Speaker 1: Hyatt's West Kasova. All that smoke drifting across parts of
Speaker 1: the US from Canada's wildfires put us in mind of
Speaker 1: a recent episode we did about the health hazards of
Speaker 1: breathing wildfire smoke. We thought you might want to give
Speaker 1: it a listen. Hope you're having a great weekend, and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again on Monday. At the end
Speaker 1: of twenty nineteen and into twenty twenty, massive bushfires ravaged
Speaker 1: Australia in what became known as Black Summer.
Speaker 2: You know, you would look outside at ten o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning and it would be a black sky and
Speaker 2: the sun, if you could say, the sun would kind
Speaker 2: of be like a red dot. It's just such an
Speaker 2: extreme amount of smoke.
Speaker 1: We hear a lot about the huge, huge economic cost
Speaker 1: of wildfires like this that are growing in frequency and
Speaker 1: size across the globe. Just look at a place like California.
Speaker 1: Homes destroyed, people's lives turned upside down. But the Australia
Speaker 1: disaster is now three years later, awakened officials around the
Speaker 1: world to another toll that's been harder to pin down.
Speaker 1: I'm Westcasova today on the Big Take. Bloomberg reporters Amy
Speaker 1: Bainbridge and Angus Whitley on the elusive health hazards of wildfires,
Speaker 1: especially on children.
Speaker 2: The fires raged across eastern Australia for months on end.
Speaker 2: They generated so much smoke. They engulfed farmland, towns, twenty
Speaker 2: four million hectares of land, the area equivalent to half
Speaker 2: of Californi. Yeah, it was just such a huge event.
Speaker 3: Just the scale of them was something that well most
Speaker 3: of Australia had never experienced before. And also because it
Speaker 3: touched so much of the population. You know, by some
Speaker 3: estermate's eighty percent of the population. That there weren't many
Speaker 3: people who weren't affected, and it really brought something that
Speaker 3: maybe had had in the past, been something that affected
Speaker 3: rural areas of Australia or remote communities. It brought these
Speaker 3: fires into the city. People in the city were suffering
Speaker 3: from smoke effects as well. You know, more than thirty
Speaker 3: people directly died.
Speaker 4: In the fires.
Speaker 3: You know, an estimated four hundred and fifty almost people
Speaker 3: indirectly dying from the fires. It was a tragic season
Speaker 3: that just went on and on and on.
Speaker 4: It was it was awful to live through.
Speaker 3: We wanted to go out and see what the long
Speaker 3: term effects of this far were. And we knew that
Speaker 3: it had devastating consequences in immediate aftermath, but something that
Speaker 3: long and that severe, we thought, well, three years after
Speaker 3: the event, what has that done to people who lived
Speaker 3: through that, particularly what has it done to the kids,
Speaker 3: the really young kids at the time who were breathing
Speaker 3: in that smoke, and also the mothers who are pregnant
Speaker 3: at the time who were breathing in that smoke and
Speaker 3: directly feeding that into their unborn children. So Ema and
Speaker 3: I went at and tried to find the mothers and
Speaker 3: the kids who were affected, and the results were terrifying
Speaker 3: in some respects, and it kind of surprised us what
Speaker 3: the kind of symptoms people were suffering.
Speaker 2: A lot of the women that we spoke to, they're
Speaker 2: still very traumatized. When you talk about that event. At
Speaker 2: the time, a lot of women say now reflecting they
Speaker 2: weren't really equipped to stay out of the smoke to
Speaker 2: try and prevent breathing those toxic particles into their bodies.
Speaker 2: We were told that masks, which of course were all
Speaker 2: now very familiar with you, that the time was so
Speaker 2: hard to access, trying to keep smoke out of your
Speaker 2: house by blocking underdoors with wet towels, putting towels over
Speaker 2: fans and things like that. Just couldn't stop breathing in
Speaker 2: this smoke. And this lasted for weeks and weeks on end,
Speaker 2: and that, of course went to the question the Angus
Speaker 2: and I had was around this acute exposure. What happens
Speaker 2: to your body? What can be the medium and long
Speaker 2: term consequences of breathing in smoke in an event like that.
Speaker 2: And once we started looking around, we realized that there
Speaker 2: was a lot of literature on long term air pollution,
Speaker 2: but there's some emerging research on the impact of breathing
Speaker 2: in wildfire smoke, and that's kind of what we zeroed
Speaker 2: in on.
Speaker 3: What we discovered was that the bush fire or wildfire
Speaker 3: smoke contains hundreds of different ingredients and a lot of
Speaker 3: poisonous gasses. You can imagine it just burns through everything.
Speaker 3: It's not a control blaze burning one particular type of fuel.
Speaker 3: It burns through vehicles, it burns through houses, building materials,
Speaker 3: and the thing that might you know, be toxic in
Speaker 3: the house goes up and smoke as bastos, bricks, concrete.
Speaker 3: There's lots of really top six substances. And what we
Speaker 3: discovered was that doctors and academics are really focused in
Speaker 3: on this tiny particular matter PM two point five in particular,
Speaker 3: which it's full of little pieces of matter which are
Speaker 3: so small that far too small to see with the
Speaker 3: naked eye, of far smaller than the width of a
Speaker 3: human hair.
Speaker 1: And PM two point five is how scientists describe the
Speaker 1: particulate matter in pollution or in wildfire smoke that lodges
Speaker 1: in the lungs.
Speaker 3: That's right, so small it penetrates your lungs, can even
Speaker 3: enter the blood stream, and of course once it's in
Speaker 3: your bloodstream, it can do all sorts of damage to
Speaker 3: different organs. And that's really the matter that does the damage.
Speaker 3: There's PM two point five in ambient air pollution, but
Speaker 3: wildfare smoke is particularly concentrated.
Speaker 1: And what is the difference between wildfire smoke and just
Speaker 1: air pollution.
Speaker 3: Well, ambient air pollution is something that most of the
Speaker 3: world deals with, you know, according to the World Health Organization,
Speaker 3: almost everybody is breathing in some kind of polluted air
Speaker 3: at some point. But wildfast smoke is traditionally very elevated
Speaker 3: for short periods of time at PM two point five
Speaker 3: levels shoot off the scale, and at some point during
Speaker 3: Black Summer and Australia, levels were ten times more than
Speaker 3: safe levels in Australia, so it was very elevated. And
Speaker 3: I think what marked Black Summer at was just the
Speaker 3: longevity of the burning. Usually these things last for a
Speaker 3: few days. Black Summer burned for weeks and weeks and
Speaker 3: nineteen weeks on end in some areas, So I think
Speaker 3: that's what academics and people are really interested in, Well,
Speaker 3: what does that do to the body. You haven't seen
Speaker 3: that kind of duration of polluted air, not in our
Speaker 3: lifetime anyway.
Speaker 2: Fay Johnston, who's kind of like a world renowned researcher
Speaker 2: on wildfire smoke, and she's based in Tasmania, in our
Speaker 2: southern state of Australia, so she's been studying this for
Speaker 2: twenty years and she kind of describes it as like
Speaker 2: this toxic mix of harmful gases including NU grogen dioxide
Speaker 2: carbon monoxide.
Speaker 5: So when I'm talking about particles suspended in the air,
Speaker 5: they can range from great big bits of dust that
Speaker 5: you can see or ash from a.
Speaker 6: Five right down to nanoparticle sized bits of carbon or
Speaker 6: other things.
Speaker 5: The tinier the particle, the more it gets into your system.
Speaker 5: So anything smaller than a size of two and a
Speaker 5: half micrometers. A micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter,
Speaker 5: so it's really really tiny. Anything smaller than two point
Speaker 5: five will enter into your lungs and can cross into
Speaker 5: your bloodstream or so we often talk about PM two
Speaker 5: point five as one marker of particles, and that's that smaller.
Speaker 6: Size class, and that's the one most studied for health.
Speaker 6: Any kind of combustion will give off a lot of
Speaker 6: particles and a lot of PM two point five. And
Speaker 6: when you're burning wood or bushfires, that kind of we
Speaker 6: call it biomass combustion that generates a lot of PM
Speaker 6: two point five and fast all the size classes. So
Speaker 6: it's a really important source of harmful particles in the air.
Speaker 6: So when you breathe, particles in your body will react
Speaker 6: to it like it reacts to any hazards, and it
Speaker 6: will activate your stress responses and your immune responses, just
Speaker 6: like if you've got pneumonia or if you've got to burn,
Speaker 6: your body reacts to the stress or the threat, and
Speaker 6: it does that in a whole lot of ways.
Speaker 2: And the other thing to think about amongst all this
Speaker 2: is your underlying predisposition, the genetic factors that contribute to
Speaker 2: you as a person, and what this kind of exposure
Speaker 2: might activate in your system, and then therefore what the
Speaker 2: medium and long term consequences might be.
Speaker 3: What Fase told us was that if you are a
Speaker 3: healthy person, maybe you could withstand several days of elevated
Speaker 3: PM two point five, But if you are perhaps just
Speaker 3: susceptible to asthma, the same dose might trigger some long
Speaker 3: term consequences in your own body. So it would have
Speaker 3: different effects to different people, and you mayn't even know
Speaker 3: that you're susceptible to it. Almost in that respect, it's
Speaker 3: a bit of a lottery as to what it might
Speaker 3: do to you. Obviously, if you're already suffering from asthma,
Speaker 3: you're predisposed to it, there's a chance it might affect
Speaker 3: you worse. But there are so many unanswered questions the
Speaker 3: mothers were grappling with. Did the smoke lead directly to
Speaker 3: my child symptoms? Could I have done more? Is there
Speaker 3: a direct link between what I'm seeing in my child
Speaker 3: now and those days where I perhaps breathing in the
Speaker 3: smoke without a mask at the time, and there is
Speaker 3: a hole in the academic research at the moment that
Speaker 3: medics and researchers are racing to fill.
Speaker 1: And you decided to concentrate on children.
Speaker 4: Why is that.
Speaker 2: We were aware that there was quite a major research
Speaker 2: study happening in the state of New South Wales that
Speaker 2: was trying to find out some answers around the medium
Speaker 2: and long term health impacts of black Summer. It's called
Speaker 2: the Mother and Child twenty twenty study, and it's conducted
Speaker 2: by a group of well known, high profile researchers who
Speaker 2: know what they're doing. Basically, we were really interested to
Speaker 2: find out why they wanted to know this. One of
Speaker 2: the first things we did was connect with a general
Speaker 2: practitioner who works in a rural area, runs a very
Speaker 2: large clinic in southern New South Wales northern Victoria, kind
Speaker 2: of in this border region, and she had given evidence
Speaker 2: to a Senate committee hearing about the outcomes of black
Speaker 2: Summer in terms of the smoke inhalation. And we started
Speaker 2: with her and I just remember my first conversation with her,
Speaker 2: and this was towards the end of last year, but
Speaker 2: being kind of blown away by the sorts of things
Speaker 2: she told us she witnessed at the time, and she
Speaker 2: had really grave fears that no one was really doing
Speaker 2: much about what happens when the next emergency invariably comes.
Speaker 1: And that doctor's name is Rebecca mcgow and here she
Speaker 1: is talking to you.
Speaker 7: There was one particular case that really made me sit
Speaker 7: up and start to take notice of this whole issue,
Speaker 7: and it was a woman who baby was born early,
Speaker 7: the baby was born smaller. But what really struck me
Speaker 7: was her comments about her placenta. And she was told
Speaker 7: that her placenta looked like she'd been a smoker, a
Speaker 7: pacadet smoker. And the midwives were all around a circle
Speaker 7: looking at this placenta. They took photos of it, and
Speaker 7: they said, you're a smoker, and she denied it. She said,
Speaker 7: I've never smoked in my life.
Speaker 3: And another mother described her a placenter's being gritty.
Speaker 7: A normal placenta is pink and fleshy, and it looks healthy.
Speaker 7: A disease percenter has a lot of gray in it
Speaker 7: and chalky white bits and parts of it that look
Speaker 7: at what we call friable or a bit fragile, like
Speaker 7: breaking away. The placenta is the most important thing to
Speaker 7: keep the baby growing. So it is the powerhouse, so
Speaker 7: it nourishes the baby. It's the pathway, the portal between
Speaker 7: what the mother breeds in and what she eats, and
Speaker 7: how that all that good nourish medi has passed on
Speaker 7: to the baby Viole, the percenta and the babies we know.
Speaker 3: We also spoke to some doctors at the time, two
Speaker 3: obstetricians who also described similar kind of experiences. But there
Speaker 3: was one particular doctor, Michael Holland, who was a roving
Speaker 3: obstetrician in down south of Sydney, and he described seeing
Speaker 3: three still berths in an era that would ordinarily have
Speaker 3: three hundred berths in a year, and that is very unusual,
Speaker 3: he told us.
Speaker 4: And that's either a coincidence or it's attributed to something.
Speaker 1: After the break, a mother describes the effect she believes
Speaker 1: breathing smoke had on her child.
Speaker 3: There was one boy, Colt, who was the son of
Speaker 3: one woman that we spoke to down in Nulligan, about
Speaker 3: four hours south of Sydney.
Speaker 4: The fires rolled.
Speaker 3: In in early twenty twenty and he's still on breathing
Speaker 3: medication day night.
Speaker 1: And you spoke to Colt's mother, Casey Douglas.
Speaker 8: I just remember I pulled him under my shirt and
Speaker 8: I had him here, and I was trying to just
Speaker 8: shelter him from the smoke. But looking outside at the
Speaker 8: glass windows, the smoke was just in. No matter how
Speaker 8: many all the windows were shut, the smoke was still
Speaker 8: coming in under the door. He was a healthy one
Speaker 8: year old before the smoke, and the smoke was present,
Speaker 8: but Colt didn't get bad until it was so close
Speaker 8: to us.
Speaker 3: There are other kids who perhaps not on regular medication now,
Speaker 3: but had used ventaline or breathing medication at some point
Speaker 3: in the preceding period. It's a medication to help you breathe.
Speaker 3: It's essentially a relaxant. It opens up the airways and
Speaker 3: make it easier to breathe. One of the key subjects
Speaker 3: that we spoke to for our story cult little boy
Speaker 3: who was one at the time, and his mother described
Speaker 3: to us how when he first took it in the
Speaker 3: days after the fire, almost immediately he started to breathe
Speaker 3: more easily.
Speaker 8: No one's quick to link anything to the fires here,
Speaker 8: but yeah, I know in my heart that the breathing
Speaker 8: issues happened straight after the fires, if not during. He's
Speaker 8: now on an asthma plan for his preschool, and he
Speaker 8: has a preventer in the morning and a preventer at night,
Speaker 8: and if he doesn't have that preventer, he has a
Speaker 8: really bad day. And he can hardly run around the
Speaker 8: poor thing without wheezing and being out of breath and puff.
Speaker 8: So it's taken a toll on him for sure. And yeah,
Speaker 8: I feel for him because he'll be most likely on
Speaker 8: vinolin for the rest of his life.
Speaker 3: There was a woman we interviewed in a beautiful coastal
Speaker 3: town called Tura Beach, which is south of Sydney, and
Speaker 3: Amy and I drove down to meet a mother called
Speaker 3: Jen Spears who was worried about her daughter Mia.
Speaker 1: And that's the woman we heard about earlier who believed
Speaker 1: her placenta had been damaged by wildfire smoke.
Speaker 3: We spoke to her in her home and she was
Speaker 3: just reeling off all the specialists in MIA's medical team
Speaker 3: who were attending to her. There was a physiotherapist, there
Speaker 3: was an occupational therapist, there was a speech therapist. There
Speaker 3: was a pediatric neurologist trying to figure out what was
Speaker 3: wrong with me. And Jen had gone through this intense
Speaker 3: period of o smoke exposure she had, as referred to earlier,
Speaker 3: she had gone through this sort of five or six
Speaker 3: week period of intense smoke. She tried escaping to Canberra.
Speaker 3: The smoke was actually worse than camera. She came back
Speaker 3: home and Toura Beach was really one of those places
Speaker 3: that was almost sort of surrounded. It was ambushed, if
Speaker 3: you like, by while far and they didn't see the
Speaker 3: sun for weeks, and there was smoke all over the house.
Speaker 4: And this was when Jen was pregnant with Mia.
Speaker 3: And it should be said that doctors haven't connected MIA's
Speaker 3: symptoms with that smoke exposure, but it's something that preys
Speaker 3: on Jen. And Mia missed her milestones developmental milestone, She
Speaker 3: was slow to eat solids. She was born three weeks
Speaker 3: early because her growth had plateaued in the womb. And
Speaker 3: again according to the midwives, MIA's placenta was partly caulcified.
Speaker 3: It was blackened as if Jen had been a heavy smoker.
Speaker 3: And then subsequently Mia didn't crawl until after her first birthday.
Speaker 4: And she has hip.
Speaker 3: Dysplasia, which is the medical term for a hip socket
Speaker 3: that doesn't fully cover the ball portion of the upper thigh. Bone,
Speaker 3: so really worrying symptoms that doctors haven't yet connected to
Speaker 3: the smoke exposure. But then Jen is wondering, you know,
Speaker 3: was it due to those few weeks of smoke exposure?
Speaker 4: Do we need to do things differently?
Speaker 3: And she said she was talking to us, so no
Speaker 3: one else in her position had to go through the
Speaker 3: same experience again, So it's that gap and knowledge that
Speaker 3: we spoke about earlier that's really sort of weighing on
Speaker 3: these mothers as well.
Speaker 1: Any our doctor is able to draw connections between the
Speaker 1: fires and these sorts of physical ailments that aren't just
Speaker 1: breathing difficulties that you might naturally associate with in ailing smoke.
Speaker 2: We asked this of the general practitioner Rebecca McGowan as well.
Speaker 2: She is part of a number of lobby groups on
Speaker 2: the environment. She said that doctors are often very pushed
Speaker 2: for time and it can be harder to get to
Speaker 2: those bigger picture issues, but she's also confident that there
Speaker 2: is an increasing awareness that there may be a link
Speaker 2: and the only thing that's really going to help with
Speaker 2: this is gathering more data and really putting it firmly
Speaker 2: on the agenda to give practitioners more confidence when they're
Speaker 2: dealing with these kinds of cases.
Speaker 7: Estimated that in Sydney at the height of the black
Speaker 7: summer smoke and fires, that it would be walking around
Speaker 7: Sydney would be equivalent to smoking thirty seven cigarettes in
Speaker 7: one day, and that was actually closer, so closer to
Speaker 7: the fires, it would be more than that. So we
Speaker 7: have that data for the last seventy years on what
Speaker 7: smoking looks like in a woman pregnant woman, so we
Speaker 7: can extrapolate a little bit. We're not just blind blind
Speaker 7: with this. We do have some scientific information.
Speaker 1: What do we know about the wides spread health effects
Speaker 1: of the fires in Australia overall?
Speaker 3: This is the key question. Know we know what it
Speaker 3: did to people at the time. There's good data and
Speaker 3: the media aftermath of higher presentations to emergency departments for
Speaker 3: cardiovascular complaints, for ventiline prescriptions, for breathing difficulties, so all
Speaker 3: that data is immediately available. What we don't know is
Speaker 3: what it's done to people like now three years after
Speaker 3: the event. And as Amy says that Mother and Child
Speaker 3: twenty twenties is.
Speaker 4: A key study.
Speaker 3: But what's also key is that these kind of studies
Speaker 3: go on and on and keep looking at the kids
Speaker 3: as they progress into school through school, and I think
Speaker 3: only then where you get a really good picture of
Speaker 3: what bush farsmoke exposure does to you during your key
Speaker 3: growth period as a child and into adulthood. And there
Speaker 3: are previous studies in the US not particularly focused on
Speaker 3: bush farsmoke, but more on generic air pollution. For instance,
Speaker 3: there was a key study in the US that started
Speaker 3: in the nineteen nineties was a study in the University
Speaker 3: of California that traced a cohort of several thousand kids
Speaker 3: through school in eras that were exposed to air pollution,
Speaker 3: and they found that once a kid reaches eighteen, any
Speaker 3: kind of damage that they've sustained to their lung development
Speaker 3: is really unlikely to be reversed. So there were indicators
Speaker 3: in the past about what generic air pollution does to children,
Speaker 3: but nothing really that pointed to long term effects of
Speaker 3: wildfare smoke in particular.
Speaker 4: I think that's what people are wrestling.
Speaker 3: With now, as wildfires are projected become more common, more severe,
Speaker 3: longer lasting. The wider picture, there are countries that will
Speaker 3: be impacted by wildfire smoke that haven't been impacted wildfire
Speaker 3: smoke to such a degree in the future as the
Speaker 3: climate continues to warm.
Speaker 1: When we come back, what's the plan for a future
Speaker 1: with more wildfires and more smoke.
Speaker 2: We know that meteorologists are warning bushfires are going to
Speaker 2: become more frequent and destructive, and this whole problem is
Speaker 2: just becoming too beg tweet ignore. Already it's costing as
Speaker 2: much as thirty six billion dollars a year in the
Speaker 2: US alone. Meteorologists say that, you know, bushfires, wildfires are
Speaker 2: going to become more frequent and more destructive as temperatures
Speaker 2: continue to rise, and we already know that long term
Speaker 2: health problems are just going to add to that bill.
Speaker 2: And something that people repeatedly raised to us mothers as
Speaker 2: well is the economic productivity that comes out of that too.
Speaker 2: Like women who have to take longer off work to
Speaker 2: care for their children, do they need to spend more
Speaker 2: time helping with developmental delays and things like that, So
Speaker 2: there is some real economic consequences as well. We also
Speaker 2: know that there are places around the world experiencing wildfires
Speaker 2: that have never previously burned because of the changing climate.
Speaker 2: So in many ways, it's putting all communities on their
Speaker 2: toes as they learn about what could potentially lie ahead.
Speaker 3: It was a really good to Nations Environment Program report
Speaker 3: on wildfires, and that pointed to a lot of the
Speaker 3: fires that were burning around the world that we hadn't
Speaker 3: seen before. I think that they said in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: fires in the Russian Arctic, for instance, burned tens of
Speaker 3: millions of hectors, And they'd been earlier blazes in Alaska,
Speaker 3: in Greenland and Canada, and I think most warrant And
Speaker 3: this was statistic that really struck me was that these
Speaker 3: kind of catastrophes like Black Summer are almost sixty percent
Speaker 3: more likely to happen this century as the climate warns.
Speaker 3: And I think whereas California has experienced eight of its
Speaker 3: ten largest fires on record in just the past five years,
Speaker 3: which might tell you something. And we've had fires in
Speaker 3: suburbs of major cities as well, like Athens Boulder in Colorado.
Speaker 3: So I guess that's the pattern that it's emerging.
Speaker 1: What is Australia doing to try to protect people's health
Speaker 1: the next time around in a way that they couldn't
Speaker 1: anticipate before.
Speaker 3: There was a key inquiry straight after the bush fires
Speaker 3: the Black Summer into what happened, how we could approach
Speaker 3: the next disaster better, and Royal Commission into into the
Speaker 3: Black Summer and that came out with eighty recommendations, including
Speaker 3: improving air quality indication, improving the flow of information to
Speaker 3: people in fire spots, working with the indigenous community to
Speaker 3: work out how to manage the land better. Some of
Speaker 3: those have been actioned, some of them haven't. And certainly
Speaker 3: that there's a better network of air quality monitors they
Speaker 3: were in place, but some of the recommendations that we
Speaker 3: hear from academics and doctors go a bit further, like
Speaker 3: subsidized air purifiers for instance for people who are particularly
Speaker 3: vulnerable for pregnant mothers, good supply of masks for pregnant mothers,
Speaker 3: maybe even evacuation plans for pregnant mothers and vulnerable in kids,
Speaker 3: like putting them at the head of the queue. So
Speaker 3: there are steps that you can take that go further
Speaker 3: than bad information, a better monitoring battle land management, but
Speaker 3: it's not clear that those are being immediately action.
Speaker 1: Our worldwide organizations like the WHO or the UN trying
Speaker 1: to get together to figure out how to get their
Speaker 1: arms around this problem.
Speaker 2: In the next few months, we expect the World Health
Speaker 2: Organization to release a major evidence review of this issue,
Speaker 2: so hopefully bringing together all that we know, and we
Speaker 2: have spoken to doctor Mary Prinicki, who is a scientist
Speaker 2: at Stanford who worked on that evidence review. She has
Speaker 2: said that it's going to make a number of recommendations
Speaker 2: globally for countries, so we do know that there is
Speaker 2: some action on these. We also know more locally here
Speaker 2: that one of the doctors that we interviewed, who has
Speaker 2: since been elected to parliamentary office, is going to put
Speaker 2: smoke related research high on the agenda. He's now the
Speaker 2: Parliamentary Secretary in New South Wales, doctor Michael Hollands. So
Speaker 2: there's things happening globally and there is a push here
Speaker 2: locally as well to try and get a bit of
Speaker 2: traction on this issue and if anything, helped communities prepare
Speaker 2: for the next disaster when it invariably does come.
Speaker 1: Amy Angus, thanks so much for speaking with me today.
Speaker 1: Thank you thanks for listening to us here at the
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