The focus will take place from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, April 13, at the Lakeport Courthouse Museum, 255 N. Main St.
To be eligible, participants must have been evacuated or received an evacuation order for the 2018 Mendocino Complex – which included the Ranch and River fires that began in July and continued until September – and they must speak Spanish as the primary language at home.
The focus group will be conducted in Spanish. Participants must sign up through an online form at https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ or by calling 925-895-7897.
Participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis; it’s limited to one participant per household. For those chosen to participate, each person will receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card; lunch also will be served.
Stephen Wong, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate and part of the team that is conducting the focus group, said their goal is to hear the evacuation stories of Spanish-speaking individuals and develop strategies that could uniquely assist them in future disasters across California.
“We’re conducting four focus groups across California,” Wong told Lake County News.
The groups are focused on how people make decisions in evacuations. He said participants are asked what they did – if they evacuated or not – and what notifications they may have received.
“We want to get a better picture of how Spanish speakers navigated the evacuation process in the Mendocino Complex,” Wong said.
The other focus groups included low-income residents of Southern California impacted by the 2017 fires and two focus groups in Napa and Sonoma counties for the October 2017 fires for those age 65 and older and those with disabilities. Those focus groups already have taken place, he said.
Wong said they also are conducting ongoing, in-depth surveys for the 2017 Southern California fires and the 2018 Carr fire in Redding.
He said Spanish speakers may have challenges in communications and so may not understand evacuation orders.
If there aren’t contingencies in place for multiple languages, “It creates a real challenge,” said Wong, adding that it also leads to difficulties for finding resources for recovery.
Public resources often aren’t enough to shelter or evacuate everyone, and Wong said the research is looking at how the “sharing economy” – peer to peer or business to peer transactions that occur over the Internet, including private companies like Uber and Lyft – can be leveraged in such situations.
He said it opens the possibility of partnerships between public and private entities to build stronger neighborhood networks, and how a sharing economy could produce a more equitable response to a disaster.
The team will build statistical models to determine what influences a person to evacuate or not. Wong said they also will look at why people choose a public shelter, the home of a friend or family member, or why they choose to go to certain locations, such as the Bay Area or out of state.
They’re also hoping to have a specific journal article that relates to the sharing economy and whether it’s equitable or not in such situations.
Wong said the group completed a report on Hurricane Irma that goes in depth into a similar kind of modeling, looking at evacuee behavior and offering key takeaways and agency recommendations. Among their findings so far is that evacuation orders actually work.
He said the different aspects of the research will come into a final report that will be presented to policy makers and agencies as well as be published. It will document the 2017 and 2018 wildfires and the evacuation process.
Wong said an idea behind the research is that agencies can implement these ideas directly into emergency response plans and evacuation plans.
The Spanish announcement for the focus group is below.
Cuéntenos Su Historia –
Grupo Focal sobre la Evacuación del Incendio del Complejo de Mendocino.
Investigadores de la Universidad de California, Berkeley están llevando a cabo un grupo focal en el área del condado de Lake y Mendocino sobre la evacuación del incendio del complejo de Mendocino (Ranch Fire y River Fire).
Grupo Focal: Hispanohablantes
Sábado, 13 de abril: 12:00 p.m. a 2:00 p.m.
Lakeport Courthouse Museum: 255 N Main St, Lakeport, CA 95453
Requisitos
1) Haber evacuado o recibido una orden de evacuación durante el incendio del Complejo de Mendocino en 2018. (Ranch Fire o River Fire en julio)
2) Hablar español como el idioma principal en casa.
Cada persona elegida para participar recibirá una tarjeta de regalo de Amazon por $100. Los participantes serán seleccionados por orden de llegada. Solo un miembro por hogar. También se servirá almuerzo.
Si está interesado, por favor complete el siguiente formulario: https://berkeley.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Sj4eewMMgXcTaJ o llame al 925-895-7897.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.