title: Patterns of preference and practice: bridging actors in wildfire response networks in the American Northwest.
abstract: The roles of bridging actors in emergency response networks can be important to disaster response outcomes. This paper is based on an evaluation of wildfire preparedness and response networks in 21 large-scale wildfire events in the wildland-urban interface near national forests in the American Northwest. The study investigated how key individuals in responder networks anticipated seeking out specific people in perceived bridging roles prior to the occurrence of wildfires, and then captured who in fact assumed these roles during actual large-scale events. It examines two plausible, but contradictory, bodies of theory-similarity and dissimilarity-that suggest who people might seek out as bridgers and who they would really go to during a disaster. Roughly one-half of all pre-fire nominations were consistent with similarity. Yet, while similarity is a reliable indicator of how people expect to organise, it does not hold up for how they organise during the real incident.
authors.affiliation: Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology, San Jose State University, United States.
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Faas
authors.affiliation: Postdoctoral Scholar at the School of Public and International Affairs, North Carolina State University, United States.
authors.forename: Anne-Lise K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Velez
authors.affiliation: PhD Candidate in the School of Public and International Affairs, North Carolina State University, United States.
authors.forename: Clare
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: FitzGerald
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, North Carolina State University, United States.
authors.forename: Branda L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Nowell
authors.affiliation: Executive Director and a Professor at the School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Canada.
authors.forename: Toddi A
authors.initials: TA
authors.lastname: Steelman
mesh_terms: D019058:Community Networks / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005390:Fires; D006801:Humans; D015205:Northwestern United States
keywords: bridging; disaster response; networks; wildfire