Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Hey EREers,

Unfortunately, a large part of my local community burned to the ground yesterday in the wake of the Marshall fire. Yesterday when we woke up, my partner and I thought it was a normal day with some crazy wind outside, but nobody in the city could possibly imagine the devastation that was about to happen in the next 24 hours. I’ve lived within an hour of this area my whole life and (at least to me and my friends) it has never been considered a fire prone area, though we all knew about the dryness and the droughts this year.

My own house is fine (and not in an evac zone), and my immediate neighborhood is fine too; but many of my friends have become “circumstantial minimalists” after evacuation, and many of them permanently after loss of their home / neighborhoods to put it lightly.

Obviously recovery from such an event is going to be a very long, incredibly complex process, and I want to help on that path as best as I can. Seeing as this forum seems to be composed of a lot of well read, varied individuals, I want to see if anyone knows of any books or guides or movies available that describe the long haul of what comes next, from the immediate local period of trying to distribute food / pet food / blankets / hygiene products to those displaced to the larger period of cleanup of toxic ash / fumes / etc and rebuilding, to community healing and resilience.

I assume this is a story that will be told many times in the future, and I would like to compile ideas from this thread into a guide to some resources of stories of these events and recovery for those who may need it right now, even if it is just to help support their mental health as they go through the coming weeks and events after a catastrophe, by knowing others have gone through it too and survived (or even thrived).

I'd start with Solnit: https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-H ... 143118072/

This is useful for individual mindsets https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Survival-Wh ... 393353710/ and I've heard good things about this one https://www.amazon.com/Unthinkable-Surv ... 307352900/

In terms of what happened later I expect a growing amount of literature. There are already accounts and movies about the aftermath of the Paradise fire.

A quick overview for homeowners: https://thebolditalic.com/what-i-wish-i ... 06b1f2382b

Santa Rosa's Coffey Park community has resources also, including how they organized to cope with things:
https://coffeystrong.com/wildfire-resou ... -wildfire/

Graphic memoir about wildfire and rebuilding: https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Story-Brian ... 1419735853

@George has not posted in several years. He experienced an earthquake that devastated his community and wrote about recovery in several different threads. Here is one.
viewtopic.php?p=81525#p81525

Historically, somewhere on the Gulf coast goes through this every couple of decades after devastating hurricanes. Some lessons are learned, most lessons forgotten, and there is local economic depression during the rebuilding phase (unless the area can be classified as economically vital, like Houston).