As wildfires tear across the Western U.S., officials are confronting the challenge of evacuating and sheltering people in the middle of a pandemic. A recent workshop examined how disaster preparedness teams must adapt to new realities as hurricanes, wildfires, and other extreme weather events coincide with COVID-19.

A workshop in 2017 looked at how climate change, landscape alterations, where people are choosing to live, and other factors are converging to make wildland fire management exceptionally challenging for federal, state, and local authorities.  Another National Academies workshop, held last year at the University of California, Davis, considered the consequences of increasingly strong and numerous wildfires, particularly in California, on population health, environmental health, emergency preparedness, and health equity.  And a virtual workshop later this month will discuss how wildfire smoke affects air quality and human health.

Our Resilient America Program partners with communities across the nation to help build resilience to extreme events, save lives, and reduce the physical and economic costs of disasters. Based On Science provides the most up-to-date, evidence-based information about how global warming and climate change are making some extreme weather events more intense and more frequent.

The National Academies have several collections of publications on disaster planning, response, and recovery:

• Emergency Preparedness / Disaster Management Collection
• Flood Resilience: Preparedness and Recovery Collection
• Earthquakes, Floods, and Natural Disasters Collection

Transportation Research Board articles:

• Extreme Weather
• Planning for Health Disasters in the Transportation Industry
• Building Transportation Supply Chain Resilience After a Pandemic
• Funding Transportation Through the COVID-19 Pandemic