3. "We've Been Fighting Fire Wrong for 100 Years" - Ralph Bloemers on What the Fire Service Can't Tell You
Ralph Bloemers is an environmental law attorney, filmmaker, and storyteller whose work has taken him from burn landscapes in eastern Oregon to the halls of Congress and the screens of PBS. He is the co-creator, with filmmaker Trip Jennings, of Elemental and Weathered, two landmark films on fire, forests, and the communities living with both. In this episode, Ralph joins Jennifer Gray Thompson for a wide-ranging conversation about why fire is not the enemy, what it actually takes to protect a home, and how we change a culture that still doesn’t fully understand what it’s up against.
They cover the suppression era that set the West up for mega fires, the indigenous fire practices that were criminalized for generations and are only now being restored, the physics of ember storms and what mesh on your vents can actually do, why community-level ignition resistance matters more than any single home, the storytelling innovations, from reggae music videos to a cartoon of a house in a psychiatrist’s chair, that Ralph is using to make the prepare message actually land, and the policy and insurance battles that Jennifer and Ralph have fought side by side on behalf of fire survivors.
Ralph is one of the most original thinkers working in this space. This is a conversation worth your time.
Resources:
- How to Disaster
- Learn more about After the Fire USA
- After the Fire USA Resource Library
- Green Oregon
- Watch Elemental
- Watch Weathered on PBS
- Cultural Fire Management Council - Margot Robbins
- CAER Earth - mycoremediation for Fire-Affected Soils
- Foothill Catalog Foundation
- Connect with Jennifer Gray Thompson on LinkedIn
Produced by NOVA