![]() Locally, regionally, and nationally, wildfire response was at a “Preparedness Level 5,” indicating that fire danger remained high and virtually all available resources, such as fire crews and engines, were already assigned to fires. Two men sitting at the front of the room led us through day’s forecast for the hot and dry day along with measures of atmospheric stability and fire risk. It was just after 8 a.m., and we had gathered for our morning briefing on a very unusual day. On August 21, 2017, I sat with several dozen wildland firefighters in a dusty briefing room. I conclude by discussing implications of these findings for conceptual understandings of disaster planning as well as contemporary concerns about skepticism and conspiracy theories directed at government planning and response to disaster events. Despite the uncertainties that dominated eclipse-planning rhetoric, firefighters largely identified risks from the eclipse that were risks they dealt with in their daily work as firefighters. ![]() ![]() These plans were generally met with skepticism by front-line disaster workers. Agency leaders devised worst-case scenario plans for the eclipse based on uncertain predictions regarding hazards from the eclipse and the occurrence of severe wildfires, aiming to eliminate the potential for unknown hazards. I find that different qualities of risk, hazard, and uncertainty across these two events were central to the development and implementation of disaster plans. In this paper I draw on ethnographic research working as a wildland firefighter, interviews with firefighters and fire managers, and state and agency planning documents to examine preparations for two events occurring in Central Oregon in August 2017: (1) the height of wildfire season and (2) hundreds of thousands of anticipated visitors for a total solar eclipse. ![]() Little research has explored how disaster managers incorporate different forms of knowledge and uncertainty into preparations for simultaneous hazards or disaster events, or how front-line disaster workers respond to and implement these plans. Such hazards involve significant uncertainty, which must be translated into concrete plans able to be implemented by disaster workers. As climate change increases the frequency and severity of disasters, and population and social changes raise the public’s vulnerability to disaster events, societies face additional risk of multiple disaster events or other hazards occurring simultaneously. ![]()
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