Mora Wildfire Project

Start Date: 
Aug 15, 2022
End Date: 
Ongoing
Beginning in Fall of 2022, Center Staff Member, Cassidy Tawse-Garcia, began participating in collaborative research on the post-wildfire community response to Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon fires. This work is part of the “Diverse Economies Working Group,” a multi-disciplinary research group that is funded through the Transformation Network (https://resilience.unm.edu/) (TN). The TN is a multi-disciplinary research body that spans across eight universities and 50+ partners with aims to, "aims to build resilient communities and ecosystems throughout the Intermountain Western United States.” 
Cassidy’s research focuses on understanding the presence and role of mutual aid in post-wildfire and subsequent (and on-going) flooding. She is interested in uncovering “informal care economies” and the role they play in crisis response. Her work on the ground has included a facilitation day at Mora High School, where she and a team of researchers led by Mora local and co-researcher, Dr. Manuel Montoya, worked with students to understand their conceptions and perceptions of community resilience in the face of the paired acute crises of wildfire and flooding. Additionally, she attended crisis recovery events hosted by New Mexico Forest & Watershed Restoration Institute in Las Vegas, NM in February 2023. These “Wildfire Resiliency Fairs” hosted resources for locals impacted by fire and flooding, but were not well attended by community members themselves. However, the host organization was utilizing a participatory map to track where those impacted by wildfire and flooding were located. This inspired the opportunity for collaboration with the host organization, and there are now plans to expand this tool to support community understanding of the impacts of disaster. Finally, direct relationships were forged with the key community partner working on direct community crisis response, Neighbors Helping Neighbors. This work prompted co-researchers to ask additional questions around how disaster recovery resources are being advertised, dispersed, and who they are, and are not, reaching? 
Research is ongoing and will now be focused on working in partnership with Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a community support organization founded post wildfires to offer impacted individuals resources and financial support. In Summer 2023, field work will continue with interviews in the Mora and Las Vegas, NM communities, focused around understanding the impacts of community on regional water governance.