Sampson Flat fire: Warnings led to confusion over evacuation, university study finds
PEOPLE living on the suburban fringe and threatened by last January’s Sampson Flat bushfires were unprepared and found official emergency warning messages confusing, a study has revealed.
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PEOPLE living on the suburban fringe and threatened by last January’s Sampson Flat bushfires were unprepared and found official emergency warning messages confusing, a study has revealed.
The research, commissioned by the SA Country Fire Service and released on the one-year anniversary of the destructive Adelaide Hills fire, also found two-thirds of people affected by the bushfire had no action plan or had made plans that could expose them to late evacuation.
However, it showed a quarter of the community had some form of written plan — a significant improvement on the 10 per cent of people who were affected by three major fires at Eden Valley, Bangor and Rockleigh in January 2014.
During the Sampson Flat fire, 24 homes, 146 other structures, five businesses and much livestock and fencing was lost as it burned through 12,569ha of land in January last year.
Part of the project focused on people living in rural towns and the suburban edge of the Hills, including Paracombe, Inglewood, Golden Grove, Banksia Park and Tea Tree Gully who the CFS believed may not have considered themselves to live in a fire-risk area.
It found none of these residents who had first found out about the fire through official CFS channels understood that the warning message was telling them to take shelter in their home.
The phone, SMS and broadcast messages told people to “take shelter”, which was generally misunderstood as a message to evacuate.
Only 4 per cent of people living in these areas had a written and rehearsed action plan.
“Of concern is that the majority of participants (58 per cent) said that their plan was to wait and see how bad it was before deciding to leave,” the study found.
SA Country Fire Service chief officer Greg Nettleton said it was not surprising that community members living in “peri-urban” areas were not as prepared as those in the more rural areas, adding: “We will continue to educate this community in the future.”
The research — conducted by CQUniversity’s Appleton Institute — also suggested that the CFS consider how it identified and named fires, because not everyone knew where Sampson Flat was.
The study also recommended education campaigns that put greater emphasis on people being emotionally, as well as physically, prepared for a fire, because unexpected anxiety and fear caused people to suddenly change their bushfire action plans.
“As the fire approached and the fear increased, some people left although they had planned to stay and defend, but then later attempted to return to their properties,” the study found.
On a positive note, it also found people had a high awareness of the new classification of “catastrophic” fire conditions and that a significant majority of people cleaned their gutters and removed fire hazard materials and vegetation from around their homes. “The residents who had prepared their properties should be congratulated on following the advice provided to them by CFS community engagement officers and local brigades,” Mr Nettleton said.
“Despite the bushfire impact — no lives were lost. We believe this is due to the bushfire safety information CFS has delivered to the community over the past decade.
“However, (the research) also shows that many in the community were not emotionally prepared, therefore CFS will look at ways to incorporate these leanings into future community engagement activities.”