In this age of helicopters, when is inaccessible really inaccessible anywhere in Australia?

Since the Christmas Day fire that devastated parts of Wye River - Separation Creek, and continues to burn out of control deep in the Otway Ranges, I’ve listened to radio interviews of Emergency Management Commissioner Lapsley and read comments attributed to him that the lightning strike the cause of the fire was “inaccessible” because it was in a “gorge”.

The Macquarie Dictionary Third Edition defines “inaccessible” as not accessible; unapproachable. It goes on to describe “accessible” as 1. easy of access; approachable.  2. attainable.

I’ve thought long and hard about a lightning strike being “inaccessible” in the Otways.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) has a rappel crew in Gippsland that are considered to be remote and arduous area firefighting “hotshots”. Was the rappel crew amongst the options deployed to the lightning strike in its early days? A DSE video on the rappel crew (click here).

The Macquarie Dictionary defines a “gorge” as a “narrow cleft with steep, rocky walls, especially one through which a stream runs”. Does such a gorge exist where the lightning struck that precluded deploying a rappel crew to this particular strike?

If Victoria did not have the crews capable of this type of work, were they available elsewhere in Australia or New Zealand? I suspect they are available in NSW, Tasmania and New Zealand and certainly in British Columbia, Canada, where a crew could have been flown to Victoria virtually overnight for a fraction of the mounting suppression costs. BC Forest Service remote area firefighting capability video (click here).

In 1997 I was a member of an Australian and New Zealand forest fire managers group that went on a USA/Canada Fire Management Study Tour that included attending the 2nd International Wildland Fire Conference held in Vancouver. During the conference we attended Fire Expo 97, where wildfire equipment, services and technology were shown.

At the Expo I was impressed by horse or mule pack loads of remote area firefighting equipment. While not suggesting pack horses or mules for Victoria, such equipment could be lifted in by helicopter.

We also witnessed a Skycrane helitanker hovering while it attacked a fire through a mock up first floor window with a nose mounted water cannon. Do the Skycrane contracts with Australia include the cannons that may have been useful in directly targeting the lightning strike if it was really inaccessible to "boots on the ground"?

During a visit to a wildland fire agency in Canada we were shown examples of equipment it used, such as the portable dam, pumps and hoses.

The following video clip shows the use of a portable dam and hose laid cross country by NSW RFS volunteer firefighters to reach a fire inaccessible to tankers. Was this the problem at the lightning strike above Wye River-Separation Creek, it was inaccessible to tankers, but accessible to physically fit, well trained and properly equipped firefighters on foot? NSW RFS cross country hose lay video (click here).

As the firefight continues it seems we do have DELWP wildland firefighters capable of working in very steep country, as the screen shot from EMV shows. Question is, were those Victorians deployed to the lightning strike in the first few days or was it not until after Christmas Day they brought in their dry firefighting skills?

Having done some wildfire threat assessment work in the Otways, I can empathise a little with the firefighters shown above. At least I've had my feet in "boots on the ground" in similar terrain and vegetation. The following photos are typical of the "wet forest" and damp gullies of the Otway Ranges.

Given the widespread problems the fire has caused, plus the huge compensation and mounting suppression costs, these are serious questions for which only an independent public judicial can find factual answers. The Coroner is well-placed to conduct such an Inquiry unencumbered by political considerations.

Seems that Emergency Management Commissioner Lapsley may have been seriously misled in ultimately supporting the burnout of a larger area to make safe the lightning strike and Premier Andrews owes him and all Victorians an independent judicial inquiry to get to the truth of the catastrophe if we are to avoid another Wye River–Separation Creek.

Time for some long overdue explanations and advice

As I finalise this posting Victoria’s emergency management agencies continue to battle a major fire in the Otway Ranges that devastated the Great Ocean Road (GOR) community of Wye River–Separation Creek on Christmas Day and wildfire all but razed the historic town of Yarloop (click here) in Western Australia.

Before going any further with the GOR fire and issues arising I will add some comments to my 23 December 2014 posting concerning the Bushfire Management Overlay (BMO) (click here).

Changes to the BMO introduced by then Planning Minister Matthew Guy, VC 109 that took effect on 31 July 2014, promoted as intended to make compliance with the BMO red tape easier, actually made it harder or financially prohibitive for some to achieve the required result, particularly where municipal councils or the public land manager — currently DELWP but probably subject to rejigging/renaming yet again in the future — don’t meet their statutory and moral responsibilities for township protection, thus driving the bushfire attack level category to BAL–FZ. I have examples of this, one of which contributed to the horror of the Christmas Day Wye River–Separation Creek fire.

A momentous and dubious change was the Minister’s decision to downgrade the CFA’s role in the BMO from the “determining referral authority” to a “recommending referral authority” in planning schemes for some development, notably erection of a dwelling.

Municipal councils are now responsible for determining the appropriateness of a BMO Bushfire Management Statement.

Where does that leave a council planner required to make the final decision and who has no real understanding of bushfire and is influenced by bushfire mythology?

Why the Minister chose to downgrade the role of the should-be-expert fire authority in the planning process, thereby adding to the difficulties and cost of obtaining a planning permit needs explanation.

“Leave and Live”

In earlier postings, I’ve been explaining actual bushfire behaviour to bring some balance to the one-size-fits-all mass evacuation mantra “Leave and Live” being parroted widely in Victoria. This only serves to frighten many people, particularly city folk, most of whom will then run at the first sign of smoke, regardless of the size and potential of the fire.

Mass evacuation only leads to unnecessarily vulnerable buildings and people fleeing at the last minute and adds questionable increased workload and possible personal health and safety threats to firefighters and other emergency services people, such as police. There’s much to be said for the adage “people save houses and houses save people”.

In a recent ABC News story, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC CEO Dr Richard Thornton (click here)  reminds us that many homes are lost as a result of being unattended when bushfire arrives:

Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC's Richard Thornton suggested following the Ash Wednesday fires the main factor in whether a home was destroyed or not, was the presence of people.

He said while studies showed many people still were not adequately prepared for a bushfire emergency, it appeared as though more people were choosing to leave their homes when a fire struck — rather than stay and defend them.

"In general we are seeing an increase in number of houses lost but that is an inevitable consequence of people leaving early," Dr Thornton said.

"Clearly if you're not there when the fire gets there you're not at risk but it does place the houses at greater risk in that process as well."

Bushfire Building Council Australia

Kate Cotter, founder and CEO of the recently formed non-profit BBCA (click here) is also quoted in the ABC story:

"We know that over 92 per cent of houses are lost through ember attack in a bushfire so the science tells us what action we need to take and that's ember proofing," she said.

"So residents can use cheap commercial fire-stop products to fill in the gaps; fly-screens to protect windows, remove all combustible materials from the house, there's a lot of practical inexpensive ways to prepare property."

"We've got to really flip around our investment strategy in disaster resilience from one of suppression and recovery to prevention," Ms Cotter said.

"Every investment we put into risk mitigation saves the heartache and the property destruction and perhaps lives."

Horses for courses, while questioning the emotiveness of the word evacuation, in the case of Wye River–Separation Creek, I would not dispute that advice to the community based on the inadequacy of hazard reduction within and around perimeters of both settlements at the time of the fire and many people there holiday renters with no real thought for fire or equity in the houses they occupy. We need to think hard about the impact of that conditioning more broadly across the Victorian community, and across Australia, for that matter.

In addressing this extremely complicated issue, there needs to be a broader consideration of the meaning of “primacy of life” that came out of the 2009 Victoria Bushfires Royal Commission.

While being interviewed in the aftermath of the Wye River–Separation Creek Christmas Day fire, I heard Premier Andrews stress that we had no funerals to attend. So far correct, but I wonder about the longer term as emotional and financial difficulties start to bite people who’ve suffered severe loss.

The following photos from the fire in the Cobaw Ranges north of Lancefield late last year are very informative to the “Leave and Live” argument.

The first two are of a dwelling constructed to “alternative solutions” modified Level 3 category of bushfire according to AS 3959—1999 Construction of buildings in bushfire-prone areas component of a Wildfire Management Overlay Fire Protection Statement in September 2006.

With appropriate defensive space the assessment was that the threat to the building would be in the form of substantial ember attack and apart from a possible fleeting touch of burning eucalypt vapour, and I don’t believe that wind at dwelling level would be sufficiently strong for that due to the barrier or "drag" caused by forest trees, convective heat or “hot air”. That dwelling survived unattended and would have been suitable as a shelter if required by well-prepared people who understood the form in which fire would arrive.

The remaining three show the remains of a dwelling well removed from the forest, that given the greenness of its surroundings and it was likely unattended, succumbed to ember attack. The burnt shrubs against the remains of the dwelling were likely incinerated by the building fire. Provide it had been retrofitted to resist ember attack, people well prepared and understanding what they would face should have been able to protect this building.

I will do a further analysis of these two dwellings in a future posting.

For some an unwelcome Christmas present

Victorians, indeed all Australians, are being shortchanged by the current approach to bushfire management evident following the Great Ocean Road fire impacting Wye River-Separation Creek on Christmas Day. Seems I can now add Yarloop in Western Australia, as the all too familiar photo below from yesterday's edition of The Australian reminds me of the main street of Macedon in the aftermath of the 1983 Ash Wednesday Fire, which raises the question, what have we learned since Ash Wednesday? I think we've gone backwards.

Are Victorians being seriously duped by the CFA's "Leave and Live" bushfire survival campaign?

With Victoria now experiencing the summer bushfire season we are again being urged to leave our homes and businesses to the mercy of bushfire through this year's questionable “leave and live” message.

I commenced this blog to primarily to assist my clients and anyone else interested to improve their understanding of bushfire behaviour and related building and planning scheme requirements, particularly the Bushfire Management Overlay (BMO).

However, the broad scale urging of people to leave their homes and businesses unprotected when bushfire may threaten is dangerous policy in that it serves to unnecessarily frighten many people, who with some detailed site-specific coaching and personal capability assessment could stay with their homes to protect them from ember attack — it's now well-known that ember attack is the major cause of building loss in a bushfire.

While there will be some people who should consider where they would be safer in the event of bushfire threatening their home, particularly those “old stock” homes that have no built-in bushfire protection measures and are close to forest or large tracks of scrub, such a broad-brush message can only create uncertainty and possibly expose homes that only need active defence against ember attack.

Such active defence can be undertaken before and after the passage of a fire front by well prepared occupants of the home. With fire brigade units unable to protect every dwelling and concentrate on stopping the spread of a fire, survival of the dwelling may depend entirely on the occupants defending it themselves.

One of my objectives with this blog is to provide some understanding of bushfire and how it spreads to involve buildings. As part of this coaching my Sunday, 15 June 2014 “Bushfire explained – Part 2: How bushfire move across the landscape” (click here) I provided information and before and after photographs of a house at Humevale lost in the 2009 bushfires.

I’ve since found a few more photographs that confirm the loss of that undefended home to ember attack, particularly at the vulnerable underfloor timber entrance door.

As in the earlier photographs, the clean and tidy lines of this brick veneer dwelling show the only direct bushfire threat to be in the form of nearby trees and shrubs. Significantly, the garage and contents at right remained unaffected by the passing fire.
The following photographs show scorched, but unburnt leaves on the adjacent trees and shrubs. I attribute the bare branches in the third photograph with the water pump and hot water service in the background to be the heat of the fire in the dwelling drying the moisture from the leaves sufficient to ignite them, but note not all the leaves.

The remains of an old timber dwelling — also shown in the background of one of the above photographs — completely unprepared to withstand ember attack is worth including as it shows that the fire driven by strong wind burning uphill did not extend to involve the eucalypt and pine tree foliage (crowning).

Bushfire Survival

Referring to the earlier statement: “With fire brigade units unable to protect every dwelling and concentrate on stopping the spread of a fire, survival of the dwelling may depend entirely on the occupants defending it themselves”.
The coastal town of Lorne is a good example of the potential for enormous, but avoidable property loss that includes numerous dwellings and a range of commercial properties, potentially millions of dollars.
According to this Community Information Guide (click here) Lorne has been assessed as being at “EXTREME” risk due to bushfire. It also includes the following statement “The Fire Danger Rating is CODE RED. Homes aren’t designed to withstand a bushfire during these conditions. Any fire that starts and takes hold will be so intense that you won’t be safe to stay and defend your home – no matter how well prepared it is”. This statement begs the question, including buildings well inside the perimeter of the township where the only real threat will be ember attack or a fire in a neighbouring garden that could be suppressed by well prepared residents?
If large numbers of people choose to not be in Lorne on a forecast Code Red or extreme bushfire threat day, will the fire agencies pre-position sufficient resources to protect the otherwise undefended properties? Resources that if not pre-positioned in the town may not be able to get there due to the areas of forest the three major roads to Lorne pass through?
There are contradictions in this community information guide that coupled with the hype the news media gives to bushfire events and community warnings can only serve to confuse or frighten the vast majority of people unfamiliar with bushfire behaviour.
Extend this to the numerous other towns and settlements in Victoria covered by similar community information guides and the potential is there for enormous property loss. Much of this property loss could be avoided if the government insisted on resources being committed to site-specific real fire behaviour education and mentoring of the large army of people within these at-risk communities — if necessary by diverting money from firefighting equipment and fire station building programs.
The “downstream” consequences of property loss seems to have been overlooked by the government, Marysville being one notable example. The loss of the family home or a business is just as injurious to the individuals involved and ultimately costly to the broader community. Preferable that the loss be avoided in the first place.
Unfortunately, the unhelpful broad-brush attitude of the government in dealing with development in areas subject to the Bushfire Management Overlay can be aligned to the no-risk “everybody out” approach.