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13 June 2025
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Featured FRI Magazine article: Vulnerability to wildfires by Malcolm Procter
When fires reduce the land’s inherent ability to control flooding, for example, they increase the hazard for households
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Each time households are faced with fire, their ability to recover is severely depleted
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Underprivileged people can’t afford to buy replacement clothes when everything they own goes up in smoke
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https://www.frimedia.org/uploads/1/2/2/7/122743954/fri_vol_3_no_6.pdf
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Vulnerability to wildfires by Malcolm Procter (FRI Vol 3 no 6). We will be sharing more technical/research/tactical articles from Fire and Rescue International magazine on a weekly basis with our readers to assist in technology transfer. This will hopefully create an increased awareness, providing you with hands-on advice and guidance. All our magazines are available free of charge in PDF format on our website and online at ISSUU. We also provide all technical articles as a free download in our article archive on our website.
Vulnerability to wildfires
By Malcolm Procter
Households in particular geographic locations or socio-economic contexts may be more vulnerable than others due to differential exposure to risk and the presence or absence of social support systems and other safety nets and fall back options such as access to freely available wild resources or the ability to migrate . The risks, shocks and adverse trends and events that underprivileged people face can relate to external or internal factors including environmental hazards and extreme events, climatic uncertainty and drought, environmental change, disease, death and illness within the family, job loss and social disruption.
The direct impacts of wildfires on lives and property, though dramatic, often are outweighed by other, indirect impacts on the economic well-being of underprivileged households and communities. Just the threat of fires reduces the market value of homes and other assets that are at risk and, all else equal, this reduction in value undoubtedly has a more intense impact on underprivileged households and communities too underprivileged to afford high-quality, fire protection services. Fires that disrupt normal commercial activities in a community eg causing evacuation from homes or temporary closure of work places, can have disproportionate adverse impacts on the families of low-income workers, who have the lowest financial reserves to cope with the disruption.
Underprivileged people rely on ecosystem services for subsistence needs, food security, as inputs into a wide range of livelihood activities and for cash income, although the degree of dependency is often differentiated across communities, households, individuals and regions. Underprivileged communities use mainly natural resources as their livelihood strategies. While securing their livelihoods and food security, these communities exhaust finite resources thereby increasing their susceptibility to hazards especially in communal settings. A challenge posed under the circumstances is the overcrowding in pristine areas (marginal areas of concern) hence escalating the footprint on the environment. Traditional authorities are owners of the land and individual communal farmers are stripped off the power and authority to make individual decisions to manage natural resources. With poverty rife in these communities, mitigation measures such as reducing livestock during drought are difficult to enforce for they are faced with land shortages.
Fires also can reduce the supply of goods and services derived from the ecosystems of veld and important to underprivileged households and communities. When fires reduce the land’s inherent ability to control flooding, for example, they increase the hazard for households, often underprivileged, residing in downstream floodplains. Fires can affect the welfare of underprivileged people throughout a city when they alter the vegetation of watersheds and thereby increase the cost of municipal water derived from them. Fires also can curtail the supply of some subsistence foods, indigenous plants and other resources important to underprivileged people and other groups.
The connection between wildfires and poverty goes largely unnoticed and unaddressed because it falls between the cracks of institutions that focus on either poverty alleviation or fire management but not both. Rural populations in South Africa affect fire activity but the relationship is not simple. Van Wilgen et al 2009 conclude: “Human population densities have direct impacts on the size and number of fires in savannahs and grasslands. Fires in areas inhabited by people are much smaller due to human alteration and fragmentation of natural vegetation. The number of fires increases with increasing human population density (presumably due to increased ignition sources) but because the individual fires are smaller, less of the landscape is burnt.” And further: “If, as has been seen in other ecosystems, there were to be a move to the cities and large parts of the landscape became depopulated, we would expect to see an increase in the area burned and the size of fires, without substantial changes in the fire intensity or the fire return period. The opposite would be true if rural population densities increased. (Increased human populations can fragment the landscape and can significantly alter fire regimes.)
Compounding the problems of impoverished housing and derisory land rights are the squalid conditions that are synonymous with the poverty of slum settlements. The concept that ‘housing is a verb’ signifies the constantly shifting nature of the issues slum residents have to face and balance continually. Shack settlements are an accommodation option close to employment opportunities, as well as schools, college, hospitals, libraries, churches and other infrastructure that may be lacking in townships and rural areas. In other words, "the urban underprivileged have to solve a complex equation as they try to optimise housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work and sometimes, personal safety."
The crux of the housing problem is the issue of land rights. The dawn of independence in many countries triggered a population rush to claim their ‘right to the city’. However, this did not necessarily translate into a right to the land. Many post-colonial elites kept the same zonal restrictions and segregation policies of their colonial masters, separating the emerging African professional classes from the underprivileged masses.
The citizens hardest hit during a disaster event are those communities living in poverty. A wildfire incident can cause an already underprivileged community to spiral into an even deeper level of poverty and with this also comes a greater sense of helplessness to change the circumstances in which they live.
People lose everything in fires. They lose money, clothes, documents, medicine – everything. Children that loose uniforms can’t go to school. People that lose ID books can’t get grants and pensions. People that lose HIV treatments are sometimes considered to have defaulted. People sometimes lose jobs and have to drop out of studies. Children are haunted by nightmares. They can no longer feel safe in their own homes. Sometimes parents have to move to outbuildings that they can’t afford or to accept relocation to the human dumping grounds outside the cities because their children are too scared to sleep in the shacks.
Impacted farmers are faced with the daunting tasks of repairing irrigation systems, clearing debris and unsalvageable crops, replacing equipment and buying trees and plants for replanting. These tasks are made more challenging by two factors. First, financing can be prohibitively challenging. Second, many impacted farmers face the prospect of multiple years without income while new plants and trees mature. And it follows that agricultural workers who remain in the area face the prospect of long-term unemployment and underemployment.
For some employees who work for businesses that were temporarily closed after fires or were unable to get to work the short-term loss of earnings can cause a longer-term financial impact as mortgage payments, rents and other bills came due. The loss of personal tools and equipment needed for work is also difficult to quantify.
Fires and fire-related programs can have numerous impacts, both short- and long-run, on the local cost of living. During a fire, supplying the demands of fire fighters and support personnel for food, telecommunications and personal services can overwhelm the capacity of local communities and temporarily drive up prices for local residents. Or, a fire and fire suppression activities might disrupt transportation routes so that local residents incur additional costs to commute to work.
But it is the downstream implications (intangible) that have the largest impact, increased prices for produce, the downstream beneficiation or add on benefits are nearly seven times the value, meat prices also increase as farms lose productivity until such time as the veld recovers equals impact on economy and the psychological shock of the devastation caused.
Underprivileged people in developing countries have been found to be more vulnerable to disasters and other unfavourable events because they lack the capacity and resources to prepare for and respond to them. Inevitably they have no insurance cover. Further, even those with insurance sometimes lack sufficient coverage to replace what they lost. And even for those adequately insured, the settlement process can be daunting and difficult to navigate. Twenty head of cattle is a sizable portion of his herd and income, the loss of these cattle, no reserves and no money to repair fences equals cattle wandering off through broken fences and cause accidents in the road. Their farming activities lack diversification; after a fire there is no fodder and the availability of grazing is reduced. A fire could be crippling as he waits for the veld to recover properly. If he uses the veld early it may become overgrazed leading to a loss of vigor, loss of nutrients in the soil and follow on rains could lead to erosion. As the cycle continues the entire area may become degraded, thus affecting the economy as well as the vulnerability of the region.
The adverse effects of frequent and uncontrolled fires threaten people's livelihoods by causing damage to property and infrastructure, reducing the productive capacity of the land, destroying resources such as grazing and thatch grass as well as other non-timber forest products. This, in turn, has an impact on the national economy. “This economic impact can be illustrated by examining the effect of grazing loss through uncontrolled fires. Communities in communal areas mostly rely on subsistence farming. Regular crop failures brought on by failed rains or flooding often require government intervention in the form of food aid. Add livestock losses due to burnt grazing to these woes and the economic burden on the government escalates dramatically. In the freehold farming areas, grazing has to be leased from neighbours if more than 75 percent of the farm's grazing is destroyed by fire”.
Another factor influencing wildfire risk is the availability of fire protection services. Primary responsibility for protecting rural areas from fire lies with district municipalities that lack capacity in terms of fire protection services, and underprivileged, rural communities may not be able to afford the level of fire protection available in urban areas. Most small communities are protected by fire protection associations that are almost entirely volunteer members. Though FPAs are often the first line of defence on the majority of wildfires, they suffer from a lack of funding for specialised equipment and have difficulty recruiting members and training members.
Uncontrolled, untimely or indiscriminate wildfires pose a threat to healthy grasslands and good grazing. Large areas of protected areas have been burnt as a result of runaway wildfires sweeping into parks from sources in adjacent land, while large tracts of valuable grazing have been destroyed on neighbouring farms. “Indiscriminate or untimely burning can have a seriously negative effect on the palatability and nutrition levels of veld grasses. This, in turn, means that greater grazing pressure is brought to bear on areas where grasslands are still healthy”.
In the event that fire prevention and fire suppression efforts fail and a home or other assets are destroyed or damaged by fire, the loss falls hardest upon the underprivileged. This is not to say that wealthier people and communities cannot suffer tremendous losses from fire. Instead, it is the recognition that underprivileged people are more likely to lose more, or all, of their assets when their home catches fire. People with higher incomes, in contrast, are more likely to have assets like mutual funds and savings accounts that are not consumed by a fire. They are also more likely to have adequate insurance to cover the financial damage.
Poverty often is correlated with poor health and limited access to health care and both factors increase the vulnerability of underprivileged people and communities to fire-related risks. When underprivileged health reduces a person’s mobility, he or she either remains longer in a fire’s path or secures assistance from neighbours, FPA personnel or others. If the latter, then these people and resources are diverted from other fire response tasks.
Fires can generate additional problems for persons with health problems. Those with respiratory problems may be more intensely affected by smoke. The stress of responding to a fire may trigger life threatening events for those with coronary problems. These problems are compounded by the limitations on health care typical of underprivileged communities and especially those in rural areas.
A central characteristic of poverty is low resilience to economic disruption
Wildfires have a devastating impact on agriculture, running into millions of Rand in damages to property, loss of life, livestock, game and grassland annually. Each time households are faced with fire, their ability to recover is severely depleted. Their assets, both social and physical, are gradually worn away by the continual incidence of fires and recovery can take time. Even if a household is not directly affected, it may lose social capital, as family and social relations break down when people are forced to resettle or temporarily relocate elsewhere.
Underprivileged people can’t afford to buy replacement clothes when everything they own goes up in smoke or to live elsewhere for months while their properties are rebuilt or hire grazing whilst the veld recovers. They can’t afford to take time off from work to calm the fears of children frightened by fire. They struggle to search for a new job when fires or cause their employer to close shop either temporarily or permanently. They can’t afford to dip into financial reserves to backfill when budgets for other programs are depleted to bear the costs of fire response programs. “The evidence is conclusive that those at the bottom of the economic ladder are more vulnerable to the risks of wildfires. These findings are consistent with the conclusions of other studies of natural disasters, which find that the underprivileged are hit hardest in the face of catastrophes”.
Due to the lack of sufficient income people start to use and overuse every resource available to them when their survival is at stake. As desperate hunger leads to desperate strategies for survival, many trees are harvested for fire wood, timber and art craft. Most of the underprivileged people use this fire wood as their source of income by selling it and art craft products are also used for income generation. The roots of the trees are dug out for medicinal purposes. This leaves the soil exposed as the grasses are also grazed by animals and also collected for roofing the houses. When it rains the entire top and good soil are eroded, which makes it difficult for that soil to produce better agricultural products.
As populations approach the carrying capacity of their environment, the concepts of capital and productivity are changing from straightforward economic (monetary) values to resource capital and resource productivity. Therefore, the sustained ability of the environment to provide resources is increasingly critical. The environment therefore needs to be protected for selfish as well as empirical reasons. In other words, for sustainable, economic as well as pure ethical reasons, the ability of the environment to provide resources and services needs to be cherished, sustained and maintained.
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Vulnerability to wildfires by Malcolm Procter (FRI Vol 3 no 6). We will be sharing more technical/research/tactical articles from Fire and Rescue International magazine on a weekly basis with our readers to assist in technology transfer. This will hopefully create an increased awareness, providing you with hands-on advice and guidance. All our magazines are available free of charge in PDF format on our website and online at ISSUU. We also provide all technical articles as a free download in our article archive on our website.
Vulnerability to wildfires
By Malcolm Procter
Households in particular geographic locations or socio-economic contexts may be more vulnerable than others due to differential exposure to risk and the presence or absence of social support systems and other safety nets and fall back options such as access to freely available wild resources or the ability to migrate . The risks, shocks and adverse trends and events that underprivileged people face can relate to external or internal factors including environmental hazards and extreme events, climatic uncertainty and drought, environmental change, disease, death and illness within the family, job loss and social disruption.
The direct impacts of wildfires on lives and property, though dramatic, often are outweighed by other, indirect impacts on the economic well-being of underprivileged households and communities. Just the threat of fires reduces the market value of homes and other assets that are at risk and, all else equal, this reduction in value undoubtedly has a more intense impact on underprivileged households and communities too underprivileged to afford high-quality, fire protection services. Fires that disrupt normal commercial activities in a community eg causing evacuation from homes or temporary closure of work places, can have disproportionate adverse impacts on the families of low-income workers, who have the lowest financial reserves to cope with the disruption.
Underprivileged people rely on ecosystem services for subsistence needs, food security, as inputs into a wide range of livelihood activities and for cash income, although the degree of dependency is often differentiated across communities, households, individuals and regions. Underprivileged communities use mainly natural resources as their livelihood strategies. While securing their livelihoods and food security, these communities exhaust finite resources thereby increasing their susceptibility to hazards especially in communal settings. A challenge posed under the circumstances is the overcrowding in pristine areas (marginal areas of concern) hence escalating the footprint on the environment. Traditional authorities are owners of the land and individual communal farmers are stripped off the power and authority to make individual decisions to manage natural resources. With poverty rife in these communities, mitigation measures such as reducing livestock during drought are difficult to enforce for they are faced with land shortages.
Fires also can reduce the supply of goods and services derived from the ecosystems of veld and important to underprivileged households and communities. When fires reduce the land’s inherent ability to control flooding, for example, they increase the hazard for households, often underprivileged, residing in downstream floodplains. Fires can affect the welfare of underprivileged people throughout a city when they alter the vegetation of watersheds and thereby increase the cost of municipal water derived from them. Fires also can curtail the supply of some subsistence foods, indigenous plants and other resources important to underprivileged people and other groups.
The connection between wildfires and poverty goes largely unnoticed and unaddressed because it falls between the cracks of institutions that focus on either poverty alleviation or fire management but not both. Rural populations in South Africa affect fire activity but the relationship is not simple. Van Wilgen et al 2009 conclude: “Human population densities have direct impacts on the size and number of fires in savannahs and grasslands. Fires in areas inhabited by people are much smaller due to human alteration and fragmentation of natural vegetation. The number of fires increases with increasing human population density (presumably due to increased ignition sources) but because the individual fires are smaller, less of the landscape is burnt.” And further: “If, as has been seen in other ecosystems, there were to be a move to the cities and large parts of the landscape became depopulated, we would expect to see an increase in the area burned and the size of fires, without substantial changes in the fire intensity or the fire return period. The opposite would be true if rural population densities increased. (Increased human populations can fragment the landscape and can significantly alter fire regimes.)
Compounding the problems of impoverished housing and derisory land rights are the squalid conditions that are synonymous with the poverty of slum settlements. The concept that ‘housing is a verb’ signifies the constantly shifting nature of the issues slum residents have to face and balance continually. Shack settlements are an accommodation option close to employment opportunities, as well as schools, college, hospitals, libraries, churches and other infrastructure that may be lacking in townships and rural areas. In other words, "the urban underprivileged have to solve a complex equation as they try to optimise housing cost, tenure security, quality of shelter, journey to work and sometimes, personal safety."
The crux of the housing problem is the issue of land rights. The dawn of independence in many countries triggered a population rush to claim their ‘right to the city’. However, this did not necessarily translate into a right to the land. Many post-colonial elites kept the same zonal restrictions and segregation policies of their colonial masters, separating the emerging African professional classes from the underprivileged masses.
The citizens hardest hit during a disaster event are those communities living in poverty. A wildfire incident can cause an already underprivileged community to spiral into an even deeper level of poverty and with this also comes a greater sense of helplessness to change the circumstances in which they live.
People lose everything in fires. They lose money, clothes, documents, medicine – everything. Children that loose uniforms can’t go to school. People that lose ID books can’t get grants and pensions. People that lose HIV treatments are sometimes considered to have defaulted. People sometimes lose jobs and have to drop out of studies. Children are haunted by nightmares. They can no longer feel safe in their own homes. Sometimes parents have to move to outbuildings that they can’t afford or to accept relocation to the human dumping grounds outside the cities because their children are too scared to sleep in the shacks.
Impacted farmers are faced with the daunting tasks of repairing irrigation systems, clearing debris and unsalvageable crops, replacing equipment and buying trees and plants for replanting. These tasks are made more challenging by two factors. First, financing can be prohibitively challenging. Second, many impacted farmers face the prospect of multiple years without income while new plants and trees mature. And it follows that agricultural workers who remain in the area face the prospect of long-term unemployment and underemployment.
For some employees who work for businesses that were temporarily closed after fires or were unable to get to work the short-term loss of earnings can cause a longer-term financial impact as mortgage payments, rents and other bills came due. The loss of personal tools and equipment needed for work is also difficult to quantify.
Fires and fire-related programs can have numerous impacts, both short- and long-run, on the local cost of living. During a fire, supplying the demands of fire fighters and support personnel for food, telecommunications and personal services can overwhelm the capacity of local communities and temporarily drive up prices for local residents. Or, a fire and fire suppression activities might disrupt transportation routes so that local residents incur additional costs to commute to work.
But it is the downstream implications (intangible) that have the largest impact, increased prices for produce, the downstream beneficiation or add on benefits are nearly seven times the value, meat prices also increase as farms lose productivity until such time as the veld recovers equals impact on economy and the psychological shock of the devastation caused.
Underprivileged people in developing countries have been found to be more vulnerable to disasters and other unfavourable events because they lack the capacity and resources to prepare for and respond to them. Inevitably they have no insurance cover. Further, even those with insurance sometimes lack sufficient coverage to replace what they lost. And even for those adequately insured, the settlement process can be daunting and difficult to navigate. Twenty head of cattle is a sizable portion of his herd and income, the loss of these cattle, no reserves and no money to repair fences equals cattle wandering off through broken fences and cause accidents in the road. Their farming activities lack diversification; after a fire there is no fodder and the availability of grazing is reduced. A fire could be crippling as he waits for the veld to recover properly. If he uses the veld early it may become overgrazed leading to a loss of vigor, loss of nutrients in the soil and follow on rains could lead to erosion. As the cycle continues the entire area may become degraded, thus affecting the economy as well as the vulnerability of the region.
The adverse effects of frequent and uncontrolled fires threaten people's livelihoods by causing damage to property and infrastructure, reducing the productive capacity of the land, destroying resources such as grazing and thatch grass as well as other non-timber forest products. This, in turn, has an impact on the national economy. “This economic impact can be illustrated by examining the effect of grazing loss through uncontrolled fires. Communities in communal areas mostly rely on subsistence farming. Regular crop failures brought on by failed rains or flooding often require government intervention in the form of food aid. Add livestock losses due to burnt grazing to these woes and the economic burden on the government escalates dramatically. In the freehold farming areas, grazing has to be leased from neighbours if more than 75 percent of the farm's grazing is destroyed by fire”.
Another factor influencing wildfire risk is the availability of fire protection services. Primary responsibility for protecting rural areas from fire lies with district municipalities that lack capacity in terms of fire protection services, and underprivileged, rural communities may not be able to afford the level of fire protection available in urban areas. Most small communities are protected by fire protection associations that are almost entirely volunteer members. Though FPAs are often the first line of defence on the majority of wildfires, they suffer from a lack of funding for specialised equipment and have difficulty recruiting members and training members.
Uncontrolled, untimely or indiscriminate wildfires pose a threat to healthy grasslands and good grazing. Large areas of protected areas have been burnt as a result of runaway wildfires sweeping into parks from sources in adjacent land, while large tracts of valuable grazing have been destroyed on neighbouring farms. “Indiscriminate or untimely burning can have a seriously negative effect on the palatability and nutrition levels of veld grasses. This, in turn, means that greater grazing pressure is brought to bear on areas where grasslands are still healthy”.
In the event that fire prevention and fire suppression efforts fail and a home or other assets are destroyed or damaged by fire, the loss falls hardest upon the underprivileged. This is not to say that wealthier people and communities cannot suffer tremendous losses from fire. Instead, it is the recognition that underprivileged people are more likely to lose more, or all, of their assets when their home catches fire. People with higher incomes, in contrast, are more likely to have assets like mutual funds and savings accounts that are not consumed by a fire. They are also more likely to have adequate insurance to cover the financial damage.
Poverty often is correlated with poor health and limited access to health care and both factors increase the vulnerability of underprivileged people and communities to fire-related risks. When underprivileged health reduces a person’s mobility, he or she either remains longer in a fire’s path or secures assistance from neighbours, FPA personnel or others. If the latter, then these people and resources are diverted from other fire response tasks.
Fires can generate additional problems for persons with health problems. Those with respiratory problems may be more intensely affected by smoke. The stress of responding to a fire may trigger life threatening events for those with coronary problems. These problems are compounded by the limitations on health care typical of underprivileged communities and especially those in rural areas.
A central characteristic of poverty is low resilience to economic disruption
Wildfires have a devastating impact on agriculture, running into millions of Rand in damages to property, loss of life, livestock, game and grassland annually. Each time households are faced with fire, their ability to recover is severely depleted. Their assets, both social and physical, are gradually worn away by the continual incidence of fires and recovery can take time. Even if a household is not directly affected, it may lose social capital, as family and social relations break down when people are forced to resettle or temporarily relocate elsewhere.
Underprivileged people can’t afford to buy replacement clothes when everything they own goes up in smoke or to live elsewhere for months while their properties are rebuilt or hire grazing whilst the veld recovers. They can’t afford to take time off from work to calm the fears of children frightened by fire. They struggle to search for a new job when fires or cause their employer to close shop either temporarily or permanently. They can’t afford to dip into financial reserves to backfill when budgets for other programs are depleted to bear the costs of fire response programs. “The evidence is conclusive that those at the bottom of the economic ladder are more vulnerable to the risks of wildfires. These findings are consistent with the conclusions of other studies of natural disasters, which find that the underprivileged are hit hardest in the face of catastrophes”.
Due to the lack of sufficient income people start to use and overuse every resource available to them when their survival is at stake. As desperate hunger leads to desperate strategies for survival, many trees are harvested for fire wood, timber and art craft. Most of the underprivileged people use this fire wood as their source of income by selling it and art craft products are also used for income generation. The roots of the trees are dug out for medicinal purposes. This leaves the soil exposed as the grasses are also grazed by animals and also collected for roofing the houses. When it rains the entire top and good soil are eroded, which makes it difficult for that soil to produce better agricultural products.
As populations approach the carrying capacity of their environment, the concepts of capital and productivity are changing from straightforward economic (monetary) values to resource capital and resource productivity. Therefore, the sustained ability of the environment to provide resources is increasingly critical. The environment therefore needs to be protected for selfish as well as empirical reasons. In other words, for sustainable, economic as well as pure ethical reasons, the ability of the environment to provide resources and services needs to be cherished, sustained and maintained.