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bushfires

Stand with bushfire survivors for climate action

Bushfires devastated huge areas of mountain country last summer – across the eastern Alps in Victoria and the northern Snowy Mountains in NSW. These fires triggered three government inquiries – all of which identified climate change as being a key factor in the scale of the fires.

Now the Bushfire Royal Commission is due to release its final report. A key question will be whether the Commission recommends that Australia act decisively to reduce it’s contribution to global heating. Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action (BSCA)  is asking you to stand with us on climate change to highlight the need for the federal government to act.

Continue reading “Stand with bushfire survivors for climate action” →
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Fires hitting mountain environments around the world

Last summer, large sections of the mountains of New South Wales, Victoria and ACT were hammered by bushfire. The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action noted that: ‘Australia’s Black Summer fires over 2019 and 2020 were unprecedented in scale and levels of destruction’. 

The same terrible fires have been burning environments across the northern hemisphere through their summer. For instance, Colorado has seen its largest ever fires. Fires have burnt on Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s tallest mountain, and in the north east of the USA, a region that rarely burns. One fire chief in Maine said “this was a whole new kind of fire, this is the stuff you see out west.”

And the same forces are at play everywhere: climate change is making fire seasons more intense. The world has warmed as a result of human activity and now all fire events occur in a warmer environment. Thankfully this awareness is now becoming part of the mainstream debate.

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Living with the Fear

Last summer’s fires burnt through communities right along the east coast of Australia and across large sections of the High Country. The sheer scale and ferocity of the firestorms made many individual fires unfightable. Many covered long distances in short periods of time, racing across the country. In some instances, like at Mallacoota in Victoria’s far east, they literally pushed communities to the beaches and into the water.

The fact is that these are the fires of the ‘present future’ – the climate change fuelled era that we are already passing into. This means ever worse fire seasons which, in turns means greater impacts on the people, businesses and communities that live or rely on increasingly fire prone landscapes. As noted by fire historian Stephen J Pyne, we now live in the ‘pyrocene’ – the age dominated by fire.

As was shown by last summer, the economic costs of fire seasons can be devastating. But there is something else going on that is obvious – on a personal and emotional, even spiritual, level. Many people are struggling with post traumatic shock, and many now hold a deep unease about the places they call home. Many people now openly express fear of the bush, and the fires that will come, summer after summer.

Continue reading “Living with the Fear” →
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ANU launches centre for early fire detection & suppression

Last summer, 1,507,895 ha of Victoria was burnt, much of it in the remote mountains of the Alps and East Gippsland. Almost every significant fire in Victoria during the 2019–20 season was as a result of lightning strike. 

Many of these started after storms moved across East Gippsland and the Alps on November 21 and December 31. Forest Fire Management crews swung into action and many of the fires were quickly put out. Aerial bombing dealt with others. In the 2019/20 fire season, state government FFMV crews suppressed 89% of all new ignitions with aggressive ‘first attack’ techniques. But there were simply too many lightning strikes, and some grew into massive blazes, including the fires that went on to devastate the forests and landscapes of East Gippsland in coming weeks.

It is clear that we need additional air capacity to get on top of these small fires before they become blazes. We also need more career remote area firefighters. Victoria should also follow the lead of NSW and TAS and establish a volunteer remote area firefighting force. In recent years, the NSW teams have able to keep 90% of the fires they attended contained to less than 10 hectares in size.

But fire seasons will continue to get longer and more intense because of climate change. We need all the help we can get to stop these lightning caused fires before they turn into blazes. This new development could deliver some useful help:

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Tasmanian volunteer remote area firefighting teams established

Over the summer of 2018/19, huge fires burnt across Tasmania. An independent review of Tasmania’s management of the summer bushfires was initiated. It makes a series of recommendations for the fire services and government, including a proposal to re-establish a volunteer remote area firefighter group. The report was produced by the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC).

Recommendation 2 of the report says:

The Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) should pursue the creation of a cadre of volunteer remote area firefighters. In doing so the TFS should not consider itself limited to upskilling of current volunteer brigade members, but should carry out a cost benefit analysis of creating one or more remote area firefighting units based in urban areas, in order to tap into the potential of those members of the urban-based Tasmanian community who may have advanced knowledge and skills relating to navigation and survival in wilderness areas.

That group has now been established and is being trained.

Continue reading “Tasmanian volunteer remote area firefighting teams established” →
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The independent review of the 2019/20 fires

Inquiry into the 2019–20 Victorian fire season 

After the 2019–20 Victorian fire season, the Inspector-General for Emergency Management was charged with ‘investigating Victoria’s preparedness for the fire season, response to fires in large parts of Victoria’s North East, Gippsland, and Alpine regions, and will review relief and recovery efforts’.

On 31 July 2020, Inspector-General Tony Pearce delivered his report to government on Phase 1 of the independent Inquiry. It covered ‘Community and sector preparedness for and response to the 2019–20 fire season’.  The report made a series of Observations and recommendations.  It has now been made public. The government now needs to decide how to respond to the report and the recommendations.

The take home message from the report is:

‘Measured in terms of their geographic extent, the tragic loss of life, the damage to property and infrastructure, the devastation to flora and fauna, and their overall social and political impacts, the 2019– 20 fires mark a key turning point in Australia’s relationship with fire and the environment’. 

Continue reading “The independent review of the 2019/20 fires” →
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Joining the dots on climate change and fire

Last summer, the Murdoch press played down the influence of climate change on the terrible fire season we experienced across much of the continent. Instead, they promoted the ‘arsonists are to blame’ line, which was then amplified across social media by climate deniers around the world, including one of Donald Trump’s sons.

While the hand of global warming was clear in that fire season, and this has been accepted in the various investigations carried out into the fires, conservative media and right wing deniers continue to peddle the falsehood that arsonists are to blame for bad fire seasons. The NSW Bushfire Inquiry debunked arson as a major cause in the fires that devastated that state. (Another favourite line run by conservatives is that a lack of hazard reduction burning also made fires worse).

A study on the fires after the 2019/20 fires by the World Weather Attribution consortium showed that although “natural variation was very important and will continue to be important in fueling these large fire seasons”, climate change is making them “substantially more probable.” 

Now, with much of the west of the North American continent on fire, the same debate is being played out over there.

Continue reading “Joining the dots on climate change and fire” →
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Fire season outlook good news for the mountains

As landscapes slowly recover after last summer’s terrible fires, which burnt huge sections of the High Country in Victoria, NSW and the ACT, the seasonal fire forecast for spring is much better than this time last year.

The Australian Seasonal Bushfire Outlook: September – November 2020, produced by the Bushfire and Natural Hazard Cooperative Research Centre, paints a welcome picture of a mild season in the South East and lutruwita/ Tasmania. The Outlook is produced quarterly in order to help fire authorities to make strategic decisions for the coming season, such as resource planning and prescribed fire management.

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Young and fit? Living in Melbourne and love the mountains? This one is for you

Over the past 15 years I have watched our mountain forests – alpine ash and snow gum – burn and burn. More than 90% of the Victorian distribution of snow gums has burned at least once since 2003. Climate change is creating longer and more intense fire seasons and this is changing our mountains. The world has warmed as a result of human activity and now all fire events occur in a warmer environment.

Last summer’s fires showed that we simply don’t have enough resources to fight these ‘fires of the future’.

Maybe this is where you come in.

Continue reading “Young and fit? Living in Melbourne and love the mountains? This one is for you” →

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Increased air capacity needed to fight the fires of the future

Over June and July 2020, Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA) hosted Australia’s first virtual bushfire and climate change summit to coordinate a national response to the Australian climate and bushfire crises. The 2020 National Bushfire and Climate Summit brought together hundreds of participants from across the country, and the world, to share their experiences, and to formulate recommendations to address the worsening risk of devastating bushfires fueled by climate change. The Australian Bushfire and Climate Plan is the culmination of that effort.

The Plan provides a broad plan and practical ideas for governments, fire and land management agencies and communities to help us mitigate and adapt to worsening fire conditions. The plan’s 165 recommendations include many measures that can be implemented right now, to ensure communities are better protected. There are a range of proposals specifically around aerial support for fighting wild fire.

Continue reading “Increased air capacity needed to fight the fires of the future” →

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Parliamentary Inquiry into tackling the extinction crisis in Victoria

We rely on healthy ecosystems for our survival. Victoria is the most cleared state in the country and natural ecosystems have faced centuries of land clearing, logging, invasion of invasive species and other threatening processes. The mountains that we love are already under threat from climate change: as fire seasons become longer and more intense, and as winter snowpack declines.

Now the Victorian parliament has announced an Inquiry into Ecosystem Decline. This is an important opportunity to show that the community wants to see ecosystems restored and species protected from extinction.

Please read on for ideas on how to write a submission to the Inquiry.

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How do we build our air capacity to fight wildfire?

Australia just experienced its hottest, driest year on record, with fires starting in the winter months and burning in some places until early March. Thousands of volunteer and career firefighters battled these blazes. As is normal practise, states helped each other out by sharing teams and resources.

As fire seasons get longer because of climate change, the prospect of fighting local fires and also having to support other states for larger sections of the year is daunting. It is also a problem for those who have to ensure we have adequate air support to be able to fight fires. Because many of the firefighting aircraft are leased, and shared around the world, as fire seasons get longer, there will be ever more demand, and greater cost, to secure the fleet we need.

Continue reading “How do we build our air capacity to fight wildfire?” →

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