent the next couple of weeks with no stable place to live, moving from family to family, while the school administration figured out next steps. A month after the flooding, the school was able to temporarily relocate, and life resumed as “normal.”
I share this story with you because, although it was an incredibly challenging time, many people in my life were able to help me through the emotional distress. This experience and their actions impacted how I handle challenges today. I hope that in sharing my experience, alongside some other resources, you are able to help young people going through something similar.
How to Show Up for the Young People in Your Life
Remain calm
Young people are always watching how their role models handle situations. I was lucky to have several adults in my life who handled the flood calmly and with grace. They honestly and genuinely assured us that even if things didn’t go how we wanted or expected, that we were going to be okay, taking the time to find small joys each day. This sense of hope and constant assurance helped me move forward into a new normal and accept changes as they came. If you are a parent or a role model to a young person, check out this article with more tips on how to help your child through a natural disaster: How to Talk to Children about War.
Find the controllable
Regardless of age, if you go through a natural disaster, you will experience a loss of control. This can be world-shattering for many and can result in distress and anger. This was certainly true for me - surrounding the flood, I felt angry and had lost a sense of meaning. However, I had people in my life who encouraged me to take back ownership. One of my mentors exercised with me to help me continue my routine and remind me how much I loved running. Another mentor was consistent about assigning tasks such as cooking to me and other students to help us channel some of our energy into something good. Although it may feel small, taking the time to encourage the young people in your life, to ensure a routine is maintained, and to provide small tasks they can accomplish can make all the difference in how they perceive themselves and help them to regain a sense of control during a challenging time.
Make space for Conversation
While displaced by the flood, I lived with two different families before eventually landing in a house with some fellow students and school staff. Although this time was difficult, I also made great memories and had many meaningful conversations with my host families, with my fellow students, and with the other adults who were all in this situation together. Some of those conversations were formal debriefs with large groups, but more often it was one-on-one with an adult who I knew cared about me. These chats created space to share my thoughts and feelings and to process in real time, which in turn allowed for healing, empathy, vulnerability, and trust. To learn more about how you can start a conversation with a young person about difficult events, look at this article: Helping Kids Cope.
Check out this video to learn more about empathy and how it makes a difference in conversation.
When it comes to wildfire, talking to young people, providing them with facts and explanations of what fire is and why it happened, and allowing them time to process and ask questions can all help them cope with the stress and fear associated with living through this event. Visit this link to learn how to help children impacted by wildfires.
Work as a Community
One of the most impactful things during the flood was how the community I lived in came together to help. While building the sandbag walls, we had different groups come in each day to help or provide food. Even after the wall broke, we continued to help other families and organizations on the river. This was incredibly meaningful as it helped me to recognize that 1) I was not alone, and 2) together we could make a difference. It is important, when and where possible, to ensure that young people going through a hard experience have the opportunity to work with their community and to see that their actions matter.
During the Hermit’s Peak Calf Canyon (HPCC) Fire in 2022, the Guild saw the firsthand impacts of the wildfires on our youth crew members. During crew onboarding and training in early June, about 6 weeks into the fires, we discussed why how we treat the land matters and how a catastrophic fire can cause so much pain and distress. Many members felt uncomfortable but didn’t know how to speak up. We hadn’t taken members’ feelings of fear and anxiety over the real-time fires into consideration and quickly learned that large group settings before trust had been built were probably not the right setting for those conversations. Afterward, we gave a lot of thought to how we could empower our crew members instead so that they would be able to feel like they were making a difference, not just talking about it.
In 2023, we collaborated with the Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance and corps members from across the state spent a week working in the HPCC burn scar, helping the communities impacted by the fire. Our youth corps spent that week learning about watershed damage and restoration. They built erosion control and restoration structures to catch the significant amount of burned soil and debris washed away following the fire.
For many members, this was their favorite part of their season, seeing why it is so important to work as a community and feeling like they made a difference. For the Guild, it was incredibly rewarding that this project impacted and empowered our young people to come together in difficult situations. If you want to learn more about this work project, check out this article: Our Youth Corps' Collective Post-fire Restoration Efforts.
Additional Resources
Resources for Young People
Emotional distress: learn more about warning signs and risk factors for emotional distress related to wildfires and other disasters.
Graphic novel: create an account on Dark Horse to access this open-source graphic novel. Follow along as Meghan and Alexx encounter a wildfire, experience what it is like to be evacuated, and talk about fire safety in Without Warning! Wildfire Safety Comic.
Coloring book: educational wildland fire coloring sheets, available for download from The Smokey Generation (Wildfire Coloring Sheets).
Upcoming webinar
Tuesday, June 4, 2:00-3:00pm MT: Fire in the Southwest – Fire Season 2023 Overview and 2024 Outlook
Wildfire is part of the landscape in the Southwest. It can be a threat to lives and property, but it is also crucial to maintaining healthy ecosystems. Please join the Southwest Fire Science Consortium for a webinar reviewing the top 8 biggest fires in the region in 2023 and looking ahead toward fire conditions for summer 2024. Presenters will place the 2023 fire season within the context of the last 10 years, pointing out trends and outliers in the timing, management costs, vegetation, and burn severity for each of 8 Southwestern fires larger than 10,000 acres, and then discuss the fire season outlook and summer weather forecast for the Southwest in 2024.