Wildfire in Australia — dealing with the new normal

Or bushfire if you prefer.

On Friday, 7 December 2018, I posted "Wildfire management — what's normal today?”

A couple of extracts from that posting:

"Wildfire management — what's normal today?” To me, a major cause of property loss and associated loss of life in the California fires is a general lack of understanding of how fire crosses the land and mandatory evacuation orders. From what I've seen from the media and other videos I consider that the agencies are too response focused and need to involve the general public in active defence of their homes where the threat is ember or firebrand attack. What then are the lessons to be learned?

In recent times I’ve become aware of people who refer to the new normal or new abnormal and of course they’re referring to their perceptions climate change or global warming on wildfire. But we should consider the new normal or new abnormal is more than just climate change.

And here we go again, wildfires destroying homes and business and threatening lives and more property in New South Wales and Queensland.

Plate 1 Wolgan Road, Lidsdale, NSW, 6 September 2019

Photo: Chris Lithgow

Chris Lithgow has kindly allowed me to use his video of the fire in Lidsdale that shows an example of wildfire crossing land.

No doubt the social, economic and environmental losses accruing from these fires and fires yet to occur before the wildfire season or summer is over will be enormous and we've not yet seen the contribution Victoria is likely to add to the losses.

I continue to see governments and others claiming that climate change i.e. global warming is responsible for these fires, but not helping the broader community better prepare to withstand wildfire and its loss potential. By this I mean the forcing or encouraging people to leave their homes to agency firefighters and run the risk that they won't be defended due to lack of firefighters available for this task. I wonder how many of the homes lost will have succumbed to ember attack.

How then to deal with the "new normal"?

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