Social impacts of fires

Acute impacts such as trauma are common among victims who would have secured short-term loans to finance their farm operations. One farmer in Mashonaland West Province lost an entire seed maize crop to veld fires after financing the crop using a $50 000.00 loan from the bank. The farmer did not have insurance against fires. The farmer has not been able to get back into crop production and is still living in debt as the loan has not been paid two years down the line.

At household level, loss of shelter through veld fires has often left families traumatized. People exposed to forest fires may experience grief. Property loss, such as the destruction of a home or damage to personal goods, can be a source of grief. Lacking shelter, these families often sleep in the open with no food supplies and proper water and sanitation facilities and this may result in stress. Feelings of helplessness may arise among people whose lives and property are threatened by veld fires (Machilis 2002). In most African cultures, poor homeless people are often stigmatized, and this can indirectly result in negative social effects and psychosocial wellbeing. For example, loss of livelihoods sources may result in divorces, and complete disintegration of the family unit.

For resource-poor and vulnerable smallholder farmers, loss of assets, housing and crop harvest further exacerbate their already low food and income security, which may usher them deep into a poverty cycle. In addition, resource-poor farmers would lose their other source of food when the forests are destroyed by veld fires. Most of the rural population depends on both non-forest and forest products derived from forest and woodlands and when they are destroyed by fires the economic cost of these fires is substantial.

Exposure to forest fires impacts psychosocial wellbeing in a variety of ways (Evans & Kantrowitz 2002; Fowler 2003) ranging from temporary frustration, to temporary or permanent reduction of health-related quality of life (HRQL), to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) feeling jumpy, avoiding reminders of the fire, nightmares, dreams, and disturbing memories (Maida 1989). However, there are no detailed studies that have evaluated both the social and psychosocial impacts of veld fires on people in the affected areas of Zimbabwe and this calls for further research.