The Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission has released an interim report.
The commission hasn’t made any recommendations on fuel reduction issues so far. However, it’s had quite a lot to say about warnings and the “stay or go” policy. In a nutshell, there’s likely to be a lot more emphasis on the “go early” rather than “stay”, and the reintroduction of “community safe places”/refuges.
For what it’s worth, I’m not sure that the “go early” part has been entirely thought through. Are mass evacuations, even if it’s just the children and elderly, going to become standard operating procedure a couple of days every summer throughout Melbourne’s fringes, Bendigo, Mount Macedon, and so on?
heard on rad nat this morning from the laundromat in King Lake:
“the fire didn’t kill us but the paper work will.”
seems to me to be the best summing up of just about everything so far.
I’m pretty sure early here means something like “first thing in the morning on a day that there is a fire that might conceivably reach you that day”, rather than “when you can reach out and touch the flames”. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s always meant, but there always has been quite a lot of uncertainty in the policy as to what exactly “early” and “defendable” mean.
Of course, this wouldn’t have helped those people who had no warning, but from what I’ve heard a lot of people in the past have tended to interpret “leave early or stay and defend” (and, really, calling it “stay or go” doesn’t help clarify matters) as stay until you realise you can’t defend and then flee into the firefront. If people are actually under that impression, then that’s very dangerous. (I don’t know if that’s exactly the case with the most recent Victorian fires, but I know it has been a problem in the past, and my impression from the Victorian bushfires suggested it was still a problem).
I think the real problem is not the policy per se, but how people interpret it. And I think it’s fair to say that it’s a failure of the fire services that people don’t understand what it means.
People need to know that defendable means that you’ve got an independent water supply (and not a plastic water tank), and a a pump that doesn’t depend on mains power, suitable clothing, and one or more able-bodied adults. They have to know about things like ember attack and how to prevent it. And they have to realise that, even with the best preparation, some fires are going to be beyond their means, and if they stay and defend, they still may die, and the chances of the fire services finding them before they do and rescuing them is pretty slim.
Unfortunately the situation isn’t as simple as a catchy slogan suggests, but it doesn’t mean the underlying principle is wrong. Whether we can be sure that enough people actually understand that principle and can therefore be left to make that judgement is another matter.
(disclaimer: I have in the past worked with fire agencies in relation to bushfires specifically, but don’t these days.)
Dr Faustus, the Murrindindi and Kilmore East fires were first observed well into Black Saturday.
That’s going to be the question isn’t it? What is the definition of early enough? And what about definition of a safe route even if you DO decide to go early enough. As a long time member of a bushfire brigade and a forest dweller I know that there are many more uncertainties about the average fire than most people would realise.
I think one of the biggest problems is the attitude of “someone will come to our rescue” instead of people taking responsibility for looking after their own houses. Even if you DO decide to leave early, how many houses have sprinklers on the roof that they can turn on before they go? How many of people living in the bush have an alternative water supply if the power goes out (usually one of the first things to happen when a tree falls over lines)? How many of them have at least SOME gear in case they can’t get away early? Have any of them made an effort to learn what to do if face with a fire?
I know these fires were exceptional, but will that be the case in the future? Will fires like this become the norm?
People need to take responsibility for the risks that come with living in the bush and be prepared to deal with the various things that can happen and not having a saviour in shining white armour – or a truck with flashing lights – show up.
Steve D: the Royal Commission seems to be taking the view that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to be prepared.
Which is fine, but there has to be a question as to how realistic it is to expect volunteer firefighters from Nhill or Mallacoota to give up their time to defend the unprepared in treechanger towns.
One thing I do know is that there was a high wind that day, as well as record temperatures. I reckon high temperature alone would justify caution, but if I were a treechanger I’d be getting out with those high winds. To me, that’s what made it deadly.
What is the practicality of everybody leaving from everywhere (going where?) on stinky blustery days? The Great Ocean Road certainly couldn’t cope (nor could the tourism industry).
This whole go early thing is awash with complexities and ambiguities. Very few people are fully competent to decide appropriately whether the weather system, interacting with their house, topography and fuel loads, exceeds some risk parameters. It’s simply beyond most people to know this. Trying to distill it into a simple message that the average illiterate person can understand is almost impossible.
PreVenTiOn is beTtER thAn ThE CurE!!!
Steve D mentions attitude: a little thing that is, of course, a very BIG factor!
Wilful, perhaps the simple word “Chaos”- as in the theory!- should be invoked as a mantra to keep people away from living in the bush!
Robert @ 5 is it really “fine” to take the view that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to be prepared? I would have hoped that a major outcome of this enquiry would be to emphasise that because all of us have the usual responsibility to make reasonable provision for the safety of our families and the security of our property no matter where we live then those of us choosing to live in fire-prone areas must now review those provisions to meet new circumstances.
I was happy to donate to the Red Cross appeal and leave it to administrators of the fund to distribute assistance. In hindsight I would have preferred to donate to a different, more general appeal, to support community Bush Fire Volunteer forces with equipment, facilities and the like.. I found some of the victims strident in their need to blame whoever or whatever and frustratingly unwilling to accept responsibility in refusing to hear the message most of Australia was getting loud and clear about the weather and conditions in rural Victoria that February weekend.
I think the Premier has hit the right note in his acceptance of the Report in refusing to focus on blame but I will be interested to see if more will now be done to encourage, if not insist on, more personal responsibility such as Steve @4 suggests as well local and state government initiatives to meet the realities of new climate conditions.
Patricia, human nature is what it is. A lot of people plan on the “She’ll be right, mate” principle. Even if the plan is reasonable, it may not be implemented on the day, and even if it is implemented it might not be enough.
The Royal Commission report spends a few paragraphs talking about the need for contingency plans with the idea of last-resort community refuges. If we really need that kind of contingency plan, I’m still of the mind that a bunker in every house is the way to go.
I’m with dr faustus@2 on this. The problem with the ’stay or go’ is not with the policy, it is with the understanding of how to make the choice. Standing in your front yard with a garden hose is sadly one of the decisions that ended tragically.
Education is the only imperative here, understanding the need to have the correct equipment, the proper preparation and the absolute terror that may well confront you. Knowing that radiant heat is far more dangerous than the fire itself and that your house may well offer you the best protection, but only if you and it are well prepared. I do live in the bush but I do not feel that I could ever stay because I do not think that I could cope with the maelstrom that I would be forced to confront, and I therefore know that I should seek a safe haven early. I also feel sure that some who lost their lives thought that they could cope, discovered they couldn’t and then attempted to flee.
Don’t deny people the chance to make a choice, but do ensure that those who elect to stay do so with the full understanding, and the knowledge that they have been well trained/informed.To that end perhaps a register would define the folk that intend to stay and they should be offered some training and advice on how to survive an inferno.
I agree, Robert, but human nature being what it is surely there must be some regulation of behaviour by government e.g.in the minimal safety provision of a bunker in every house such as you have suggested.
Personally, I don’t like hearing about old disused bunkers: it’s 2009 for Chrissakes! (Was it a money saving exercise….?!?!) SPOT the hazard; ASSESS the risk; MAKE the change!!!
As has been pointed out in various ‘letters pages’ by various peoples regarding various themes: “WHAT ABOUT THE QUESTION OF SUFFICIENCY BEING ADDRESSED!??!”
National service, only called something different, and motivated at a state level.[1] At the age of 18 everyone should be expected to do something in service of the community and themselves, and continue practising this skill at regular intervals for the rest of their life. One of the major things should be bushfire training. The CFA I’m sure will say “no, it’s impractical”, but if you through a few million dollars at them every year in a generation they’ll realise it was a great decision, and so will the fact that we won’t have another Black Saturday until someone says “this is useless/unfree/…, lets get rid of it”.
Other possible options would be SES and first aid training; I welcome other suggestions. It shouldn’t be implemented or understood as a one year(ish) commitment, but be a life-time commitment. Aside from the obvious purposes of making sure people who live in the bush know how to fight fires, it would also encourage a sense of community and a recognition that we can’t pay everything we get back by just buying stuff and spending money (hasn’t the trickle down theory been destroyed? why does anyone still think it applies to our relationship with the community?) By being a lifetime commitment you would also regularly see people you might otherwise have no contact with, and it would naturally extend to immigrants and permanent residents, so no-one would necessarily feel excluded.
[1] motivating this at a federal level would have Queenslanders learn how to fight Victorian bushfires, which is possibly worse than useless, or sending everyone to the army/navy/other federal forces. Of course it would be a co-operation between the state and federal governments, but the options available to you would be chosen by your state government and would include options that are only relevant, but absolutely crucial, in your state.
Coward, I’m fully with you on the civil service idea. Not very popular in this day and age however.
Robert @ 12 – I think the big danger with home bunkers is that it will encourage many more people to stay to defend their houses when they otherwise would have left. And while initially they may be adequate as a last resort after a few years of no maintenance they are going to turn into death traps.
I accept that we should look to improve the way we deal with such events, but I also think alot of the blaming and so on is just our increasing, child-like unwillingness to accept that bad shit happens. We seem to operate these days on the assumption that we can and should all be perfectly safe, and if we’re not it’s because someone isn’t doing their job.
It was over 40 degrees for days on end. I’ve got a system that pumps **all** our recycled waste water (sewerage included) onto the garden, and I couldn’t keep a small area of lawn from browning up and going crispy that week. The drought was the worst on record, had been on for what, seven years? It hadn’t rained for seemingly months. Ain’t the bloody fire chief’s fault.
I’m with Sean. This was a once in many generations event – its not suprising that a system designed to cope with once-a-year, stretching to once-in-a-decade, events failed. But it is not logical to compromise the once-a-year arrangements to try and meet the once-in-generations catastrophe.
For the great majority of bushfire events “stay or go” is exactly right. Even for that day, imagine the catastrophe had mass evacuations begun and the fires took off a bit earlier than expected – many, many more people would have died.
I worry that the interim recommendations, once the nuances are stripped off (as they will be in the public mind), will lead to gutted cars with burnt humans in them becoming a more common sight.
I take your point, dd, but:
a) It may not be once a decade, but it’s once-a-generation. There was Ash Wednesday, and before that Black Friday.
b) even if it used to be once-a-generation, means that that intense fires are likely to become more common. So once-a-generation might well become once-a-decade or worse.
Totally agreed Sean. While I’m sure there are many improvements to be made, and the RC is looking responsibly at what can be done better, the infantile media chase for the bad guys in this situation is reprehensible. A lot of the people working on the fires are volunteers (not just CFA truck crew) who work very hard for not much reward and recognition. Why would they want to go back and work on fires again?
Pseudo
back in the dim dark past a number of youth groupings including Girl Guides, Boy Scouts, St John’s Ambulance etc. provided very basic
i) first aid training
ii) bushcraft and fire safety knowledge,
and encouraged attitudes of
iii) self-reliance, and
iv) community service
Also junior surf life-saving, etc, (not quite as relevant to bushfire safety and recovery.)
just saying.
I’ve begun another thread on these issues.
Ambi – those groups are not dead! I’m involved in Girl Guides, and after years of numbers dropping, over the past decade, numbers have stablised and started to rise again. And we do still teach fire safety and first aid
(although i don’t think it is quite as much a focus as ‘back in my mothers day’)
More on topic… that day of the fires – it was a shocker of a day. It had been stinking hot for weeks, I got sunburnt at 10am putting the washing on the line. I live in the inner city, and remember the streets looking like late autumn, with dead, utterly crispy dry leaves from all the elm trees flying about everywhere, and all piled up in the gutters. It was weird and strange, and the worst summer I’ve ever felt. And the wind was just whipping about.
Clearly, in those conditions, ANY fire was going to be huge. I don’t think its fair to blame those who were trying their hardest to save people and property for not doing enough.
MsLaurie: the CFA aren’t perfect. Nor are the DSE. And when you put them together there are a whole pile of issues.
But the best firefighting organization in the world couldn’t have stopped those fires, and it was inevitable that some people were going to die. But a smarter response would probably have reduced the death toll a great deal.
Ta MsLaurie
What I was suggesting was that ‘national service’ or ‘CFA juniors’ are not the only ways of diffusing fire safety and first aid knowledge through the community.
We live in provincial Victoria, but once lived just south of Churchill. The “Churchill-Jeeralang” fire raced past our former house, narrowly missing it and the hiuses of several former neighbours. Devastating, and many died later that day because of that fire. As Paul Norton notes, it started in a pine plantation, swept into bushland, farmland, other plantations, spotting tens of kms ahead.
Yes that day was a shocker. We took Premier Brumby’s warnings very seriously. The low humidity, high temperatures, strong winds, were a nasty combination.
I wonder if we took the warnings seriously because we had lived on a steep, bushclad hill for 22 years (so fire prevention and precautions had been a necessity)??
We weren’t in direct danger that day. Blackened leaves and bark fell from the smoke plume blowing across from Bunyip State Park, but houses were damaged only a few kms from our town. The wind change saved us, and incinerated many others.
In the reaction to the release of the royal commission’s interim report, I’m surprised by the general silence of the media, and even environmental groups regarding the role of climate change in these fires. The timing of the interim report should have allowed the commission to recommend that Australia’s climate policies be reviewed for their impact on long-term bushfire prevention. Public recognition of climate change as a significant factor may have influenced the Rudd Government to take a stronger position to Copenhagen, and therefore to provide international leadership towards a stronger global agreement that could mitigate bushfire risk over time. Sure, examining climate wasn’t going to change what happens this fire season, but the interim report was a perishable opportunity within the timeframe of the Copenhagen process. The July 2010 final report, in which the inquiry will examine climate change, will come far too late. For more on this, have a read of my article on ABC Unleashed (the follow-up to my March article on the terms of reference for the inquiry). The sorts of policy recommendations I had hoped the royal commission might consider are included in my submission.
One of the major issues in Victoria is that of inadequate bushfire/evacuation warnings. But the solution to this will not be simple, I think. Already there has been much discussion of what is the appropriate technology to use (will there be a lot of people who simply won’t get SMSs and such? Do we use sirens?) There is a letter in the AGE today which makes an interesting point about the difficulties and contradictions inherent in this.
Couldn’t find a link for the article she cites.
She’s right – but what is the alternative? Clearly we need to warn the affected people in the towns most at risk. But we don’t know who are the arsonists as some of them are amongst that very group. And it’s no solution to confine that information to formal town meetings about fire safety, for the same reason; some arsonists are even in the CFA.
The way to structure and administer a warning system is far from clear and this is only one of many issues.
It is important to understand that there are risks involved in both staying and evacuation. People did die while escaping the fires and we could have had a major tragedy if an evacuation road had got blocked at the wrong time. We can talk about leaving very early but, if we go evacuation, a balance will always have to be struck between the risk of people ignoring the ssytem if there are too many false alarms and the risk of an evacuation tragedy if people leave too late. The best way to be sure of saving lives is to avoid depending on evacuation and to insist that all houses in high risk areas have an appropriate refuge that can be reached from the house while not being at risk if the house catches fire. (Some people died in basements that were under burning houses. I am not sure how much a refuge would cost but all they need to be able to do is protect people when the fire front goes through.
We also need to keep in mind that, even if no-one had died in these fires we would still be talking about the devastation of property loss to individuals and communites. Stay and fight makes sense provided that people know what they are doing, have adequate equipment and the house does have a refuge. I used to run emergency services in a small town that was periodically at risk from cyclones. Many of the practices used for cyclones woudl make sense in bushfire prone areas. In particular:
1. Fire inductions when people move into the area.
2. Houses have some resistance to fires and defendability.
3. Areas near houses clear of tress that can fall on roofs and refuges and obvious fire hazards.
4. Refuges that will withstand any bushfire that may reach the house.
5. Fire preparation check at the start of the fire season to check house, refuge, equipment etc as well as checking for people who may need special help.
6. A series of alert levels with action plans for each level. This includes action after the fire has passed or risk has reduced. Community action to help those needing special help and to help protect houses with no one at home is desirable.
We can certainly have done better both before and during these fires
It’s all fine and well to say what if? Did you know that in marysville a wind storm came through BEFORE the fire – that wind storm closed the exit/entrance to one side of the town.
Are you aware that the gravity fed water supply for the township failed due to commerical premises being comsumed by flames.
The losses in Marysville ALONE should have been higher if it wasn’ for a VERY brave individual who alerted the township using a carhorn.
As for preparedness – some people no matter how hard you pushed them, seemed to think it couldn’t/wouldn’t happen to them.
Fire bunkers are of little use UNLESS they are maintained and even then could prove to be fatal – just ask the watchman on the Mt Gordon fire tower near Marysville.
The fire in Kilmore moved too fast for anyone to stop it – the only thing that saved the outer suburbs of Melbourne was a 15′ wind change. But even then people in the path of the fire before the change – thought it couldn’t happen to them
AND YES – I was affected by the Kilmore fire and was in Marysville before most outside emergency crews got in – so I am not just blowing my own horn.
Even now the thoughts that 1 person in 1 township saved so many and lost their life makes me imagine what life would be like now if the CFA hierachy hadn’t succumbed to public pressure regarding testing and use of the fire siren. Public refuges were no longer recommended because the Government and Council didn’t the liability if the case of what if.
YET at the last minute told residents to evacuate to a point that 5 years was condemned as unsafe due to %^&*() public liability.
and in closing – thank-you to all – who stood in the face of that fire and risked their own lives to save others.
Let us pray that this is a once in a life time event and let our children never ever forget this event. EVER
It won’t be a once in a lifetime event, unfortunately. Spot the hazard; Assess the risk; Make the change. Thinksafe SAM may help. Anyway, what about the bunkers that saved people in the 1930s that were not maintained??? ATTITUDE is where the problems are normally found….. let’s change our attitude towards living in the bush and thinking she’ll be right or it’ll happen again and again and again! Who remembers that poor MP crying in Parliament about the bulk of people who died being form her electorate: is it good enough to just blame the pollies? DEMAND change sheeple or forever hold your peace! “We all have the power to demand an end to the threat of (INSERT CAUSE HERE!)”
Who remembers Michael Jacksons, “Man in the Mirror”????
Don;t even get me started on Politicians and THAT period of time
The different between 1930’s and now is that 1930’s and old mine shaft (or dugout) with wet hessian over the doorway was a good as you would get
These days – (techonology) we have to have everything lined to make sure we don;t get dirty – we have to have this, we have to have that.
Sometimes the old ways are the better ways of doing things . NOT always, but sometimes AND common sense has gone out the door – everyone looks to government to solve the problems. What about your own personal backyard first?
There is no stopping these fires – they will continue to occur, criminally started OR other means. EVERYONE MUST be prepared.
For people in the hills both near and far – they have to think ahead. Get out if your house is overgrown with trees. Get out if log cabin (but then again, The Crossways) Marysville survived, with the help of the Steavnsons river
Nothing is known until the time – you have to prepare to stay and fight and perhaps die and take that risk and accept the blame and not blame others if something goes wrong OR GET OUT and accept you may lose your house
I know I am staying – Some of my neighbours are staying
This time round – the 17yo took her car and exacuated with the 81yo and 71yo neighbour. she lead the party down to the ‘burbs.
Illegal or not – I wasn;t prepared to have others risk their lives because they couldn;t get out – or didn’t know when to leave