the dark lessons of natural disasters
In 2009, Australia's deadliest bushfires on record destroyed Kinglake, a town just over an hour's drive northeast of Melbourne. While the community struggled to make sense of the loss, people in the town started hearing and seeing disturbing behavior in the community. Reports of domestic violence became common. One resident said that in the weeks following the devastating fire, virtually everyone in the town knew someone who was affected by violence. And in one report, the percentage of women in badly burned areas who said they experienced physical violence was seven times that of women in areas that had been only moderately or minimally affected by the fires.
Experiencing a loss of employment or having a financial hardship or having post-traumatic stress disorder can all increase the likelihood someone will be violent toward a family member, studies show. For those that survive a disaster like a fire, these issues can happen all at once.
I traveled with NPR reporter Rebecca Hersher to Australia to report on lessons from Australia’s wildfires — from the ways in which scientists are learning to predict landslides following a fire to the disturbing uptick in family violence that happened to one town. But it was this last one that was the most difficult story to tell. We spoke to people who lived in Kinglake, those who moved away, or were part of the recovery effort. And we dug into research that included emotional interviews with nearly 50 women and 40 men who survived the Kinglake fires about the disturbing changes in the community afterwards.
Read the full story here.