FireChasers Project: Improving Community Response to Wildfire

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With funding from the National Science Foundation and Joint Fire. Science Program, this project will produce a series of
FireChasers Project: The Issue

Improving Community Response to Wildfire

The increased severity and frequency of wildfires has increased public concern with wildfire management. Failures in effective communication and coordination among responding organizations and agencies can lead to dangerous outcomes. In response to these growing concerns, the Fire Chasers—a research team led by Drs. Nowell and Steelman from North Carolina State University—will be working with 126 high risk counties across the Western United States to both assess and strengthen inter-agency capacity for responding to significant wildfire events.

We Need Your Help

The Benefit

With funding from the National Science Foundation and Joint Fire Science Program, this project will produce a series of tools to help local communities and incident management teams better manage wildfire. A central component of the project will be a comprehensive capacity assessment involving about 40 organizations, community groups, and agencies key to wildfire incident response in 126 counties. This assessment serves as the foundation of all subsequent research and tool development and its accuracy depends upon the community’s willingness to participate. To achieve the required level of participation, we need to offer sufficient incentives. Based on a proven strategy from our past work, we would like to offer participating communities the chance to win one of five $5,000 awards that will go to a local initiative, program, or charity recognized for its excellence in promoting wildfire resilience. Unfortunately, this expenditure falls outside of allowable expenditures of federal funding. We are seeking partners to help us fund this element of the project. At this time we need to raise $25,000 to allow us to incentivize community participation in our research.

A community grant program will provide significant benefits to both the communities of interest as well as the sponsoring organizations. These benefits include: Sponsoring Organization  Elevate your public image as community steward. Receive national recognition in communications with ~ 5,000 disaster response professionals. Publicly acknowledged support your company or organization on all tools, reports, publications, and presentations generated from this project. Community  Assist federal wildfire management teams and local communities to work together more effectively during wildfire disasters.

For more information, please contact Dr. Branda Nowell at [email protected]