Health and Social Impacts of California Wildfires and the Deficiencies in Current Recovery Resources An Exploratory Qualitative Study of Systems-leve

This article describes a qualitative study on health and social service workers to determine the cause and effect of health and social impacts from wildfires. Factors related to the Tubbs wildfire included contaminated drinking water containing Benzene, which is a cancer agent. Mental health issues and trauma correlated to interpersonal violence. Hospitals and emergency departments were often the only medical facilities operating with the healthcare workforce being impacted by personal loss to include 210 physicians and healthcare workers who lost homes and unable to work impacting the hospital during the wildfire.