General Fire Management Issues
Currently, there are six postings in this section:
1. The Eastern States Fires (up to 2008)
2. Poor Land Use Decisions Contribute to Failed Bush Fire Management
3. Who are the Beneficiaries of Large High Intensity Bush Fires?
4. Bush Fire Smoke
5. BFF Review of the “Inquiry into Fire and Emergency Services Legislation in WA” 2006
6. Bush Fires and Your Wine
1. The Eastern States Fires (up to 2008)
In recent years, i.e., 1990 to the present, there has been a succession of large forest fires in NSW, ACT and Victoria, and to a lesser extent, in Tasmania and South Australia. Why is this so? The glib answer put forward by green activists and some academics is that it is due to global warming and we had better get used to it. These people usually display a remarkable lack of concern at the disastrous effect that large, high intensity forest fires have on all aspects of biodiversity.
The BFF begs to differ. We do not believe that global warming is a factor in this situation at all. We believe it is simply a matter of mismanagement of forest land on a large scale, combined with a long period of poor land use decisions. The result has been a marked increase in the flammability of our forests and woodlands. It is true that the Eastern States have experienced a serious drought in recent years, and drought does increase fuel flammability, but droughts have always been a feature of the Australian environment.
Those who ascribe the increase in damaging forest fires to global warming simply don’t know what they are talking about.
Let’s look at each of these factors, mismanagement of forests and poor land use decisions, in turn, although they are interdependent to some extent.
To begin with, it is necessary to understand some basics of forest fire management. The fires that cause damage to forest ecosystems and pose great difficulty in control are large high intensity fires. The intensity of a fire is influenced by a number of factors, such as fuel dryness, temperature and wind strength, but the most important is fuel quantity. This is also the only factor we can control.
Fuel quantity is also affected to some extent by the nature of the fuel. If the forest floor is covered with short vegetation the lower flame height means that a fire is less likely to move into the crowns of the trees, thus causing a quantum leap in the damage to the forest and in the difficulty of control. A layer of shrubby vegetation, however, provides a copious quantity of “hung-up” fuel that dries out faster and more completely than ground fuel and greatly facilitates the development of a crown fire.
How Australian Forests Are Being Mismanaged
Large areas of forest land in the Eastern States are now being managed by national park agencies. These agencies tend to be philosophically opposed to active management of forests, and are usually opposed to active management of forest fuels by the use of prescribed fire. Their basic approach to forest management is to lock up the forest and throw away the key. Ask any East Coast 4WD club!
Many of our national park managers also promote a mistaken adherence to the Eurocentric notion that fire in forests is an evil thing. Consequently, forest fuels have been building up for many years. When a fire does come along, as inevitably it does, it is almost impossible to control, even in comparatively mild weather conditions. Fires rage out of control for days, even weeks, as in Victoria in the summer of 2007. The firefighters work like slaves, putting their lives on the line time and time again. Smooth-talking State Premiers waltz in (during a lull in the fire, of course), waffle on about what a great job the firefighters are doing, hand out a few more million dollars (of taxpayers’ money) and then go away and forget about it.
Sound familiar? It should, if you have been watching your TV lately. And it doesn’t need to happen. We can start managing our forests and woodlands better, so that we don’t have such large and damaging fires. How? Simply by actively managing them to keep fuel quantities down to levels where fire intensity is lower and fire suppression is easier (and a whole lot safer). Not only will the forests be less damaged by wildfire, but the cost of active management to reduce fuel levels will cost the community a lot less than the current reliance on fire suppression.
Some academics will say that such a policy is unproven and we don’t know the impacts of regular mild fires. However, we know that the Aboriginal people were burning the forests regularly and mildly for many thousands of years before Europeans arrived and tried to impose an Un-Australian approach on our native bush. The bush we see now is the product of that fire regime and is well adapted to it.
Another aspect of mismanagement of forests is closure of, or failure to maintain, access tracks that give vital access for firefighters, enabling them to attack fires before they become too large. A fundamental tenet of fire control is to detect it quickly, get to it quickly and knock it down while it’s still small. The recent 4 Corners program that examined the bushfire situation at the time of the disastrous Canberra fire of 2003 clearly demonstrated that, had that basic tenet been followed, the Canberra disaster would not have occurred.
A little-known side effect of poor access is the need to “backburn” large areas of forest in order to try to contain a bushfire. Often, the result is a very large increase in the total area burnt under severe weather conditions when the damage to the forest is very great indeed. Further, as any firefighter will attest, a “backburn” is always a gamble, and many come unstuck and break away to form a new fire front.
A spin-off of the passive approach to forest management is the reliance on suppression efforts to contain fires. Of course, it makes for grand political posturing for a State Premier to assure the community that he will spend a fortune on hiring ever more water bombers and gigantic helitacs. It makes for good TV, too, especially those shots of a bomber dropping water to save a house somewhere. But have you ever noticed that when that happens, the fire is running quite quietly there, often just trickling back against the wind? That didn’t need bomber or a chopper to save the house. A small crew of firefighters could have done it just as well, and much more cheaply.
The fact is, the approach of putting all the eggs in the suppression basket has failed everywhere it has been used. In a bad fire situation, no amount of expensive equipment will achieve control. In the USA, where they have access to much greater numbers of water bombers, it is acknowledged that this approach is a failure. Yet we, and they, persist in using it because the public has been convinced that this is the only thing that can be done.
The Way Ahead
But there is a proven successful alternative. The only realistic way to avoid large, high intensity bush fires is to keep forest fuel levels down to low levels by prescribed burning under mild weather conditions, so that when fires do occur, they are of lower intensity and are much easier, and very much cheaper and safer, to control. This requires active management of forest fuels on a broad scale, but it will not happen unless there is a dramatic change in forest management policies by managing administrations.
Of course, active management of forest fuels by fuel reduction burning is not something that can be embarked upon overnight. It requires careful research into fire behaviour in a variety of fuel and vegetation types, and the sad fact is that this research has not been carried out in a systematic way in the Eastern States. The only exception is a small program that has been carried on by CSIRO in Canberra. Some of their results could be put into practice now but much more research needs to be done to encompass the range of forest and fuel types in the Eastern States.
What is needed here is a paradigm shift away from the protectionist mentality that pervades many of the current forest management agencies in the Eastern States. We need a return to the sort of fire management regime used by aboriginal people in ages past. The beautiful forests and landscapes that the first European settlers found were the product of frequent mild burning, not of massive high intensity fires which blackened the landscape over millions of hectares, which is what the current approach is doing.
Do you understand all of the technical terms used in this article? If not, go to the BFF Glossary of Bush Fire Terms, on this website.
2. Poor Land Use Decisions Contribute to Failed Bush Fire Management
Why is it that TV reports show so many instances of houses under threat from bush fires? Although the natural bias of the media to show human suffering is no doubt a factor, there is also no doubt that more people really are in harm’s way from fire. The reason is the great expansion of habitation into urban fringe areas. In the last 30 years considerable numbers of people have moved from traditional suburbia into “special rural” subdivisions (0.4 to 5 ha blocks) to live “among the gum trees”.
Local government has usually accepted this change in land use as it has increased their rate base, and in rural districts, helped to arrest the long term decline in rural population. However, many of these rural or semi rural subdivisions are poorly designed, with little or no consideration given to fire management issues. For example, housing blocks may extend into areas of coastal heath that are well known to be highly inflammable and the source of fast-moving fires driven by strong sea breezes. In other places we see houses constructed on steep rocky areas, or overhung by eucalypt trees. These are houses that are “built to burn”.
There are two difficulties with this “tree change” movement. Firstly, it has often displaced from that part of the landscape genuine farmers who were actively managing the land, including control of weeds, feral animals and fire. Secondly, they have been replaced by people with an urban background and no appreciation at all for the real requirements of land management. Many of these people have a romantic view of life in the bush, and desire to be surrounded by trees and greenery. They almost invariably view fire as something to be excluded from the environment. Not only is it destructive, they believe, of nature and wildlife, but it produces that nasty stuff, smoke.
While this is obviously not true of all new settlers, many of these newcomers don’t really live in the country, they just sleep in it and commute off to work in the city each day, or visit their rural retreat on weekends. They often do not join in the volunteer bush fire brigades and seem to expect the volunteers to do all the dirty work of controlling fire in the district. Instances have been reported to us of the city slickers lolling on their verandah, tinny in hand, just watching the brigade controlling a fire on their own land.
It’s time to call a halt to these irresponsible land use decisions which create a serious hazard or threat to people’s lives. At the very least, there should be built into every new subdivision adequate provision for proper fire management. This has to include effective minimisation of fire hazards and protection of life and property.
People who choose to live in the Australian bush must face up to the fact that bush fires are a natural factor of our environment. To survive and protect their assets they must become directly involved in fire management, including fuel reduction activities and support for their local bush fire brigade.
3. Who are the beneficiaries of large high intensity bushfires?
It is only February, but 2006/7 is already shaping as one of Australia’s worst bushfire seasons. The extraordinary fires in Victoria have captured the headlines, but there have also been big, intense and damaging bushfires in Tasmania, West Australia, New South Wales and Queensland. These succeed the shocking fires in eastern and south-western Australia every summer over the last 5 years.
There are many interesting issues relating to this new prevalence of big, nasty bushfires. Bushfire management in Australia reached its peak between about 1975-1990. But despite all the technical innovations since then, the huge expenditure on aerial water bombers and the vast armies of fire fighters with their wondrous equipment, bushfire management in Australia has regressed to the situation that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, whenever bad fire weather occurs, unstoppable fires ravage the bush.
It is also curious how the recent disasters have come to be accompanied by a spirit of defeatism amongst our leaders. Bushfires, it seems, are an Act of God, a natural phenomenon which cannot be prevented. Lie back and think of England!
This line of thinking is not just an example of gutless leadership, it is logically flawed and flies in the face of decades of research into bushfire science and centuries of human experience. What is going on?
I was once advised by a grizzled public servant of the old school “if you want to understand any puzzling social or political issue, look for the beneficiaries.” Who on earth might benefit from the regular occurrence of huge, hot bushfires?
While the correct answer is “no-one” it is not hard to find people who use the big hot fire to their political or financial advantage. For example I have heard environmentalists portraying the recent fires in Victoria and WA as a direct consequence of global warming. They quite unambiguously assert that unless we unquestioningly adopt their political agenda on climate change, there will be more horrible bushfires. This can easily be shown to be crooked thinking, but it is an effective line because of the current hysteria about global warming.
The media can be seen as a beneficiary of big nasty bushfires as these provide highly newsworthy, truly front page or top-of-the-bulletin stuff. Journalists are served up with wonderful hero stories, disaster stories and controversy stories on a plate. Bushfires are tremendous drama, complete with cataclysmic vision of houses and forests going up in flames, farmers shooting burnt sheep, sad people raking through the remnants of their houses picking up twisted trinkets, hillsides of blackened forest. To the media (and of course to their clients the viewers and readers), big hot fires arouse intense interest and excitement; few things outside war provide more opportunities to exploit the gamut of human emotions or to experience them vicariously.
Then there are the Fire Chiefs, resplendent in their American World War 2 General’s uniform. “Bushfire management” these days has largely morphed into “bushfire fighting”, a thrilling battle to be fought by Emergency Services staff who have been waiting in the wings for this very moment. I am not criticising our top Firemen. They are doing the job they are appointed to do and all would be equally dismayed by the human misery and environmental damage caused by intense bushfires. Nevertheless, when the Big Fire declares war, their 15 minutes of fame arrives. The regiments of firefighters are amassed and despatched; the squadrons of bombers and helicopters are unleashed; the support and technical units are rushed to the battle. Fire Chiefs are nightly seen on the news giving high profile briefings to politicians and the media, planning strategies and dictating the tactics at the front. This is war, and war is hell. But war is also The General’s Big Moment, his hour upon centre stage.
I also wonder about the money, and who gets it. Bushfire fighting in Australia has become horrendously expensive. In particular, unbelievable sums are spent hiring aerial equipment and firefighters from overseas. I am convinced that if the money spent hiring overseas equipment and importing (and paying) inexperienced overseas firefighters was channelled instead into re-creating the permanent force of firefighters who once occupied the nation’s forest districts, we would be financially better off and have a superior fire management system.
Bushfire research is another interesting and complex issue. There is a considerable band of academics in Australian universities who are associated with and at least partly funded by the Bushfire CRC. None of these people like to see people and houses being burnt, but they all know that every big, nasty fire helps to underpin the security of their research grants, guarantee future funding and ensure desirable academic side-effects such as overseas conferences, publishable papers, and graduate students.
Finally there are those politicians who have learned how to make a name for themselves from a bushfire. They do this by the generous authorisation of huge sums of money for suppression at the very height of the fire, turning up at the control point and shaking the hands of smoke-grimed firefighters, commiserating with people who have lost everything, and looking grave but intelligent in a media briefing. After the fire they disperse largess from the government coffers to compensate those of their constituents who have been burnt-out, and promise more money for fire fighting equipment and research.
I am by no means saying that these “beneficiaries” are the cause of the disastrous decline in the standard of bushfire management in Australia over the last 15 years. We are all to blame for the inept political leadership and government dysfunction which are at the root of the problem.
What really worries me is that while God and Global Warming are cast as the villains, nothing will change. It just means that sensible investment in programs of bushfire prevention and preparedness, damage mitigation and community education continue to be set aside in favour of a self-fulfilling prophecy of apocalypse. Those who support (for example) an effective level of prescribed burning in the national parks, can safely be ignored. God and Western Civilisation are ordaining killer bushfires and we can do nothing about it! The fire and brimstone prophets of the Old Testament are back on the job
Roger Underwood
February 10th, 2007
Email: yorkgum@westnet.com.au
4. BUSH FIRE SMOKE
The smoke that arises from bushfires, whether it comes from prescribed burns or from wildfires, is a controversial subject in Western Australia. Every time the metropolitan area is affected by smoke drift from a prescribed burn in nearby forests there is an outcry in the media. Paradoxically, there is little comment on smoke from a wildfire, even though it is much thicker and often long-lasting: it seems to be accepted that this will happen.
To some, smoke is simply a matter of air pollution, and therefore should be stopped. To others, it is an inconvenience, especially if they suffer from respiratory disease. In the latter case it is possible that smoke particulates can cause increased difficulty with breathing. However, there are well-known steps sufferers can take to alleviate the breathing difficulty.
Dens smoke does reduce visibility. There have been many instances of bush fire smoke causing temporary problems at airports.
However, bush fire smoke in the Australian environment is not air pollution. Smoke is a natural, and necessary, part of our environment. Native vegetation has evolved in the presence of fire and the landscapes we see today have been moulded by fire. Some plants actually depend on periodic fire for reproduction, and almost all species have some sort of adaptation that enables them to tolerate our fire-friendly climate. Many native plants are also fire-friendly and contain essential oils that are highly inflammable. This feature increases the intensity of a fire and makes forest fires in native vegetation Australia faster-spreading than similar fires in other countries.
After they arrived in Australia some 40,000 years ago, the Aboriginal people began to use fire in a systematic way to manage the vegetation and smoke became a more or less constant part of the environment of the continent. Before them, it was lightning that started the fires in a more haphazard way, but frequently all the same. All the reports of the early European explorers mention the smoke of Aboriginal fires as a feature of the sky in Australia.
It is clear sky that is unnatural in Australia, not smoky skies. Essential land management activities like prescribed burning should not be governed by misguided attitudes toward smoke.
Some people express concern that prescribed burning adds to carbon dioxide emissions and oppose its use for that reason. There are two answers to this mistaken attitude. Firstly, the fires are going to happen anyway. They are absolutely inevitable. The choice is between the lesser emissions from prescribed burning or much higher emissions from the inevitable wildfires. Take your pick!
The second answer is that there are no net emissions from prescribed burning. It is a carbon neutral activity because the understorey vegetation, which constitutes most of the fuel consumed in a prescribed burn, regrows vigorously after a burn and takes back from the atmosphere the carbon previously emitted. This is a natural cycle that has been ticking over for millennia.
5. A Review by the Bush Fire Front of the “Inquiry Into Fire and Emergency Services Legislation” by the COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AND JUSTICE STANDING COMMITTEE of the Legislative Assembly - Report No. 3
The members Committee were:
Mr A.P.O’Gorman, Member for Joondalup, MLA, Mr M.J.Cowper, Member for Murray, MLA, Mr S.R.Hill, MLA, Member for Geraldton, Ms K.Hodson-Thomas, MLA, Member for Carine and Mrs K.Hughes, MLA, Member for Kingsley. The Hon. P.D.Omodei, MLA, Member for Warren-Blackwood, was a coopted member.
With the exception of Mr Omodei, whom we understand made only a minor contribution to the Committee proceedings and report; the Committee appears to contain very little personal experience in rural fire management. The only other source of such experience would have been the support staff but those identified in the report are all from Fire and Emergency Services (FESA) with expertise almost exclusively, in city fires and emergencies.
This commentary is only directed at issues associated with rural fire management.
A basic problem about FESA is that it has a culture based on the fire suppression paradigm associated with urban and industrial incident management. Although it is responsible for administering the Bush Fires Act FESA lacks background, experience and expertise in rural fire management. Remarkably, the report states “FESA is the statutory authority responsible for fire in W.A.” This ignores the role of Local Authorities and the Department of Environment and Conservation but reflects the perspective taken throughout the report and explains the proposal that FESA should remain responsible for emergency functions statewide.
The report makes no reference to providing an overall philosophy on fire management for the State. WA does not have a State Bush Fire Policy. Without this there are no overarching objectives, no clear definition of issues needing to be addressed, nor logical explanations of how the many issues might be resolved. So the review cannot provide a reasoned framework for its recommendations.
The report creates the impression that the Committee has accepted the views of FESA uncritically and gone along with what seems to be a power grab for fire and emergency functions throughout the State. As an example of this, it is proposed to remove the two mile buffer zone bordering forests of the south west. Removal of this zone seems primarily designed to ensure FESA control over all land not directly managed by DEC (Recommendation 48). However, the reason for the existence of this provision is still valid. DEC needs to be able to intervene outside its borders to prevent a fire entering land for which it is responsible.
Although DEC (CALM at the time of the inquiry) made a submission pointing out that it lacks any legislative authority to practise fire management on the lands it manages, the Committee failed to deal with this issue and referred to it as peripheral. Considering the massive areas of W.A. under DEC control and the huge amount of State funds used to provide fire protection and management on them it is hard to understand how a review of the Bush Fires Act would see this matter as peripheral to any changes made to that Act.
In a similar manner, it seems the Committee found no reason to comment on the concept of the Prohibited Burning Season. This is a key issue in the Bush Fires Act and impinges on all Local Government and DEC fire practices.
One of the Committee’s most ill-informed recommendations was that that the Conservation Commission was adequate to oversee DEC fire practises through management plans and audit. This ignores the fact that there is a total absence of experience and expertise in fire management in the Conservation Commission.
The Committee’s report makes no reference to the issue of fuel reduction burning which is the primary means available in rural forested areas to reduce risk and simplify suppression. This aspect of fire management was the main issue raised by the Bush Fire Front in its submission to the Inquiry, but our input was ignored
There are numerous other matters of concern in the report, particularly those that influence Local Government fire protection and management activities, and the status and functioning of volunteer fire brigades. On any issues affecting State fire control outside of city and urban events, the BFF considers that recommendations from this review should not be implemented without much more input from rural land managers with more appropriate experience and expertise.
6. Bushfires and Your Wine
The ABC news carried a report on their website on 22 October 2008 about the detrimental effects of bushfires on the wine industry in Victoria. The extensive wildfires of 2003 up to 2007 were reported to have cost the industry more than $100 million. As an example, smoke from the fires of 2006 and 2007 in the northeastern alpine region apparently caused a pinot noir to become basically undrinkable, the aroma carrying a strong ash, smoked meat, smoked salami, almost ash-tray like characters.
The industry is concerned because (in line with prevailing ABC ideology) “climate change predictions suggest there will be a lot more bushfires in future”.
The BFF agrees there will be more wildfires in future, but the cause is not climate change, but poor forest management. The recent severe wildfires in Victoria have been entirely due to a huge buildup of forest fuels. This has happened because green activist pressure has resulted in a drastic decline in the amount of prescribed burning over the last 30 years. The only way to reduce the incidence and extent of wildfires is to greatly increase the annual area of prescribed burning. Indeed, this was the conclusion of a recent Victorian Parliamentary inquiry. That will also produce some smoke, but the quantity is an order of magnitude less than that emitted by a wildfire.
Smoke from burning bush is an inevitable feature of the environment in Australia. Perhaps the vignerons should have been a bit more interested in the characteristics of that environment before they located their vineyards.
The ABC also noted that the Victorian wine industry is working with the State Government to carefully plan when and where prescribed burning will occur, hoping to lessen the likelihood of vineyards getting smoked. Since it was also clear from the article that there is limited understanding of when and how the smoke actually enters the plants, it seems a bit premature to try to tell forest managers when they can burn.
The BFF suspects this is yet another constraint on forest managers that will result on less prescribed burning and therefore more wildfires.
Addendum February 2009. One wonders what the 2009 bushfires have done to the wine quality.