Parenting Climate Disasters, Trauma, and Recovery

Guest Post by Natasha Stavros, Ph.D.

Climate disasters, like wildfires, are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. For parents, this isn’t just about rebuilding homes or replacing toys and other belongings. It’s also about caring for children while managing trauma. Research shows that people who have experienced a climate disaster often suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at levels similar to those returning from a war zone. What does this mean for parents?

My Story: Parenting Through Wildfire Trauma

The first time that I evacuated my home because of a wildfire was in 2003. Since then, I’ve evacuated two other times, and twice I’ve watched my communities burn. Once I lost a house I owned just four years earlier, and another time I saw the home I rented before destroyed.

In 2013, I received a Ph.D. as one of the first people, if not the first person, to quantify the likelihood of extreme, very large wildfires in the western U.S. under climate change. Even with my scientific background, living through fire after fire has taken a personal toll. I dread peak fire season, and every year, that window shifts and becomes longer and more sporadic. Whenever there are major fires, my phone and email blow up with questions from the media. I answer the same variation of questions about the connections between land management, climate, and fire. Despite having an intimate relationship with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it took me decades to realize that what I was experiencing was constant re-exposure to traumatic events that began with a climate disaster.

Wildfires and PTSD: Not Just “Natural Disasters”

I wasn’t alone in realizing that trauma doesn’t stop when the flames go out. After the 2018 Camp Fire in California, which killed 85 people and destroyed more than 18,000 structures, a study showed that PTSD levels in affected communities were on par with those in war zones. In that moment, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, along with your brain and muscles, repeat the past experience despite the new conditions of the present. Afterward, the body collapses with exhaustion. This means that climate disasters don’t just destroy landscapes—they can reshape mental health, families, and communities for years to come. PTSD symptoms, however, aren’t the same for everyone. They can show up as nightmares,
flashbacks, trouble sleeping, being irritable, and feeling disconnected from others.

What Is PTSD?

The physiologic response to PTSD is that the autonomic nervous system within our brain takes control, and our cognitive reasoning takes a back seat. When a trauma trigger happens, the brain and body recall the original fight, flight, or freeze response meant for safety. In that moment, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, along with your brain and muscles, repeat the past experience despite the new conditions of the present—afterward, the body collapses with exhaustion. When a trauma trigger, such as a climate disaster, happens, the brain and body recall the original fight, flight, or freeze response meant for safety. In that moment, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, along with your brain and muscles, repeat the past experience despite the new conditions of the present—afterward, the body collapses with exhaustion.

Psychologically, “trauma causes us to lose agency”, says Sarah Liebman, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT). The trauma response, run by our autonomic nervous system for survival, overrides the cognitive functioning that allows us to make choices. “Trauma makes us vulnerable to the helplessness and hopelessness that is baked into the event disrupting the reasonable flow of our lives,” Liebman says. Reliving that helplessness through autonomic response is prevents us from reacting to the present moment.

Socially, humans benefit from shared reality. Liebman says, “trauma can be exacerbated when there is not a collective recognition of the harm caused when something happens that dismantles your dreams- your expectations that within some reasonable variation, a certain future will come to reality.”

When we think of the harm caused by a climate disaster, like wildfire, most people think of the
immediate impact of the event and quickly disconnect from the reality of those who live with the
aftermath. This disconnection feeds trauma because it fails to acknowledge full extent of the
harm.

How does PTSD affect us as a family?

There are many factors that affect how you, as an individual, and your family, will respond. Some of these factors include access to community or routine after the event the availability of resources such as new housing and amenities. Other factores include acknowledgement and support from people in your everyday life, along with individual’s temperament.

For this article I interviewed three mothers all from the working, middle-class socioeconomic status–all directly impacted by wildfire. One mother was white and a renter. When she lost her home, her community quickly found them a place to move within driving distance of the same schools, shops, and doctors that they knew. Another mother, also white, owned her home, which survived the flames, but everything around her burned to ash leaving toxic chemicals and an unlivable home for an undefined amount of time. Another mother, a woman of color, had rented her home, in a relatively stable situation for over a decade. After the disaster, she had to relocate beyond a reasonable commuting distance to another community with higher rent.

What Comes Next?

The latter two mothers were physically and mentally suffering from symptoms of PTSD. All them acknowledged that their children played a crucial role in keeping them grounded to the present and how important it was to have community support. They also recognized the importance of restoring routine, but that, even when your children return to normal, parents may not. For months, sometimes years, parental routines can be disrupted by constant bureaucratic procedures with insurance companies and and local, state, and federal agencies.

These mother’s stories supported a psychological concept known as containment. Visualize containment as concentric circles nested within each other. The ability of one layer to “contain” and support the functioning of the smaller circles depends on sturdiness of the larger circles.

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