The region’s residents already were suffering through a heat wave — temperatures climbed north of 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Melbourne was scorched by three consecutive days above that threshold in late January before hitting 115 degrees on Feb. 7, the city’s hottest day on record — actually lower than the 118 degrees recorded by Avalon, Victoria, the same day. Winds of more than 60 mph compounded the hazardous conditions. When the blazes began, the gales fanned flames faster than residents or firefighters.
The parched environment and the blazes’ ferocity exceeded everything fire agencies had experienced previously, according to Steve Warrington, a deputy chief officer of the Country Fire Authority (CFA). “We know that a fire will go so fast under certain conditions. Of course, when you’re working in conditions that you haven’t seen before, it’s very hard to predict what that fire’s going to do,” he said.
More than 4,000 firefighters from different agencies were dispatched. Many came from the CFA or the Victorian government’s Department of Sustainability and Environment. In some places, witnesses reported seeing flames leaping more than 300 feet high and melting aluminum. The convection effect from fire plumes generated winds that appeared to unscrew trees from the ground; the bushfires occurred primarily in rural areas and grasslands.
“It was well beyond the norm,” Warrington said. And that experience is being felt worldwide as climate change, population growth and other factors increase the danger from wildfires.
In Australia, news outlets chronicled the catastrophic damage. The Irish Times reported on Feb. 9 that flames scorched more than 1 million acres, and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported the same day that 1,300 homes were lost northeast of Melbourne. According to a Feb. 8 Brisbane Times story, up to 80 percent of Marysville, Victoria, was destroyed by flames. An article in The Australian, also dated Feb. 8, reported that only one building in the entire town was left standing.
Firefighting efforts continued for days as temperatures cooled. Casualty reports varied, but a March 9 press release from the Victoria Police confirmed that 173 lives were lost.
Although some fires began before or after Feb. 7, that date that month saw the most ferocious blazes. Consequently that day is widely called “Black Saturday.”
Photo: Australia’s Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre researchers wanted to learn more about a house that was successfully defended by its owner amidst the firestorm in Strathewen, Victoria. Courtesy of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre.
California’s ‘100-Year Blazes’ Show Australia the Way
Victoria can do nothing but recuperate and prepare for the next big blaze. Californians know this well.More than 340,000 acres in California were burned by fires from Aug. 1 to Sept. 7, 2009. Flames from the Station Fire in unincorporated Los Angeles killed two firefighers and destroyed more than 160 structures in about a week. In another example, then-Lt. Gov. John Garamendi declared a state of emergency in August for the Lockheed Fire — a blaze that prompted the evacuation of approximately 2,400 people in the Santa Cruz Mountains and destroyed nearly 8,000 acres. Those were just two fires among thousands in California in 2009. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 6,000 fires burned from Jan. 1 to Aug. 29. In 2008, 4,500 burned in the same period.
“Before the last five or six years, it was, ‘Well, this is a once-in-a-100-year event,’” said Lou Paulson, a fire captain for the Contra Costa County Fire District and president of the California Professional Firefighters. Previously 15 years or more would pass between notable wildfires. “They’re now coming all the time,” Paulson said.
That means authorities might have to rethink fire mitigation and preparation since these scorchers are becoming more frequent. In Victoria, Australia’s government didn’t waste time getting to work. The 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission was formed on Feb. 16 to investigate the fires’ causes, and to address preparation and response for the next one.
The commission has engaged citizens for their views and is working with researchers, emergency services personnel and other public-sector entities. The commission released an interim report in August. “It was released with the hope that some changes could be made for this fire season,” said Professor John Handmer of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). He’s also the director of the Centre for Risk and Community Safety, which conducts research for the Royal Commission.
The interim report doesn’t address key issues like fuel management or how to remove and relocate dry wood, grass and other natural materials that can strengthen flames. However, the document includes recommendations for improving emergency notification for the 2009-2010 bushfire season. The final version of the report is due July 2010.
The Victoria fires sprang up in several rural locations. Victoria’s rural population comprised more than 1 million people in 2007. Although Victoria has more than 5 million residents, most live in the capital city of Melbourne, which was largely unaffected by the catastrophe.
Warrington said ground forces were so blindsided by the fires that they couldn’t get a handle on them quickly, much less make speedy assessments for the public.
“It went faster, longer and harder than we’d predicted,” Warrington said. “When you’ve got a 15-minute window to warn a community that they’re about to be engulfed by fire, it becomes very, very difficult. It’s not just about the window. What do the people do under those circumstances? You can’t evacuate them. You can’t put them on the road. You just hope like heck they bunker down in that environment.”
This difficulty impeded the government’s ability to relay information quickly enough. “It was faster than we were able to know ourselves as a firefighting service,” Warrington said of the fire. “And therefore, if we didn’t know, we couldn’t communicate that to the public, so we were criticized for that.”
The interim report revealed that no emergency warning signal was used to alert the public and that “other avenues for issuing and raising awareness were not encouraged, such as the use of local sirens or the use of commercial radio and television.”
But in California, many of those communications lessons already have been learned. The Los Angeles Fire Department has received attention for using Twitter for crisis communication in real time. Los Angeles fire personnel used Twitter to help tackle a fire in Griffith Park in May 2007.
Brian Humphrey, a public service officer for the department, read tweets about the fire sent by citizens, some of whom were on the opposite side of the blaze from the firefighters. They tweeted about wind conditions and fire behavior, so Humphrey tweeted back asking them to call him. They did and told him information about the fires that he then passed along to firefighters, which ultimately aided their containment strategy.
Warrington wants to use the Internet’s power similarly in Victoria. “We’ll be looking at, obviously, how we can increase the speed and accuracy of our messaging,” he said. Ideas include creating a comprehensive Web site for bushfire information. The interim report disclosed that existing Web sites and phone lines had incomplete or outdated information when the Victoria fires hit.
He also wants to use Twitter for real-time information exchange. “How can we use that to try to find out where the fire is? How quickly it’s going? What’s going on? We’ll look at every possible means to try to inform the public,” he said.
Warrington mentioned other strategies, including sending automated messages to phones with fire-related information. He also spoke of unique protection plans and approaches for each town that’s at risk for fire damage and death. The Royal Commission’s interim report recommended that the country be more open to using national warnings and notifications during major fires.
Climate Change Making a Deadlier Planet
The emergence of larger, more frequent fires hasn’t gone unnoticed by those who wonder what role climate change plays on a hotter, deadlier planet.“If we phrase the question, ‘Did climate change cause the fires?’ I think we have to say, ‘No, almost certainly not.’ But if we say, ‘Did climate change contribute to the fires?’ Then I think we can say that it quite likely did,” RMIT University’s Handmer said.
The concern is that hotter temperatures exacerbate fire conditions. Many causes of the Victoria fires were attributed to lightning, arson or other physical actions. Conditions at the time were hot and dry, Warrington said.
“We had a number of fatalities just because of the heat wave,” she said. “The trains stopped running. The power went out because of the heat wave. The whole state was tinder dry.”
Australia has been dealing with serious drought. According to the report Climate Change in Australia, rainfall in southern Australia has declined over a 30-year period. The report also indicated that the country’s frequency of hot days and nights has increased.
“We’re in winter and I look out the window — it’s a lovely sunny day. It’s warm,” Warrington said. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, and we still haven’t gotten any bloody rain.”
Between the drought, rising temperatures and dry air, Australia’s climate was conducive for fire.
Photo: One month after the fires, Marysville, Victoria, was still closed to public access. All of Main Street was destroyed, except two buildings, a motel and a bakery. Courtesy of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre.
Does ‘Stay and Defend’ Deliver False Security?
When flames are approaching, people need to act quickly. Victorians have a long-standing fire strategy in place called “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early,” also known as “stay or go” for brevity’s sake.The approach, which also is applied in other Australian states, calls on individuals to prepare for fires beforehand and defend their homes from flames if possible. If not, they should leave long before the fire arrives. It’s up to residents to decide what’s best based on the information available.
But the Victoria fires besieged communities so quickly that people had less time — sometimes no time — to act. Normally the Australian Bureau of Meteorology will broadcast a fire conditions bulletin a few days in advance to warn the public, which Warrington said happened before Feb. 7. But even so, people were stunned.
“You’re living in the bush. You’ve got your curtains down. You’ve got the air conditioning going. You’re probably watching football on the [television],” Warrington said. “The first thing you hear about as the thing flashes across the screen is, ‘There’s a fire in your community.’ You’ll open the window and the fire is literally at your back door.”
The “stay or go” policy has drawn criticism. Harold Schaitberger wrote in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 23 that “stay and defend is clearly a half-baked idea” because common citizens aren’t firefighters. His article responded to news that California fire chiefs were considering the tactic for the state. On Aug. 20 the San Jose Mercury News reported that the California Professional Firefighters dubbed the approach “stay and die.”
The Royal Commission’s interim report called for a re-examination of the policy’s messaging, and said citizens should more fully understand the risks of remaining at home.
The policy may not be as simple as its detractors suggest. For starters, “prepare, stay and defend or leave early” is often shortened to “stay and defend,” “stay or go” or something similar. The word “prepare” is missing, so some feel its meaning has been compromised.
“The emphasis on preparation hasn’t gone through very strongly because there’s no point staying and defending if you haven’t done your preparation — and that’s not preparation on the day [of a fire]. That’s well and truly beforehand,” said Gary Morgan, CEO of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, which is assisting the Royal Commission’s research.
The key message is that residents in a bushfire-prone region should leave ahead of time, Warrington said. They shouldn’t wait to leave until they see the fire. “Only stay if you’ve prepared your home and if you’re physically capable of doing it. If you’re in a bloody wheelchair or you’re unstable, you quite clearly can’t stay,” he said.
But do even the able-bodied have that much nerve?
“‘Leave early and stay and defend’ potentially give folks a false sense of confidence that they’re going to be able to deal with things,” Paulson said. “We’ve had people in the past who’ve said, ‘I’m going to stay in my house.’ And then at the last minute, when they see the fire coming they want to leave.”
For years, the stay-or-go policy was in place for “regular” fires. The Black Saturday flames were unheard of for civilians, let alone the professionals. If firefighters have trouble managing, it’s unclear what the public can really do.
“What do you do about the fire that happens at 1:00 in the afternoon on Thursday when people are at work? How do you deal with people who are entrenched and want to go back and protect their homes? ” Paulson asked.
In the July 11 article Let’s Not Throw Good Policy into the Fire, CFA Fire Captain John Schauble wrote that the stay-and-defend policy is rooted in practices of rural people who’ve dealt with fires for generations and had to fight fires to protect their property and livestock. In the past, staying at home in isolated areas was the main option for those who lived too far from firefighters. They stayed and defended because that was their only option.
Schauble supported the policy, but pondered how well it would apply in urban settings.
“I think that fire is just too variable to be able to have any policy that is going to work all the time,” said U.S. Forest Service researcher Sarah McCaffrey.
She accepts Victoria’s policy, but said no approach should be a one-size-fits-all solution. The Victoria infernos were monsters. “It was a very fast-moving fire. I certainly heard interviews with people who couldn’t leave, but they knew how to stay. They wanted to leave but they knew what to do, and so they actually managed to stay and survive,” she said.
The Royal Commission’s interim report said there should be more options than staying or going, and that “a person’s preferred option may not be possible and sometimes fails.”
“The more options you have, the better,” McCaffrey said. “Either ‘stay and defend is the solution everywhere’ or ‘fast evacuation is the solution everywhere’ is problematic to me.”
As Australia continues its debate regarding the merits and application of stay or go, emergency managers around the world will be watching. Circumstances may change by July 2010, when the Royal Commission’s final report is scheduled for release. But for now, the Victorian government is standing by its policy while admitting that bushfires, like stay-or-go tactics, can be more complicated than they first appear.
Prevention Must Become Bigger Part of Equation
Back in California, Ventura County fire professionals encourage residents to evacuate early if they know a fire is coming. But since not all Californians comply, the county educates them about how to prepare their homes if they choose to stay before help arrives. The plan is called “Ready, Set, Go!”Sound familiar?
Ventura’s approach certainly sounds a lot like Victoria’s. In fact, U.S. fire officials were considering the Australian approach in early 2009. Advocates felt that the public should know what to do in case firefighters couldn’t reach them in time.
County Fire Chief Bob Roper told the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 13, “We don’t have enough resources to put an engine at every house in harm’s way. We figure, if people are going to stay, maybe they can become part of the solution.”
Roper and likeminded professionals in Southern California were concerned about leaner budgets that will impede their ability to finance firefighting. And they could become more overstretched as more people move into denser, fire-prone communities.
Firefighters from seven Southern California districts met in fall 2008 to discuss adopting a preparedness approach similar to Australia’s. The preliminary discussions preceded the Victoria fire and the ensuing re-examination of Australia’s fire tactics. Some fire districts, like Ventura County, decided to move forward, as Ready, Set, Go! demonstrates.
If money and resources become tighter as fires become more frequent and dangerous, perhaps citizens and firefighters need a more cooperative approach. Paulson thinks that prevention and better warnings will become more prominent in time. “We’ve been more focused on the response portion of it, but I really think the prevention portion is going to become a bigger key,” he said.
That would mean focusing more on the reduction and removal of dry, combustible materials near properties, known as fuel or vegetation management. Planners might also push for building structures with less combustible material or not building in certain areas.
“I think, from an urban-planning perspective, the urban sprawl of a lot of cities — instead of redeveloping a section, they will just expand their borders and sprawl out to the interface,” Paulson said. “What they should be doing is urban renewal and infill.”
He also questioned why houses are being built in fire-prone areas.
As super fires come and go, communities will be asking these kinds of questions for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, citizens and firefighters will have no choice but to get ready for the heat. Infernos wait for no one — even people who are ready for them.
