Reporter
April Ehrlich is a reporter, newscaster and producer with Jefferson Public Radio on the California-Oregon border. She grew up in LA and Orange counties and attended CSU-Fullerton. Before joining JPR, April worked as a reporter in rural Oregon and Idaho. She also served a two-year stint with AmeriCorps.
"Here I was, a stranger dropping into people’s lives, asking that they tell me their deeply personal stories from a traumatic event."
This story was produced as a project for the 2019 California Fellowship, a program of USC Annenberg's Center for Health Journalism....
Some people say they only had minutes to prepare before they had to flee their homes during the Carr Fire in Shasta County last year. Such short notice was extra challenging for seniors and people with disabilities.
When a major wildfire burns into an urban area, federal disaster officials are quick to offer financial help to people who lose their homes. But not everyone is eligible for aid after a wildfire.
Abandoning your home while fleeing a wildfire can be a traumatic experience. It’s even scarier if you don’t understand the language of the evacuation alerts chiming into your phone.
It seems intuitive that people who have less money or fewer social privileges can’t recover from major fires as easily. But most people aren’t aware of the extent and nature of the damages.
