Maeve Juarez, a wildland fire specialist with the Montecito Fire Department, discovered that massive wildfire was inching its way into the town in Southern California a few days into December 2017.
She was going to be fighting the Thomas Fire, which at the time was the biggest wildfire in California history, on the front lines of a town of less than ten thousand residents.
But the town was ahead of the fire in more ways than one, chief among them being that it had been preparing for this day for thirty years.
A long-term initiative had made sure residents of the town took preventative steps, such as raking up dried leaves from the town and fortifying their own homes against fires, and it had fostered a degree of community trust and togetherness that allowed for speedy response in the event of a rapidly spreading fire.
Many communities are thinking about self-defense strategies as climate change puts the threat of wildfires closer to them. While other communities might not have 30 years to devise such measures, they can draw inspiration from Montecito’s long-term experiment when formulating their own plans.
Juarez suggests that we shouldn’t begin avoiding dementia once the symptoms appear, just as we shouldn’t begin planning for a wildfire once it is approaching our neighborhoods.
