When conspiratorial thinking and rumors start to undermine recovery and what to do about it.
This was not the same community I had grown up in. The packed school cafeteria sat silent. After several minutes, a hand went up. She targeted her response to the presenter. "I want to know. What are YOU doing for ME?"
In the months following the destruction of the town of Greenville, CA, a group of former and current residents gathered together to create the Dixie Fire Collaborative. The purpose of the group was to begin the long road toward recovery and rebuilding of the town. The Dixie Fire has laid waste to the town of 1,000 or so residents. The historic main street was gone. The quaint country homes with lovingly cared for gardens was gone. The museum was gone. The gas station. The cafe. Everywhere one looked, the town was now ash and twisted metal smoldering under the mournful gaze of charred pines.
The Dixie Fire Collaborative was gathered together by Sue Weber, a long-time resident of the community, a former nun with Saint Teresa, a basketball coach, an educator, a familiar face. She reached out to people she knew would be capable of leading the charge and putting in the work to help the town. With her experience in working on international disaster teams, she was able to create the collaborative in a short amount of time. It was an impressive achievement and ground breaking in its depth and speed. The collaborative was ready to get to work.
Rumors had been swirling around the community. Who was this "Dixie Fire Collaborative" anyway? Weren't they just outsiders coming in to take over our town? When is my house going to be rebuilt? Who do they think they are?!
The first community meeting of the Dixie Fire Collaborative was a strange mix of suspicion, apathy and demands. The collaborative had called together all of the leaders of the community from the local, county, state and federal level. There where housing experts, the sheriff, the county supervisor, contractors, planners, architects, any one who had a skill to donate to the cause was there to present to the general public the realities of rebuilding.
The audience filled up the elementary school cafeteria. One of the only buildings in town to have survived the Dixie Fire unscathed. Watching the meeting over a live Zoom feed, I was struck by the lack of community engagement at the meeting. I had grown up in Greenville, CA. I was a graduate of Greenville Jr/Sr High School. My parents were long-time residents and still were. I also knew what it was like in those first months after losing everything. My house, my pets and all of my belongings had been lost to a house fire only a few years prior. I understood the fire survivor brain fog, the feeling of defeat, the exhaustion and the desire to just get on with your life. But, looking out at this crowd gathered in the cafeteria, I sensed a different sentiment settling over the community.
All the feelings, thoughts, and emotions a community might have are brought to the forefront during and after a disaster. Of all these, conspiracy thinking can muddy the waters of recovery and make organizing more difficult.
During the Dixie Fire and shortly after it, a whole slew of conspiracies traveled around social media feeds and into people's convictions. Here are several that were popular on social media:
All of these conspiracies made their way into the community mindset and once they were implanted there, it was difficult to unlatch them.
While misguided, these conspiratorial mindset made it more difficult for the community to band together after the fire. People had planted themselves into groups of believers and non-believers of the conspiracies. This mindset also created a sense that people had lost their homes on purpose. That they had been targeted. So when the Dixie Fire Collaborative gathered everyone together that day, there was a feeling among the audience in attendance that they were owed something. They wanted their town back that had been stolen from them. And they wanted it now.
Slowly people began to realize that their homes, their businesses, their towns were not going to come back without effort from the entire community. No one was riding in on a white horse to magically transform the town back into what it was. To more forward, they were going to have to put in the work.
After that first meeting. The one in which the first question asked by the audience was "What are YOU going to do for ME?!" the Dixie Fire Collaborative worked tirelessly to educate the rest of the community on what disaster recovery looked like and what it would require. A website, created by The Seed Design Studio, was put online and an email campaign started knitting the community back together. We had to get people talking to each other, brainstorming and thinking as a group again. A workshop was held to help the community to change their mindset. To get it back to the place it had been when I was a kid. A mindset of togetherness, of resiliency, of DIY and pulling ourselves up, of sacrifice and determination. To be successful in rebuilding our town, we needed to get us all back to those attributes.
What we have learned over this first 6 months since the disaster is that when faced with unprecedented loss, many people will turn to social media, rumors and conspiracies for comfort. It is a natural human tendency seek a quick explanation for disaster. The challenge of the disaster recovery team is to break down the barriers to collaboration and community that are created by conspiratorial thinking.
Here are ways you can rebuild community after disaster:
