Wildfires across the Pacific offer timely lesson for bushfires

The devastating Los Angeles wildfires have rekindled concerns about Australia’s readiness to fight bushfires.

Despite the shared burden with Los Angelenos of living in fire zones, five years after the Black Summer of 2019-20 produced one of the most catastrophic bushfire seasons on record, we still await the royal commission’s final report.

And on a more micro level, the NSW Rural Fire Service has been warned a program designed to help use private water supplies during blazes had “ceased to be effective”.

The carnage in California offers a stark reminder for Australians about bushfire prevention.Credit: nna\sswain

The Herald’s Max Maddison reported exclusively this week that a business paper from the July conference of the Rural Fire Service Association highlighted that Static Water Supply signs relied on by volunteers had been placed at entrances to properties with insufficient water supply and unsafe access and exits for firefighting appliances: “The risk to personal safety of members is increasing due to the program’s integrity being compromised.”

Such a lackadaisical approach stands in stark contrast to the national shockwaves that greeted the Black Summer fires which killed 33 people, ruined the health of many more, destroyed more than 3000 homes, caused $10 billion in damage and wiped out or displaced nearly three billion animals.

The subsequent Royal Commission into Natural Disaster Arrangements made a series of recommendations that called for a national approach despite states and territories holding primary responsibility for emergency management.

The federal government has implemented all 15 recommendations as required. The commission published an interim report in October 2023 that showed a considerable delay in implementing recommendations aimed at Australian, state, and territory governments. The situation will remain unclear until the commission publishes its final report, promised sometime this year.

“Achieving an effective national approach to natural disasters requires a clear, robust and accountable system capable of both providing a comprehensive understanding of, and responding to, the aggregated risks associated with mitigation, preparation for, response to and recovery from natural disasters,” the report said. “Unprecedented is not a reason to be unprepared. We need to be prepared for the future.”

California was not. Despite its Mediterranean climate, Santa Ana winds and water shortages, Los Angeles has never confronted fire within on such a scale and with ferocious winds still threatening southern California, recriminations have set in over the failure of water supplies at the height of the blazes, the lack of warning, poor building regulations, the risk to children, the aged and people with and respiratory and heart conditions, when homes, businesses, cars, plastics, chemicals, fuel and building materials went up in smoke. The unhelpful politicisation of the disaster is fraying nerves further.

How different in Australia where the years of living with bushfires have tempered community outrage with pragmatism.

Such reasonableness is no longer an option for Australia. The Los Angeles fires reinforced what we learnt from Black Summer: human-caused climate change is driving more intense and frequent extreme weather across the world and authorities must foster community resilience to disasters ahead and not dawdle on reforms.

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