Rosenstiel School researcher Katharine Mach, who studies the response and adaptation to changing climatic conditions, examines the possibilities of moving people and assets out of harm’s way.
Rosenstiel School researcher Katharine Mach, who studies the response and adaptation to changing climatic conditions, examines the possibilities of moving people and assets out of harm’s way.
Katharine Mach was only 9 when the Oakland Hills firestorm of 1991 killed 25 people and destroyed nearly 3,500 homes. But the University of Miami scientist, who was born and raised in California’s San Francisco Bay area, remembers the deadly blaze quite well.
“While we were safe and lived in an area where the fire risk was low, for thousands of other people, it was a time of unbelievable panic and trauma,” recalled Mach, an associate professor of marine ecosystems and society at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. “We had friends who lost homes in that fire.”
With wildfires now scorching the West Coast, Mach, whose research focuses on climate change risks and the ways in which people respond and adapt to those risks, recently pondered the question of whether it is time to consider managed retreat—moving people and infrastructure out of harm’s way—as a defense against the destructive blazes that plague the West Coast and only seem to be getting worse.
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Image via Associated Press.
