It is only February, but 2006/7 is already shaping as one of Australia’s worst bushfire seasons. The extraordinary fires in Victoria have captured the headlines, but there have also been big, intense and damaging bushfires in Tasmania, West Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. These succeed the shocking fires in eastern and south-western Australia every summer over the last 5 years.
There are many interesting issues relating to this new prevalence of big, nasty bushfires. Bushfire management in Australia reached its peak between about 1975-1990. But despite all the technical innovations since then, the huge expenditure on aerial water bombers and the vast armies of fire fighters with their wondrous equipment, bushfire management in Australia has regressed to the situation that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, whenever bad fire weather occurs, unstoppable fires ravage the bush.
It is also curious how the recent disasters have come to be accompanied by a spirit of defeatism amongst our leaders. Bushfires, it seems, are an Act of God, a natural phenomenon which cannot be prevented. Lie back and think of England!
This line of thinking is not just an example of gutless leadership, it is logically flawed and flies in the face of decades of research into bushfire science and centuries of human experience. What is going on?
I was once advised by a grizzled public servant of the old school “if you want to understand any puzzling social or political issue, look for the beneficiaries.” Who on earth might benefit from the regular occurrence of huge, hot bushfires?
While the correct answer is “no-one” it is not hard to find people who use the big hot fire to their political or financial advantage. For example I have heard environmentalists portraying the recent fires in Victoria and WA as a direct consequence of global warming. They quite unambiguously assert that unless we unquestioningly adopt their political agenda on climate change, there will be more horrible bushfires. This can easily be shown to be crooked thinking, but it is an effective line because of the current hysteria about global warming.
The media can be seen as a beneficiary of big nasty bushfires as these provide highly newsworthy, truly front page or top-of-the-bulletin stuff. Journalists are served up with wonderful hero stories, disaster stories and controversy stories on a plate. Bushfires are tremendous drama, complete with cataclysmic vision of houses and forests going up in flames, farmers shooting burnt sheep, sad people raking through the remnants of their houses picking up twisted trinkets, hillsides of blackened forest. To the media (and of course to their clients the viewers and readers), big hot fires arouse intense interest and excitement; few things outside war provide more opportunities to exploit the gamut of human emotions or to experience them vicariously.
Then there are the Fire Chiefs, resplendent in their American World War 2 General’s uniform. “Bushfire management” these days has largely morphed into “bushfire fighting”, a thrilling battle to be fought by Emergency Services staff who have been waiting in the wings for this very moment. I am not criticising our top Firemen. They are doing the job they are appointed to do and all would be equally dismayed by the human misery and environmental damage caused by intense bushfires. Nevertheless, when the Big Fire declares war, their 15 minutes of fame arrives. The regiments of firefighters are amassed and despatched; the squadrons of bombers and helicopters are unleashed; the support and technical units are rushed to the battle. Fire Chiefs are nightly seen on the news giving high profile briefings to politicians and the media, planning strategies and dictating the tactics at the front. This is war, and war is hell. But war is also The General’s Big Moment, his hour upon centre stage.
I also wonder about the money, and who gets it. Bushfire fighting in Australia has become horrendously expensive. In particular, unbelievable sums are spent hiring aerial equipment and firefighters from overseas. I am convinced that if the money spent hiring overseas equipment and importing (and paying) inexperienced overseas firefighters was channelled instead into re-creating the permanent force of firefighters who once occupied the nation’s forest districts, we would be financially better off and have a superior fire management system.
Bushfire research is another interesting and complex issue. There is a considerable band of academics in Australian universities who are associated with and at least partly funded by the Bushfire CRC. None of these people like to see people and houses being burnt, but they all know that every big, nasty fire helps to underpin the security of their research grants, guarantee future funding and ensure desirable academic side-effects such as overseas conferences, publishable papers, and graduate students.
Finally there are those politicians who have learned how to make a name for themselves from a bushfire. They do this by the generous authorisation of huge sums of money for suppression at the very height of the fire, turning up at the control point and shaking the hands of smoke-grimed firefighters, commiserating with people who have lost everything, and looking grave but intelligent in a media briefing. After the fire they disperse largess from the government coffers to compensate those of their constituents who have been burnt-out, and promise more money for fire fighting equipment and research.
I am by no means saying that these “beneficiaries” are the cause of the disastrous decline in the standard of bushfire management in Australia over the last 15 years. We are all to blame for the inept political leadership and government dysfunction which are at the root of the problem.
What really worries me is that while God and Global Warming are cast as the villains, nothing will change. It just means that sensible investment in programs of bushfire prevention and preparedness, damage mitigation and community education continue to be set aside in favour of a self-fulfilling prophecy of apocalypse. Those who support (for example) an effective level of prescribed burning in the national parks, can safely be ignored. God and Western Civilisation are ordaining killer bushfires and we can do nothing about it! The fire and brimstone prophets of the Old Testament are back on the job.
by Roger Underwood
Perth, Western Australia
Roger is a former General Manager of CALM in Western Australia, a regional and district manager, a research manager and bushfire specialist. Roger currently directs a consultancy practice with a focus on bushfire management. He lives in Perth, Western Australia.
can’t help but comment and have a giggle. Are there beneficiaries? You bet there are. Its about time some of the damn myths out there stopped dead in their tracks.
Firstly, there are groups such as the AIC who publish information about arson profiling, but also admit there is little data available, and reproduce studies from the states, in fact I now they have not taken up the opportunity to interview a couple of arsonists.
There are fundamental flaws, there are a number of arsonists that I am aware of who DO NOT fit the profiles, this means screening and other methods allow arsonists esp bushfire to slip through the net. This has been brought to their attention; however they choose to ignore it.
Other groups that conduct employment screening for government departments have also been advised, but choose again to ignore it. Im sure they are making a nice dollar or two for contracts to supply their service, and wouldn’t want to jeopardize this.
There are many task forces set up around the country to deal with bushfires and arson, but what has kept on the quiet side is the errors they choose to repeat, because they fail to admit to past mistakes. I am aware of departmental investigators providing evidence in supreme courts, where the evidence they produce purporting to a particular fire is that of another, and damn well get away with it.
This is the thin edge of the wedge, they also provide false evidence about wind speed, direction and so on, effecting matters such as fire behavior.
There are cases of land management plans matching areas of “mysterious” bushfires, for example a fire occurs in a state reserve, park or what ever you like to call it, it “coincidently” matches proposed burning, where environmental issues are an issue, and then call it deliberate.
Yes I am having a go at the establishment, but not the fire fighters, I do hold many tertiary qualifications in this area including fraud and investigations. I have also been involved with a fire department as a fire fighter….the list just goes on and on
There are beneficiaries, gongs sought (medals) and dodgy business in some cases, oh and worth a though….chasing gain, recognition and so on, ironically meets some of the criteria “of a fire setter” using the FBI profiles.
Its political, big dollar and very little is produced other than what the authorities provide.
Bob, you are underweight in the CO2 department. It takes 1 tonne of carbon to produce 3.6 tonnes of CO2 so 10t CO2/ha is only 2.78t of carbon or only 5.56 tonnes of hardwood/ha.
My understanding of the volume of Victorian forests is that more like 55t/ha would have been burned with another 55 to 110 tonnes killed off.
So we are probably looking at more than 150 million tonnes CO2 in 2003 and at least that much more being emitted by dead wood over the next 50 years, if it was not burned out this year.
Which reminds me. We must check to ensure that deemed emissions from the harvested salvage does not end up being counted as a forestry emission.
Hi Roger and all, there has been a distinct change in fire fighting in Victoria which might havelead to a far larger fire, a less intense in many areas and limited property loss given its size.
For fire now a control line is established some distance from the fire and then a bulldozed bare earth break further back and the bush between is burnt.
Several major bare earth breaks, some over 100 k in length, have been created, especially around major domestic water supply catchments.
I do not have the address at hand, but NASA space shots record the start of this fire from December makes spectacular viewing as lightening started fires along a large portion of the Dividing Range.
These fires were all over the shop, coming from several places driven by sparodic hot gales. This fire burnt up to near Christmas when wet cool weather slowed it to a stage it can be mopped up - a process that is just finishing now. Bairnsdale residents had to turn the lights on a 2pm as the fires to the north blackened the sky for a couple of hours, then an early dusk merged back to a smoky night after black rain fell.
The second set of fires that burnt in January came from the tail end of the first fire around the New Year and flamed up with hot nor westerlies and headed toward Bruthen. A few days later it suddenly cut away with a sou westerly and headed up to Tambo Crossing and Swifts Creek and then that, or another fire, headed over through the 2003 regrowth across the NSW border toward Thredbo.
The areas burnt in the 2003 fires were said by DSE staff to have burnt as hard and even faster. I think this was likely because of the increased openness and wind speed combined with that affect of a still open canopy and more intense drying from summer wind and sun - in this dry year.
This fire affected some millions of people with smoke smothering towns thickly for days or even weeks. It went beyond Shepparton to the west and Leongatha to the south - setting off alarms in Melbourne CBD over quite few days and creating breathing difficulties out in the suburbs.
This fire and the 2003 fire covered about 1,500,000 hectares. The immediate release of carbon from these fires will be followed by methane release from the leaf litter. The water for Lakes Entrance well be greatly compromised and there is likely to be a significant blue green algae event in the autumn.
At an average of 10 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare - an educated guess, nothing more - these fires may have contributed 15 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere.
The impact on water is anyone’s guess. There are so many theories as to whether young trees should replace the older trees and be harvested or thinned before they reach significant water using capacity and so on.
If the forest is left to regrow I think that the r non permeable and non layers penetrated by the forests root mass would have a significant water storage capacity depending that could be impacted by salvage logging, depending on the amount.
As Eric Abetz discovered in his home state of Tasmania, it is unwise to assume that fires start in National Parks, water catchments and old forests. The Tasmanian fires started in logging areas.
All bar a small portion of the upper Yarra water supply catchment still remains unburnt after 200 years. A few lightening strike fires have been put out in that time - other lightening strikes failed to burn more than a tree or a few acres apparently.
Bob McDonald
Thanks Mary and Allan. I am afraid I go all glassy eyed when confronted with Acts and Regulations. It must be my Welsh ancestry. The ghosts think I am reading English Law.
If you go to http://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au and go to the In Force section, look up Rural Fires Act 1997 No 65 then go to Division 1 and there you will find Section 44 and the power it confers to the Commissioner.
Basically if the Commissioner decides that the local fire authorities can not deal with an existing fire, or a fire that may get to a size beyond the locals resources, or is in a location that is of high risk, (or is in easy reach of media) he can declare the section 44 regulation to provide the necessary resources to his delegate to put out the fire.
You have to remember that State Forests and NPWS are recognised fire fighting agencies under the act and do provide Incident controllers to act as the Commissioners delegate.
The Commissioner is not at the direction of the Bushfire Co-ordinating Committee in this situation but he has to take note of local bushfire management plans.
Davey, I have no idea but I have heard the same information from several sources, firefighters to foresters. I am pretty certain it was a factor raised in the coronial enquiry into the Canberra fires. There was one guy in particular who was really outspoken about how the fire was left to grow to uncontrollable size. I'm talking about NSW I don't know if it applies any where else.
Nathan,
Do you know the cause of the fires starting in state timber forests? Lightning or vandals?
Mary,
Very interesting point. Is there any official writing on this?
I have been told that NPWS leave small fires because once they get to a certain size and intensity a section 44 can be declared. This means the cost of fighting the big fire does not come out of their operational budget but is picked up by the government. They actually have a vested interest in fires growing to catastrophic sizes.
One other beneficiary you forgot to mention was Eric Abetz,Minister for Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation, who took the chance after Tassies recent massive bushfires to blame environmentalists for the fires. His stance was basically if they had been allowed to log in protected areas the fires would never have occurred. He missed the point that all the fires had started in state forest managed for the timber industry and promptly told our state fire chief to shutup and keep out of politics when this was pointed out to him.