The people who keep the worst from happening

Thanks for reading my World’s on Fire, a weekly newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. If you found this dispatch interesting, I hope you’ll subscribe!

A shorter newsletter from me this week, as I’m hoping you’ll take the time you normally spend here watching Episode #327 of COVIDCalls – linked below – instead.

I’ve been lucky enough to be a guest on this daily discussion a few times over the past year, and I’ve featured the creator, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles, in a past Q&A. This episode was particularly special for me, though, as it allowed me to revisit some reporting I’ve done this year. I was joined on the show by Sarah Miller, an emergency manager who spoke with me for an article I wrote about burnout in that profession, and Luke Mayfield, Vice President of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which is an organization I featured in a piece about the structural challenges wildland firefighters face.

Over the course of the hour, both Miller and Mayfield offered deeply personal insights into how this past year has pushed the professionals we rely on as a society to stay safe to their breaking points. I think voices like theirs are essential to hear right now as a growing list of people across the U.S. deal with compounding crises, so enough from me – give them a listen:

Just wanted to flag a free, virtual event I’m attending that I thought some of you might be interested in, as well: The Los Angeles Times book club selected “Breathing Fire: Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires” by Jaime Lowe for its September read. There will be a discussion with the author on September 28, and you can learn more and sign up here.

If you do decide to join, reply to this email and let me know, and we can potentially set up a small MWOF chat before or after!

thank you for reading and subscribing to My World’s on Fire. If you want to take that support to the next level and get access to exclusive content, you can sign up for my Patreon. It also means the world to me when you post about it on social media like Samantha Montano did (and if you like this newsletter, be sure to check out hers, too):

Now, here’s a little something for reading to the end.

Colleen