This was a months-long investigation with NPR and member station Jefferson Public Radio into FEMA claims after 2020's historic wildfires in Oregon and California. Photo by Michael Sullivan for NPR.
On Nov. 23, Aidan Ellison — a Black teenager — was shot and killed by a White man in Ashland, Ore. This small college town near the Oregon-California border has a progressive reputation, but Ellison's death has led many Black leaders to question that reputation and demand change. This piece won Second Place in the Social Justice Feature of the 2021 Public Media Journalists Association Awards and First Place in the Social Equity Reporting category in the 2021 Society of Professional Journalists Region 10 Awards.
Hundreds of students in Talent and Phoenix lost their homes to the Almeda Fire this September, just a week before school was supposed to start. Now some of them are showing signs of extreme stress and anxiety, causing school leaders and parents to consider resuming in-person classes amid a pandemic. This piece won First Place in the Hard News category of the 2021 regional Murrow Awards and First Place in the Covid-19 Feature category of the 2021 Public Media Journalists Association's Awards.
I strapped my gear across my back to ride with a team of cyclists into my neighborhood that was partially destroyed by the Almeda Fire. The cyclists were delivering water, food and other necessities to people who were stuck in their homes because of road blocks following the catastrophic wildfire, which destroyed 2,500 homes in the county.
Fears over spreading the coronavirus have forced some homeless shelters around the country to close or limit their capacity. In rural Southern Oregon, civic leaders told those in need to camp in the nearby woods. Now with wildfire season around the corner, law enforcement is relocating homeless people again. This piece won First Place in the News Feature category of the 2021 Public Media Journalists Association Awards.
Homelessness is often seen as an urban issue, but rural areas along the West Coast are also struggling with large homeless populations. Many of these areas don't have the resources for shelters, but even when they do, they're sometimes reluctant to build them.
Wildfires disproportionately impact historically marginalized people due, in part, to systems not designed with them in mind. This series was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism's 2019 California Fellowship. It won first-place news series in the regional Edward R. Murrow Awards and the Public Media Journalists Association contest.
A wildfire evacuation shelter near Redding, California, became overwhelmed with people refusing to separate from their pets, so volunteers set up a warehouse where people could sleep next to their creatures and get free vet services.