As a firefighter I look at the shocking loss of life in Victoria and ask why.
In South Australia, the same as Victoria, we have a policy of evacuate early or stay and defend your home. People are questioning whether this is appropriate. People are saying that they originally thought they would stay and defend but, in light of what happenend in Victoria, now they are going to evacuate.
We need more information before we can make an informed decision. We need to know how many people perished in homes that were prepared, and if the occupants were physically capable (and mentally prepared) to face a major fire.
The media is full of stories of how survivors fled at the last minute, barely outrunning the flames. The papers show pictures of people standing on their house roof, dressed in shorts and thongs and armed with garden hoses. They should not be making a big deal about it – these people rolled the dice and won. I can’t help but think of a picture of an older gentleman at Mt Macedon, similarly dressed, during the Ash Wednesday fires. The difference is minutes later he perished. Bushfire preparedness is about preparation, not about a last minute gamble.
These fires are not a unique occurence. Ash Wednesday had equivelant (or worse) weather conditions. Other fires have burnt far greater areas. Why has this one had such horrific repercussions?
Our crews are better trained, our equipment is superior. We have air support that Ash Wednesday operations could only dream of (and beyond the dreams of anyone involved in Black Sunday).
Is it the attitude of people today? Is the dream of living in the bush part of the reason so many died?
The urban sprawl is leaving the plains and moving into hillier terrain. People want to be surrounded by bush – that’s part of their decision for a ‘tree change’. People like to have their homes surrounded by tall trees. They don’t like the ugliness caused by hazard reduction methods – the fallen trees become refuges for native animals.
I live in a ‘traditional’ gardening area. The people who settled this area made their living from their ‘gardens’, we gew most of Adelaide’s apples and cherries. Most of the houses are in cleared areas, surrounded by well tended fruit trees (or at least they were, this generation of gardners are moving away, and properties are being taken over by urban professionals and turned into vineyards). When we teach supress wildfire we say that you need to be 4 times the flame height away from the fire to be safe. Most of the older homes are defendable, at least in the sense we have thought of defgendable until now.
The gardeners used to burn off the remaining scrub on a regular basis. Cool burns, in spring or autumn, that removed the fine fuels, moved slow enough that animals could move out the way, and used a plan that allowed for specific areas to be burnt each year so there were always refuge areas for native animals. Intrestingly, they kept the weed species which dominate the landscape today under control.
Today’s land management is different, and hazard reduction does not occur. Instead, if a fire starts we rush out and extinguish it. Fuel loads build up.
When a fire starts now it has far more fine fuel available. If the fire starts on a bad day – particularly high wind, we can do little to combat it. It will move quickly and because of the heat generated pose a greater threat to anything in its path.
The fire servics do not have enough resources to protect every structure, particularly on the urban fringe.
There are no easy answers. Hazard reduction is a good place to start. Early evacuation is important, a fire at Basket Range cannot harm you if you at Glenelg beach with your valuables and pets.
No matter what the outcome, we are all going to need accurate data so they we can better prepare ourselves for the next big fire, and there will be one. The media needs to look at the way it presents information, so that people aren’t mislead into thinking they will get away with what could be considered foolhardy behaviour. We, as firefighters, will need to analyse our tactics to see if we can do more.
Most importantly we, as Australians need, to look at how we live when we are in close prximity to the bush. We need to assess our land management practices and if we can’t better balance safety with our desire for untouched bush we’ll have to stop building where we do.