UC Davis

This dissertation work studies the effects of climate-driven flood and wildfire events throughout the American West, with a particular focus on the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. It brings together an interdisciplinary literature primarily from the fields of hazards geography, economics, planning, and environmental management in order to better understand the economic and social factors associated with recovery from climate-driven disasters. The flood component of this work draws on established theories around price discounting and flood awareness and tests them empirically across three case study counties in the United States. The fire component of this dissertation uses household-level consumer data to map population displacement in the wake of a major wildfire disaster. It also contributes by sharing the first comprehensive survey of wildfire survivors to better understand relocation desires and preferences, adding to a disaster displacement literature that has up to now neglected the category of wildfire hazards.Findings suggest that in regard to flooding, real-estate markets continue to behave different across contexts based on the perception of the flood event as expected or a “freak event.” In the context of wildfire displacement and particularly the case of the 2018 wildfire, the disaster caused a diaspora of thousands of households to relocate across the United States. Social factors were found to be correlated with relocation and relocation distance, with older and wealthier households relocating farther from the fire footprint. Survey findings from this population revealed that above 40% of displaced residents would not prefer to return to the fire-affected area even under “ideal circumstances,” and that measures of place attachment and risk perception supplement social factors as predictive of relocation distance. Taken together, analysis of these wildfire survivors suggests that local and regional planners should think regionally about post-disaster housing and recovery needs. It also spotlights the role that housing affordability plays in hazard vulnerability in California, where the populations that inhabit wildlands tend to be highly socially stratified between those who choose to live in exurban forested environments as a preference, versus those marginalized to these areas by virtue of housing affordability. Future research should continue to focus on the experiences of climate-driven disaster survivors, and interrogate the root causes of vulnerability these hazards.