Nurturing Spiritual Resilience to Promote Post-disaster Community Recovery: The 2016 Alberta Wildfire in Canada

Nasreen Lalani,Andrew J Greenshaw,Caroline Mcdonald-Harker,Pamela Brett-Maclean,Vincent I.O Agyapong,Matthew R G Brown,Peter H Silverstone,Julie L Drolet

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2021.682558

Abstract

The 2016 Alberta wildfire, the largest insured natural disaster in Canada, led to a mass evacuation of residents of Fort McMurray, a small city in northern Alberta. The wildfire resulted in significant damages to housing and community infrastructure. The entire community was displaced for several weeks. Post-disaster, community members experienced individual and collective trauma, and other negative mental health impacts in response to the significant losses and grief they endured. Spirituality has been found to be a major protective factor in facilitating resiliency and recovery following the experience of disaster. Nonetheless, little focus has been directed toward how spirituality can strengthen and empower community capacity and growth during post-disaster recovery. Our study explored various meanings and concerns, along with tools and strategies that helped to nurture spiritual resilience and well-being among residents of Fort McMurray following the Alberta wildfire. Data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions with community influencers working to support long-term recovery efforts in the city. Participants identified a number of spiritual resources such as a strong sense of belonging, a shared positive outlook, faith and hope, compassion, and sense of gratitude, which contributed to increased resilience and positive health and well-being and helped them to support families and communities in the post disaster recovery period. Our findings indicate that spiritual values and beliefs can play a significant role in building resilience and promoting individual and communal healing and recovery post-disaster. These findings have important implications for post-disaster recovery strategies, as they highlight the need to ensure supports for interventions and initiatives that strengthen a collective sense of identity and social cohesion, informed by communal norms and beliefs, including programs and resources which support opportunities for reflexivity to foster shared healing and ongoing recovery processes.

Highlights

“How we are able to weather the storm, how we’re able to endure the challenges and complications of life that are thrown at us is a sign of our resilience
Snowball sampling approach, participants were recruited from: [1] social service agencies and community organizations based in Edmonton and Calgary which played an important role in addressing the immediate needs of Fort McMurray residents following evacuation, and later supported their return home; and [2] social service agencies and community organizations based in Fort McMurray that actively supported the re-entry of residents, and have continued to support ongoing recovery efforts
Analysis of data gathered from the diverse group of community influencers who participated in individual interviews and focus group discussions provided a vivid description of their experience of the 2016 wildfire, the chaotic city-wide evacuation, response and early and ongoing recovery processes since residents have returned to Fort McMurray

Summary

Introduction

“How we are able to weather the storm, how we’re able to endure the challenges and complications of life that are thrown at us is a sign of our resilience. Social, economic, and cultural influences shape the resilience and wellbeing of a community especially in the post disaster recovery context, it is important to recognize the unique context of the Fort McMurray community. Along with the trauma of experiencing a disaster, individuals and families often experience the loss of homes and community infrastructure, which makes the basic tasks of everyday life challenging, as well as loss of a sense of identity, meaning, and purpose—all of which impact overall health and well-being [7]. He characterizes resilience as the co-occurring capacity of individuals to navigate their way to the psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, and physical resources that sustain their wellbeing, and individual and collective capacity to create or obtain culturally meaningful resources needed to support such efforts [11]. The literature indicates a positive relationship between resilience and spirituality both at the individual and the community level

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