Some VERY Clear Thinking On Bushfires
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March 10, 2009Andrew Campbell, a Victorian forester with professional training in fire behaviour, fire suppression and fire management with experience as a ‘sector boss’ in the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires has set down some very clear thoughts about life after the Victorian bushfires.
Offended by rabid media comments such as “it’s all the greenies’ fault” Andrew says claims that fuel reduction burning would have prevented these fires are a nonsense due to two crucial facts:
- the 47 degree temperature (115 degree Fahrenheit)
- the 120 km/hr winds
The fact that these conditions followed strong growth during an unusually wet November-December and a decade of drought made for an ‘explosive tinderbox’.
Answers for Andrew lie in these areas:
1. Dramatically improved fire detection and first attack capabilities, with many more aircraft already in the air over high risk areas on high risk days and highly trained first attack crews in helicopters distributed around the state (although no first attack would have succeeded on saturday 7 February).
2. Dramatically ramped up efforts to identify arsonists (psychological profiling of fire volunteers etc) penalties for arson and monitoring of known firebugs (including GPS bracelets) with huge increases in the size of police arson aquads (at the expense of anti-terror squads) and stronger penalties for arson.
3. Mandatory fire survival bunkers for houses/communities in fire prone areas – easily integrated with water tanks etc in rural residential areas – and changes to building codes to mandate fire-sensitive design for measures such as window shutters, leafless guttering systems, under-floor venting, gas bottle storage etc.
4. Much better and manadatory training in fire preparedness for everyone on high risk areas.
The ‘leave early or stay, prepare and fight’ policy is the right policy.BUT the bar has been lifted for both options. Leave early means before the high risk day…Stay and fight means being trained, equipped and ready with a Plan B (the survival bunker) for those rare conditions >40C and >100km/hr winds…
Personal fire shelters (clipped to belts or back-packs) as worn by US firefighters (they look a bit like a single person tent or swag made of aluminium foil that ‘pop open’ like a beach shelter) could also be investigated for both residents and firefighters.”
Concluding…
“We have had our bushfire, literally and figuratively. The old structures have been flattened. Let’s not put them back as they were. Let’s take the opportunit to redesign, to re-wire, to replumb and to replenish our landscapes, our economies, our basic systems fotr food production, energy, transport, water and housing, to fit new climatic. ecological and economic circumstances.”
Andrew’s full article is well worth the read at http://www.triplehelix.com.au/documents/ThoughtsontheVictorianBushfires_000.pdf
4 Comments
Re: personal fire shelters – among the materials distributed for CFA Crew Leader Training is an account of the catastrophic failure of these shelters in a wildfire situation in a US or Canadian fire (immaterial). Of a sizable group
(e.g. a dozen) of very experienced firefighters, all those who chose the personal fire shelters died, those who continued to flee and seek alternative shelter survived. Reasons for the failure in equipment were proposed, but no definitive cause was given. Food for thought. As a volunteer firefighter with fairly wide experience over 17 yrs, I would be reluctant to trust my life to one of these shelters.
Thanks for this input Jack – I did wonder about such a device in extreme conditions such as 7 Feb.
As a firefighter of yesteryear these fires have inspired me to design and develop new techniques (now in process) of firefighting. It seems quite eveident that the fire situation is gradually becoming worse, I relate that fact due to urban development as a single point of many causes when referring to the history of fire events, hence the new required fire fighting techniques.
The incerted article of Andrew Campbell with,,,,,,”Victorian forester with professional training in fire behaviour,,,,,,” is drawing conclusion from past experience and older methods. Applying those methods of yesterday could and will cause the loss of helcopters, their crews, and expensive equipment from effects and items that he is not aware of. Andrew is barking up the wrong tree with regard to the future fires.
Please continue Captain – could you give some links or expand on this comment?