Community Resilience Series Ep.3: Preparing for and Recovering From Megafires with Butte County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Taylor Nilsson
About this episode
The episode discusses community resilience in the face of megafires, featuring insights from Taylor Nilsson of the Butte County Fire Safe Council.
Welcome to the third and final episode of our Community Wildfire Resilience Series, supported by Fire Aside! In this episode, we spoke with Butte County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Taylor Nilsson. Butte County, CA has seen more catastrophic fire in the last eight years than most places in the West, possibly even the world. Starting with the Camp Fire in 2018 (85 killed, 14,000 homes lost), then the North Complex in 2020 (16 killed, 2,300 structures lost), then the Park Fire in 2024 (700+ structures destroyed), Butte County has seen 50% of its Wildland Urban Interface impacted by wildfire in the last seven years, and over 90% of its WUI impacted since 1999. This being the case, folks in this area have a deep understanding not only of preparing for wildfire, but of the long process of recovering from it—while knowing from experience that they simultaneously need to be preparing for the next one.
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- Part 2: The Latine Forestry Workforce and Why Solidarity Matters with Manuel Machado (and Guest Host Gaby Eseverri)
- Part 1: The Latine Forestry Workforce with Dr. E.J. Davis
- Braiding The Personal with the Ecological, with HOTSHOT Author River Selby
- The Intricacies of Hotshot Culture, with Wildfire Days author Kelly Ramsey
- The Social Contract of Managing Fire with Stephen Pyne
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