Understanding Disaster Risk by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780128190487
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
Published: 2020-09-21T20:00:00+00:00

2.1.3.2: Challenges to reducing wildfire risks in informal communities

The case demonstrates the range of challenges that need to be addressed to improve the wildfire risks faced by an informal community. A key tension for spatial planning is the need to allow, facilitate, require, and even actively bring about certain outcomes. Within contexts of informality, this implies that challenges generally extend along a spectrum between the general autonomy and self-organizing abilities of residents, and the need to draw on wider systems external to the settlement that usually operate “within” the formal systems of risk management and settlement management. Accordingly, the ideas of collective concerns and understandings focused around wildfire risk inherently challenge assumptions of inside and outside formality.

Developing ways to reduce the vulnerability of existing settlements built with little or no initial consideration of wildfire (or other) risk is a major challenge. As previously pointed out, physical mechanisms to increase resilience to wildfire are best established before settlements are in place. If the risks are taken into the account before settlements are established, development in areas where risks are considered unreasonable could be limited (Burby, 1998). However, historically, settlements have been established with limited consideration to wildfire hazard exposure. This is exacerbated in informal settlement contexts. It is common that informal settlements, such as the case of Agüita de la Perdiz, prioritize “good” locations in term of proximity to the city and the opportunities it offers, yet vacant land available—where people can settle informally—is usually exposed to greater risks. Furthermore, existing settlements often have limited capacity to provide the adequate separation from the fire source. This is evidenced in this case study; most of the site’s perimeter is directly adjacent to and surrounded by vegetated land under various other ownerships, challenging fuel reduction and limiting the capacity to provide separation. Moreover, structures themselves are often built with limited consideration of fire risk. Even more so, housing structures in informal contexts are often built with limited resources using whatever materials available, with little planning, and often illegal connection (if any) to services. To illustrate the implications these might have, the implication of illegal connections to services is briefly described. Low-quality electricity connections to housing and to power lines, combined with extreme winds and dust, often cause sparking or fires. In combination, fallen power lines (particularly illegal connections without safety cut offs) during wildfire events may impede firefighting response activities. Similarly, poor-quality gas line connections or the location, storage, and connections of gas bottles may cause or worsen fires as they impact upon a settlement. Reticulated water services are often important to fire suppression, even if they may lose pressure during a fire event. Good quality, legal connections stand the greatest chance of continuity in fires, even if this may mean prioritizing water to the response agency’s hydrants.

Understandings of the dynamism and incremental self-organized improvement capacities of communities allow exploring retrofitting measures intended to modify fuel levels or increase buildings’ resistance, which can provide a practical way to promote resilience to wildfires. More

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