Book Review: Red Flag Warning

Image: the cover of the book is an overexposed low contrast image of flames in colors of white and red. Across the top and black is Red Flag Warning. Below that in white is mutual aid and survival in California's fire country. Below that in Black smaller letters is edited by Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia, introduction by Manjula Martin.

Red Flag Warning, edited by Dani Burlison and Margaret Elysia, is necessary reading in current times. This collection of essays covers a lot of ground for such a small amount of pages. I found all of the entries to be very well written and edited. The use of space in this book is quite efficient and appreciated. 

Equal parts affecting and pragmatic, RFW manages to capture the horrors and desperation of wildfire while also understanding it as an inevitable and sometimes useful part of the landscape. I am in my 40s now and grew up in SoCal until I was about 9 years old. I remember back then the droughts, fires, and heat waves. Over these few decades since, it is frankly terrifying to see how much ecological disaster and collapse has accelerated. Now I watch the destruction from afar, gaining glimpses but no longer experiencing it the same way. The entries in this book bring the issue more front and center and grounded me more in the dire situations now plaguing fire prone areas. 

The way some of the authors capture the experience of terror and loss has left me thinking about them for days. The book can be difficult at times for this reason, but not without purpose. We also learn the many ways that communities came together to solve problems that the state would not solve. We learn about love, resilience, and cooperation even when that alone at times is not enough to save us.

There are multiple entries discussing indigenous knowledge about controlled burning and other methods of living alongside fire. I liked that it did mention that all humans cause disruptions of the ecosystem, which burning can be part of in a negative way. The reason this stood out to me was that some writing about (and even by) indigenous people can be tokenizing- treating all indigenous folks as a single homogenous tribe of mythical entities living in pristine wilderness. We can acknowledge that humans have had diverse and disruptive effects on other species and environments in every location that we have traveled to. We can acknowledge that colonialism exponentially exacerbated these effects. We can note what we have learned over time and we can also take wisdom from the past. There were effective methods of preventing fire via controlled burning and combining that with the new limitations caused by the population levels and ecological collapse of today provides accessible solutions. Indigenous people have been instrumental in finding ways to preserve their own land and communities - both environmentally and culturally. They have also taught other people throughout the area how to preserve the wisdom of the past and apply it to the future. They do so with generosity and solidarity, despite so many being descendents of colonizers who led us to the catastrophic present in fire country.

The book also focuses on the myriad of people often left out of discussions around wildfire. Many of the stories we see on the news are about wealthy celebrities who have lost their third home in some affluent area of California. Many of the people most affected by wildfire are those of smaller rural low-income communities, indigenous people living on reservations, immigrants-especially undocumented folks, and people of other marginalized communities. There is also an entry on the fire fighters who are also prisoners, putting their lives on the line to protect these communities, only to find themselves unable to find employment when they are out due to unjust restrictions. 

I like that they included an essay on the financial effects of fire. I didn't realize until I was reading it that we often don't have this sort of economic viewpoint in many leftist or mutual aid based texts because we understandably don't want to center capitalism. It was enlightening seeing someone sort out some of the statistics to create a wider view of the effects of disaster. For instance, I had never realized that state of emergency designations are often based on economic loss and other numbers, not relative to population. This means that smaller communities, even if the fires are far more dangerous and devastating in that location, will often not be labeled as in a state of emergency because there are not enough people there to meet some sort of criteria. This happens on top of the other oppressions facing these communities.

The only criticism I really have about this text is how discussions of other animals were treated. Some of the most horrific stories I've heard about these fires are of farmed animals who were left trapped, unable to escape, as the flames engulfed them alive or of already threatened wild animals being surrounded. The only real reference is to domesticated animals are as "livestock" and there are few things more capitalist than designating others as property. Other animals are unable to offer their stories and this book so they rely on us to have to tell them for them. Near the end there is mention of one community who offers a place for some people to take their animals. However the rescue networks for animals, both domesticated and through wildlife rehabilitation, are really important parts of this puzzle that I would have liked to be better represented and discussed. Mentioning animals as an afterthought without truly immersing them and discussion shows a lack of scope in terms of understanding some of the greatest contributors to climate change and those who are most affected by it outside of humans. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.