The emotional impact caused by a traumatic event and the process of second victimization in forest firefighters.

Jaime Senabre

Director of SINIF.

University of Alicante, Spain.

Abstract:

The forest fire extinguishing services sometimes face critical situations that can suppose a traumatic experience capable of generating a deep discomfort in the interveners, such as the loss of companions during the work of extinction, burns caused by the fire, the emotional impact in situations of entrapment, etc. This type of negative events can provoke fear and feelings of terror in the victims, as well as invisible emotional scars, difficult to erase and of complex approach.

An inadequate assistance to this type of professionals, affected by a critical incident of these characteristics can originate various processes of victimization, causing a psychological damage characterized by pain, anger, indignation, guilt, fear, awe, intense re-experimentation of what was lived, physiological and psychological hyperactivation, apathy, helplessness, feeling of loss of control, insecurity and avoidance behaviors.

The absence of empathy and sensitivity of the staff that attends to the victims, together with a lack of information and a mismatch between the expected and received treatment can cause a negative feeling in the firefighters affected by the traumatic incident, capable of initiating a process of revictimization called second victimization. In this work, concepts such as traumatic experience, traumatic event, psychological damage and second victimization are addressed.

Likewise, the conditioning factors of the emotional impact (external and internal), the objectives of the psychological help work and the basic skills to develop it are pointed out. Also, the phases through which the forest firefighters go when they suffer a revictimization are indicated. 

Finally, some guidelines are offered on what to do to avoid a second victimization.

Citation: Senabre, Jaime (2018).  The emotional impact caused by a traumatic event and the process of second victimization in forest firefighters. In Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy, Vol. 8, pp 38 DOI: 10.4172/2161-0487-C3-030

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Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy

Forest fires and social perception of the landscape: A study with Spanish population.

Jaime Senabre
University of Alicante, Spain.
Director of SINIF.

Abstract 

Forest fires are a global environmental problem that burn millions of hectares every year throughout the planet, causing human and economic losses as well as significant degradation of the natural environment. In Southern Europe, with Spain and Portugal at the head, 70% of the continent's forest fires occur. The growing human population and continuous occupation of the territory, exercise a role of domination and submission of nature. For this and other reasons, we can´t omit the involvement of humans in the probability of occurrence of fires in the world. At present, it seems obvious that we are experiencing a change of trend in aspects such as temperature and precipitation rates, something that, together with other environmental evidences, has been associated with global climate change. In this context and as it always did, fire plays a modulating role in the characteristics of the vegetation and the structure of the landscape. This last aspect is the one we focus on in this study. Some of our findings determine that 95.90%, of the Spanish population surveyed, consider that there is a representative and characteristic landscape in the area where they live. We have also found that the "recreational" value of landscape is greater than the "economic" value, an aspect that may be relevant when it comes to forest management and forest fires. On the other hand, we have been able to confirm the high concern of Spanish citizens for the threat posed by natural phenomena to the landscape of their community and, especially, the concern about the threat of forest fires on the landscape, where 80.34% of our sample has identified damage to the landscape due to the impact of forest fires. Studies on social perception are a good tool for planning and improving prevention and risk management, as well as for the development of environmental policies appropriate to each specific territory. 

Environment Pollution and Climate Change Open Access (ISSN: 2573-458X)

PDF: Forest fires and social perception of the landscape: A study with Spanish population.

Citation:  Senabre, Jaime (2018). Forest fires and social perception of the landscape: A study with Spanish population. In Environment Pollution and Climate Change, 2018, Volume 2. pp84. DOI: 10.4172/2573-458X-C1-002

 

5^th World Conference on Climate Change. 2018, London, UK.

Recent Publications 
1. Senabre J (2018) Forest fires from the perspective of environmental psychology. Climate Change 4(13).
2. Senabre J (2017) Wildland fires, climate change and society. J. Earth Sci Clim. Change 8(10).
3. Senabre J (2016) Wildland fires and climate change. J. Earth Sci Clim. Change 7(5).

Forest fires and soil loss: A threat to biodiversity.

Jaime Senabre.
University of Alicante, Spain.
Director of SINIF.

Abstract:

Society doesn’t seem to be aware of the negative effects that forest fires have on the soil, whose degradation can become irreversible in many cases. The soil is one of the fundamental elements for life on Earth and that isn’t given due attention. In the same way, in the studies on forest fires the action of the natural risks in territories affected by forest fires and the influence of these in the loss of soil are little taken into account. A determining factor of plant productivity is the quality of the soil, a limited resource that is easily destroyed, not only by the incidence of fires, but by the climatic and meteorological conditions to which the area affected by fire can be subjected: Torrential rains, floods, droughts, extreme temperatures, strong winds that can accentuate the loss of nutrients and erosion. According to data obtained from a survey on the perception of risk by natural phenomena carried out with the Spanish population (n=1223), 67.54% of the respondents think that they live in an area threatened by some natural phenomenon and 73.02% indicate that at some moment in his life, some natural disaster has occurred that has damaged the community in which he lives. In this line, another study conducted by our research group provides us with relevant data on the frequency perception of forest fires in Spain (n=1068), where 58.52% of the population declare to suffer the impact of forest fires each year, 5.34% every 10 years or more and 3.46% never. Given these findings on risk perception and based on actual incidence data, it is possible to prepare, not only forest fire risk maps, but also risk maps of natural hazards to relate them, in order to establish the potential risk of loss of soil and the possible threat to biodiversity, based, mainly, on the observed changes in fire and natural disaster regimes.

Citation: Jaime Senabre (2018). Forest fires and soil loss: A threat to biodiversity. In Journal of Ecosystem & Ecography. Volume 8 (pp 43). DOI: 10.4172/2157-7625-C4-041 

Journal Link: 

https://www.omicsonline.org/ArchiveJEE/biodiversity-congress-2018-proceedings-tracks.php 

7^th International Conference on Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management

 July 26-27, 2018 Melbourne, Australia