Ash Wednesday Bushfires in 1983 – approaching Anglesea on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, Australia

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This article was initially published by Tigerquoll 20090622 on CanDoBetter.net in the aftermath of the devastating Victorian bushfires that climaxed on 7th February 2009, quickly branded by the media as ‘Black Saturday‘:

Ultimate responsibility at the time – Victorian Premier Brumby and Australian Prime Minister Rudd

(and tomorrow is Armistice Day when nearly a hundred years ago people questioned…

‘Ultimate Responsibility‘)

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The Victorian Premier Brumby’s Royal Commission into the January-February 2009 bushfires is a mere incident review. If Victoria is to be protected from firestorms in future, it should undertake a root cause analysis, including the numerous past investigations into bushfires, with a view to achieving a cultural shift in rural fire fighting methods, resourcing and emergency management and into ecology management, housing approvals in bushfire prone areas, building design in bushfire prone areas, bush arson criminology and into serious resourcing of rural fire management.

Indeed, given the repeated history of bushfires across Australia and the repeated uncontrolled nature of many of these leading to extensive property damage, the loss of thousands of livestock, widespread ecological destruction, the human lives lost and injuries, and the massive costs incurred every year, the scope of the enquiry should be escalated to a national level.

But the Victorian Commission’s terms of reference focuses on the immediate causes and circumstances of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires. It focuses on the immediate management, response and recovery. This is a start, but the real start occurred in 1939 with the shock of Black Friday. It lead to the Stretton Enquiry, but many large and damaging firestorms have occurred since – so the Stretton Enquiry showed that lessons were either ignored or the application of those lessons were ineffective. The Esplin Inquiry of 2003 identified striking parallels between 1939 and 2002-3 bushfires. Now we have the 2009 Bushfires, but each investigation is disconnected from the previous one, almost as if to intentionally ignore history and any prior lessons learnt. Interstate and overseas, many major bushfires and their subsequent investigations have amassed research, insight and lessons. Why limit the investigation to one event?

Incident investigation will uncover causes and flaws and will likely make specific recommendations in the hope of preventing similar incidents. But root cause analysis goes beyond identifying the symptoms of a problem. But the Commission has not started with identifying the problem.

1. Let’s premise that at the core is the problem of preventing ignitions becoming firestorms.
2. What are the causes of uncontrolled ignitions in the bush.
3. Where are they typically lit?
4. How are ignitions detected by fire authorities?
5. What is the time lapse between ignition and detection?
6. What is the time lapse between detection and response and eventual suppression?
7. Which causes and interventions would mitigate the risk of these ignitions developing into uncontrollable firestorms?
8. Are the ignition detection tools adequate?
9. Are the communications tools adequate?
10. Do we have the right tools and trained personnel in the right places to effectively respond?
11. Is the entire detection, response and suppression system sufficiently integrated to deal with multiple ignitions in extreme conditions across the State at the same time? How would this be achieved?
12. What budget would be required to have such resources and technology in place to achieve this standard?
13. Is the problem indeed too big for Victoria by itself to adequately deal with and so is the problem in fact a national one?
14. How would a satisfactory solution be achieved without causing other problems like ecological damage and local wildlife extinctions?

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Then implement the recommendations and scientifically monitor their effectiveness.

However, the Commission is looking at what caused the specific ignitions, what damage the specific bushfires caused and specific responses. It will conclude what specifically should have been done in these specific incidents. It will lead to a blame game that will solve nothing. Subsequent ignitions if not predicted, detected, responded to and suppressed to prevent firestorms, will likely have different circumstances in different locations. So how will the problem have been solved by this royal commission?

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What about the affected people up in the Bush?

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Horror, shock, helplessness, anger, loss – loved ones, family, next door neighbours, familiar faces gone.  Then there’s financial loss, bank issues – sympathy first but  then demands, threats and ambivalence.  This is whole livelihoods.  It is devastation.  The initial trauma (community and personal), plus the ongoing trauma (community and personal).

Governments do the obligatory media spin, but as months pass they move on to other priorities.  But the people don’t – whether they end up staying or going, the trauma stays.

This was absolutely catastrophic!  Catastrophic!   No-one can prepare or recover as easy as Government claims.  What is ‘moving on’?

This is War Reparations league!   A war hit here and ordinary people were simply living their ordinary lives in the bush.  Another token bushfire enquiry without bushfire reform is repugnant, ignorant and callous.  How will the Victorian Royal Commission prevent bushfire history repeating itself?

If our society could cope before, we may accept fate.  But knowing the extreme risk in February 2009 and now, fate is no excuse. It is wrong for government to pursue bushfire management nonchalant business-as-usual in Victoria… in Australia.

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Footnote

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My uncle and aunt lost their family home down at Angelsea during the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires.   They weren’t insured.  Though they escaped with their lives, they lost everything else.  Thereon they were never really quite the same. They became refugees in their home community.

Anglesea Dreaming – a recollection of one’s youth and holidays

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This article was initially published by Tigerquoll 20090620 on CanDoBetter.net in the aftermath of the devastating Victorian bushfires that climaxed on 7th February 2009, quickly branded by the media as ‘Black Saturday‘:

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Children’s play equipment sits in front of a house destroyed by bushfire in Chum Creek

North Healesville, Victoria, Australia

[Photo: ABC]

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Pursuing the ‘bunker solution‘ is a dead end that no government will underwrite – think of the risk of failure!

What has been avoided in this Victorian bushfire debate are the fire fighting statistics. Where are the fire fighting operational metrics showing the time between ignition and detection and response and suppression?

Is anyone considering the fundamental task of effective bush fire fighting as a key cause of this disaster? The operational metrics, if indeed collated, would be alarming to the general public. The unprecedented extreme risk of uncontrollable wildfires was known to fire fighting operations management, yet no extraordinary resources were deployed in advance. Hours, not minutes, lapsed between ignitions, detection and responses. As a consequence, suppressions via a tired old truck-centric response methodology was demonstrably grossly inadequate. CFA responses were absolute failures in the tactical response to the February 2009 Victorian Bushfires. The whole show descended into an incompetent stuff up which resorted to the worst case scenario – ‘every man for himself’.

Only vigilante fire response had a chance of working. Acceptable may be in 1909, but not in a sophisticated 2009 supported by millions in annual funding and research. The response at strategic management level was ‘Keystone Kops‘. The field response was like a tragic Gallipoli – a strategic blunder with good men sent in with too little, too late.

The Marysville community like others didn’t deserve official response approach of ‘too hard basket’ and abandonment. The result was incineration entrapment.

This is the lesson of the incompetence of the CFA, DSE and Emergency Management Australia.  An ignition started in the bush is not an uncontrollable tsunami. But in conditions like that in January 2009 in Victoria, an ignition and more so multiple ignitions become equivalent to a tsunami if conditions, delay and inadequate resources are a combined factors.

The systemic failure to deal with ‘before-the-fact’ (ignition) causes is just as vital in being effective at bush fire fighting. I am not talking about slashing and burning the Aussie bush like an ‘Agent Orange’ sortie over Vietnam to eliminate all threat and wildlife habitat. I am talking about grossly negligent housing approvals in extreme bushfire areas, about grossly negligent property owners building houses out of flammable materials and doing squat about bushfire preparedness, about governments at all levels that fail to prepare bushfire prone populations and that fail to effectively communicate emergency drills to protect their lives, and that fail to provide sufficient resources to stop bushfires killing people.

Police are only this week interviewing residents around Bendigo to try to identify the suspected arsonist of that fire – five months later as a one-off investigation. Why did Brumby wait 5 months to investigate? I wager the arsonist involved could have been detected well in advance had a co-ordinated permanent bush arson squad been established long ago complete with specialist criminologists, psychologists, experienced bush fire investigators, criminal investigators, etc and enough resources to allow them to do their job.

I have no time for political band-aids or government responses that invariably involve millions that do not address the root causes of the problem. The bush itself, as habitat to millions of Australian animals must first be respected as the mutual innocent victim. Bushphobic responses by fanatics calling for scorched earth blanket responses will only fuel greater ecological catastrophe.

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Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Bushfire bunkers may be death traps’

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[Source: ABC Radio ‘AM’ Programme adapted by Zoie Jones, 20090511, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-03-02/bushfire-bunkers-may-be-death-traps/1605846]

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‘With firefighters on high alert in Victoria, some people in bushfire risk zones have decided to install fire bunkers on their properties.  But there are no regulations controlling the structures and there are concerns some of the fire shelters could be death traps.

Garrie Ferguson, who lives in the bushfire-prone Adelaide Hills, has started selling reinforced concrete water tanks as bushfire bunkers.

“If at the end of your street you only have one way in, one way out, you either run the fire in your car and risk getting killed, you either go back to your house and risk burning in there,” he said.  “Or risk the chance of hopping in underground to something that’s very well protected and try and outride it in there.”

For under $3,000 Mr Ferguson can install a concrete tank that fits six people and comes with metres of underground piping that holds reserve air.  He has sold 14 bunkers in the past two weeks.

“I do actually have a member of the metropolitan fire service that has bought one as well,” he said.

But Mr Ferguson cannot guarantee that people will be safe.  “I can’t guarantee anything at all. Somebody might put 12 people in it, use the oxygen supply and die,” he said.

Another option that some people are turning to, is to install a shipping container into the side of a hill.

Robert Caulfield from the Australian Institute of Architects warns against the temperatures that can be generated inside the containers and the possibility of running out of oxygen.

“It’s quite possible we could end up with fireproof shelters with people absolutely cooked inside it or get suffocated,” he said.  Mr Caulfield says during the bushfires three weeks ago shelters with steel roofs and similar features became glowing hot.

“It really needs a rigorous test on these sorts of things because once you get something generating that sort of heat it will also actually set up convection currents inside it, it can start fires inside the unit and so forth,” he said.

The institute is now calling for an urgent review and testing of the products being sold as fire bunkers.’

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[2]   ‘Bushfire Bunkers Report’

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by the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission in its Final Report – Section 6.10 ‘Bushfire Bunkers’, p. 190^http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/finaldocuments/volume-2/PF/VBRC_Vol2_Chapter06_PF.pdf]

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‘In its second interim report the Commission expressed its concern about the lack of regulation for bunkers, the risks of misplaced reliance on bunkers, the demand for bunkers, and the widespread availability of bunker products. It tackled the clear and pressing need for a minimum standard to regulate the design, siting and construction of bunkers by recommending that the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB) develop a standard as a matter of priority.

The Commission also made recommendations designed to ensure that, in Victoria and nationally, bunkers are regulated under building legislation and the standard developed by the ABCB is referenced as the minimum standard for construction of bunkers.
On 30 April 2010 the ABCB released a performance standard for private bushfire shelters; the standard is available free on the ABCB website. The ABCB advised the Commission that the 2011 edition of the Building Code of Australia will include bunkers and will reference the standard. In the meantime, the Commonwealth and the ABCB will continue to encourage all jurisdictions to adopt the bunker standard by means of interim regulations. On 28 May 2010 the Victorian Government adopted the standard through an amendment to the Building Regulations. The Commission commends this swift action to finalise and adopt the standard.’

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[3]   ‘Fire Bunkers: Interim Regulations Released’

by Fire Protection Association of Australia, ^http://a.cdn.fpaa.com.au/docs/Fire%20Bunkers.pdf [Read Document]

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[4]   ‘Bushfires Royal Commission makes early recommendations for fire bunker standards’

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by Geraldine Mitchell, 20090921, ^http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-reports/early-guidelines-for-bushfire-bunkers/comments-fn4chuwg-1225777637531]

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‘The bushfires Royal Commission will make early recommendations for building standards as Victorians rush to install bunkers and rebuild their homes in high- risk areas.  Commission chairman Bernard Teague has just announced the commission will not wait until the release of its final report next year to make the recommendations.

Commissioner Teague said evidence in relation to building standards indicated changes needed to be made before the next bushfire season.  He said recommendations would focus on the regulation of bushfire bunkers, changes to the new building standard and a revision of the Standards Australia handbook.  Further hearings will be held on Friday, October 30 and recommendations are expected to be released before the end of the year.  Last month the commission heard bushfire survivors rebuilding homes in ravaged areas were making risky decisions as officials wrangled over the best building standards.’

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Comment by ‘Les’ 20090926:

‘As a base standard the existing bunkers or dug outs at Surrey Rd, Powelltown, or the intersection of Warburton to Woodspoint Rd and Rd 7 Upper Yarra, or on top of Mount Ritchie off Rd 10 in the O’Shannasy, should be looked at (being) maintained!  As to the base level add 10% to February 7th, and budget to maintain them, problems occur when Government Agencies start cutting maintenance costs because nothing has eventuated for 5 years.’

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[5] ^Fire bunkers could have helped in the Victorian fires

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[6]    ^How misconceptions about bushfire bunkers may cost lives

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[7]    Wildfire Safety Bunkers, ^http://www.wildfiresafetybunkers.com.au/

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[8]    ‘Death Trap or LifeSaver? ‘, ^http://www.firesheltersaustralia.com.au/media/Bushfire%20Shelters.pdf [Read Document]

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[9]    ‘Bushfire Bunkers – A Summary of Products and Concepts‘, by the Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian Bushfires,  [Read Report]

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[10] ‘Bushfire survivor shares tale of escape‘, transcript of interview by ABC 7:30 Report, 20090212, ^http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2490128.htm [See video]

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The duty of fire fighting is to detect, control and suppress fires..

If bushfire fighting cannot do this reliably outside the urban environment, then the bushfire fighting promise has become a community lie and a deadly one at that..

This is a duty, irrespective of who is charged with the responsibility – government professionals, local volunteers, outsourced contractors, whomever?
But people in the bush are dying in their homes and in their cars, irreplaceable property has gone forever, and vast valleys and ridges of Australia’s rare ecosystems are being incinerated into extinction.
Australia’s post-war Dad’s Army model has long become ineffective.  It has become a reckless and incompetent menace luring vulnerable bush communities into a false sense of security and trust, to their death..
It is long time that Australia’s post-1939 Black Friday bushfire fighting mentality, resourcing and infrastructure were challenged by communities!

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The following is article was initially posted by Tigerquoll 20090326 on CanDoBetter.net:

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Out of the media frenzy to get ratings out of the Victorian bushfires, a ‘so-called’ bushfire expert on an ABC 730 Report panel (David Packham) advocated a 6 to 7 fold increase in prescribed burning for Victoria.

Another neo-Dreamtime wizard?

The effectiveness of this strategy is undermined by the live evidence shown (on ABC 730 Report Thursday 12-Feb-09) of local resident Jim Baruta in his home video. Over 200m of clear paddock stood between the bush and his house. This represents hazard reduction to an extreme degree (no trees or undergrowth for 200 m). Yet it was ineffective defence. Only his bunker saved his life.

As the ‘heat’ of the tragedy cools down, one of the overlooked impacts that needs to be considered in a balanced way is the impacts of broad scale fire (prescribed, wild, arson or otherwise) is having on the habitat of ground dwelling mammals. In the search for answers to avoid a repetition of the firestorm it is important that natural areas of high conservation value including old growth forests receive due recognition as natural assets worth protecting. Its integrity is not being measured and is probably disappearing through fire at a rate comparable to what logging is causing in SE Asia. That the bush grows back is not an indicator of its biodiversity health.

One must recognise that the bush (habitat) is also the innocent victim of these horrific fires. Dense ground cover is a fuel for fire but also home for wildlife. Keep removing the fuel and one removes the wildlife- eventually to its mass extinction. The underlying causes of the fires are the ignition, the lack of non-burnable material to create a buffer between good bush and human settlement, the slow detection of ignitions, the slow response to these while still manageable (remote country or otherwise) and the inadequate resources to suppress many spot fires. As to the ignition cause being arson – Australia needs a serious permanent criminology unit dedicated to this crime. The media and our leaders need to be careful not to incite dormant serial arsonists – just like one read and watched in the days preceding the first arson attack at Delburn on 29 Jan. The media frenzy just fuelled the copy cats’ excitement.

Bushfire management is a complex issue, so poorly under resourced, so poorly disconnected from bushfire research, yet so integrated into the lives of so many Australians. The public deserve a say into the Royal Commission. Those who tragically died and lost everything deserve billions not just in recovery but in the whole task of bushfire management.

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Comments:

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Re: Prescribed burning

April 17th, 2009 by ‘Matthew’:

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I don’t doubt your commitment to the environment, but you’ve got it exactly backwards. Increased burning is exactly what we need. Not just for human safety, but because the Australian ecology depends on fire at the very least as a means of recycling dead matter (The Australian ecology is different from many others in that our lack of water tends to inhibit microbial decomposition – as a result fire takes on that role).

There are many other reasons, as well. The natural adaptation of Australian plants to fire means that fire suppression actually helps drive native species to extinction, as they are out-competed by faster growing, more prolific seed spreading imported weeds. This is often accompanied by native animals being pushed out in the same fashion.

But the weeds, by putting their effort into spreading widely, have few resources left to recover from periodic annihilation events (like bushfires), meaning that where the bush burns periodically, native plants and wildlife have a natural advantage. Strange as it may sound, continual fire protects native species.

So long as the fires are not the huge events that just happened, of course. Continual small fires (such as aboriginals lit – look up “firestick farming”) has proven to be best. This is not to say that exactly the same areas should be burned each time, of course.

An early paper of Tim Flannery’s on the subject would be a good introduction to the historical importance of fire, and how it relates to the rest of the Australian environment – please don’t be put off by the windy title: “The Timing, Nature, and Aftershock of Pleistocene Extinctions in Australia” (^http://www.amnh.org/science/biodiversity/extinction/Day2/bytes/FlanneryPres.html)

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Lies, damn lies, and bushphobic myths

April 19th, 2009 by Tigerquoll:

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Burning native habitat is State-sanctioned arson.  If not, then perhaps Matthew in his claims above can offer verifiable ecological authority behind the myths he relies upon to justify why deliberatly setting fire to native habitat is ‘good’ for it?
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Myth 1: “Increased burning is exactly what we need.”

Arsonist profess this, so how do you differentiate yourself? Arsonists feel good about lighting fires.
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Myth 2: Bushfire is “good for human safety.”

Ambit claims deserve no more than single words rebuffs like: ‘crap’. But politely, I offer a more reasoned response.

Many prescribed burns actually get out of control and become the threat to human safety they are trying to avoid. Human safety is about not building in bushfire prone areas and not using materials that burn. Why is this logical solution avoided? If you choose to build in the bush and then burn the bush so that there is no bush around to burn, have you ust defeated your purpose of building in the bush? Bushfires burn down houses mainly fronm ember attack which can travel by winds many kilometres, so to remove the threat of ember attack, how many kilometres circumference of bush do you need to destroy to feel safe – 3km, 10km? You may as well build you house on farm land with no trees, undergrowth or grass in sight. Then you may be safe from ember attack. Think of the St Andrews example during the February Victorian Bushfires.

Bushfire fighting is all about rapid detecton, response and suppression of ignitions. Currently most bushfires are detected by thoughtful members of the public calling 000, then volunteers are called in and drive out in fire trucks. What are the performance statistics for say 2008 for all ignitions in Victoria in terms of elapsed time between estimated ignition time and response on site? Hours? Days? Such delays are not good for human safety or habitat.
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Myth 3: “Australian ecology depends on fire”

Another ambit claim and so I say, crap. Name your ecological authority? Name species of flora that are threatened with extinction due the lack of fire? Name species of fauna that are fire dependent and relish being burns victims and displaced for years due to habitat destruction by fire?

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Myth 4: “The natural adaptation of Australian plants to fire means that fire suppression actually helps drive native species to extinction, as they are outcompeted by faster growing, more prolific seed spreading imported weeds. This is often accompanied by native animals being pushed out in the same fashion.”

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So you are now claiming bushfires are good because weeds grow faster than native plants. How is putting out bushfires logically connected to weeds? I am being really patient now.

Some Australian flora have become more fire tolerant that others, but others remain sensitive to fire and vulnerable to fire. This generalist claim disregards the complexity of biodoversity. It’s like claiming the bush growns back and so must be ok. Again, what ecological authority do you base you claim?

How does putting out bushfires (fire suppression) “drive native species to extinction”?

Weeds do not invade undisturbed bush easily – there is too much bush in the way. Heavy rain after burning will leave exposed subsoils and attracted weeds, but bushfire authorities who engage in prescribed burning abrogate themselves of responsibility for follow up weeding – ‘not our problem’ they say.
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Myth 5: “Strange as it may sound, continual fire protects native species.”

Really strange this one. What ecological source, evidence, location do you have for this claim?

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Myth 6: Aboriginal firestick farming has proven to be best.

Small mosaic occasional fires have prevailed across Australia, but the frequency and scale of that applied since 1788 has been a thousand fold – hardly comparable. Now we have a fraction of the good bush left, so hardly a comparable practice when we only have islands of the original natural landscape left.

Referring to Tim Flannery’s book is a start as a source, but what argument are you drawing upon? Name dropping is not supporting evidence.

Matthew, here’s some an ecological authority to counter your myth that ‘fire stick farming’ is an age old environmental condition “best” for the Australian bush.

“Professor Gell has uncovered evidence that the incidence of fires increased dramatically with the arrival of Europeans after the 1830s. Contrary to conventional beliefs, he says, the first squatters burnt the land far more regularly than Aborigines ever did.”    [Source: “Researcher questions fire strategy” by Geoff Maslen in the SMH of 23 Mar 09, ^http://www.theage.com.au/national/researcher-questions-fire-strategy-20090323-96e2.html]

One must recognise that the bush (habitat) is also the innocent victim of bushfires, so how can you argue fire is good when the bush burns and by burning is killed, habitat lost and native animals burned alive, displaced because home ranges of native mammals are not transportable?

Think of a ‘home range’ like a farm dog chained to a tree – it can’t just walk to the next hill to escape fire. Home ranges are geographically fixed. Fire destroys them and the animals do know to move elsewhere. They may roam to feed but return to their burnt out home after feeding – exposed and so many die.  I can cite evidence if you want.

Simplistic myths trying to generalise bushfires being good for Australia’s native flora and fauna are overdue their time of reckoning. Bushfire authorities simply are flying blind with no ecological idea of what they do.

The CFA in Victoria and RFS in NSW have become more adept at letting remote fire burn millions of hectares of native habitat and to lighting prescribed burns systematically every year, to the extent that bushfirefghting has forgotten its core task of bushfire suppression and supplanted it with prescribed burning.
This is defeatist. Perhaps the CFA now stands for Country Fire Arsonists and the RFS stands for Rural Fire Starters?

Notably not a Australian native zoologist among them.

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Researcher questions fire strategy‘

by Geoff Maslen [March 23, 2009, The Age, http://www.theage.com.au/national/researcher-questions-fire-strategy-20090323-96e2.html]

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A leading bushfire researcher has questioned calls for more frequent controlled burn-offs, saying they may make our forests more prone to large blazes.

The director of the centre for environmental management at the University of Ballarat, Professor Peter Gell, says frequent burning of Victoria’s forests may have resulted in bushfires becoming more frequent and more intense.  Professor Gell has uncovered evidence that the incidence of fires increased dramatically with the arrival of Europeans after the 1830s.

Contrary to conventional beliefs, he says, the first squatters burnt the land far more regularly than Aborigines ever did.

“This may have created a situation where the frequent burning of forests early on changed the plants on the forest floor to create fire-provoking vegetation rather than reducing it.”

Professor Peter Gell is convener of a national network of scientists examining the affects of humans on Australia’s ecosystems. He also heads an international network of researchers on the effects of people on the world’s lakes

“At Ballarat, we are looking at fire history and we believe the incidence of fires markedly increased after Europeans arrived. The first squatters burnt more regularly than the indigenous people and might actually have increased the interaction between fire and vegetation rather than reduced it.”

Victoria’s early settlers turned most of the original forests into woodland and most of the woodland into grassland, Professor Gell says.  So although the total “fuel load” has decreased, conditions for bushfires within the remaining forests are different now than they were 300 years ago.

“If we are facing a new climate and increasingly extreme and catastrophic fire hazards, fuel reduction burning may be doing little to restrict the passage of fires,” he says.

“It’s also possible that fuel reduction burning will become so frequent or excessive that biodiversity is completely sacrificed because the shrub layer that is critical for most of our rare and endangered birds and animals will be destroyed.”

Professor Gell says that governments are investing enormous sums of money in trying to maintain biodiversity, soil stabilisation and water quality. But these are all negatively affected by regular burning.

“If you burn every year or two, you could be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.” .

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– end of article –

This article initially posted March 26th, 2009 on CanDoBetter.net by Tigerquoll

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The Australian Institute of Criminology reported last month that half of Australian bushfires are deliberately lit. Bushfire research needs to go further to evaluate whether in fact of the most damaging most are deliberately lit.

Test: If one excluded arson ignitions and their related spotover fires (between 29 Jan at Delburn to 8 Feb) would the firestorms have occurred?

Assuming the answer is no, then clearly arson must be Australia’s key focus in combating the impacts of bushfire.

Unlike the other two causes of bushfire, (lightning and accident) which are random, bush arson targets the worst conditions, upwind of a specific target and often involving multiple ignitions.

The term ‘fire bug’ is too docile and to start seriously dealing with it, we must change the perception and the language. Bush arson has become so deadly and catastrophic a crime that it warrants the term ‘pyroterrorism‘. See the application of this term in the recent California fires.
^http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/thepyroterroristsarecoming.html

The forthcoming Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires of 2009 risks concluding similar theme recommendations as the 2004 COAG Enquiry into the 2003 Canberra Firestorm, which itself repeated those of many previous bushfire enquiries. The implementation of any recommendations requires budget, timeframe and an independent federal watchdog accountable to the public. I will be analysing its terms of reference.

Aside from serious resourcing of bush fire fighting (nationalising it, building approvals, building codes, etc), the key systemic problem is the cultural disconnect between bushfire research and fire fighting practice. Criminal arson investigation needs to be a permanent and dedicated arm of bushfire management, properly resourced with primary data collected from all Australia and overseas using the best criminal psychologists and with a proactive mandate.

In NSW, the government set up Strike Force Tronto to investigate serial bush arsonist after the Christmas 2001 bushfires. Then the government got complacent, other priorities emerged and it was disbanded in 2005. But following a series of arson bushfires in 2006 (with houses lost in (Picton and Cattai) the force was reinstated on 26 Sep 06 (Daily Telegraph p1). Reactive sporadic resourcing of bush arson investigation clearly isn’t effective.

To seriously address the main cause of deadly bushfires, a national organisation needs to be permanently established and perpetually funded to focus on criminal investigation into bush arson/pyroterrorism with a mandate to recommend deterrent policies and practices across Australian bushfire fighting as well as the media.

Media reporting leading up to the 7-Feb-09 firestorms, simply incited dormant serial arsonists. Go back and read The Age and television media in the days before and after 29 Jan when the first bush arsonist struck at Delburn (south wast of Churchill). The front page of The Age on Saturday 7-Feb-09 read: ’44 degree heat “as bad a day as you can imagine”
– which was a quote from of all people the Victorian Premier made to the general public the day prior.

Just like the media policy of not reporting suicides due it being known to encourage copy cats, so too media reporting of heatwaves and of extreme bushfire conditions needs to be tempered to avoid inciting dormant serial arsonists.

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This was a submission to the ABC TV Four Corners programme on the Victorian Bushfires ‘Two Days in Hell’ by reporter Quentin McDermott, ahead of it being aired Monday 16-Feb-09.

The following article by Tigerquoll was initially published on CandoBetter.net on 20090312

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During Victoria’s devastating 2009 bushfires, few will be aware that the Victorian Government’s so-called Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) allowed nearly all of the natural ecology of the northern half of Wilsons Promontory National Park (‘The Prom’) to burn at will.

Indeed  ‘DSE’ has long been colloquially denigrated by rural Victorians as an acronym for ‘Department of Sparks and Embers‘ for such very reason.

Out of control, lack of resources?, or has The Prom Fire (now having destroyed 24,800 hectares of native habitat) in fact been deliberately left to burn?

DSE in collaboration with the Victorian Government’s CFA (Country Fire Authority) have protected private property at Tidal River and Yanakie.

Perhaps ‘CFA’ has similarly become an acronym for…’Culpable Fire Arsonists‘.

• What really has been going on at The Prom behind the fire barricade out of public view?
• Why was the small fire north of Sealers Cove not extinguished on Friday 13th February 2009, when it was nearly out?
• Why after three weeks with mild weather conditions has this wildfire not been put out?
• Why, ahead of more forecast hot winds, has DSE risked this fire continuing?

…government silence is deafening!

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Is this really an opportunistic prescribed burn…thanks to lightning? Is it in fact because the DSE doesn’t want the fire out..not until its prescribed burn area is burnt?

A DSE operational fire planning document sourced from the Yarram Fire Distict (which includes The Prom) shows that most of The Prom that has now been burnt is in fact part of DSE’s ‘Planned Burns’ for 2009, 2010 and 2011 anyway. The DSE map (click link below) shows no fires history for the northern half of The Prom.

 

…’so quick let’s burn it, lest it burns!’

[CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE]

Yarram Fire Operations Plan 2008/09 – 2010/11 – showing most of Wilsons Promontory colour coded for planned burning.

© Firemap Tue 14th Oct 2008

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On this DSE planned burn map of The Prom, no areas are off limits from burning save the few villages and small pockets of private property and what the DSE has mapped as Zone 5 ‘Exclusion of Prescribed Burning’.

All other natural bushland areas of The Prom have been targeted by DSE for burning anyway.

This prescribed burning culture labels all bush hazardous ‘fuel’ and a demonic threat. Instead of putting out the fires in bushland they let the bush burn and all the native animals burn alive in the process.
They brag… ‘we save houses, the bush will grow back so what’s the problem?’

The ‘Department for Sparks and Embers’ is living up to its name.
But who’s responsible for the fauna?

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Comments:

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Is DSE helping developers get at the Prom??

March 4th, 2009 by ‘Prudence C’:

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I would go further.

Are the developers that are driving this country to ruin actually after the Prom???

Does DSE, which is removing all rights from citizens to object to development, purposefully causing extinctions through burning so that soon it will be able to say, “Oh, all that land is degraded, it may as well be developed”?

I would put NOTHING past this government.

It should not be allowed to get away with what it has already done to Wilson’s PRom.

DSE is really just an old wood-feller’s hang-out. It should be closed down and something that cares about animals put in its place.

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Vic DSE’s handling of Wilson’s Promontory fire defended

March 22nd, 2009 by ‘callum’:

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You people have no idea what DSE try to do to get that fire out as so as they could!  Where it was burn is very thick bushland and very high country you couldn’t get fire trucks in there. they tried droppin strike teams in but with the water bomber not make making a difference there was no point keep it going to without the water bomber the strike teams weren’t allow to stay on the fire front. so they had to wait until the fire got to where they could attack it. so before you start having a go at dse get the facts right. because the DSE did a great of protecting as much of the prom as they could. if they wanted the whole thing to burn they would have sat at the enterance to the prom and watched it burn!       (Abuse removed – JS (Can DoBetter.net editor))

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DSE’s prom effort was opportunistic prescribed burning

March 25th, 2009 by Tigerquoll:

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Callum (above comment) claims the remote fire on Wilsons Promontory could not be put out.
The evidence is that on 13th March 2009 it was almost out due to rain, according to a timely online NASA satellite photograph. A fire truck approach for remote ignitions is obviously not going to work. It’s a bit like trying to connect up to the nearest fire hydrant in the bush. Such an urban fire fighting approach to remote ignitions is clearly flawed. The fact is that the Victorian government grossly under-resources remote fire fighting. This results in stuff all effective ignition detection (delegated volunteers rely on a goodwilled member of the public to ring 000 before fire trucks roll) and stuff all in effective response and suppression – if the truck hoses can’t reach the remote ignition, let’s sit and wait -it’s only bush. The resourcing of serious standby airborne Canadairs and Aircranes is beyond Brumby’s mindset, the let the bush burn culture is stuffed.

Questions to Callum, assuming he is duly informed about the actual fire response operation:

1. Why did the “water bomber” not make making a difference to controlling the fire – especially on or before the 13th, before the wind speed picked up?
2. Why were not extra water bombers including dedicated aircranes deployed immediately?
3. Why weren’t the strike teams allowed to stay on the fire front and extra strike teams deployed, if necessary from interstate?
4. Why did DSE have to wait until the fire got to where they could attack it?
5. Why doesn’t DSE have an effective response strategy to remote fires?
   (This was one ignition in favourable weaher conditions leading up to the 13th March).
6. Was not most of the northern Prom burnt consistent with the 2009-11 fire plan of the Yarram Fire District?
7. A lot of Victoria has thick bushland and very high country, moreso than the comparatively accessible (by air) coastal landscape of The Prom.
8. How is DSE measured on its performance – by the minimal amount of area burnt due to fast and effective suppression? If so it has failed Victorians and their forests big time.

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If DSE can be demonstrated to not have used every resource possible to quell this fire, the the presumption of opportunistic prscribed burning remains and the organisation deserves to be disbanded.

What’s the bet that Brumby’s Royal Commission ignores the Prom and the plight of ground dwelling fauna?

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A large number of native

April 14th, 2009 by ‘Anonymous’:

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A large number of native plant species in the Prom (and indeed, across Victoria) require fire to persist. There are however many species that will not survive fire (including animals obviously). The problem is that the species that require fire to disperse their seeds, sprout from epicormic shoots, flower like the native grass tree and for dormant seeds in the soil to be stimulated by fire do not survive the type of fire that spread through the Prom on the 13th March. Controlled fires are only lit when they can be managed and are either hot quick burns or slow not so hot burns. There are many ecologists that would give you this same view point. If you are correct and the DSE allowed this fire to burn then they should be held accountable but I seriously doubt that this was their conscious decision. They would be fully aware that many species would be lost.

While I understand your arguements, I think that you are being unreasonably harsh. The Prom fires were not immediately endangering property or person, of course the government would deploy all efforts in areas such as Healesville and Marysville where this was the danger before protecting native bushland. I think that this fire season was a unique situation and had there not been immediate danger to human life then I’m sure the management of the Prom fires would have been handled differently.

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Let the DSE publicly justify its actions

April 14th, 2009 by Tigerquoll:

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The desperately dependent myth that a few native plants require fire to survive is perpetuated to the extent that encourages DSE and CFA to incinerate all Victoria within cooee of a Eucalypt. Latching on to epicorimic growth seems to justfy incinerating ground dwelling mammalian habitat. Since when did a Potoroo sprout epicotic paws? DSE, to have any legitimacy beyond myth must provide independent ecological authority of the mandatory requirement for fire for species survival. I challenge the conspicuously ignored fact that any species of Australian fauna require fire to survive. Try lighting fire to you hand or house and see the reaction!

The bushphobic myth is defeatist! Burn the bush in case it burns!

Isn’t the real problem the fact that rural fire authorities are denied the right resources to instantly detect, respond to and suppress remote ignitions. Relying on calls to 000 and sitting in fire trucks is useless in quelling ignitions in rugged and remote country. It must be immensely frustrating to watch a fire grow into an uncontrollable monster because one is denied by government the right resources to deal with it while it is controllable. The considerable investment needed and asked for from government to fight fires while they are controllable, pale compared to the massive tragedy of letting a wildfire rip lives, property, wildlife and heritage to cinders because of government cost savings.

Then what a cheek to hear government thank the charities for picking up the tab and then to target mass burning of the natural environment just because government does not want to fund State of the Art fire fighting – which would instantly detect, respond to and suppress remote ignitions with military precision – saving lives, property, the rural way of life and our wildlife like genuine heroes.

The wildfire problem is likely to get worse with drought and arsonists more prevalent. Waiting for a remote ignition to reach a control line is what they in the 1940s. The risk and cost is too great to rely on a dad’s army response in the 21st Century, unless you have a mantra to destroy the Aussie landscape and create a neo-colonial parkland.

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Your comments appear only half-educated

July 20th, 2009 by ‘artemis’:

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No offence, but your comments appear only half-educated. A prescribed burn is done in pockets, so that an entire area is not burned off all at one time. This allows animals to continue to flourish in the wider area. This is what is called a “mosaic” effect. Which is why you see the DSE have burnt a little each year over the last few years. This is not “bush phobic” but takes into account the fact that the Australian bush has a complex and necessary relationship with fire for propagation and the DSE tries to work with the bush to encourage it at its natural state as best as possible without injuring or harming the humans that now inhabit it so profusely. In fact you will find that when prescribed burns as the Aboriginals carried them out stopped, certain species of animals that thrived and lived in the edges of them became extinct.

As fire is the natural state of the Australian bush, you will never stop it, the best we can do in our situation, is learn to harmoniously work with the land and manage it. If you understand it from this angle you will understand that prescribed burns cause no where near the damage to flora, fauna, the environment and humans as the huge deadly wildfires that occur if we don’t prescribe burn.

The DSE and the CFA are both committed to working to save the environment as much as possible, unfortunately too many people see them as the enemy – humans love to have a tangible enemy to attack, even if that means turning on one another when convenient. It will be nice when people finally realize that prescribed burns are much more green than they first understood.

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Prescribed burning is based on unsupported myths

July 21st, 2009 by Tigerquoll:

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Mosaic prescribed burns immediately around built assets (aka Asset Protection Zones) would seem sustainable. Building approvals only in low bushfire risk areas would seem sustainable. Permitting building construction out of non-combustible and fire retardant material would seem sustainable.

But the ‘bushphobic’ culture has pushed the boundaries and scale well beyond immediate protection of buildings. The scale of bush burning into remote wild parts of Victoria by DSE and the CFA is broadscale and massive and causing local faunal extinctions. Take a look at the DSE site

Take also one small example of a CFA fire district in Victoria. The Yarram Fire District in South Gippsland in its DSE Approved Fire Operations Plan [2008/09 to 2010/11] for 2500 hectares of bush to be deliberately burned.

The issue of burning the bush is indeed complex, yet the ecological complexity and impact is not understood or appreciated by DSE or CFA. How do you know that “DSE activities “allows animals to continue to flourish in the wider area”
Where are your statistics Artemis? Why are not independent zoologists with experts in Australia’s native fauna providing independent public reports supporting each Proposed Plan Burn by the DSE and CFA across Victoria? Too embarrassing, especially when these get out of control 1 in every 2? It is because the DSE and CFA have cumulatively destroyed more native habitat that any other threatened process? Look at Wilsons Promontory in 2009 and 2005! Default prescribed burning from the convenience of lightning. No building threatened so let the bastard – saves us the work anyway on the Fire Plan and we can always argue the old “it was burning in inaccessible country” excuse – works every time, guaranteed!

Controlled limited ‘mosaic’ burning that excludes flora species and ecological systems vulnerable or intolerant to fire is the PR spin. But on the ground prescribed burning is not an exact science. It is not undertaken scientifically nor supervised scientifically or able to be independently verified as compliant. The DSE or CFA have no independent public watchdog. They are a law under themselves and they know it. Weekend warriors end up torching most of the prescribed burns – “this’ll do!” If it gets out of control, we’ll deal with it but actually it will save us bother next time and minimise the fire risk next summer.

The Aboriginal firestick burning is another excuse used to justify deliberate arson of wild landscapes remote from buildings is another old school fire management myth, lacking scientific merit. Since when did ancient Aborigines drop aerial incendiaries over vast inaccessible areas every year?

The Armageddon myth is another bushphobic alarmist excuse to try to justify slashing and burning as much bush as possible ‘before it burns’ every seven years or so. This way no bush is ever allowed to live beyond seven years. The main reason huge deadly wildfires occur is because the fire authorities take too long to detect the ignitions take too long to respond, don’t have the right tools to suppress remote ignitions fast and effectively.

The DSE and the CFA are both committed to perpetuating the status quo, let alone give a toss about the natural environment.

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Logging is drying our forests!

July 20th, 2009 by ‘Anonymous’:…

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By “managing” our forests and clearing native vegetation, along with the conditions of drought and climate change, we are actually making them drier and less dense, and thus adding to the risk of mega-fires.

While our State government continues to permit the logging and thinning of our native forests and water catchment areas, the public can do little to prevent further mega fires.

The dry conditions means that trees suffer and compete for water. They lose their leaves, or die, thus exacerbating the dry undergrowth problem. Instead of moisture, forests continue to become more vulnerable. It is then a cycle downwards to damaged ecosystems, and thus more fire dangers.

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Broadscale frequent prescribed burning is a threatening process

July 21st, 2009 by Tigerquoll:

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Indeed, logging, thinning and frequent burning (forest practices) over Australia’s 220 year colonial history have and continue to destroy the integrity of our native forests and force our native fauna closer to extinction. Colonial ‘clearing’ for agriculture and building materials destroyed most of south eastern Australia’s natural landscape. Neo-colonial practices including unchecked urban invasion and prescribed burning continue to do destroy what’s left.

Australia’s original natural landscape is characterised by varied topography and varied mosaics of different vegetation types. Broad scale destruction of native vegetation across south eastern Australia has reduced the remnant forest and heath habitat into fragmented and isolated islands. Many specific habitat types are now threatened and endangered as a consequence. Wet schelophyll has being transformed into dry schlerophyll. Note the fire resistent species that return after a fire – Acacias (wattles), tea tree and Eucalypts. These then dominate the new growth and when the next fire occurs they burn more intensely and exacerbate the wildfire. Frequent prescribed burning makes our remnant forests more susceptible to wildfire. Frequent prescribed burning and uncontrolled broadscale bushfire are by area and impact are responsible for the loss of our remaining biodiversity and ecological values across south eastern Australia.

This is even though prescribed burning has been found not to prevent ember attack – the main cause of wildfire spread in extreme bushfire weather conditions! Frequent broadacre burning policies have limited effectiveness at mitigating wildfire risk (its intended aim). The previous “NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner, Phil Koperberg, echoed similar sentiments when faced with criticism after the 2002 fires: ‘Unless you’re going to keep all of New South Wales hazard reduced to a point where there is no fuel on the ground…we’re going to have fires’ (McKey 2002).” SOURCE: http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2003/02/brandes.html

ACB Submission to the Teague Commission on Victoria’s 2009 Bushfires

The Australian Centre for Biodiversity (ACB) at Monash University has made a submission to Teague Commission on Victoria’s 2009 Bushfires, and addresses the fundamental question: ‘Can fire and land management practices and policies be modified to minimise the future risk of similarly catastrophic bushfires without compromising Victoria’s native ecosystems and the biodiversity that they support?’

ACB in its submission, has offered the following warnings of how broadscale frequent burning threatens our native forests:

“Natural fire is a complex physical process that affects organisms, communities, and landscapes in various ways. The spatial and temporal variability of these impacts depends on the intensity and frequency of fires in an area, that is, the fire regime.”

“Inevitably, after a major bushfire, there are calls to increase the amount and frequency of fuel reduction burns. However, increasing the rate of fuel-reduction burns is, in effect, changing the fire regime in an ecosystem and may have substantial ecological implications.

“The application of fuel-reduction burning to mitigate fire risk, therefore, needs to be critically questioned on two fronts.
First, will increasing the frequency and amount of prescribed burning reduce fire risks at the landscape scale?
Second, how will changing the fire regime through increased fuel-reduction burning impact on native ecosystems? Will increasing fuel-reduction burning lower fire risks?

“Theoretical studies have also shown that fuel-reduction burning at the landscape scale can reduce the risk of large, catastrophic fires. However, these studies make important assumptions about the other point of the fire triangle: climate. Under most reasonable climatic conditions, fuel reduction burns done sufficiently frequently may reduce the risk of large fires. However, under extreme climatic conditions, such as those that preceded Black Saturday, this may not hold. As of Friday, 6 February 2009, approximately one-third of Victoria’s public lands had been subjected to fuel-reduction burns since 2003; that is, ~5% of public lands were subjected to fuel-reduction burns each year. This was the target set in an earlier Parliamentary Enquiry and clearly did not prevent the Black Saturday fires. Modeling studies suggest that the amount of fuel reduction burns would need to be doubled, at least, to have any potential for avoiding similarly catastrophic fires if conditions of such extreme fire danger re-occur in the future.”

“Increasing fuel-reduction burning to proposed levels (10-15% of public lands per year) would reduce habitat diversity by homogenizing the regional fire regime. The diversity of habitats and their mosaic distribution across the Victorian landscape is a critical component in maintaining local and regional biodiversity. The interdigitation of sites differing in their susceptibility to fire provides temporary refuges for animals that can move away from fires and later recolonise their original sites. More frequent fuel-reduction burning will change the structure and composition of the understorey vegetation. While many animals may be better able to survive the low-intensity fuelreduction, the resultant vegetation may be poor-quality habitat.”

“Applying a single prescribed burning policy to Victoria’s public lands will disadvantage a large proportion of the native biodiversity and reduce local and regional habitat diversity. Shifting
toward more homogeneous landscapes through increased prescribed burning will be detrimental to the long-term conservation of biodiversity in Victoria.”

“Increased prescribed burning may reduce fire risks in some years, but is unlikely to have any effect in those years with extreme climatic conditions similar to those of 2009.”

“A uniform and widespread increase in fuel-reduction burning across Victoria’s public lands will likely have negative long-term impacts on the native flora and fauna.”

ACB’s recommendation:

“We recommend that the State government consider a more nuanced policy that acknowledges the spatial complexity of Victoria’s landscapes and the values associated with them. We recommend that increased prescribed burning be focused in high-risk areas directly surrounding towns to minimize threats to people and property. However, for more remote, unpopulated areas, where the primary values are biodiversity and timber, we believe that fire management plans should be based on the best available science, that they should be consistent with the appropriate historical fire regimes, and that they provide an integrated, long-term vision for Victoria’s natural heritage.”

SOURCE: www.biolsci.monash.edu.au/research/acb/docs/teague-commission.pdf

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Conservation biologist disputes that burn-offs harm ecology

May 1st, 2010 by ‘Anonymous’:

[Subject was: Myth? are you serious? – JS]

Myth? Are you serious? Perhaps you should learn the basics of Australian ecology and the critical role of fire for the majority of Australian flora before you go and bad mouth the authorities who do their best to save your homes. I know there is a lot of debate but you can’t base your arguments from what you hear in the media. I am a studying ecologist and conservation biologist, you need to hear the real truth from the experts – not the damn reporter who gets paid to write what ever will sell papers. without fire the prom will disintegrate. sure you feel sorry for the cute and fluffy animals that may be caught in these fires but if you had any decent knowledge you would know that our native wildlife have evolved with fire and they wont all perish, They have adapted the most interesting adaptations and behaviours that allow them to escape or rebuild their populations at amazing rates after fire. For most, if not all, of the Australian biota, fire is beneficial!

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Feeling “sorry” for the “cute and fluffy animals” is sickening

May 1st, 2010 by Milly:

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Feeling “sorry” for the “cute and fluffy animals” is sickeningly patronising and degrades our wonderful and diverse wildlife. How could you be studying ecology and not have some appreciation of our stunning and awesome range of unique species in Australia, and their tragic decline? It is ecologist like you who, without peer support and without having a shred of compassion or empathy with living creatures, become paid to “manage’ wildlife with fire-arms! (Such as Canberra’s kangaroo managers[1]).

There was no capacity for fires to be as large or as intense as what we are seeing today. Land clearing and logging have made soils and undergrowth drier and more open for oxygen, increasing fire risks.

Since European settlement, the landscape has changed dramatically. Trying to replicate Aboriginal fire practices in southern Australia would unfortunately now be a risky experiment. European land management has seemingly done everything necessary to turn the Australian landscape into a moonscape. The argument that we should engage in widespread and regular burning of the forest because that’s what Aboriginal people did for years is, as the 2003 bushfire inquiry put it, “a highly attractive philosophy”. However, we simply do not know enough about traditional burning in southern Australia to be able to re-create an Aboriginal burning regime.

Firstly, in most parts of Australia, we don’t know how Aboriginal people used fire. Secondly, since European occupation, ecosystems have been changed so much that Aboriginal burning would no longer be possible. The native animals that ate and buried plant material have largely disappeared, so there is a lot more flammable vegetation in the bush now than there was before Europeans arrived.

Many wildlife have traits that enable them to survive fire. Often they are adapted to specific fire regimes, determined by intensity, frequency, season and scale. However, inappropriate fire regimes may have undesirable consequences including declines or local extinctions of biodiversity.

Footnotes

See:

^Roo culls lead to tourism boycott calls of 6 Jul 09

^RSPCA rubber-stamp in Majura Kangaroo kills unworthy of this organisation’s aims of 17 Jun 09

^Fitzgibbon’s Massacre – 9th May 2009 of 14 May 09

^It is clear that the government is interested in “managing” wildlife such as kangaroos out of existence of 13 May 09

^ACT Environment Commissioner unqualified to condemn kangaroos of 16 Apr 09

^Majura kangaroo killings: Another Belconnen Cover-Up? of 15 Apr 09.

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Bushfire authorities: underfunded dad’s armies playing with fire

May 2nd, 2010 by Tigerquoll:

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In response to comment above: “Authorities who do their best to save your homes.”

What is the latest excuse for these ‘bushfire authorities’ failing to save homes in Victorian in February 2009?
The simplistic strategy applied to rural fire fighting across Australia is to burn the bush before it burns. Get rid of the bush (fuel), with no thought to the impact to wildlife of burning and to the sterile ground cover landscape such practice leaves.

Bushfore authorities do this to hide the blatant fact that they are incompetent at suppression fires before they cause serious damage. By the time the detect the fire and get to it, it is too late.
As for bush being a natural asset would even occur to them. Only houses matter because they are the only thing they know how to defend, and they can’t even get that right. It is not the volunteers at fault, it is the Government dependent on volunteers and token funding that is at fault. Try taking that approach with the police?

Brumby and Rudd were ultimately responsible for the 17 Victorian deaths. They simply avoid funding a serious emergency force to prepare for and to mitigate such natural disasters and bush arson. A pre-1939 Black Saturday approach to bushfire fighting is gross public negligence. I hope those affected take up a class action and sue the pants of the government authorities. Only then will the billions needed to to do a proper fire fighting job be invested by Australian governments rather than paid out after the tragedy and rely on volunteer charities.

Fire is beneficial is only beneficial for those with a penchant for lighting fires. If it isn’t doing too little too late to put wild fires out, the rest of the year is spent lighting new ones. If there is no fire there is nothing to do, so we better light a fire and look busy. Drip torches and airborn incendiary – burn the lot seem to be the Neanderthal thinking!

Didn’t learn much from Ash Wednesday 1983 or the hundreds of fires since. Bloodly uselfess lot these dad’s army. No I don’t expect a fire truck to turn up outside my house if there is a fire. I know here I stand and it’s every man for himself.

‘Fire ecology’ what a farcical term for State-sanctioned arson. Well name one species of flora or fauna made extinct due to lack of fire? – there’s a good one for your so called ‘ecology’ course.

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Article by Tigerquoll initially posted on CanDoBetter.net on 20090226:

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The Fire was nearly out..so why was it abandoned by bushfire management?

The 2009 Wilsons Promontory bushfire was reportedly sparked by lightning striking the remote Cathedral Range on the east coast just north of Sealers Cove on Sunday 8th February 2009.

Witnesses say that by the following Friday 13th, the fire was still localised on the Range and all but out. This is confirmed by the following satellite photo taken by NASA’s MODIS Rapid Response Team on the 13th. The satellite takes high-resolution images of visible, shortwave and near-infrared light of Victoria twice daily.

Wilsons Promontory on 13th Feb 2009

showing scattered cloud over the Prom and on the east coast (right side) a small red (burnt) patch with only a single column of smoke noticeable.

© NASA 13-Feb-09

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Daily updates of this fire can be found at the following URL:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/world/australiafire_20090223.html

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The Prom was left to burn

Over the subsequent days the fire continued to burn then the winds increased. Now, more than two weeks later most of the northern half of ‘the Prom’ has been burnt. The vegetation has gone. The Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) website today reports 23,800 hectares burnt out. The Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) website shows the following map of the burn (shaded area below).

© DSE Wilsons Promontory Media Map 24 Feb 09 12:30pm

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The fire has burnt the Cathedral Range, along the east coastline right across and along the Corner Inlet shoreline to Millers Landing. Affected sites are Vereker Creek, Whiskey Bay, Tongue Point, Monkey Point, Three Mile Point, Mt Roundback, Three Mile Beach, Mt Margaret, Lighthouse Point Lighthouse, Mt Hunter and parts of Darby Swamp. Wilsons Promontory National Park is just one of the many important natural and wilderness areas of Victoria devastated by these current bushfires.

Wilsons Promontory where thousands of hectares have been burnt

© Photo. John Woudstra 18-Feb-09

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Frequent Fire History

In the case of the Prom, this is the second time in four years that fire has burnt through this northern region. On 21 March 2005, a twenty hectare prescribed burn was lit east of Tidal River. It escaped three times over a period of twelve days and burnt out 6,000 hectares of native bushland in the National Park.

A key investigative report was undertaken by Commissioner, Emergency Services, Bruce Esplin, (the Esplin 2005 Report) into a number of fires over previous years. In the case of this DSE prescribed burn in the Prom, the investigations found that the prescribed burn was poorly planned and after ignition, was not patrolled properly.

A notable finding of the report was that: “There remains considerable community uncertainty about the effectiveness of the prescribed burning program, and what changes, if any have occurred in the amount of prescribed burning undertaken since 2003”.( para 33)

Yet prescribed burning continues each year across Australia, not in the small mosaics, but on a grand scale and with a record of frequently getting out of control. On top of the 6,000 hectares four years ago, just a few days ago we hear of over 23,000 hectares of the Prom has now been burnt. Fires in the Prom also occurred in 2001.

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Impacts on Flora and Fauna

The Prom has diverse vegetation communities including warm temperate and cool temperate rainforest, tall open forests, woodlands, heathlands, and swamp and coastal communities. There are rare stands of White Mangrove, being the most southerly stands of mangroves in the world.

The Prom is rich its diversity of native mammals with over thirty species having been recorded, many of which are either rare or threatened. These include the Long-nosed Potoroo, Swamp Antechinus, White-footed Dunnart, Broad-toothed Rat, Feather-tailed Glider and Eastern Pygmy-possum. “One of the most significant habitats of the New Holland Mouse also occurs within the park, and a number of species of whale have been sighted in the waters off its coastline.” The Prom also provides habitat to populations of Eastern Grey Kangaroos, koalas, wombats and emus.

The heathlands, influenced by the frequency and intensity of fire, are rich in species and provide habitats for a variety of fauna, including many threatened species. [Source: Parks Victoria website]

However, bushfire research across Australia has shown that while some native flora are fire tolerant and/or can recover and in some case thrive in the immediate years following a fire, other species have not adapted and so they become displaced and can die out. (DSE website).

While the Victorian Royal Commission is focusing on the fire management measures to protect life and private and public property associated with the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, the impacts on flora and fauna seem to have been overlooked. Some species may not survive if fires are too frequent, as the plants are unable to reach maturity and produce sufficient seed before the next fire episode. (DSE website).

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Threatening Process

Little is known about the recovery of fauna diversity as a consequence of such widespread bushfires, be they caused by lightning, intentionally or otherwise. But given the scale of these current fires across the Prom crossing from shore to shore, it is probable than many native animals, as in many other parts of Victoria, will have been burnt alive in the fires and that their already rare populations will now have declined substantially and be at risk of local extinction.

In respect to Australia’s fauna, given that there we now have a fraction of the intact native habitat compared with pre-1788, how can anyone argue that allowing bushfires to get out of control is not a threatening process?

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Australian native forests – are they valuable ecosystems and habitats for wildlife; or bushfire fuel hazards to be burned, before they burn?

 

Blue Mountains wet schlerophyl forest

© Photo by Henry Gold, wilderness photographer

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Bushfire Management’s root problems

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1. Bushfire Management which recognises wildlife habitat as an asset worth protecting makes the fire fighting task immensely complex. So moreover the more simplistic and cost saving rationale of ‘protecting life and property’ holds sway, where no thought is given to the conservation values or to the habitat needs of wildlife. The inculcated and unquestioned bushfire management attitude that native forests are the cause of bushfires, rather than being victims of bushfires, belies one of the three key root problems of why bushfire management is failing. Ignitions left to burn in inaccessible terrain time again have proved be devastating not just for nature and wildlife, but consequentially for human life and property. Wildfire does not discriminate.
2. Bushfire Management across Australia is so poorly equipped to detect and suppress ignitions when they do occur, that out of frustration, fear has been inculcated to encourage all native forests be dismissed as bushfire hazards and ‘prescribed burned’ as a precaution. Across the New South Wales Rural Fure Service, the term is quite unequivocal – ‘Hazard Reduction‘ . Broadscale hazard reduction, euphemistically labelled ‘strategic burns‘ or deceptively ‘ecological burns‘ and has become the greatest wildlife threatening process across Australia driving wildlife extinctions.’
3. Both the localised and regional impacts of bushfire and hazard reduction upon wildlife ecology are not fully understood by the relevant sciences – ecology, biology and zoology. Fire ecology is still an emerging field. The Precautionary Principle is well acknowledged across these earth sciences, yet continues to be dismissed by bushfire management. They know not what they do, but I do not forgive them.

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Australia’s record of wildlife extinctions are the worst of any country in the past two hundred years.

‘Of the forty mammal species known to have vanished in the world in the last 200 years, almost half have been Australian. Our continent has the worst record of mammal extinctions, with over 65 mammal species having vanished in the last 50 000 years.’ [Chris Johnson, James Cook University, 2006]

 

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‘Australia leads the world in mammal extinctions. Over the last two hundred years 22 mammal species have become extinct, and over 100 are now on the threatened and endangered species list, compiled as part of the federal government’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.’ [Professor Iain Gordon, research scientist in CSIRO’s new Biodiversity Theme, 2009.]

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Uncontrolled bushfires, broadscale and frequent hazard reduction, and land clearing are the key drivers causing Australia’s remaining wildlife to disappear. Once habitat is destroyed, the landscape becomes favourable to feral predators which kill the remaining unprotected fauna. Thousands of hectares of Australia’s native forests are being burnt every year and are becoming sterile park lands devoid of undergrowth habitat. Wave after wave of habitat threats continue to undermine the layers of resilience of native fauna, until fauna simply have no defences left and populations become reduced to one local extinction after another.

James Woodford in his article ‘The dangers of fighting fire with fire‘ in the Sydney Morning Herald, 8th September 2008, incitefully observed:

‘Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn offs? What we do know is a lot of precious wild places are set on fire, in large part to keep happy those householders whose kitchen windows look out on gum trees.

Hazard reduction burning is flying scientifically blind. Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown. An annual bum conducted each year on Montague Island, near Narooma on the NSW far South Coast has become a ritual in which countless animals,including nesting penguins, are roasted.

The sooner we acknowledge this the sooner we can get on with the job of working out whether there is anything we can do to manage fires better. We need to know whether hazard reduction can be done without sending our wildlife down a path of firestick extinctions.’

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‘Koalas may be extinct in seven years’

[Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 20070411]

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‘Extreme drought, ferocious bushfires and urban development could make koalas extinct within seven years, environmentalists are warning. Alarms about the demise of the iconic and peculiar animal, which sleeps about 20 hours a day and eats only the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, have been raised before.

But Deborah Tabart, chief executive officer of the Australia Koala Foundation, believes the animal’s plight is as bad as she has seen it in her 20 years as a koala advocate.

“In South-East Queensland we had them listed as a vulnerable species which could go to extinction within 10 years. That could now be seven years,” she said. “The koala’s future is obviously bleak.”

South-East Queensland has the strongest koala populations in the vast country, meaning extinction in this area spells disaster for the future of the species, said Tabart.

The biggest threat is the loss of habitat due to road building and development on Australia’s east coast – traditional koala country. The joke, said Tabart, is that koalas enjoy good real estate and are often pushed out of their habitat by farming or development.

“I’ve driven pretty much the whole country and I just see environmental vandalism and destruction everywhere I go,” she said. “It’s a very sorry tale. There are [koala] management problems all over the country.”

Massive bushfires which raged in the country’s south for weeks during the summer, burning a million hectares of land, would also have killed thousands of koalas.’

[Read More]

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‘A Bushfire action plan which protects people, property and nature’

[Source: The wilderness Society, 20090219, http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/forests/bushfire-action-plan]

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In the immediate aftermath of the devastating Victorian Bushfires of 2009, The Wilderness Society, in response to bushfire management’s quick blaming of the native forests for the bushfires; drafted a ‘Bushfire Action Plan‘ that sought to recognise the need to protect nature along with people and their property.

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‘Bushfire remains one of the most complex and difficult aspects of our environment to deal with. Climate change is expected to make things even tougher, with increases in the number of high fire danger days and the number of people and houses at risk increasing with the tree/sea change phenomenon.

With the onset of climate change, mega-bushfires that burn massive areas are expected to occur more often.

A joint CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology study of the impact of climate change in bushfires found parts of Victoria faced up to 65% more days of extreme fire risk by 2020, and 230% more by mid-century.

Yet clearly we have a lot to learn and the Royal Commission will set a new agenda for land and fire management, prevention and response. Many challenges will remain but some aspects seem clear. We need more money and support for fire fighters if we are to successfully protect life, property and the environment. Two key areas are the early detection of fires including the use of aerial surveillance and remote sensing especially in remote areas, increasing rapid response capacity including more “Elvis” helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they start.

The outstanding work of firefighters on the front line needs to be backed up with the best available knowledge, planning and resources to ensure operations are as effective as possible in protecting people, property and nature. There is an urgent need to increase investment in these areas and rapidly establish scientific underpinning to fire management, as well as properly resourcing implementation and fire operations.
We also need more information for government and community about how to deliver fire management in a way that also protects the natural environment and our unique wildlife.

Fuel reduction burning has an important place in the fire management toolbox, and we support its place in scientifically underpinned fire management for the protection of life, property and the environment.

The issue of fuel reduction burning often dominates the fire debate, as if it is the only fire management tool. But it’s important to remember that this is only one tool in fire management, and not the silver bullet that will fire proof the landscape.

Environmental groups want to see the science that supports the current fuel reduction program, including a scientific justification for so-called hazard reduction burns in specific areas and the scientific justification for the route and extent of fire break establishment. Environmental groups are particularly concerned about the lack of impact assessment of these programs on biodiversity, particularly given their uncertain benefits to reduce the extent, frequency and severity of fire.

Views on these measures tend towards two extremes. One extreme is that we should fuel reduction burn all forest areas every 20 years and carve out thousands of kilometres of fire breaks, the other is that all our forests are wilderness areas which should just be allowed to burn and not manage our forests for fire at all.

For the Australian bush to be healthy and to protect people, property and nature we need a scientifically based balance between these extremes.

Fire management is not ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to the Australian bush. It needs to be targeted and specific, because we know that different kinds of bush respond differently to fire and therefore need different management. For native plants and animals to survive, fire management needs to promote “good” fire at the right time of year, of the right type and size. And that varies with vegetation type and resident native animals. Grasslands will require more frequent fires compared with forests, while areas such as rainforest will need to be protected from fire altogether.

That’s why we need good ecological science informing fire management, which has come a long way in understanding what’s best for native plants, but we need a better understanding of what fire management is best for protecting wildlife and avoiding extinctions. Its critical that scientists, fire agencies and governments work together to understand how to best manage fire to protect habitat for endangered wildlife, because no one wants fire management to lead to extinctions.

Of course, the protection of life & property needs to come first in fire management – but we can do that while also protecting nature and wildlife. A balanced approach is to prioritise the protection of life and property in areas close to farms and townships, and to prioritise fire management for the environment in remote areas and national parks.

A continuation of the expansion in knowledge, resources and support for fire management and community preparedness will best ensure the protection of life, property and the environment into the future…

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We have developed a 6-point plan to reduce the bushfire risk and help protect people, property, wildlife and their habitat.

1. Improve aerial surveillance to detect bushfires as soon as they start.
2. Ramp up hi-tech, quick response capability, including more ‘Elvis’ helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they ignite.
3. More research into fire behaviour and the impact of fire on wildlife and their habitat.
4. Around towns and urban areas – prioritise the protection of life and property with fuel reduction and fire break management plans.
5. In remote areas and National Parks – prioritise the protection of wildlife and their habitat through scientifically-based fire management plans.
6. Make native forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting old-growth forests, rainforests and water catchments from woodchipping and moving logging into existing plantations.

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Critique of Roger Underwood’s Criticism of TWS ‘6-Point Plan‘

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On 12th February 2009, Roger Underwood, a former rural firefighter and a forestry industry employee in Western Australia, had his article published in The Australian newspaper criticising the above recommendations of The Wilderness Society (TWS).

Regrettably, rather than offering constructive criticism and proposing counter arguments with supportive evidence, Underwood instead dismisses the Wilderness Society’s contribution, but disappointingly with empty rhetoric. Underwood states upfront:

“the trouble with the society’s action plan to reduce the risk of bushfires is that it won’t work.“

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The Wilderness Society’s six-point action plan aims to counter the current bushfire management strategy that relies upon hazard reduction burning and the ecological damage this is causing – ‘destroying nature’, ‘pushing wildlife closer to extinction’, ‘increasing the fire risk to people and properties by making areas more fire prone’.

Underwood claims that statistics exist showing no massive increase in prescribed burning, but in fact that prescribed burning has declined. Yet Underwood fails to provide nor even reference any such statistics. He fails to recognise that both bushfires and prescribed burning collectively cause adverse impacts on wildlife. If all burning of native vegetation, however caused, is included in the assessment, then would statistics indeed show an increasing trend in the natural area affected by fire in Australia?

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‘Burn it before it burns’ Theory

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Underwood questions the wildlife extinction problem without any basis. He then adopts the ”old chestnut‘ theory of blaming the threat to wildlife on ‘killer bushfires‘. ‘Killer bushfires’ (the firestorm threat) has become the default justification by bushfire management for its policy of prescribed burning. This is the ‘Burn it before it burns!‘ defeatist attitude. If one burns the bush, there will be no bush to burn. Underwood’s claim that ‘killer bushfires’ are a “consequence of insufficient prescribed burning” is a self-serving slippery slope fallacy. If nature is an asset of value to be protected, then it is defeatist to damage it to prevent it from damage. The history of so-called ‘controlled burns‘ have an infamous reputation of getting out of control and becoming wildfires. If the attitude of burning as much of the bush as possible to avoid uncontrolled wildfire, then then paradoxically the implied incentive is to let controlled burns burn as much as possible to minimise the risk of unexpected fires in the same area.

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In respect to each of The Wilderness Society’s (TWS) Six Point Plan, one counters Underwood’s responses as follows:

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1: Improve aerial surveillance to detect bushfires as soon as they start

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Underwood supports aerial detection as “a first-rate resource and a comprehensive system” but says that it can fail completely under hot, unstable atmospheric conditions and when there are very high winds. However, fire towers and aircraft are not the means of bushfire surveillance today. Low orbiting geostationary satellites with infrared and high resolution cameras can now spot individual cars in real time and through cloud and smoke. Satellites are not affected by atmospheric conditions such as high winds or hot temperatures. Modis-Fire is one company that specialises in such satellite technologies.

In addition, the CSIRO, with the Department of Defence and Geoscience Australia, has developed an internet-based satellite mapping system called ‘Sentinel Hotspots‘. Sentinel Hotspots gives emergency service managers access to the latest fire location information using satellite data. Fire fighting organisations across Australia have used this new strategic management tool, since it was launched in 2002, to identify and zoom in on fire hotspots. [Read More]

In 2003, an article in the International Journal of Wildland Fire entitled ‘Feasibility of forest-fire smoke detection using lidar‘ extolled the virtues of forest fire detection by smoke sensing with single-wavelength lidar.

Such technologies are available if the political will was met with appropriate investment. Such technologies could be available to a military-controlled national body, but unlikely to be available to volunteer members of the public. It all depends on the standard of performance Australians expect from bushfire management.

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2: Ramp up hi-tech, quick response capability, including more ‘Elvis’ helicopters to fight bushfires as soon as they ignite.

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Underwood dismisses aerial fire-bombing as a “dream” that “has never succeeded in Australia, and not even in the US” and “next to useless“.

Well, it seems Underwood is contradicted by the recent decisions of Australia State Governments across Australia’s eastern seaboard to charter not just one Erikson Aircrane but three. Not only was Elvis contracted from the United States in Summer 2010 to Victoria, “Elvis” was based in Essendon, ‘Marty‘ was based in Gippsland and ‘Elsie‘ was based in Ballarat. Clearly, the Victorian State Government considers the cost of these three aircraft justifiably cost-effective in offering quick response capability to fight bushfires.

Dedicated Fire Fighting Erikson Aircrane ‘Elsie‘ based in Ballarat, Victoria during the 2010 Summer

© Photo ABC Ballarat http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/12/22/3099609.htm

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In South Australia, the Country Fire Service (CFS) believes in the philosophy of hitting a fire ‘hard and fast’.

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‘CFS volunteers and aerial firefighting aircraft are responded within minutes of a bushfire being reported and as many resources as possible are deployed to keep the fire small and reduce the chance of it getting out of control. It is not widely known that South Australia has a world class initial attack strategy of aerial firefighting. The value of a rapid aerial firefighting approach has been supported by Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre research. In their 2009 report titled ‘The cost-effectiveness of aerial fire fighting in Australia, the Research Centre wrote the following in their summary

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The results of the analysis show that the use of ground resources with initial aerial support is the most economically efficient approach to fire suppression. Aircraft are economically efficient where they are able to reach and knock down a fire well before the ground crew arrives. This buys time for the ground forces to arrive and complete the containment. Rapid deployment of aerial suppression resources is important. This advantage is much greater in remote or otherwise inaccessible terrain. Where other suppression resources are unable to reach the fire event within a reasonable time period, sole use of aircraft is economically justified.’

 

[http://www.bushfirecrc.com.au/research/downloads/The-Cost-Effectiveness-of-Aerial-Fire-Fighting-in-Australia.pdf].

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Underwood claims that: “Elvis-type aircranes cost a fortune, burn massive amounts of fossil fuel, use gigalitres of precious water and are ineffective in stopping the run of a crown fire that is throwing spot fires. Water bombers do good work protecting houses from small grass fires. But against a big, hot forest fire and during night-time they are next to useless.”

Underwood conveys a sense of dogged reliance in traditional fire truck centric thinking as if to preserve an old firie culture of ‘we know best‘ and ‘nothing is going to change our thinking‘ mindset. May be it is out of petty envy wherein many volunteer firies can command trucks but wouldn’t have a clue flying helicopters and so would feel sidelined.

Well, since the 2009 Victorian Bushfires, more than A$50 million worth of new initiatives have been introduced or are under development.

“Further changes are likely to be introduced as the Royal Commission, which was established to investigate the Black Saturday disaster, is ongoing. Aerial firefighting is set to be addressed by the commission. Among new initiatives in Victoria is a A$10 million trial of a very large air tanker (VLAT) – the first-ever such experiment in the country. On 14 December, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 Super Tanker, leased from US company 10 Tanker Air Carrier, arrived in Melbourne. Australian regulator, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, and underwent final compliance assessment to allow it to enter service in January.”

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[Source : http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/09/338056/australia-puts-firefighting-tankers-to-the-test.html]

Underwood may well dismiss aerial suppression technology as ‘razzle-dazzle‘, but he is right to state that such investment requires governments to put more resources into research and into monitoring bushfire outcomes, including the environmental impacts of large, high-intensity bushfires and continuous feedback to management systems from real-world experience out in the forest.’

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3: More research into fire behaviour and the impact of fire on wildlife and their habitat

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While Underwood claims that he supports more research into fire behaviour and fire impacts, he is dismissive of the conclusions of much of the research already done, but offers no explanation. This seems an internal contradiction. What are the conclusions of the research?

Underwood claims the conclusions do not support the Wilderness Society’s agenda. How so? What is TWS agenda?

Underwood conveys an unsubstantiated bias against the Wilderness Society, only offering an ad hominem fallacious argument – attacking the messenger, not the argument.

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The science on fire ecology is still emerging. The Wilderness Society validly states above that ‘bushfire remains one of the most complex and difficult aspects of our environment to deal with‘, that ‘there is an urgent need to increase investment in these areas and rapidly establish scientific underpinning to fire management, as well as properly resourcing implementation and fire operations‘ and ‘the lack of impact assessment of these programs on biodiversity, particularly given their uncertain benefits to reduce the extent, frequency and severity of fire‘.

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4: Around towns and urban areas – prioritise the protection of life and property with fuel reduction and fire break management plans.

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Underwood here perceives an inconsistency in TWS Action Plan – suggesting its support for fuel reduction around urban areas contradicts its claim that fuel reduction makes the burned areas “more fire prone”. However, this action item is about prioritising fuel reduction on a localised basis around the immediate areas where life and property are located.

Whereas broadscale hazard reduction that is carried out many miles from human settlements has become a new strategy of bushfire management. The excuse used is euphemistically termed a ‘strategic burn‘ or even an ‘ecological burn‘ in the name of encouraging biodiversity. Except that the practice seems to be a leftover habit from the Vietnam War in which helicopters are used to drop incendiaries indiscriminately into remote areas without any care for the consequences.

A so-called ‘ecological burn‘ of Mt Cloudmaker

This was conducted by helicopter incendiary by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (DECCW)

in the remote Krungle Bungle Range of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area

(Photo by editor from Hargraves Lookout, Shipley Plateau, 20080405 , free in public domain)

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A recent example is the ‘strategic burn’ authorised and executed by the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (DECCW) in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area on 12th May 2010. Some 2500 hectares of remote wilderness was deliberately set alight around Massif Ridge, some 12 kilometres south of the town of Woodford in wild inaccessible forested area of the World Heritage Area. The excuse was to reduce the available ‘fuel’ (native vegetation) for potential future wildfires. [>Read More: ‘National Parks burning biodiversity‘ ]

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5: In remote areas and National Parks – prioritise the protection of wildlife and their habitat through scientifically-based fire management plans.

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Underwood contends another stock standard industry claim that where native forests have been protected, they have naturally accumulated fuel loads in which sooner or later an uncontrollable landscape-level fire occurs. So his anthropocentric theory runs that is humanity’s responsibility not to let nature be nature, but to control nature and so to burn the bush before it burns. This theory is premised on the defeatist approach that in the event of a bushfire, bushfire management is not in a position to detect and suppress it.

And so Underwood, poses the standard industry response of “more frequent planned burning under mild conditions“. He assumes that leaving the overstorey and the soil intact will ensures a diversity of habitat for wildlife. Yet Underwood is not a zoologist and has no understanding of the vital role that dense ground vegetation provides to Australia’s native ground dwelling mammals (e.g.the Long-footed Potoroo, Spotted-tailed quoll, Eastern Pygmy Possum, the Petrogale penicillata, Broad-toothed Rat, Bolam’s Mouse, the Smoky Mouse, the Eastern Chestnut Mouse, the Long-nosed Bandicoot), as well as nexting birds, flightless birds, amphibians and reptiles.

Eastern Quoll – Dasyurus viverrinus – EXTINCT on mainland Australia

© Photo by Andrea Little http://www.mtrothwell.com.au/gallery.html

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Underwood’s view reflects the simplistic misguided view of biodiversity of most of Australia’s bushfire management – that the presence of trees and regrowth of fire-tolerant plants equates to biodiversity.

Can Underwood name one species of Australian fauna that is fire tolerant?

Underwood misinterprets the text of TWS which advocates an holistic fire management system, not as a silver bullet or ‘one-size-fits- all’ convenient panacea that pretends to fire proof the landscape. The only guarantee of ‘one-size-fits- all’ hazard recution is a sterile forest devoid of biodiversity and causing local species extinctions. TWS argues for a scientifically-based and balance approach recognising that some forest ecosystems like rainforests are most definitively fire-intolerant.

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6: Make native forests resistant to mega-fires by protecting old-growth forests, rainforests and water catchments from woodchipping and moving logging into existing plantations

Underwood challenges this last item stating there is no evidence that old growth forest is less likely to burn than the regrowth forests. This is false. Australian native forests that regrow after fire are those that are fire-resistant. Typically, these genus (Eucalypt and Acacia) regrow quickly and become dense mono-cultures. If a fire passes through again, the fire is often more intense and devastating. Old growth forests, rainforests and riparian vegetation around water catchments tend to be moist and so less prone to bushfires.

But this sixth item is not about the relative propensity of old growth forests to burn more readily than regrowth forests, so Underwood’s argument is a distracting red herring. TWS’ aim here is more about placing a higher value on old growth and rainforests due to their greater biodiversity and due to their increasing scarcity. Clearly, TWS is ideologically opposed to woodchipping and logging of old growth forests and rainforests. Logging operations typically involve follow up deliberate burning and such fires have frequently got out of control. Underwood’s needling criticism of TWS for having a lack of knowledge of fire physics or bushfire experience is a typical defensive criticism leveled at anyone who dares to challenge bushfire management. Conversely, if Underwood has the prerequisite knowledge of fire physics or bushfire experience, he is not very forthcoming except to defend the status quo of bushfire management.

The recent bushfire results are demonstrating that bushfire management is increasingly unable to cope with bushfire catastrophes nor meet the expectations of the public to protect life, property and nature.

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Further Reading:

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[1] ‘Studies of the ground-dwelling mammals of eucalypt forests in south-eastern New South Wales: the species, their abundance and distribution‘ by PC Catling and RJ Burt, CSIRO, 1994, http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WR9940219.htm

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[2] ‘Australia’s Mammal Extinctions – A 50,000-Year History‘, by Chris Johnson, 2006, James Cook University, North Queensland. http://www.cambridge.org/aus/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521686600

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[3] ‘Solving Australia’s mammal extinction crisis‘, (2009) by Professor Iain Gordon, research scientist in CSIRO’s new Biodiversity Theme, ABC Science programme. He chaired a symposium on Australia’s mammal extinction crisis at the 10th International Congress of Ecology in Brisbane August 2009. http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/09/02/2674674.htm

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[4] ‘Koalas may be extinct in seven years‘ , Sydney Morning Herald, 20070411, http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/koalas-may-be-extinct-in-seven-years/2007/04/11/1175971155875.html

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[5] ‘A Bushfire action plan which protects people, property and nature‘, The Wilderness Society, 20090219, http://www.wilderness.org.au/campaigns/forests/bushfire-action-plan

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[6] ‘Manage bush better so climate won’t matter‘, by Roger Underwood (ex-firefighter), The Australian newspaper, 20090212, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/manage-bush-better-so-climate-wont-matter/story-e6frg73o-1111118824093

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[7] ‘Locating bushfires as they happen‘, CSIRO – Sentinel Hotspots, http://www.csiro.au/solutions/Sentinel.html

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[8] ‘Modis-Fire’ satellite bushfire detection, http://modis-fire.umd.edu/Active_Fire_Products.html

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[9] ‘Elsie’s first day on the job, Ballarat’s fire fighting helicopter‘, by Prue Bentley (ABC TV Ballarat), 20101222, http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2010/12/22/3099609.htm

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[10] ‘South Australia – Country Fire Service – Factors that influence aircraft selection‘ – http://www.cfs.sa.gov.au/site/about_us/aerial_firefighting/aircraft_selection.jsp

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[11] ‘Australia puts firefighting tankers to the test‘, Fight Global 20090209, http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/09/338056/australia-puts-firefighting-tankers-to-the-test.html

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[12] ‘Bushfire-CRC – Aviation content’, http://www.bushfirecrc.com/category/bushfiretopic/aviation.

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[13] ‘Towards New Information Tools for Understanding Bushfire Risk at the Urban Interface‘, 2004, R. Blanchi, J. Leonard, D. Maughan, Bushfire-CRC, CSIRO Manufacturing & Infrastructure Technology, Bushfire Research. [Read full report]

[end of article]

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by Editor 20110105.

Australia has a history of national disasters, which our detached apathetic politicians repeatedly fail to plan for.Rockhampton Flood of 1918

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~auscqfha/floods.htm

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The Central Queensland (CQ) Family History Association Inc. knows and respects the history of Central Queensland. It has well documented the flooding of the Fitzroy River through Rockhampton.

A. E. Herman in his account ‘The Fitzroy River and its early Floods‘ wrote:

‘The Fitzroy River and its tributaries drain a vast expanse of country. Captain Cook, in the Endeavour, sailed along the eastern coast. On May 26, 1770, anchored in and named Keppel Bay, and Flinders, in the Investigator, anchored in the Bay, ascended Sea Hill, named Broadsound and found The Narrows, but failed to discover the great river coming down from the far interior of the continent. The streams that feed the Fitzroy flow through some of the richest grazing and agricultural lands in Queensland. Fresh water continues to some five miles (8 Km) past Yaamba, the old northern crossing 21 miles (33.8 Km) by road and 34 miles (54.7 Km.) by river from Rockhampton. Here tidal influence commences.’ ‘The country drained by the Fitzroy River is estimated to be 55,666 square miles (144,174 square Km.) of which 54,800 square miles (141,932 square Km.) is upstream from Rockhampton and because it drains an immense area it must, of course, carry enormous quantities of water at times.’

[Source: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~auscqfha/floods.htm ]

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Indeed, Rockhampton has flooded many times throughout its history, mainly through the Wet Season.

• Jan 1918: 10.11 metres
• Feb 1954: 9.4 metres
• Jan/Feb 1978: 8.15 metres
• May 1983: 8.25 metres
• Jan 1991: 9.30 metres
• Feb/Mar 2008: 7.50 metres

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[Source: Bureau of Meteorology, FLOOD WARNING SYSTEM for the FITZROY RIVER, http://www.bom.gov.au/hydro/flood/qld/brochures/fitzroy/fitzroy.shtml ]

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And the 2011 flood is expected to peak at 9.4 metres – not as ‘unprecedented‘ as the politicians would have us believe.

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Bligh Expects Queensland Flood Emergency to Exceed $5 Billion

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Rockhampton Flood @ 9.2m in 2011

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Rockhampton is again under flood along with many townships of central Queensland.

Today [5th Jan 2011] Queensland Premier Anna Bligh estimated that the total economic impact of the flood damage to Queensland could be $5 billion. Julia Gillard has previously said the Federal Government would be providing assistance that would run into the hundreds of millions to assist the recovery process. Clearly that falls well short of the $5 billion minimum estimated by the Queensland Premier.

And now the politicians are promising, pontificating and filibustering. The political party that herald’s itself as representative of rural Australians, the National Party, has called for a national disaster fund set up and that it be contributed by a household insurance levy. NSW Nationals Senator John Williams said Senator Boswell’s insurance levy should be replaced by a levy on council rates to catch all landowners.

Senator Williams has called for a debate around a national “emergency fund” of up to $10 billion that would help in the event of a flood or other disaster like drought, fire or earthquake.

“Bring on the debate, the money has to come from somewhere. We can’t just pluck it off trees,” he said. “I think a national fund would be a great step forward so the money is there when a fellow Australian is in need of it. There will obviously be some impact on the Australian economy but I would think the Australian economy is large enough and robust enough, as it does almost every year, to be able to cope with these sort of natural disasters,” he said. [1]

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So serious is this round of disasters in Queensland, Australia’s Prime Minister ‘Julia Gillard ‘has ordered more government funds be diverted to flood-ravaged Queensland in a bid to prevent the state slipping into a long economic slump.’

‘In what may become Australia’s largest and most costly rebuilding operation, clean-up grants of up to $25,000, along with low-interest loans, were offered by the Prime Minister yesterday in addition to the commonwealth’s normal emergency relief payments. Production has almost ground to a halt in the coal industry, while early assessments of Queensland’s agriculture sector have put the cost of the floods at more than $1 billion in lost production.

Authorities also worry that receding floodwaters will reveal unexpected damage to infrastructure, raising the political pressure on all levels of government to chart a clear course to recovery.’ [2]

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National Disaster Management Grossly Neglected in Australia

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But yet again, after another natural disaster politicians cry to escape all implications of government culpability and so distract public attention by claim of ‘act of God‘ and ‘unprecedented‘ and calling for Australians to chip in and dig deep. Instead of confidently relying upon years of government investment in contingency planning and infrastructure, politicians become shy and distractingly appeal for ‘community spirit’. But now what choice does the community have now that a disaster is upon them? They only have community spirit, despite the bleeding guv’ment.

The floods have also badly affected New South Wales, the Gascoyne and western Victoria. This has included the NSW border town of Goodooga ‘which lies directly in the path of the Queensland floodwaters and is expected to be isolated by the weekend and could remain cut off for the next six weeks.’ The NSW Premier Kristina Keneally has said that evacuations are already underway. The NSW government has declared another eight local government areas to be natural disaster areas, bringing the total to 59. [3]

Also currently occurring is the severe flooding of the Gascoyne Region including the town of Carnarvon, 900km north of Perth. The State Fire and Emergency Services Authority is similarly advising residents to watch for changes in water levels and be ready to evacuate.’ [4] On 19th December 2010, the river had reached 7.7 metres and the president of the Carnarvon Shire, Dudley Masien described the flood the worst he had witnessed. “The hotel roof is only just peaking out of the water“, he said. [AAP 20101220].

Meanwhile in South Australia, over the 2011 New Year period temperatures had been forecast to be 40 degrees Celsius threatening “catastrophic conditions” for bushfire. Luckily an early change averted this risk, but even so several major fires have occurred across South Australia in the past few days including grass fires at Kangarilla, Salisbury East and Keith. The SA Country Fire Service has warned of very high danger ratings remain in place for the North-West Pastoral, North-East Pastoral, West Coast, Eastern Eyre Peninsula, Flinders, Mid-North Yorke Peninsula and the Riverland. [5]

Seriously, Australian governments at all levels need to stop their ‘too-little-too-late’ reactionary responses to emergency management in Australia . The Australian people, the Australian economy and the Australian natural environment deserve better. Currently, we have disparate grossly underfunded State run groups largely staffed by local volunteers – volunteer rural fire services, volunteer state emergency services, and total dependence upon various charities like the Red Cross and Salvation Army.

The responsibility for emergency management throughout Australia has been run on the cheap by successive State and Federal governments since Black Friday of 1939. National Disaster Management is probably the most neglected responsibility of all government services, because to do it right involves long term planning beyond election cycles and costs so much money.

Do we love our ‘sun burnt country‘?

http://poeartica.blogspot.com/2009/02/my-country.html

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Since Victoria’s catastrophic and multiple Black Saturday bushfires about this time two years ago, Australia has emerged from decades of prolonged drought across many states; as well as experienced wild damaging storms; and bushfires this summer in South Australia and WA (again deliberately lit).  Australia has copped cyclonic conditions across the north and now flooding rains throughout central and southern Queensland and into northern regions of New South Wales. Each new year that comes the risk of damaging weather is not likely to wane.

Last September, Australia’s closest neighbour, New Zealand, suffered a devastating earthquake in Christchurch, and we don’t have to travel far back to recall the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that devastated coastal Sumatra, Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Australia has a litany of disasters through its recent history:

• March 1899: more than 400 die in Cyclone Martha at Cape York, far north Queensland.
• December 1916: Flood kills 61 at Clermont, Queensland
• April 1929: Northern Tasmanian floods kill 44
• December 1934: Melbourne floods kill 36 and leave 3000 homeless
• March 1935: Cyclone in Broome, West Australia kills 141
• February 1955: Hunter Valley floods kills 25 in Singleton and Maitland, NSW
• February 1967: Tasmanian bushfires kill 62, most in Hobart
• January 1974: Brisbane floods kill 14 (Cyclone Tracy 25,000 made homeless)
• December 1989: Earthquake in Newcastle, NSW kills 13
• July 1997: Landslide at Thredbo, NSW kills 18
• February 2009: Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria kill 173
• and many others.

[Source: The Australian newspaper, ‘Summer, season of catastrophe’, 20110112, p.11]

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What is Australia doing about National Disaster Management on its own doorstep and to prepare its poorer neighbours in the South West Pacific? Australia as a rich wealthy nation has a moral responsibility to harbour its close exposed neighbours.

But what disaster monitoring and preparation strategy does Australian have for weather research & monitoring, disaster contingency planning, investment in defensive infrastructure to ensure community resilience, damage mitigation, natural disaster response training?

Where is Australian political leadership in national emergency management?

Australia has a recurring pattern of natural disasters. Simple searches on Google reveal that weather history in Australia is only repeating itself. It’s not new. It’s not ‘unprecedented‘ as government politicians try to excuse their leader’s unpreparedness, or is it disinterest?

Classically in Australian literature, Dorothea Mackellar’s Australian epic poem ‘My Country’ prevails and I borrow the following pertinent excerpt, which is prone to regurgitated reference by the media:

“I love a sunburnt country,

A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges,

Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons,

I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror —

The wide brown land for me!”

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But bear in mind Mackellar wrote that poem back in 1904. She was insightful! Colonial Australia struggling out of raw survival in a retched landscape and through someone’s noble sense of ‘Federation’, Australians will have felt the natural onslaught of the ‘terror’ of natural disasters.

But surely a hundred years hence with the time and luxury of foreign lifestyle, our irresponsible governments do not deserve pardon for their gross public ineptitude.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has come out declaring it was well aware of the impending torrential downpour from the current La Ni√±a event and of the likelihood of extensive flooding pending for south east Queensland. Historically, La Ni√±a has always caused high flooding cross SE Queensland big river regions. Hello! So where were the Queensland Government’s risk assessment, contingency planning, infrastructure investment and community preparation to lessen the likely disaster scenarios for the big river communities? Is Bligh a joke talking?

We’re now in the 21st Century, not Mackellar’s era. Australians in all states and territories have a public right to expect that our Australian national government will dutifully properly prepare, manage and mitigate the impacts of national disasters. It is all about good governance. What do we pay taxes for if it is not for times like this?

While many of us who can take out general insurance, those insurance companies can only respond to natural disasters in a financial sense but after the disaster. But it is not the job of insurance companies to manage disaster; it is without equivocation the responsibility of government and quite simply that is why we must pay our taxes throughout our lives. Government civic infrastructure is still not in place to mitigate known historic recurring disaster risk and so since the risk remains so the proportional premium increases. Consequently, many thousands of Australians are in a Catch 22. They are not eligible or cannot afford the requisite insurance to cover their property against natural disaster because the premiums are prohibitively expensive, but they can’t sell and relocate because their property values will have plummeted.

Over the decades thousands of Australians have had their building approved by government on land with a history of natural disaster – flooding, bushfire and drought for instance. If that is not reckless enough, governments at all levels continue to renege on disaster risk mitigation and defensive infrastructure to withstand known disaster types. So in the event of these recurring natural disasters, look at the record of the Australian Government’s contingency planning and performance protecting the Australian public – their lives, property, and to Australia’s most vulnerable our wildlife and its natural habitat? Thousands of hectares of forests have been cleared across the Brisbane River that naturally would have absorbed much of the deluge. Now bare hills and hard surfaces and many thousands of storm water drains, the rains are not absorbed. Housing development continues to be approved in bush settings that are undefendable in the event of a bushfire. Agricultural approval is provided for cropping on marginal lands with repeated histories of drought and/or flood.

Unlike back in 1904, Australia in 2011 is supposedly a wealthy, technologically advanced society. Australia easily has the financial and resource capability to be disaster prepared at national level. But failure to contingency plan condemns Australians to ‘planning to fail‘. When disaster hits Australians are on their own! When a government lets down its people it has lost all legitimacy.

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So what is ‘Emergency Management Australia’ ?

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Nationally, Australia has no central organisation that deals with national disasters, natural or otherwise. The job is left to the relevant State Government concerned; somewhat a leftover remnant of colonialism.

There is a token agency under the Federal Attorney General’s Department, called Emergency Management Australia [compulsorily abbreviated to an acronym like most government agencies to ‘EMA‘, but the name is more impressive than the tasks it performs.

In 2005 under the Howard Government, Emergency Management Australia was on paper “tasked with co-ordinating governmental responses to emergency incidents” and with providing training [at Mount Macedon] and policy development, yet “the actual provision of most emergency response in Australia (was)… delivered by State Governments.”

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emergency_Management_Australia&oldid=32590701]

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In November 2007 under the Rudd Government, the Emergency Management Australia focus was modified, slightly:

“On request, the Australian Government will provide and coordinate physical assistance to the States in the event of a major natural, technological or civil defence emergency. Such physical assistance will be provided when State and Territory resources are inappropriate, exhausted or unavailable.” – and they gave it an acronym ‘COMDISPLAN‘ standing for Commonwealth Government Disaster Response Plan.

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Emergency_Management_Australia&oldid=174306765 ]

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That is, in lay terms, the Australian Government will only help in national emergencies when the States can’t handle a public emergency.

Such a bureaucratic attitude is hardly proactive leadership from our wealthy developed nation!

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In recent years, the Rudd/Gillard Government renamed the organisation Emergency Management in Australia (visit the site http://www.ema.gov.au/), which seems to have been a way of playing down its national leadership role to one of being simply an informational resource. Again, this is divulging responsibility for national emergencies to the next tier of government. Imagine if the states and territories did the same and divulged such responsibility down to local councils?

Emergency Management in Australia doesn’t even have a dedicated minister responsible. Instead, the entire responsibility is tagged on to the Federal Attorney General’s Department. Currently the task is being delegated to an ‘Acting’ Attorney-General Brendan O‚ÄôConnor and shared with Minister for Human Services Tanya Plibersek. It is as if the Australian Government has a head in the sand approach to national emergencies at home, hoping they won’t happen, but when they do, she’ll be right mate! – we’ll fob our way through it as best we can with what’s lying around.

What a bloody irresponsible approach to national emergency management! And all the government does is to encourage the thousands of Queensland residents affected by the flooding to lodge a claim for the Australian Government‚Äôs Disaster Recovery Payment ‘AGDRP‘ – another acronym!

Other reactionary responses from Canberra are currently listed on the EMA website as ‘Flood-affected residents urged to apply for assistance’, ‘Extra disaster assistance for flood-affected communities in Queensland’, a ‘Boost for Territory Disaster Resilience’, a ‘Boost for Tasmanian disaster resilience’, ‘Commonwealth response to the final report of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission’, and when in doubt, ring Triple Zero (000). How reassuring!

Perhaps one initiative positively worth noting is that the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) met in Brisbane on 7 December 2009 and agreed to a range of measures to improve Australia‚Äôs natural disaster arrangements. COAG recognised “the expected increase to the regularity and severity of natural disasters“, and so agreed to a new whole-of-nation ‚Äòresilience‚Äô based approach to natural disaster policy and programs.” Under a Natural Disaster Resilience Program, at Federal level we are now supposed to have Commonwealth funding for disaster mitigation works and support for emergency management will be approximately $110 million over four years.

Well at least it’s a step in the right direction – adopting a ‘whole-of-nation’ approach is long overdue. Yet the current funding scope again is classically ‘too-little-too-late‘. The politicians pontificate. How much of this $110 million will be required for the 2010 Queensland Floods disaster? How much reached the victims of the 2009 Black Saturday disaster across Victoria?

What inevitably happens is that when the disaster situation gets beyond the local volunteers and State and Federal Governments are in a lather not being able to cope, the standard response is to call in the Army? As if the Army knows better than the experienced volunteers?

But for a national government to resort to calling in the Army is a public confession that the government’s emergency management plan has utterly failed the people. At this very point government raises the white flag of failure in national emergency management. One’s government is suddenly incompetent.

And just like what the Federal Government did in Victoria after Black Saturday’s shemozzle of a disaster management, this is just what they are again doing now in Queensland. Enter Major General Mick Slater, poor bugger!

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Army deployed to manage the 2011 Queensland Floods Recovery

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On 5th January 2011, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh announced that Major General Mick Slater would lead the state’s flood recovery taskforce, as more than

200,000 Australians in 40 communities across Queensland have been impacted in some way by the floods. The Army will be tasked to rebuild houses, economies, regional communities and infrastructure. It is estimated that about 1,200 homes across Queensland have been inundated by floodwaters thus far, with another 10,700 homes affected and 4,000 residents evacuated, and the flood bill could be well above $5 billion.

But as a freshman to national disaster management, incoming Army officer Slater has revealed that despite his Army experience has not prepared him for this challenge:

…’one of his first duties will be to talk to Major General Peter Cosgrove, who headed the Innisfail rebuilding project after Cyclone Larry in 2006.

“I believe he’s returning from overseas today and I hope to speak to him tonight. This is early days for me. I’ve just been appointed to this job, but I do understand that time is of the essence as we progress down the recovery mode. However, it is very important that we get it right the first time. “If we rush in and do patch-up jobs… then we will have got it wrong. We must get it right from the start and that will take some time.”

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[Source: ‘Army general to head flood recovery taskforce’, ABC, 5^th January 2011, http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/05/3106898.htm ]

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Reading between the lines, it is clear that the Army is not trained, skilled, experienced or prepared to deal with national disasters. The Army is traditionally trained to fight battles against a human enemy. It has recently evolved to deal with peacekeeping missions, but national disasters remain outside its core skill set.

Premier Bligh has recognised:

“This is a large and complex effort. It will not happen quickly. It will require all of us working together across different levels of government.”

And so once again, instead if a single national professional response, a hotch-potch of agencies is thrown together from Federal and State Governments. Volunteers and charities will play a key role and asking the public for charity has already started.

Once again a desperate government declares ineptness and phones a friend in Canberra – ‘please send in the Army and make our politicians look like we’re taking decisive action what now there’s a good chap, meet you at the club for afters’.

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Australian Army Not Equipped for National Disasters

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CRITICAL QUESTIONS: What does the Australian Army know about national disaster management? More that the State Emergency Services or Fire Brigades? I don’t think so. But the Army has resources, and that it why it is brought in. So why don’t the emergency agencies have the resources in the first place? Emergency agencies do emergencies. The Army fights wars.

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Let’s look at the record…

Army Deployed to Manage the Recovery after the 2009 Victorian Bushfire Disaster

Between 10th February and 14th March 2009, Australian Prime Minister Rudd and Victoria‚Äôs Premier Brumby agreed to have the Australian Army Reserve deployed to assist the multiple emergency services in the immediate aftermath ‘mopping up’ of the Victorian bushfire emergency, dubbed by the media as ‘Black Saturday‘. The Army set up Joint Task Force 662 based to the north of Melbourne under the command of Brigadier Mike Arnold.

Under ‘Operation VIC FIRE ASSIST’, Joint Task Force 662 involved about 450 Army Reservists in a recovery support role – mainly a construction and an engineering regiment with assistance from the School of Armour and a Combat Services Support Battalion. Specifically, ‘Search Task Group’ was set up comprising around 160 Army Reserve soldiers to assist police locate human remains with perimeter security around many townships and residents destroyed including the two Kinglakes, Strathewen, Marysville, and Flowerdale. An RAAF AP-3C Orion aircraft was deployed to provide aerial imagery to assist in the identification of residences affected by the fires.

Army support included delivering food parcels, and putting tents and facilities into place to help accommodate, feed and support people left homeless.

An Engineer Support Group, comprising around 70 personnel, five army bulldozers, a front-end loader and a grader, working with the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment and Country Fire Authority, to assist with improving fire breaks and containment lines, and clearing roads of vegetation and debris throughout the many bushfire affected areas.

Somewhat outside core duties, Defence personnel from Northern Command and Townsville launch bushfire undertook direct fundraising collecting donations at the gates to Larrakeyah Barracks, Northern Territory and Lavarack Barracks, Townsville. On Friday 13th February five RAAF members from Combat Support Unit Edinburgh also conducted a collection in aid of the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal at the main and south gates of RAAF Base Edinburgh.

[Source: http://www.defence.gov.au/media/download/2009/feb/20090210/index.htm ]

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So the Army involvement in dealing with the national disaster of ‘Black Saturday‘, was effectively a post-disaster mop up operation assisting police and providing civil engineering support and relief effort. The Army was not deployed at the outset of the known bushfire risk on Monday 3rd January 2009 when weather forecast was extreme and fires had already started. Nor was the Army deployed during the disaster period itself – Saturday 9th through Monday 11th January. This is due to the Army not being best trained to deal with such emergencies and the false expectation that the volunteer Country Fire Authority were.

The emergency conditions were such:

“The majority of the fires ignited and spread on a day of some of the worst bushfire-weather conditions ever recorded. Temperatures in the mid to high 40s (¬∞C, approx. 110‚Äì120¬∞F) and wind speeds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph), precipitated by an intense heat wave, and almost two months of little or no rain fanned the fires over large distances and areas. “

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires]

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Army Deployed to Manage the Response and Recovery after Cyclone Larry in 2006

Severe Tropical Cyclone Larry made landfall in Far North Queensland as a Category 4 storm crossing the coast near Innisfail at dawn on 20 March 2006. With wind gusts up to 240kph Cyclone Larry was regarded as the most powerful cyclone to affect Queensland in almost a century. In addition to the high winds, the cyclone moved inland and developed into a tropical depression causing protracted torrential rains and extensive over the following week.

The wind and flooding damage extended north to Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands and as far west as Mount Isa. After landfall, Tropical Cyclone Larry moved over north-western Queensland on 22‚Äì23 March, with heavy rain falls across the region. Most of the damage occurred in the Innisfail coastal region where 80% of buildings were damaged, power and phone lines were downed, water was contaminated and the region’s main agricultural crop, bananas, was decimated. The economic damage bill came to around A$1 billion in damage, and there was one fatality.

The usual array of disparate organisations attended the immediate emergency response including the standard local emergency services (fire brigades, ambulance and police) as well as local volunteer fire brigades (Thuringowa) and unpaid State Emergency Service volunteers. Perhaps unlike other states, the umbrella organization Emergency Management Queensland initially led and coordinated the disaster management (response and recovery) including SES, Emergency Service Units, and EMQ Helicopter Rescue.

Local councils were handed authority to enforce mandatory evacuations once Queensland Premier Peter Beattie declared Larry a ‘disaster situation’. Desperately though, even local prisoners who ‘could be trusted’ were considered for recovery and clean up work-gangs, then around 150 tradesmen from around Australia arrived in Innisfail within days to repair houses, schools and public buildings.

The Australian Army was also deployed early. Within hours of the cyclonic winds subsiding, the nearby Townsville-based 3rd Brigade and Cairns-based 51st Battalion were deployed as well as the Far North Queensland Regiment. Three UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were reserved for rescue and logistical support. A Combat Services Support Battalion was set up to manage the disaster relief effort based at Innisfail Showgrounds to provide basic food, water, shelter and sanitary needs to evacuated residents. Onsite health care, environmental advice, fresh food and purified water (as well as testing local supplies), tarpaulins, bath and shower facilities, and up to 500 beds were provided.

The Navy and Air Force were also deployed including a CH-47 Chinook heavy lift helicopter, one Seahawk helicopter, three Navy Balikpapan class LCH Landing Craft, two Caribou aircraft, two C-130 Hercules, and several LARC-V amphibious 4WD vehicles.

By 23rd March, three days after the cyclone hit, Prime Minister John Howard and Premier Beatty appointed former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove, to take charge of recovery efforts labelled the ‘Cyclone Larry Taskforce‘. One quick decision made by Cosgrove was to call for an economic assessment by state and federal governments, and specified a moratorium on businesses’ debt repayments to banks for 3 months. (An outside the Army square type of thinking).

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Larry]

Previously as a Major General in the Army, Cosgrove had successfully managed the 1999-2000 complex UN INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce in East Timor dealing with post-war humanitarian and security crisis. He was credited with commanding thousands of personnel from many countries and completing a successful mission to transition the country to relative stability.

[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTERFET]

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This experience had given Cosgrove disaster management skills beyond traditional Army combat roles, and clearly had well prepared him to lead the Cyclone Larry Taskforce. But Cosgrove’s peacekeeping civil emergency experience in a complex environment singled him out as the best person to lead the management of a national disaster in Australia. His success ought to serve as a model for future emergency management planning.

Yet Cosgrove’s experience is atypical of the Australian Army’s broader experiences. The Army’s role and experience in national disasters has been purely responsive and supportive. The main contributions by the Army in national disasters has been using Army equipment and military training to try to help a civil emergency. Following desperate orders from the Prime Minister of the day, the Army responds the best it can with what it has got in a situation it is not expertly trained or resourced to do professionally. The Army’s role in emergency management is not strategic, national nor involved in risk assessment, contingency planning nor leadership of the emergency response. But it should be.

The Australian Regular Army and its volunteer Army Reservists are tasked for traditional military combat, not for the new emerging role of international peacekeeping, nor for managing civil unrest, nor for anti-terrorism, nor for natural and national disaster management. Yet recent world events and trends point to such roles becoming more important and likely than traditional military combat. So the role of the Army, its capabilities and its culture need to change to better meet Australia’s true ‘defence’ needs in the broader 21sst Century context. The Army’s 20th Century traditional military combat role belongs to the 20th Century.

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Irresponsible to Expect State-based Volunteers to Manage National Disasters

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Tropical cyclones are not new in northern Queensland nor indeed across northern Australia. They invariably occur every Wet Season generally between the months of November and April and each year only varies in their intensity. This author experienced Cyclone Joy back in 1990 while living in Cairns. The need for a national disaster management organisation probably dates back to Cyclone Tracy of Christmas 1974 which flattened Darwin.

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Darwin following Cyclone Tracy at Christmas 1974

© Film Australia. http://www.abc.net.au/aplacetothink/html/cyclone.htm

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Australian natural history is one of recurring natural disasters. Current flooding along the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales is again affecting the town of Gundagai, but since Australian history is poorly taught these days, few will be aware that a major flood back in 1852 wiped out the original town site of 71 buildings, and 89 of the town’s 250 inhabitants perished.

Bushfires, severe storms and cyclones, prolonged droughts, flooding rains, and even earthquakes have frequented the landscape, almost annually. With climate change apparent, however caused, there is every expectation from climate science that extremes of weather in Australia, around the world and in our region, will not lessen but more probably will increase both in frequency and severity. New forms of natural disaster may also occur in future such as tsunamis, landslide (recall Thredbo 1997), storm surge, even possible tornado or tsunami, a volcanic eruption from our north or plague and pestilence. National disasters affecting Australia and our region may also not only be naturally caused, such as a major bridge collapse, major dam collapse, major gas explosion and given ongoing tensions and terrorist events pervading our now global society, new forms of national disaster may loom.

While the 1939 ‘Black Friday’ bushfires in Victoria killed 71 people, the accompanying heat wave – which triggered the blazes – claimed 438 lives and yet remains largely unacknowledged. With climate change, a recurrence is almost certain.

Is Australia prepared to cope, manage and mitigate the effects of national disasters? Is the current emergency management framework centred on State-based and local volunteers adequate to the task?

In localised low grade emergencies, the current system generally copes well. But when it comes to national disasters like Cyclone Larry, Black Saturday and the 2011 Queensland Floods, the answer is clearly ‘no’. The test is, do most Australians believe that the emergency authorities in each case were sufficiently prepared and resourced and adequately responded? Do most Australians believe that the impacts of these national disasters could have been considerably mitigated by better risk assessment, contingency planning, the immediacy and appropriateness of the response and co-ordination of recovery?

Such questions go the core of Australia’s national security and to the role and expectation of government to protect its people and assets. The concept of ‘national security‘ needs to extend beyond the narrow military sense to encompassing defence against all forms of adverse impact to our society, economy and environment. National security also extends to Australia’s immediate region; since to ignore national disasters of our neighbouring nations would be not only immoral but likely have spillover effects on Australian eventually.

So what to do about the problem of recurring national disasters?

Government urban planning, human settlement approvals and investment in civic infrastructure to properly protect its citizens from the impacts of national disasters, and the funding of general and life insurance are interrelated key socio-economic issues that will likely come to the fore as communities recognise history repeating itself and governments are found wanting – but they are a focus is for another article.

The contention in this article is not to criticise the work of emergency service volunteers and professionals of the many organisations that get involved, but rather to highlight that the framework and resources in which they operate is woefully inadequate. Volunteers must feel like pawns in a loosely run reactive system, but culturally they are condemned if they dare criticise.

Yet the repeated evidence is that Australia’s current emergency management framework fails the delivery and performance expectations of Australians in our wealthy and advanced society. Look at the records since the first national disaster of the 1939 Black Friday bushfires! Below in the Further Reading section, a number of online references provide links to the many national disasters throughout Australian history. Natural history is repeating itself, but regrettable so is the laissez faire, even ‘head-in-the sand’ attitude of successive Australian governments to avoid serious investment and planning in emergency management for national disasters.

National disasters are costing Australian lives, communities, economies and environments. The full triple-bottom-line costs (direct and indirect) cumulatively reach the billions almost annually. The cost has to be paid in one way or another and often it is in the form of economic loss, decline in rural society and environmental degradation. Instead of governments investing billions up front to mitigate the damage and costs, governments are forking out afterwards anyway and Australian morality is tweaked to donate in order to make up the funding shortfall. The old adage of ‘prevention being better than the cure‘ holds so true here, but the solution seems beyond the short term narrow thinking of our political leaders.

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‘So serious is this round of disasters in Queensland the Prime Minister ‘Julia Gillard has ordered more government funds be diverted to flood-ravaged Queensland in a bid to prevent the state slipping into a long economic slump.’

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In what may become Australia’s largest and most costly rebuilding operation, clean-up grants of up to $25,000, along with low-interest loans, were offered by the Prime Minister yesterday in addition to the commonwealth’s normal emergency relief payments. Production has almost ground to a halt in the coal industry, while early assessments of Queensland’s agriculture sector have put the cost of the floods at more than $1 billion in lost production.’

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[Source: ‘PM Julia Gillard to help flood-hit Queensland weather storm‘, by Sean Parnell and Jared Owens, The Australian, 4th January 2011. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pm-julia-gillard-to-help-flood-hit-queensland-weather-storm/comments-fn59niix-1225981305357 ]

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“Surely it’s time for Julia Gillard to stop seeing the Queensland floods as a series of media opportunities and start showing some practical leadership. She does not appear to have had the truly national implications of this disaster made clear to her.”

[Source: David Williams, Frewville, SA, Letter to the Editor, The Australian, 20110112, p13)

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Full Costs of National Disasters Many Times Greater than Government Investment in its Volunteer Emergency Management Model

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http://on-walkabout.com/tag/bushfires/

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Economic Cost of National Disasters of Living Memory

In terms of direct economic damage alone, in Australian dollars the Queensland Bligh Government has estimated the cost of the current 2011 Queensland Floods to exceed $5 Billion. The economic damages bill for the 2009 Victorian Bushfires exceeded $2 billion. The economic cost of the 2006 Cyclone Larry was in excess of $1.5 billion. The 2003 Canberra Bushfires insurance cost came to $250 million. The 1991-95 drought across in north-eastern New South Wales and much of Queensland cost the economy around $5 billion.

In 1990, over one million square kilometres of Queensland and New South Wales (and a smaller area of Victoria) were flooded in April 1990. The towns of Nyngan and Charleville were the worst affected with around 2,000 homes inundated. Six people were killed and around 60 were injured.

The insurance claims payouts from the 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires for Victoria and South Australia combined were $1.3 billion (2007 adjusted terms). The preceding four-year drought across south-eastern Australia (1979-1983) cost the economy around $7 billion mainly in agricultural losses.

In January 1974, the weakening Cyclone Wanda brought heavy rainfall to Brisbane and many parts of south-eastern Queensland and northern New South Wales. One third of Brisbane’s city centre and 17 suburbs were severely flooded. Fourteen people died and over 300 were injured. Fifty-six homes were washed away and 1,600 were submerged. At Christmas 1974 Cyclone Tracy killed 65 people and caused over 600 injuries in Darwin and 70% of all houses had serious structural failure. The total damage bill was around $800 million (1974 $s). In 1970 Tropical Cyclone Ada caused severe damage to resorts on the Whitsunday Islands, Queensland. Fourteen people were killed and the damage bill was estimated at $390 million.

Many other national disasters have occurred in Australia as well as in neighbouring countries. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami claimed more than 150,000 people dead or missing and millions more were homeless in 11 countries, making it perhaps the most destructive tsunami in history. An estimate by the World Bank and Indonesian government put the total bill for the destruction of property and businesses at more than US$4.4 billion.

[Sources: Various references online, most notably http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/naturaldisasters/ ]

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Many minor emergencies that occur each year particularly involving storms and bushfires would add to the aggregate costs of these major events.

So a broad brush stroke estimate of the direct economic costs alone of national disasters affecting Australia would average in the range of between $2 billion and $5 billion per year. This excludes the social costs of people experiencing trauma and losing loved ones and livelihoods as well as the unknown environmental costs which should be measured and included and disclosed by the Australian Government so that the cost truth of national disasters is know to the Australian public. Without triple bottom line measurement, the true scale of the problem remains hidden and the ability to problem solve and to make cost effective and cost benefit investment decisions is greatly diminished.

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Disaster Compensation

So in the current instance involving the 2011 Queensland Floods, Prime Minister Gillard has promised a $25,000 grant to each flood-affected property owner and $15,000 to those similarly affected in the flooded Gascoyne Region of Western Australia. Assumedly, flood-affected property owners in northern New South Wales will be similarly compensated. Under Queensland’s Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements (NDRRA) the State and Federal Governments share the compensation costs and include other Disaster Relief Measures such as providing Counter Disaster Operations and a Personal Hardship Assistance Scheme (to alleviate personal hardship), an Associations Relief Assistance Scheme, Restoration of Public Assets, Concessional Loans to Primary Producers, Freight Subsidies to Primary Producers, and Concessional Loans to Small Businesses.

[Source: Queensland Disaster http://www.disaster.qld.gov.au/support/ ]

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But the financial compensation offered by the Australian government varies with each national disaster and the aggregate cost information is not readily available online, perhaps intentionally. In the main, each state government sets up a range of compensation funds on a disaster event basis. The Australian Government provides a website Disaster Assist that summarises what compensation is available for a given disaster event, usually with references to CentreLink and back to the relevant state government. Visit: http://www.disasterassist.gov.au/www/disasterassist/disasterassist.nsf/

In the case of the 2011 Queensland Floods disaster, an Australian Government Disaster Recovery Payment rate is $1,000 per eligible adult and $400 per child.

“Claims for this assistance can be lodged at Centrelink until 4 July 2011 as application for the payment is available for a period of up to six months.”

Identified Disasters on the website are listed as follows:

Current Disaster Assistance

* Queensland Floods – December 2010

* Financial assistance for flooding and severe weather events November – December 2010

* NSW Flooding – October 2010

* South East Queensland Flooding – October 2010

* New South Wales Weather Event – September 2010

* Victorian Flooding – September 2010

* Victorian Bushfires – January/February 2009

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Previous Disasters

* Victorian Storms – March 2010

* Queensland Floods – March 2010

* WA bushfires December 2009

* Mid-North Coast Flooding – November 2009

* Samoa Tsunami – September 2009

* Human Swine Influenza (H1N1) Outbreak 2009

* New South Wales Floods – March 2009

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Annual Funding in Australian Emergency Management

On 12th May 2009, the Rudd Federal Government issued a media release entitled ‘Improving Disaster Resilience‘ as part of the Federal Budget 2009-2010. It stated:

‘The Rudd Government will invest $79.3 million to strengthen efforts to prepare for and combat major natural disasters.

A comprehensive ‘Disaster Resilience Australia Package’ will integrate a number of existing emergency management grant programs, providing the flexibility to effectively meet the requirements of local communities threatened by disaster. The additional funding will be part of this new package.

…The package will integrate the current Bushfire Mitigation Program (BMP), Natural Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP), and the National Emergency

Volunteer Support Fund (NEVSF). The funding will:

• support disaster mitigation works including flood levees and fire breaks
• assist Local Government meet its emergency management responsibilities
• support the work of volunteers in emergency management
• build partnerships with business and community groups to improve their ability to respond to emergencies.

…In addition, the Commonwealth will also provide more than $12.8 million over the next four years to assist States and Territories lease additional fire fighting aircraft for longer periods during bushfire seasons.

Aircraft will be leased through the cooperative National Aerial Firefighting Arrangements (NAFA) and will help individual States and Territories access a range of specialised aircraft that would otherwise be out of reach.

“Aerial firefighting has emerged as a valuable tool in the fight against bushfires and the national arrangements have proven to be an efficient, collaborative approach that shares the cost of these specialised assets,” Mr McClelland said.

This additional funding brings the Government’s total contribution to the National Aerial Firefighting Arrangements to $14 million per year from 2009-2010.

Following recommendations of the 2008 Homeland and Border Security Review, the Government will also establish new briefing facilities and establish an enhanced Government Coordination Centre to support decision-making in the event of a national crisis or major natural disaster.’

[Source: Australian Government – Attorney General’s Department]

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On 8th June 2010, the New South Wales Keneally Government announced it would invest $972 million in emergency services across NSW, including the NSW Fire Brigade, NSW Rural Fire Service and NSW State Emergency Services.

The NSW Emergency Services Minister, Mr Whan states:

“Our emergency services are our first line of defence against storms, floods, tsunami, fires and other emergencies and it is vital that they have the personnel, facilities and resources they need to protect communities around NSW.”

“…Over the past two years, our SES volunteers have responded to a string of emergencies, including major floods in Northern NSW, the Central West and Far West.

“Given the predicted impacts of climate change, this workload is expected to increase in coming years and it is important that the SES is ready to face the challenges ahead.”

The Budget highlights for the emergency services were listed as follows:

NSW Fire Brigades (professionally paid)

The NSW Fire Brigades 2010/11 budget is $637 million. Spending includes:

* $18 million for more than 35 new fire engines and specialised vehicles

* $8.4 million for firefighting and counter terrorism plant and equipment

* $10 million for Cabramatta and renovated fire stations and training facilities

* $2.5 million for Community Fire Units

* $1.3 million for a Workplace Conduct and Investigation Unit

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NSW Rural Fire Service (largely unpaid volunteers)

The Rural Fire Fighting Fund for 2010/11 is $220.4 million. Spending includes:

* $32.2 million for about 200 bush fire tankers

* $16 million for new and renovated stations and fire control centres, including installing water tanks

* More than $17 million for bush fire mitigation, including $6.7 million for works crews

* $7.8 million for aerial firefighting resources

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NSW State Emergency Service (largely unpaid volunteers)

The State Emergency Service budget for 2010/11 is $64.1 million. Spending includes:

* $2 million to assist with the cost of about 60 emergency response vehicles

* $1.4 million for rescue equipment, including $600,000 for about 20 floodboats

* $1.4 million for communication and paging systems

* $930,000 towards the cost of upgrading unit headquarters around NSW

[Source: http://www.nswfb.nsw.gov.au/news.php?news=1656 ]

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The division of emergency services management by the State of NSW into three separate governments agencies, of which only the urban-based fire brigade is fully professionally paid, is typical of the other Australian states and territories. NSW is the most populous state in Australia and so has the greatest taxation revenue with which to fund its public services such as emergency services. An actual annual aggregate figure of the combined capital and recurrent expenditure on emergencies services across Australia would be welcomed and should be disclosed on the Australian Government’s website.

But for a quick comparison, let’s assume that the annual aggregate investment by governments at all levels across Australia, including that of local councils is in the range of $3 billion to $4 billion per year. The investment is almost on par with the economic cost outlay of Australia’s national disasters. It is important to recognise that the funding cost is separate from the disaster economic cost, and that the socio-environmental costs are excluded.

So Australia’s total economic spend on national disasters and civic emergencies probably averages close to A$10 billion per year.

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A Case for Disaster Management to be ‘professionally nationalised’ across Australia.

Google Search on ‘Disaster Management‘ (globally)

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First some problem solving questions:

1. Why are national disasters causing such massive impact on Australia’s environment, society and economy?
2. Is the damage caused by natural disasters impossible to mitigate (a fatalistic acceptance), or can more be done to mitigate their damage to the environment, society and economy?
   
3. Does Australia have a history of natural disasters and are any of the recent ones socalled ‘unprecedented‘ or are they just a repeat of what has gone before and even less severe than previously?
4. Who is responsible for planning and mitigating the impact of national disasters when they do occur?
5. Is not national disaster management as vital a function as military defence?
6. Is the current framework of multiple disjointed independent State and locally based organisations the most effective and efficient structure to do the job?
7. What if Australia’s Defence Force had the same framework and organisational structure as current emergency management? Could Australia’s Defence Force perform the same as it currently does? Why not?
8. How is current disaster contingency planning and response performance measured and are the measures appropriate to quantifying the desired standards of performance?
9. Is the current disaster contingency planning and response performance acceptable to the Australian community?
10. How short of ideal is the current performance?
11. Why is the current emergency management response not able to mitigate the impact to an acceptable level?
12. How do Australia’s emergency management operations measure up against world best practice?
13. What countries have world best practice emergency management?
14. Does the funding structure facilitate or inhibit the capacity of the emergency planning and response?
15. Are grants and subsidies an appropriate revenue source for such a vital service?
16. Ought funding be guaranteed as it is with the Defence Forces?
17. What are the alternatives to Australia’s current disaster contingency planning and response framework?
18. Do other countries have a proven success record of disaster contingency planning and response, which Australia could learn from and adapt?

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United States: Federal Emergency Management Agency

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Probably the global best practice structure currently for dealing with national disaster management (from risk assessment through reconstruction phasing) exists not surprisingly with the United States of America. Try searching elsewhere and frankly, the US is hard to beat.

The United States National Response Framework (NRF) is part of the National Strategy for Homeland Security that presents the guiding principles enabling all levels of domestic response partners to prepare for and provide a unified national response to disasters and emergencies.

Until 1979,the United States had no comprehensive plan for federal emergency response. Then President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order creating the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which consolidated the emergency response duties from multiple agencies across the country that each had disjointed emergency operational plans. National legislation was enacted in 1988 to effectively nationalise Federal response to disasters. Under the National Contingency Plan, multiple organisations were united to deal with disaster preparedness and response.

In 1992, US President Bill Clinton appointed James Lee Witt as the head of FEMA, who substantially changed FEMA to adopt an all-hazards approach to emergency planning. Clinton elevated Witt to a cabinet-level position, giving the Director access to the President. So for the first time, a national disaster management organisation had a National Response Plan and reported directly to the head of the US government – the President.

Since then, following the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks, the United States thrust disaster management to the forefront of national priority for obvious reasons and it is due to this that the United States probably more than any other country, bar perhaps Israel, has a world leading disaster management structure today. Since 2003, the Department of Homeland Security has absorbed FEMA and since 2008, the National Response Plan has been replaced by the National Response Framework.

Check out: US Federal Emergency Management Agency and FEMA National Response Framework [NRF]

The United States National Response Framework (NRF) is part of the National Strategy for Homeland Security that presents the guiding principles enabling all levels of domestic response partners to prepare for and provide a unified national response to disasters and emergencies. Building on the existing National Incident Management System (NIMS) as well as Incident Command System (ICS) standardization, the NRF’s coordinating structures are always in effect for implementation at any level and at any time for local, state, and national emergency or disaster response.

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NRF five key principles

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1. Engaged partnership means that leaders at all levels collaborate to develop shared response goals and align capabilities. This collaboration is designed to prevent any level from being overwhelmed in times of crisis.
2. Tiered response refers to the efficient management of incidents, so that such incidents are handled at the lowest possible jurisdictional level and supported by additional capabilities only when needed.
3. Scalable, flexible, and adaptable operational capabilities are implemented as incidents change in size, scope, and complexity, so that the response to an incident or complex of incidents adapts to meet the requirements under ICS/NIMS management by objectives. The ICS/NIMS resources of various formally-defined resource types are requested, assigned and deployed as needed, then demobilized when available and incident deployment is not longer necessary.
4. Unity of effort through unified command refers to the ICS/NIMS respect for each participating organization’s chain of command with an emphasis on seamless coordination across jurisdictions in support of common objectives. This seamless coordination is guided by the “Plain English” communication protocol between ICS/NIMS command structures and assigned resources to coordinate response operations among multiple jurisdictions that may be joined at an incident complex.
5. Readiness to Act: “It is our collective duty to provide the best response possible. From individuals, households, and communities to local, tribal, State, and Federal governments, national response depends on our readiness to act.”

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‘NRF CORE’

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• Roles and responsibilities at the individual, organizational and other private sector as well as local, state, and federal government levels
• Response actions
• Staffing and organization
• Planning and the National Preparedness Architecture
• NRF implementation, Resource Center, and other supporting documents incorporated by reference

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NRF ANNEXES

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* ESF #1 – Transportation

* ESF #2 – Communications

* ESF #3 – Public Works and Engineering

* ESF #4 – Firefighting

* ESF #5  -Emergency Management

* ESF #6  – Mass Care, Emergency Assistance, Housing, and Human Services

* ESF #7  – Logistics Management and Resource Support

* ESF #8  – Public Health and Medical Services

* ESF #9  – Search and Rescue

* ESF #10 – Oil and Hazardous Materials Response

* ESF #11  – Agriculture and Natural Resources

* ESF #12 – Energy

* ESF #13 – Public Safety and Security

* ESF #14 –  Long-Term Community Recovery

* ESF #15 – External Affairs

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NRF SUPPORT ANNEXES:

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* Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR)

* Financial Management

* International Coordination

* Private-Sector Coordination

* Public Affairs

* Tribal Relations

* Volunteer and Donations Management

* Worker Safety and Health

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NRF INCIDENT ANNEXES:

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* Incident Annex Introduction

* Biological Incident

* Catastrophic Incident

* Cyber Incident

* Food and Agriculture Incident

* Mass Evacuation Incident

* Nuclear/Radiological Incident

* Terrorism Incident Law Enforcement and Investigation

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Proposed New Defence Corps: Australia’s ‘Civil Emergency Corps‘

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As one solution to Australia’s failing governance of national disasters, I propose the complete overhaul of Australia’s current state-based and volunteer based disparate organisations, by consolidating, nationalising and professionalising them all into one. I propose a new national defence corps be established under new national legislation – Australia’s ‘Civil Emergency Corps‘. This Corp would be an equal partner with our Army, Navy and Air Force, but instead of focusing on national defence against human-based threats, the Civil Emergency Corps will focus on national defence against mainly natural threats.

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A special national commission should be established by the Australian Government to review and shape the purpose, functional scope, framework, organisation structure and strategies of this new corps. The initial intent is that this Civil Emergency Corps is to be modelled along the lines of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Federal National Response Framework (NRF), but tailored to Australia’s specific needs and circumstances. The design of the organisation will be based on input received from current emergency personnel, emergency experts and from the broader Australian community. Ideas from comparable organisations overseas will also be considered, such as from nations having proven effective national civil defence organisations.

Funding is to be on par and have the same budget process as the Australian Regular Army. No more raffles, grants and fund raising. The organisation would be professionally paid, run in a military structure and discipline. Like the Army it would have core full-time regulars and a part-time reserve component. It would be initially staffed by the current people already performing emergency service work. Over time the organisation will evolve to coming up to par with the equivalent performance standards as the Army. It’s resourcing would be exponentially increased to equip it to being a national effective fighting force to deal with national emergencies, properly.

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Essential Functions of the Civil Emergency Corps

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• All the work of the State Emergency Services, Fire and Rescue Agencies
• Disaster Risk, Contingency, Mitigation Planning – from local to national and indeed regional scale
• Natural Disaster Response ‚fire, explosion, contamination, flood, drought, storm, sea surge, earthquake, etc
• Disaster Relief
• Disaster Recovery
• HAZMAT Response
• Disaster Management Training
• Community Education in Natural Disaster Preparation and Mitigation
• Post-disaster review an analysis and recommendations for future best practice and preparation to the Federal Government
• Ongoing national disaster research input

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Mascot

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Australia’s magnificent wedge-tailed eagle should be the mascot of this new organisation. It is uniquely Australian, a highly respected native bird and the eagle traditionally is a symbol for guardianship, protection, power, strength, courage, wisdom and grace. All these qualities quite apt for a Civil Emergency Corps. An appropriate motto is ‘defending our community‘ – but instead of in English or translated back to Latin, better in Australian Aboriginal.

Australia’s Wedge-Tailed Eagle

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wedge_tailed_eagle_in_flight04.jpg

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Incorporated into Australia’s Defence Context

1. Australian Regular Army / Army Reserve

2. Royal Australian Navy / Navy Reserve

3. Royal Australian Air Force / Air Force Reserve

4. Civil Emergency Corps / Civil Emergency Reserve

• State Corps
  • Regional Brigades
    • Local Units

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National Government Ministry

1. Minister for Civil Emergency
2. Deputy Minister for Civil Emergency
3. Parliamentary Secretary for Civil Emergency

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Organisational Structure

In the same way as Australia’s three other corps are configured, the new Civil Emergency Corps is to be comprised of ‘Regulars‘ – full-time and professionally paid, as well as ‘Reservists‘, who commit on a part-time on demand basis, who are professionally trained and paid commensurate on time served.

The organisational structure is to geographically-based into a respective ‘State Corps‘ for each State and Territory, then into ‘Regional Brigades‘ and then at local level into ‘Local Units‘.  Each component will have its share of regulars and reservists.   The existing infrastructure of the various emergency services agencies would be utilised.

In addition, in order to deal with highly specialised functions, dedicated Corp Specialist Regiments will be established (see proposed list below).

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A ‘National Command Centre’

• headed by the Corps General Marshall
• based in Canberra next to the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), for strategic reasons

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State & Territory Corps

• each headed by a ‘Corp Brigadier’
• organisation structure based on a hybrid geographical model of both Fire Brigades and State Emergency Service, decided on a region by region assessment

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Regional Brigades

• each headed by a ‘Regional Commander’

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Local Units

• each headed by a ‘Unit Captain’

Note: Currently, in the New South Wales State Emergency Service (SES), NSW is divided into 17 ‘Regions’ based on major river systems.

‘Each of the 226 volunteer units belongs to a Region, which is led by a Region Controller. Region boundaries coincide as nearly as possible with major river systems. Each Region Controller is responsible for the operational control of emergency flood and storm responses, including planning, training, operational support and other functions within their area of control. The Region Headquarters also provides administrative support to the units in its region. The Region Headquarters all have fully functioning Operations Centres and a group of volunteers who help with training, planning, operational and other functions.’

[Source: http://www.ses.nsw.gov.au/about/ ]

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Merger and Integration of the following national organisations into the new Civil Emergency Corps:

• Emergency Management Australia
• Care Flight Group
• Australian Volunteer Coast Guard
• St John Ambulance Service

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NSW Corps

A merger and integration of the Fire and Rescue NSW, NSW Rural Fire Service, NSW Police Rescue Unit, Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service (NSW), CareFlight Group, Marine Rescue NSW, Community Emergency Services Incorporated

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Victorian Corps

A merger and integration of the Victorian Fire Brigade, Country Fire Authority, State Emergency Service, Search and Rescue Squad (of the Victorian Police).

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Queensland Corps

A merger and integration of the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service, Queensland State Emergency Service and Volunteer Marine Rescue, Queensland Rural Fire Service, RACQ CareFlight, Capricorn Helicopter Rescue Service (Rockhampton), Royal Flying Doctor Service, Volunteer Marine Rescue Association of Queensland.

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South Australian Corps

A merger and integration of the South Australian Metroplitan Fire Service, Country Fire Service, State Emergency Service, South Australian Sea Rescue Squadron.

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ACT Corps

A merger and integration of the ACT Fire Brigade, ACT State Emergency Service, ACT Rural Fire Service.

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West Australian Corps

A merger and integration of the Fire and Emergency Services Authority of Western Australia (which has already merged its emergency service agencies), and the Volunteer Marine Rescue Western Australia.

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Northern Territory Corps

A merger and integration of the Northern Territory Fire and Rescue Service, Northern Territory Emergency Service, Bushfire Volunteer Brigades, Rescue Co-ordination Centre (Northern Territory Transport Group).

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Tasmanian Corps

A merger and integration of the Tasmanian Fire Service, State Emergency Service Tasmania, Tasmanian Air Rescue Trust, Sea Rescue Tasmanian Inc.

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Corps Specialist Regiments

• Each specialist regiment shall have its own part-time payrolled Reserve component.

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‘Evacuation Regiment’

• emergency field transport and logistics to effect evacuation of people and their personal effects
• assumes basic human needs provision of displaced persons (emergency accommodation, food and clothing, emergency sanitation, emergency childcare
• currently performed by charity groups like The Salvation Army, The Australian Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul Society, Anglicare Australia, Mission Australia, Catholic Mission, and others

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‘Utilities Regiment’

• public utility repair and rebuilding – drinking water, sewage and sanitation, electricity, gas services

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‘Reconstruction Regiment’

• debris clearance, demolition, salvage, engineering, construction, civil infrastructure, and relief housing, farm fencing repairs.

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‘Communications Regiment’

• Corps internal communications including satellite, (attached to Army Signals), plus public communications – land phone, mobile/SMS, public broadcast services, internet services, including evacuee/missing persons database and related communications

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‘Search and Rescue Regiment’

• assumes land search and rescue functions previously performed by various State Police special units

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‘Maritime Regiment’

• assumes functions previously performed by Coast Guard, including sea search and rescue and vessel salvage functions

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‘Medivac Regiment’

• assumes functions previously performed in times of disaster by State-based Ambulance Services, Royal Flying Doctior Service, Army Medics, St John Ambulance and paramedics, air-ambulance, field medicine and medical emergency evacuation, hospital transfers, disease prevention, containment and vaccinations
• Not a replacement of the State-based Ambulance Services

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‘Community Regiment’

• provides the full range of trauma counselling, psychological and associated mental health services

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‘Vet Regiment’

• Specialised livestock and pet recovery, animal sheltering, emergency veterinary services, emergency relief livestock agistment, stock feed provision and distribution

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‘Biosecurity Regiment’

• All biosecurity emergency planning and response to disease outbreaks, pandemics, epidemics, pestilence, plague, national health threats or emergencies, including mass casualty events, communicable disease outbreaks, and quarantine emergency planning and response.

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Civic Emergency Strategic Partners

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• Australian Regular Army
• Engineering
• Signals (Communications)
• Logistics/Transport
• Royal Australian Navy
• Royal Australian Air Force
• Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Australian Government Department of health and Aging ‚Äì Health Emergency
• Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation
• State and Federal Governments ‚Äì Premiers Departments
• New Zealand Government ‚Äì Ministry of Civil Defenc and Emergency Management CentreLink
• CSIRO
• Bushfire CRC
• Seismology Research Centre, Australia
• Geoscience Australia
• Australian Broadcasting Commission
• Department of Community Services (and State equivalents)
• Major Supermarket Retailers ‚Äì Coles, Woolworths, Metcash
• Shipping Container company
• Satellite Service Provider – Australian Satellite Communications Pty Ltd,
• Commonwealth Serum Laboratories (CSL)
• Telstra
• Qantas
• Brambles Shipping
• Salvation Army
• Red Cross
• Infrastructure Australia
• Ambulance Services
• State Hospitals
• Metcash, Coles, Woolworths
• LinFox, Toll Holdings,
• DOCS
• CentreLink
• State Morgues and Funeral Directors
• Business Council of Australia
• Small Business Council of Australia
• Insurance Council of Australia

and others.

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Nationalisation brings serious investment.

‘The world’s biggest fire-fighting plane ejects water during a demonstration in Hahn, Germany.

The altered Boeing 747 can carry more than 75,000 litres of water. California has chartered one’.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01473/jumbo-jet_1473655i.jpg

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Cost- Benefits

1. Collectively across all the existing emergency organisations, Australia already spends billions in emergency management, but is not coping and is under-performing against 21st century triple bottom line expectations
2. Cumulatively, Australia already spends billions in emergency management, but most of the cost is in response due to being underprepared. Prevention is better than the cure – cheaper economically and on lives.
3. A professional organisation, on the payroll is fairer to the workers involved. Government reliance on community volunteers is exploitative and the standards can never collectively match full paid professionals with state of the art resourcing. Taxes are paid by the people so that government will protect them in both military and civil defence.
4. A single national Corps is better positioned than multiple disjointed organisations to prepare for and respond to the ever increasing array of national disasters, but such an organisation would retain the critical advantage of regional and local personnel and resources. Economies of scale and efficiency gains from removing duplication in administration and overheads would come from a single Corps. But a key condition must be that any job losses would attract full retrenchment payouts.
5. Many secondary school leavers could be readily recruited into a Civil Emergency Corps service for limited services, than are attracted to the traditional three military corps.

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Can Australia afford it?

Can Australia afford not to? Wait until the next disaster and then ask the question again?

When Australians observe the hundreds of millions of dollars (indeed billions) of taxpayer moneys spent by State and Federal Governments in wasteful projects, the answer is a simple yes, easily. Question the opportunity cost of the following recent examples of government inappropriate spending and waste:

1. Prime Minister Gillard donates $500 million to Indonesian Islamic Schools [^ November 2010]
2. Senate inquiry into the Rudd-Gillard Government’s botched $300 million Green Loans program has confirmed that some groups of assessors hired as part of the program are still owed over $500,000 in fees due to mismanagement and poor administration procedures under the scheme with some assessors blasting the Federal Government for failing to implement proper checks and balances. [^July 2010]
3. The Rudd Government has recorded an $850 million blow-out in the cost of its household solar power program. Labor had only intended to spend $150 million over five years on solar rebates but instead splurged $1 billion in just 18 months! [^March 2010]
4. Queensland Premier Bligh committed $1.2 billion into the Tugun Desalination Plant, which has been plagued by problems since it opened last year, will be shut early next year, along with half the $380 million Bundamba treatment plant and the new $313 million plant at Gibson Island. Water infrastructure has cost Queenslanders $9 billion recently and they are entitled to know the money is being spent wisely. [^December 2010]
5. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh shelved a $192 million project involving carbon capture research. Bligh has said she is determined to make carbon capture storage economically viable and has committed another $50 million of taxpayers money to finding the answer. The Bligh government has already spent $102 million researching cleaner coal technology through the state-owned ZeroGen, a joint state-commonwealth government and industry led-research project for coal-fired power production. [^December 2010]
6. Victorian Premier Brumby’s Wonthaggi desalination plant will cost Victorians $15.8 billion over the next three decades, departmental figures show, leading the state opposition to accuse the government of hiding the project’s true cost. [^Sept 2010]

And disaster management it is better invested up front in prevention and response, than afterward in relief and recovery.

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Further Reading:

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[1] ‘Reform 03 ‘Formation of a Civil Emergency Corps‘, >Link

[2] ‘Nat MPs push levy for disaster fund‘, by Joe Kelly, The Australian, January 05, 2011,

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/treasury/nat-mps-push-levy-for-disaster-fund/story-fn59nsif-1225982479225]

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[3]  ‘PM Julia Gillard to help flood-hit Queensland weather storm‘, by Sean Parnell and Jared Owens, The Australian, 4th January 2011, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pm-julia-gillard-to-help-flood-hit-queensland-weather-storm/comments-fn59niix-1225981305357

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[4] ‘Premier visits NSW towns in flood’s path’ , ABC, 6th January 2011,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/06/3107563.htm

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[5] ‘Carnarvon on flood warning but levees hold’, 20th December 2010, ABC

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/20/3097642.htm

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[6] ‘SA has been facing ‘very high’ fire danger’, ABC, 1st January 2011,

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/01/3104707.htm

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[7] Bushfires in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Bushfires_in_Australia

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[8] Floods in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Floods_in_Australia

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[9] Droughts in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Droughts_in_Australia

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[10] Severe Storms in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_storms_in_Australia

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[11] Cyclones in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cyclones_in_Australia

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[12] Black Saturday Bushfires

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires

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[13] Earthquakes in Australia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Earthquakes_in_Australia

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[14] 1997 Thredbo Landslide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Thredbo_landslide

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[15] Role of the Australian Army

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Defence_Force

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[16] Australian Government – Natural Disasters in Australia

http://www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au/articles/naturaldisasters/

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-end of article –