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“So, when these winds combine with drought, which has affected southern California this fall and into winter, we have perfect conditions for wildfire. … We are seeing an extension into a longer season that is approaching a fire year.”

Amid such tragedy and loss, it’s hard to imagine a community, especially the sprawling patchwork of neighborhoods that make up greater Los Angeles, rebuilding itself. It will take years, but it will. Finding hope will require looking at past disasters and the various paths that communities take to rebuild.

The cycles of disaster — and the media

Disaster experts often refer to disaster management as a cycle (left): initial emergency response, longer-term recovery, and mitigation and preparation measures.  

We don’t need to look that far back to communities on the difficult road to building back. “We’ve seen many communities affected by disasters,” said Elizabeth Albright, associate professor of the practice of environmental science and policy methods at Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who has conducted studies on disaster recovery on flooding and wildfires. “The media frequently moves on after a window of time, often to the next crisis.”

Take Hurricane Helene, in Western North Carolina this past September, as an example.

Regina Johnson is a minister who was at a meeting in Lake Lure, N.C., planning a youth camp as Hurricane Helene approached. After two days of heavy rain breached a nearby creek, the group started to leave.

Roads started to close and gas stations lost power, so Johnson stayed with family nearby rather than risk getting stranded. It took a week for Johnson to make the hour’s drive back home to her husband in Weaverville.

Some roads had been partially cleared, but much of the scenery looked like the apocalypse: mud-filled roads, tree branches adorned with floating trash, huge trees lying on houses. There was a 7 pm curfew because of power outages.

 “When I finally got back up here, there were strips of trees down. I drove over power lines,” said Johnson, who just a couple weeks before had joined a Climate Justice Preaching cohort organized by Duke’s Divinity School’s Transformative Preaching Lab.

Her church had utilities when others didn’t, so it became a gathering place. “We didn’t initiate any of it,” said Johnson. “The community came to us and asked to use our space.” They offered a shower trailer (from a partner church), clean water (from a water purification company), and satellite internet (hooked up by a neighbor). served hot meals.   

“It was crazy to see how the hurricane leveled the playing field among those of varying means,” said Johnson, noting how the wealthy individual needed a shower as much as the man living out of his car. And yet, “There was a mom who was living in poverty before this happened. We wanted to give her things for her pantry, but she was telling us no, give it to someone who needs it.”

‘They bring people together’

That sense of community is what Brian McAdoo, associate professor of Earth and climate science, has noticed from working on countless disasters: “They bring people together. It’s not about the looting.”

Yet these events also highlight the ways people in geographically marginalized, smaller communities are affected. “Some people don’t have the resources to leave. They’re incapacitated. If something happened to me, I could go to a hotel. Some of my neighbors can’t,” said McAdoo, who was on the United Nations that investigated the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. “How do we help those people who need it the most? How are (smaller communities) going to rebuild saying it’s not going to happen the next year?”

Tornado season starts early spring in some parts of the country but they, such as wildfires, can happen year-round. If these events, including in Hawaii and , seem to be increasingly in the headlines, it’s because they’re happening with greater frequency and magnitude.

According to the , in 2024, there were 27 confirmed weather/climate disaster events in the United States, with losses exceeding $182 billion (although in total dwarfed by the L.A. fires).  Refer to the chart on the left to see the increase from the 1980s, when there were 3.3 events per year at a cost of $22 billion per year.

What’s the reason for the increase? It’s a combination of things, says Lydia Olander, program director at the Nicholas Institute for Energy Environment & Sustainability. “Some of it is climate change, and some of it is because people are moving into high-risk areas,” she said.

The last was 100 years ago in 1916. Eighty people died and hundreds of homes were destroyed.

As disastrous as it was, it could have been worse.

“At that point, there was no arts district in the flood zone,” said McAdoo. “There were not as many people, not as many roads. But now there is greater magnitude because there are ,” referring to properties or development.

‘What we do as humans is not always logical’

But, he added, “if we make a little bit of investment now and both arrange, plan, design and implement, we can do a better job of mitigating our risks to provide more resilience for both us and for the communities to which we belong.”

Community buy-in

“Climate change is a global problem but the impact and response is primarily local,” said John Lohnes, a Duke orthopedic physician assistant who was on Duke’s volunteer State Medical Assistance Team that provided emergency response in the wake of Hurricane Helene.

“We’re well set up to address material and physical needs,” said Lohnes, who has a master’s degree in environmental management. “It’s the recovery piece that’s more challenging. The impacts are complex afterward and continue for years,” especially in areas with poverty. “We can’t prevent these things, but we can lessen them through (things like) building codes and through education.”

Lohnes is co-teaching a class on , where he says he is trying to integrate that layered thought process.

Yet, as Schaad notes, “For these interventions to work, a community has to buy into the science and cooperate together for a long-term plan.”

Timing and audience can be key. As part of the Climate Justice Preaching cohort, Regina Johnson needed to write a sermon about climate justice and give it to her congregation. “I thought, a lot of people are going to tune me out because they don’t think (climate change) is a big deal,” said Johnson, who describes her congregation as “purple – conservative and moderate.”  

Then the hurricane hit.

Just weeks later, Johnson recalls thinking, “I have to present a sermon to survivors of one of the most unexpected climate catastrophes we ever had. How do I do it?  Some of them don’t see it as a climate issue, they see it as a freak of nature,” said Johnson.

“At that point I knew that even though it was our fault collectively as humanity, I knew that was not the time for that (climate) sermon. The thing that helped me form my sermon was, in the midst of tragedy ... (how) do you not completely give into despair? I said, ‘Look, I’m tired, you’re tired, let’s acknowledge and sit with it.’”

Johnson also said this to the congregation: “Our Earth is hurting, how do we fix It? How do we prevent it from getting worse? … How do we hold on to hope? I can't answer that question for you but what gives me hope is one, I know I’m not alone in this work. … I also remember that all of this is a process not just one approach will fix.”

The next story in this series will focus on immediate emergency response and longer-term recovery efforts following an extreme weather event, with the work Duke experts and scholars are doing to help community resiliency.