Wildfire preparedness is often framed around individual actions: knowing your evacuation route, packing a go-bag, or signing up for emergency alerts.<\/p>\n
But our nonprofit partners remind us that wildfire preparedness is also something we can do together. Because being truly ready also means building the relationships, knowledge, and systems that help entire communities respond.<\/p>\n
The ideas in this guide come from local organizations that survived fires and worked alongside their communities toward recovery.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nDuring wildfires, roads can close, traffic can build, and conditions can change quickly. Consider where you’ll go, how you’ll get there, and what you’ll take with you. Make plans for children, pets, livestock, medications, and documents.<\/p>\n
You may also consider who else in your community may need help evacuating? Does anyone lack a car or have trouble receiving emergency alerts? Is there someone with a mobile disability or who relies on electricity-dependent medical equipment? Start a conversation with your neighbors about evacuation plans and how you can help one another get to safety if a fire threatens your community. <\/p>\n
If someone needs support you can’t provide, help connect them with a local agency or organization that can.<\/strong> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Emergency alerts provide critical information about evacuation warnings, road closures, and changing conditions. Sign up for the systems used in your area.<\/p>\n And\u2014don’t rely on your phone alone! Power and internet access can be disrupted, and not everyone receives information in the same way. How does your community communicate during disasters? Does your neighborhood use phone trees, radios, text chains, social media, or door-to-door alerts? Satellite radios and solar or hand-crank radios can help when service or electricity are unavailable. <\/p>\n Organizations can also offer emergency information support, especially for unhoused or immigrant communities who may not receive alerts in their native language or through traditional channels. MCN<\/a>, for example, shares emergency information in Spanish and Haitian Creole through trusted community networks. <\/p>\n Look out for similar organizations and find out how they share emergency information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Certain landscaping and construction choices can give flames more fuel, allowing fire to spread more quickly and increase the risk of damage to your home and surrounding areas. Depending on where you live, this might mean upgrading siding, sealing gaps where embers can enter, or choosing fire-resistant materials such as shou sugi ban (yakisugi)<\/a>, a traditional Japanese technique for charring and preserving wood siding. If you’re clearing vegetation around your home, be sure to follow local guidance to avoid accidentally removing native species or creating new environmental risks.<\/p>\n But preparing a home isn’t equally easy for everyone. Some people may not have the money, equipment, time, or physical ability to do the work themselves. That’s where community support and clearing days can make a difference.<\/p>\n In dense, urban environments, such as the city of Bukavu, \u201crecurrent fires are caused from faulty electrical installations, the use of kerosene, improper use of gas, the lack of urban planning, and flammable building materials,\u201d writes our partners at TERRE DU CONGO<\/a>. In their case, the organization focuses on distributing fire safety tools like extinguishers and fire blankets, radio programs, and improving households’ knowledge of fire causes, prevention and rapid response protocols. <\/p>\n Wherever you live, consider what fire risks are most relevant to your community\u2014and what you can do to reduce them. In some places, finding local organizations doing firewise landscaping and construction may be the way to go, and in others, it may be about addressing structural challenges like electrical hazards. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Preparedness can be expensive. Not everyone can afford to buy every tool or piece of equipment they might need to prepare their property or respond to an emergency.<\/p>\n Community tool libraries<\/a> and resource-sharing programs<\/a> can help make preparedness more accessible. Instead of every household buying its own equipment, neighbors can share what they have. Sometimes the most useful resource is the one your neighbor already has! <\/p>\n But shared resources can be about more than tools. Communities can also prepare by creating shared stocks of food and water for the days immediately after a disaster, or by making sure emergency food programs reflect local cultures and dietary needs. In Maui, Maui Hub<\/a> has helped connect communities with culturally appropriate food access as part of disaster response and recovery.<\/p>\n That kind of resource-sharing can also be built into community spaces. Also in Maui, the KCWA community nursery<\/a> grows hundreds of native trees while also serving as a resilience hub, seed-collecting and propagation workshop space, and community tool library.<\/p>\n Look for similar spaces in your community\u2014or consider how an existing community space could become a place to share tools, knowledge, and resources.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cGeography, language, culture, poverty, immigration status, and other barriers can limit their access to disaster services including essential health care.\u201d\u2014Migrant Clinicians Network<\/a><\/p>\n Preparedness isn’t just about having enough resources\u2014it’s about making sure those resources can actually reach the people who need them. Who might struggle to receive an emergency alert or need access to information in a different language? Who might not have transportation, stable housing, or access to healthcare? Who might be hesitant or unable to seek help from government agencies?<\/p>\n For the team at Migrant Clinicians Network, this means working with local clinician networks to anticipate these challenges, develop accessible outreach strategies, and align health services with community needs during emergencies. <\/p>\n As you prepare, asking these questions can help your community identify gaps before a disaster exposes them\u2014and build the relationships, resources, and response systems needed to meet people where they are.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Look for local classes and workshops on emergency preparedness, first aid, fire safety, evacuation planning, or other skills that could be useful during a disaster. Libraries, community centers, schools, and nonprofits can all serve as places where neighbors learn together. These gatherings have another benefit, too: they give people a chance to meet one another before an emergency happens.<\/p>\n Learning together can also help communities respond more quickly when disaster strikes. During the 2025 fires in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, APAD Korea<\/a> provided emergency first aid through mobile medical units, showing how community-based skills and resources can help meet immediate needs during a crisis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wildfire mitigation takes many forms, from prescribed and cultural burning to restoring healthy ecosystems, creating fire-resilient landscapes, and using traditional ecological knowledge to care for the land. It can also mean supporting policies and organizations working to address the climate pressures that are making fires more frequent and severe. <\/p>\n Across the world, organizations like Native Americans in Philanthropy<\/a> are working to strengthen traditional fire management practices, while others like Our Hawai\u02bbi<\/a> are supporting efforts to restore aging infrastructure and expand land stewardship education for residents, visitors, and non-Native communities.<\/p>\n Look for local groups leading this work and consider how you can support them\u2014whether by volunteering, donating, advocating for better land management and climate policies, or learning from the people who have cared for these landscapes for generations. There is no single way to escape wildfire risk, but there are many ways to contribute to the work of building more fire-resilient ecosystems.<\/p>\n \nThe places where people already gather can become powerful resources for disaster preparedness.<\/p>\n A library might host a wildfire preparedness workshop. A community center might serve as a place to share emergency information. A neighborhood organization might coordinate supplies or help residents connect with local resources.<\/p>\n Think about the spaces in your community that people already trust\u2014and how they could help neighbors prepare for what comes next.<\/p>\n After the Maui wildfires, people convened at a restaurant-turned-humanitarian-hub, and eventually moved to a weekly Zoom call. That simple act of creating a space to connect helped residents stay informed, coordinate, and make decisions together as they navigated the recovery. Eventually, the organization KCWA <\/a>was formed from this space. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n When disaster strikes, local knowledge can be one of a community’s greatest assets. <\/p>\n Neighborhood response groups can help residents share information, check on one another, identify evacuation needs, and coordinate support before, during, and after an emergency. Look for existing community emergency response teams (CERTs), neighborhood preparedness groups, or other local networks in your area. If one doesn’t exist, your local fire department or emergency management office may be able to connect you with training, resources, or existing networks.<\/p>\n Community-led organizations can play a similar role on a larger scale. In Belize, Belize Karst Habitat Conservation<\/a> hosts refresher training for community fire brigades, recruits new members, clears firebreaks, and runs a Fire Awareness program to help prevent wildfires. <\/p>\n Look for organizations doing this kind of work in your area\u2014or, if you’re able, consider supporting their efforts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Revisit your evacuation plan. Update your emergency contacts. Check your supplies. Make sure new neighbors know how your community communicates during an emergency. Pay attention to changes in local evacuation zones and emergency systems. Most importantly, keep building relationships.<\/p>\n The strongest communities aren’t necessarily the ones that can prepare for every possible scenario. They’re the ones that know how to come together, share resources, communicate, and look out for one another when things change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Individual preparedness matters, but communities also need resources to prepare, respond, and recover from wildfires. Consider supporting organizations working on the ground in fire-affected communities, whether through donations, volunteering, or sharing their work with others.<\/p>\n As wildfires become more common and widespread globally, GlobalGiving created the Wildfire Emergency Response Fund<\/a> with the goal of raising funds before fires strike\u2014so we can move funds to community-led organizations responding to wildfires even faster and support communities in recovery after the flames have been put out. <\/p>\n Funds will go toward providing emergency shelter, food, clean water, medical care, and other essential relief for people in the event of a wildfire. As communities begin to recover, funding will also support debris removal, rebuilding homes and livelihoods, mental health services, ecosystem restoration, and long-term resilience to future wildfire disasters.<\/p>\n Explore GlobalGiving’s Wildfire Relief Fund.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\nFeatured Photo: Preventing Wildfires: Protecting Belize's Forests<\/span> by Belize Karst Habitat Conservation<\/a><\/small>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wildfire preparedness is often framed around individual actions: knowing your evacuation route, packing a go-bag, or signing up for emergency alerts. But our nonprofit partners remind us that wildfire preparedness is also something we can do together. Because being truly ready also means building the relationships, knowledge, and systems that help entire communities respond. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":231909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[12],"coauthors":[969],"class_list":["post-231869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tips","tag-disaster-recovery"],"acf":[],"cp_meta_data":{"_edit_lock":["1785786416:151"],"_edit_last":["151"],"intro":["Wildfire preparedness is stronger when we do it together. Here are 11 ideas for building neighborhood-wide preparedness plans.\r\n2. Know your area\u2019s emergency alerts system<\/h3>\n
3. Consider firewise landscaping and construction<\/h3>\n
4. Share tools and resources with your community<\/h3>\n
5. Think about who might be left out<\/h3>\n
6. Learn together<\/h3>\n
7. Support local mitigation efforts<\/h3>\n
8. Turn community spaces into preparedness hubs<\/h3>\n
9. Join (or build) a neighborhood response group<\/h3>\n
10. Keep your plan updated<\/h3>\n
Want to help communities affected by wildfire?<\/h3>\n
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