Disaster Relief in the US Often Depends on Your Race
A 2020 working paper on wildfire response inequality coauthored by Matthew Wibbenmeyer, which has since been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal, is cited in the Chicago Policy Review.
A working paper by Resources for the Future shows that in the instance of a wildfire, nearby communities with a relatively high percentage of high-income, well-educated and white residents receive higher levels of fuel treatment as compared to non-white neighborhoods. (Fuel treatment reduces fire intensity and lessens damage from future fires.) Furthermore, communities with more white, non-Hispanic residents are better able to bounce back from disasters. This factor, when combined with lower FEMA compensation, puts non-white disaster-struck communities at a gross level of disadvantage.
