Southern California’s Wildfires Will Impact Health for Years to Come. Here’s How.

Dangerously powerful wind gusts menace Southern California today, threatening to push large-scale wildfires toward populated areas even as firefighters work to contain them. Search-and-rescue teams comb through decimated neighborhoods, and people return home to find their homes and neighborhoods destroyed and their drinking water contaminated.

At this moment, the focus is on containing the flames and protecting people from the most immediate dangers. But as the smoke clears, the crews depart, and the headlines fade, millions of Southern Californians are starting an arduous journey.

Communities devastated by wildfires, like Lāhainā on the Hawaiian island of Maui or the Northern California town of Paradise, offer living proof of something the general public is only beginning to understand: Natural disasters severely damage the long-term health of the communities they harm, killing many more people and causing lifelong, indirect health problems that often go unaccounted for in formal death tolls and impact studies.

In the aftermath

With wildfires, environmental health risks persist long after the flames are extinguished. Exposure to smoke can cause or exacerbate severe respiratory and cardiovascular issues. Bacteria and hazardous chemicals can persist in a community's water supply for long periods

Health care providers frequently report worsening physical health in the aftermath of natural disasters as people struggle to access prescription medications and manage chronic diseases like diabetes and cancer; confront infectious diseases and water-borne illnesses; and reliably access health care, nutritious food, and other essential resources.

Families lose their homes, cherished belongings, and a sense of security. Children witness the disappearance of their toys and familiar surroundings, while retirees see their lifelong investments reduced to ashes. The emotional and psychological toll is profound, with many grappling with trauma and uncertainty about the future.

Mental health practitioners working in disaster-affected communities reliably report drastically increased rates of depression, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and other mental health impacts, and their experience is backed up by scientific research. These mental health impacts can be lifelong, and evidence repeatedly indicates that repeated exposure to natural disaster - a growing problem as climate change causes more severe and frequent wildfires and storms - can compound mental health impacts.

An exponential toll

Indirect impacts to health and mortality can be the hardest to measure, but researchers often find their impact far more severe than the immediate death toll. A recent study in the journal Nature found that tropical storms, for example, can cause 300 times the number of excess deaths over the long term than they do immediate fatalities. While researchers have not studied long-term mortality from wildfires as closely as they have storms, most of the factors thought to cause these deaths occur in wildfires too: housing loss, economic disruption, displacement, lack of access to services, and ecological changes.

Lost housing - especially in a community where housing is relatively scarce and housing insecurity widespread, as in Los Angeles County, can drive up the cost of living and make finding a home all but impossible for many. In Butte County, where the 2018 Camp Fire killed 86 people and destroyed entire communities, homelessness climbed 16% in the months after the fire, and even today, rebuilding hasn't come anywhere near replacing the 15,000 homes destroyed.

Damaged businesses destroy livelihoods and reduce community access to essential resources like healthy food and social services. Lost jobs and barriers to access can cause further economic and health consequences, exacerbating the problems of lost housing. People who are displaced long-term from their homes and communities confront greater social isolation in addition to economic consequences. All these social and economic factors can severely impact long-term health, access to medical care and treatment, and mortality.

By communities, for communities

Nonprofit healthcare providers, including health centers, community clinics, and charitable pharmacies, have long been aware of the impacts of wildfires and other disasters on vulnerable patients. Health center and clinic staff check on patients at home, staff shelters, and spend weeks on intensive response efforts, even as they go without permanent housing and confront their own hardships. It's often community members, in the months and years after a wildfire decimates their community, who found mobile health clinics and mental health-focused nonprofits to meet the drastic increase in need they see around them.

Direct Relief works over the long term with communities devastated by natural disasters to increase health care access, build community resilience, and mitigate the social and economic threats that can damage health for years to come. The organization is committed to working with local partners throughout wildfire-affected areas to increase health and resilience and reduce medical vulnerability over time.

In response to the Los Angeles County wildfires, Direct Relief has made more than $100 million in medicines and supplies available to healthcare providers and first responders. The organization's emergency response teams have deployed throughout the area to deliver N95 respirators, personal care products for evacuees, prescription medications, field medic packs for responders working in the field, and other requested aid. Ongoing deliveries of requested medical aid are being dispatched to health care providers from Direct Relief's Santa Barbara warehouse.

The organization continues its close coordination with local and state agencies, such as the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and the California Primary Care Association, and with its extensive network of healthcare partners throughout Southern California.

Direct Relief will continue to closely monitor health and medical needs in impacted communities, and to work with local partners to provide needed support.

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