Victoria Is No Stranger to Learning From Fire Opinion by Bruce Esplin
Summer is approaching, you can smell it in the air. When I think about how we are going to tackle it this season, I think first about Victorians – those who lived through the horrors of last season, and those who are yet to experience it. At best Victorians are nervous about summer, at worst traumatised.
Our fire services are leading change – dramatic change, and they will need to do this through the fire season, while fighting fires, potentially extreme fires. They will be under intense scrutiny, and the Royal Commission hearings will continue.
Fires have already been burning in NSW during winter, and in Queensland. Once again, California and Greece are experiencing severe loss at the mercy of nature. Though it should come as no surprise, many do not know that Victoria is among the top three most fire prone areas in the world. Victorians are no strangers to bushfire, or to the losses caused by it. Neither is the emergency management sector a stranger to learning from it.
The State’s fire policies and practises have been built on learnings from past events. After the Linton fires in 1998 when five firefighters tragically died, the sector learnt about the importance of firefighter training: a national accreditation system was established with national competencies. Protective clothing was improved, and a much stronger emphasis was given to firefighter safety.
The CFA truck fleet since that time and over the last decade has been refreshed and safety mechanisms dramatically improved. Fire crews now sit inside the cabins, rather than out, there are radiant heat reflective blankets, and there are protection sprays for the truck when caught in a fire.
The ability to coordinate an air fleet that draws on resources from across Australia has been greatly enhanced with interstate and international arrangements established. For many this will translate as ‘Elvis’, the water bombing helicopter. For those who don’t know - we now use Elvis’ sister ‘Elsie’ as well.
From the 2003 Alpine bushfires the sector learnt the importance of information to the community. The agreement with ABC radio was established, and due to its success was later mirrored across Australia. The Victorian Bushfire Information Line was established, and there was a huge uptake in community fireguard groups – neighbourhood based groups that plan and prepare for fire together. Community attendance at meetings during fires rose from 8,000 people during the 02/03 fires, to 63,000 people during the last fire season.
The government reinforced its commitment to targeted, strategic fuel reduction burning. Just a few years later the USA determined it was no longer able to undertake burning as the risk had grown too high. In other words – they had left it too long - they had lost the ‘firestick’.
Victoria led technological advances in 2005 and successfully trialled a telephone warning system. The State fought aggressively for a national take-up, with the position that every Australian deserves a warning. It resulted in agreement by the Council of Australian Governments. Its long awaited arrival will come before this fire season.
In 2006 as more than one million hectares of land burned for the second time in three years the fire services put in place their learnings from 2003. They now had a new expertise in managing resources across the State for a war that could last two months or more, and they knew how to protect lives and towns while those slow moving fires crept through. This was important in the days and weeks following Black Saturday.
The Victorian psyche knows fire - it is part of what being Australian is all about. Black Saturday has rewritten the rule book. We will, after the Black Saturday fires, learn more than we ever have before, and huge change will be required. This has already started.
What bothers me is how quickly our fire risk is forgotten after one of two quiet years. Victoria’s greatest ally now is the upsurge in interest; from the community to government to those living in the highest risk areas in our State. We cannot allow this interest to wane as it has in the past.
Climate change will only make our fire seasons more severe, potentially more catastrophic. Like those of 1851, 1939, 1983 and now, 2009. Tom Griffiths, a fire historian recently said, “In those histories lie the intractable patterns of our future. There is a dangerous mismatch between the cyclic nature of fire and the short-term memory of communities.”
My plea now is to all Victorians. Understand and accept Victoria’s fire risk and get prepared. This risk is not going to go away, and we can no longer afford a short term memory.