Post-Fire Recovery
Stabilize and restore the landscape and community following a wildfire event.
Post-fire recovery efforts can affect susceptibility. Explore your community’s risk.
About Post-Fire Recovery
It can take months and even years to recover from the emotional, financial, and ecological impacts of a wildfire. The healing process for a community requires extensive resources and support.
Landscape stabilization and rebuilding homes and communities following a wildfire can be stressful and overwhelming. While immediate action is needed to address landscape rehabilitation, infrastructure repairs, post-fire flooding mitigation, and neighborhood restoration, long-term care is required to ensure personal well-being, financial stability, community health, and a renewed sense of place. Pre-fire mitigation steps—such as wildfire preparedness, home hardening, land use planning, and addressing community health and safety—can reduce the work required to recover post-fire.
Community Tools
After the Fire: Resources for Recovery
The Natural Resources Conservation Service is available to assist with site specific questions and provide technical assistance for landowners as they begin to restore the landscape following a fire. In addition, there may be financial assistance available through regular Environmental Quality Incentives Program or special state initiatives to help address resource concerns on private and tribal land.
After the Flames
After the Flames is a curated list of post-fire recovery and restoration information. The resources are useful for communities as they work to establish plans and priorities that protect citizens, homes, essential infrastructure, and resources from the destruction that occurs after a catastrophic wildfire. After the Flames is an initiative of Coalitions and Collaboratives, Inc. (COCO).
AIM: Action, Implementation & Mitigation
The Action, Implementation, and Mitigation Program (AIM) seeks to increase local capacity and support for wildfire risk reduction activities in high risk communities. Selected participants in AIM will receive technical and financial support and become affiliate members of Coalitions and Collaboratives, Inc. (COCO).
Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Teams
The BAER program is designed to address emergency stabilization issues related to wildland fire. The BAER teams perform emergency stabilization actions within one year of wildfire containment. These actions are intended to stabilize and prevent unacceptable degradation to natural and cultural resources, minimize threats to life or property resulting from the effects of a fire, or to repair, replace, or construct physical improvements necessary to prevent degradation of land or resources.
Community Mitigation Assistance Team (CMAT)
Community Mitigation Assistance Teams are a national interagency resource designed to work collaboratively with local partners to build sustainable mitigation programs focused on community fire adaptation actions on the ground. A CMAT works with communities at high risk of wildfire to analyze their mitigation programs and barriers, develop workable solutions to help move mitigation forward, share best mitigation practices for achieving outcomes, and build successful partnerships.
FEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant Program
The Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) manages several grant opportunities for wildfire in their Hazard Mitigation Assistance program. The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program Post-Fire provides mitigation assistance for Fire Management Assistance declarations on or after October 5, 2018.
Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network
The Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network connects and supports people and communities who are striving to live more safely with wildfire. The purpose of FAC Net is to exchange information, collaborate to enhance the practice of fire adaptation, and work together and at multiple scales to help communities live safely with fire. This includes embracing resiliency concepts and taking action before, during and after wildfires. They offer a Fire Adapted Communities Self-Assessment Tool (FAC SAT) to help communities assess their level of fire adaptation and track their capacity to live safely with fire over time
NACo County Wildfire Playbook
The National Association of Counties (NACo) produced this county leadership guide to help communities become more fire adapted and learn to live with wildland fire. The playbook has been designed by county commissioners, for county commissioners, as they endeavor to fortify and protect communities from high severity impacts of wildland fire.
Research & Science
- After the Fire. Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2019). Emmitsburg, MD: U.S. Fire Administration.
- Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) Program. (n.d.). USDA Forest Service.
- Recovering from the wildfires. (2020). American Psychological Association.
- Wildfire recovery as a “hot moment” for creating fire-adapted communities. Schumann RL, Mockrin M, Syphard A, Whittaker J, Price O, Gaither CJ, Emrich CT, & Butsic V. (2020). International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 42. 101354.
- Wildfire Recovery: Ways to Move Forward. (2006). Wildfire Recovery, 1(1). Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Extension Service.
Learn how these actions align with federal policies and initiatives.