TasWeekend: We are all sitting in the line of fire
When is the right time to prepare for fire danger in a changing climate? Complacency is a killer and fires are getting fiercer, but are we heeding the warnings?
Lifestyle
Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News.
HAVE you noticed how quickly your washing is drying after you peg it out? Professor David Bowman has. The bushfire academic doesn’t miss much.
We’re up on Knocklofty Reserve, a bushland behind our West Hobart homes. He sees the landscape with a keenness that eludes me on my hillside meanderings. I’m attuned today, though, as Bowman describes the damage a single careless act or lightning bolt could unleash up here in these heavily fuelled perimeter hills of Hobart, the zone firefighters call the urban interface.
Bowman peers up into the canopy, pointing to withered eucalyptus foliage drooping from tree limbs. “If this is spring, what is summer going to look like?” He bends to pick up a clump of soil and it is so desiccated it falls apart in his hand. It’s not just the Bureau of Meteorology and the recent interstate fire disasters that Bowman views as portents, it’s the parched state of the bush so close to home.
Behind us stands sombre kunanyi/Mt Wellington, and beyond that lie the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area and other intractable landscapes, all increasingly prone to ignitions from dry lightning storms.
We’ve set off from the carpark at the top of Forest Rd and soon reach what Bowman describes as “a sensational piece of interpretative signage” on the track named after colonial artist John Glover. “Let’s jump into history,” he says, standing at a reproduction of Glover’s 1830s painting, The River Derwent and Hobart Town, which shows a landscape with just a fraction of today’s thick understorey. Bringing it back to something resembling the open Glover vista would reduce the intensity of fires if they were to ignite here, as they did in the 1967 bushfires in which 62 people lost their lives around Hobart. It would also make subsequent regular hazard-reduction burns simpler and safer.
It’s too late for all that this year. It’s a tinderbox up here. “All of these people who are crapping on at the moment about green tape and ‘why aren’t people allowed to burn?’, I would like to take those people up here and say ‘you burn that, but if it escapes control you are 100 per cent liable’,” says Bowman.
“Talk is cheap.”
We pause to admire a green clearing, the kind of subtle firebreak he’d like to see more of. He calls them marsupial lawns.
Most bushfire-prevention strategies focus on the urban/bushland interface of cities and towns. Seared by the Dunalley fires of 2013, which caused significant damage to townships, the State Government is spending $9 million a year on fuel-reduction burns and mechanical interventions around the state. Looking around Knocklofty with Bowman, though, it’s clear there’s plenty more work to be done.
When we reach a pond he has monitored for two years, he points to the line of sticks he uses to mark the diminishing high-point. “Last summer during the height of the bushfires this pond was full,” he says. “Even in February, when fire was still burning across the island, there was water in it. But unless something dramatic happens it will be dry in the next couple of weeks.
“I’m not saying the whole forest is going down the toilet, but overall it’s drying up. Even the subsoil is so dry. It’s like going broke. You can rely on reserves but eventually you just can’t afford what you are doing. Effectively, that’s what is happening with our forests. They are under tremendous stress.”
I first interviewed Bowman in October last year, after his pioneering formation of a multi-disciplinary school at the University of Tasmania dedicated to the study of fire, which is his life’s work. Whenever I read about a fire emergency afterwards I’d remember the Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, recalling both his prophetic words and his complicated wish to not be a prophet of doom.
Still, a spade’s a spade. “It’s a lot worse now,” he says, compared with last year, when the second-largest bushfire event in Tasmania’s recorded history, behind the fatal 1967 blazes, flared from mid-January.
“Add what we are already seeing on the mainland, with vegetation types that aren’t meant to burn burning,” says Bowman. “And of particular concern is the intense heat coming from the continent, with oven-dry winds coming out of the interior. These are very significant warnings for Tasmania. On the back of the 2013, 2016, 2019 fires, and the drought stress, all of it is telling us we are seeing new fire behaviours.”
He says he found the “white noise” from politicians of all stripes during the recent NSW bushfire emergency unfortunate. “It frustrates me. It’s confusing for people. It’s feeding into tribalism when what we need is to come together as a community. This is a unifying, not a divisive issue.”
Bowman often paces this patch of Knocklofty, troubling over his thoughts as he exercises his dogs. Right now, he’s perplexed about timing. “What I’ve been thinking about is, when is a good time to say this stuff? To tell people they may be really on their own [on a catastrophic fire warning day]? Is it a good time to tell people as they are literally about to be impacted by fire?
“The problem is we should be telling people years before the fires come, but then that’s kind of being alarmist and stupid. I am not even talking about climate change here, I’m just talking about the fire hazard thing and the reality that, if this goes wrong, there is a certain limit to the capacity of the state to be able to intervene. There are certain fires where it just doesn’t matter what kit you’ve got.”
He says the sooner we all recognise we are in a different space, the better. By now we are back at the lookout near the carpark, with views over the city, river, Eastern Shore and up to Mt Nelson. “That ratcheting of hot weather we are seeing is part of the global climatological setup now,” he says.
Expect your clothes to keep drying fast. That’s about the least scary way to put it.
Steven Franklin is brigade chief at Geeveston Fire Station in the Huon Valley, 60km south of Hobart. His wife Amelia Franklin is second officer. The couple recently returned from fighting fires in southern Queensland, including at Mt Barney 100km southwest of Brisbane, as part of a 23-strong Tasmanian Fire Service contingent.
Their orange firefighting overalls from the deployment are still drying on a line strung across the station common room.
Steven says he and Amelia did not hesitate to put up their hands for their interstate brothers and sisters. “I had them all coming here to help us in January and February. I thought it was a bit of payback,” he says. “And it was that damn dry over there, it’s not funny.”
Steven works for the local council and Amelia in the apple industry. When there’s a fire or other emergency, they down tools and get to work protecting the community. It’s not always fire. About 5am this morning Amelia attended a two-vehicle collision at Port Huon further north. Their team often fields first responders because the closest SES is 22km away at Huonville.
Their station’s 25-member volunteer fire crew includes Steven’s brother Bradley as third officer, and Bradley’s partner Brittany Direen, who is Amelia’s sister; and the girls’ parents. These are capable, can-do country people — but the events surrounding their town last summer took their breath away.
The drama for Steven and Amelia began on a stinking hot day in mid-January. In the arvo, they took their two dogs down to local beach Cairns Bay to cool off. As he downed a can of beer, Steven watched the clouds welling up “nice and dark”. Maybe there’d be rain?
They went on to visit his parents but headed home after thunderclaps made their dogs fret. Steven was about to water the vegetable garden when the first lightning bolt struck a far hill. Within 30 seconds his pager started sounding.
“And it didn’t stop from there,” he says. Multiple dry lightning strikes and ignitions followed and, over the next couple of days, the Geeveston fire crews were busy dousing town-edge fires. Steven says they also initially responded to a bushfire further out, which would come to be known as the Riveaux Rd fire, with the state’s two other fire agencies, Parks and Wildlife and Sustainable Timbers Tasmania, taking over that blaze.
By that point Geeveston was covered in smoke, says Amelia, and the local firies felt a bit out of the loop. “Community members were knocking on the door and we had no information to pass on to them. We had no idea what was going on.
“I think there’s an issue between the agencies communicating, which has since come out in the [operational] review. There’s a lot of stuff being put into place now, but we are not going to know until we have a decent fire if it’s going to work.”
Steven says he felt shut out by the other agencies. “We could have helped them out, but the agencies thought they had enough capability. In the end, the weather turned on the wrong way for them and they lost control.”
He is not saying the addition of a TFS crew would have necessarily changed the outcome, but he reckons their help wouldn’t have hurt. When the Riveaux Rd blaze jumped containment lines and headed towards the Tahune Airwalk, Steven’s crews were called on to evacuate the tall-trees attraction.
“We did have a few issues with people wanting to turn around and get a refund and that sort of thing,” says Steven with a half-shrug, half-chuckle.
“Everything took off from there. The fire took a run across the Tahune Airwalk road and kept going up the Arve Valley. Firefighters tried to stop it at every containment line, but it just got too big. It did a big horseshoe shape around the town … basically you could look out the window and see mountains burning all around.”
Ultimately, just a handful of houses in the entire region were lost, partly thanks to firefighters’ tremendous efforts. There were plenty of hairy moments along the way, says Steven. Overgrown roads and tracks were a particular trap hazard for the firies with their tankers’ limited manoeuvrability.
“If you are not out in time, you can guarantee you are going to get trapped,” he says. “The forest is overgrown across some of the roads and there are few places to turn a truck.”
When their own home came under sudden threat, the Franklins grabbed what they could and kipped at the fire station with their dogs and assorted others, including a Mercury crew at times. As the horseshoe closed in, they went looking for a place to bunker down in case they were unable to hold the blaze back.
Amelia says last summer was a wake-up call for many people, but not for everyone.
“We need to get the community to really understand how important it is to maintain their properties,” she says.
Getting people to really take on preparing their properties is proving tricky. “We held a community meeting after bushfires, but people had a gutful of fire and there wasn’t much interest,” says Steven. Lately, they have resumed their efforts.
We pile into a TFS Toyota Hilux and head out along Kermandie River Rd for a better look at some of the damage.
Numerous side roads leading up up into steep bush are still marked with signs “Warning: Area Impacted by Fire”. The blackened hills tell the same story. As we wind our way up into plantation regrowth, Steven points out a spot where one of the fire trucks rolled on a bulldozer track, and we drive past Rileys Waterhole, the main water source for the helicopters. “They sucked it almost dry,” he says.
We pull into a secluded family property high in the hills, where I slip out of the cabin to meet one of the owners, Though I’m here unannounced, he is exceedingly polite. George Brettingham-Moore quietly shows me around the burnt-out block and the still-standing timber home belonging to his parents Adrian and Elisabeth.
George works intermittently for the Bureau of Meteorology in Antarctica as an engineer, calibrating the weather instruments. In his downtime, at least lately, he’s learnt a lot about fighting fire. He says he was lucky he and his dad had plenty of warning to prepare the property while Elisabeth, who is asthmatic, went to join George’s sister in a safer place. “We had a lot of notice of when the fire was coming through because it didn’t get here until two weeks after the lightning started.”
The men spent that time getting sticks out of the garden and bulldozing a few firebreaks. Their main kit was two fire hoses gravity-fed from a hilltop tank, one of them powered with off-grid electricity.
“Dad had been confident for a long time that he was very much a stand-and-defend person, and with the fire hoses set up I was happy to stay and support,” says George.
The fire finally hit them on the first Sunday in February, leaping their freshly dozered firebreaks. They lost all their sheds, but managed to defend the house in a five or six hour battle.
George plans to stay in place this summer. “After the fire, the fuel load will be much lower here, so for a couple of years we will probably be safe, but it’s always a concern,” he says.
Back down at the Geeveston Visitors Centre, information officer Linda Marlow laments the loss of numerous forest giants in the fires, including the 500-plus years old eucalyptus regnans, known as the Arve Big Tree 10km out of town. “It is still closed off where the Arve giant was lying across the road,” she says.
She says accommodation businesses in the town have been hardest-hit by the tourism downturn when the Tahune Airwalk closed (it is due to reopen this summer).
Marlow has noticed anxiety levels rising again with the temperature. The sound of helicopters triggers some people.
“I know a few people who’ve sold houses because of the fire and moved to Hobart,” she says.
Cassandra and Dave Rolph are cooking and stockpiling steamed bao buns for their market stalls at Street Eats @ Franko and The Taste of Tasmania when I arrive at their small mixed farm above Geeveston. They also stayed to defend.
“You think it will be terrifying, then it will be over, but it was not like that at all,” Dave reflects. “It was more a long-term low-key oppressive discomfort. It was depressing, there was smoke everywhere. One of us was up watching for embers every night and we feared we would run out of water.”
Staying to defend Deep End Farm required meticulous assessment and planning. “You have to think clearly,” says Dave. “We were able to clear the grass, the dam was full of water, and we have a modern reasonably defendable home built only five years ago to modern bushfire standards.”
Though they were ultimately spared, Cassandra says she felt afraid for weeks. “We could see fires all around us, and when the wind changed I was so frightened. And now when I see smoke I am terrified.”
You never forget the first time you hear a big bushfire up close, says Tasmania Fire Service chief officer Chris Arnol, a veteran firie who has led the service for four years. “The sound is terrifying as it comes over. It is like a jet-engine roar.”
Like most things, though, you get used to it. Perhaps that’s why he sounds calm when he says “without a doubt there is absolutely a raised level of concern since last summer”.
Arnol says that while the overall bushfire risk this summer is similar to the past four summers, added dryness is leading to greater volatility. It was dry lightning that led to last summer’s devastating loss of six per cent — or 95,400 hectares — of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area.
“Lightning strike bands have given us grief lately,” he says. “Both this last year and the three years before we had bands of lightning in January and February that left us with 70-80 fires in remote locations.
“As far as my remit for the urban interface, I’m confident we’ve got that covered. We’ve got the strategy and we’ve got the resources sitting there: pre-positioned aircraft, bulldozers, a standing number of 4000 frontline volunteers, and skilled career fire officers who can command and respond to fire.
“But when we’re in remote locations, that’s a different place. That’s usually dealt with initially by Forestry and Parks and is a different modus operandi.”
Around settled areas, weight of response is the strategy he embraces. The idea is to use predictive data to pinpoint the highest-risk fire areas and to come in hard and fast when fire flares. “This is how we’ve done it for the past four summers,” says Arnol. “What we do is put extra effort in being ready to pounce on those jobs. That has meant more investment upfront in aircraft and our firefighters being prepositioned to strike.
“It means initial attack with helicopters to hold the fire until the volunteers can get there. This is part of the climate change action that we’re we’re moving through. Once, every town had a fire station that would go out to local fires. That was all right when your intervention could work with one truck but, as time has progressed, we’ve not been able to do that. We can’t always grab the fire with that first truck.”
Firies are closely monitoring the East Coast and several other at-risk locations. “We know where our bad fire areas are,” says Arnol. “And this summer it’s along the East Coast, and it’ll be up in the Derwent Valley. “We’ve had a little bit already in the Fingal Valley this season.”
Remote firefighting requires a different approach, skill set and kit. “Last summer we had lots of fires, a large air operation with about 50 aircraft around Tasmania, and specialist remote area firefighters,” says Arnol.
“Incident management teams, air operations people and specialist remote area fighters were called from interstate. The interstate agreements are there for surge in those remote areas.”
In August, an Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC) review, commissioned by Arnol, was released. In response to one of its recommendations, a program is under way to increase the deployment of TFS volunteers to remote fires, which is outside their traditional remit.
“We won’t necessarily get much done by the peak of this summer, but it is happening,” says Arnol.
“There were also initial attack issues with so many fires in remote locations last summer,” he says.
Another recommendation is for all three fire agencies to further research and benchmark good practice in responding to new fire starts in remote terrain.
A new purpose-built State Control Centre, also recommended, has the support of the State Government. And a new State Air Desk has already been established.
After decades working in an operational environment, it was no surprise to Arnol that communication came up in the review.
“It’ll always be communications,” he says. “The report picked up a couple of things via inter-agency communications in that initial phase on the Riveaux River fire. We’ve learnt from that and we’ve just signed off on a changed inter-agency protocol.”
I ask the fire chief for his take on union rumblings over the professionalised versus the volunteering labour force of the TFS.
“Our union might say a few things at the moment because they are going through an Enterprise Bargaining Agreement,” says Arnol. “They have a strategy and they are entitled to their opinions and I have no issue with that.”
He says there are two conversations going on — “politicking and operational” — and he doesn’t just mean the union talk. State Parliament has been the scene of posturing argy bargy over resourcing and readiness, and the AFAC review recommendations tabled in August have done little to quell it.
“The issue around ‘are we ready’, well, we are as ready as we have ever been,” says Arnol. “I have a standing army of 4000 people, we’ve got the predictions done and we’ve established the new staffed air desk, through which Tasmania can access up to 150 aircraft nationally.”
As well, the TFS has in place 125 community protection plans for specific areas around the state, and bushfire-ready neighbourhood engagement with all the risky bushfire towns.
The focus on off-season fuel reduction will continue in the urban interface zone. The review recommends a close fuel management collaboration between the Government and three fire agencies, and policy review to clarify which body or agency is responsible for enforcing fuel management on private property. Arnol says he is pleased with the inroads made so far.
“If we look at it across Tasmania since we started the program, we have reduced risk just on fuel management by about 10 per cent in the last 12 months around state, with a further reduction by bushfires themselves of about 4 per cent.” He says the western interface of Hobart, including reserves such as Knocklofty, show up to 25 per cent less risk in some places.
Also on the western side are areas of wetter forest that — while less likely than drier tracts to ignite and slower to burn if they do — contain enormous long-accumulated fuel loads for the same reason. That’s why, in places such as Fern Tree, Arnol says the emergency response will not be for people to shelter in place: “It will be for them to evacuate.”
It is the spectre of a low frequency/high impact incident that can really give a catastrophiser the heebie jeebies. In disaster terms, if you were to think of such a blaze as a wave, it would be a rogue or freak wave with tremendous destructive potential. “The risk is frequency/impact and that trade-off is exactly the problem,” says Arnol.
The next stage, says Arnol, will be to create another line of defence through fuel reduction further out, but that relies on the right preconditions for wetter-forest burns.
Trying to make people aware of risks without panicking them or infringing on their civil liberties in the face of danger is a balancing act. The TFS spends $3 million annually on community education, but it doesn’t always cut through. “We have a lot of trouble really engaging the community to take notice of what we are saying,” says Arnol.
Bowman, who studies the cultural as well as ecological impacts of bushfire, agrees. “We have to manage psychosocial stress and be involved in pathways that are adaptive but also positive,” he says.
“We have to change gear from telling everyone it’s all rosy and dinky boo to allowing people to be concerned — and then giving them a pathway to act.”
Even if it turns out we are lucky this summer, we need to change, he says. “We need courage. We need massive community buy-in. We should embrace the diversity, including learning more about aboriginal fire management, and not see this as a top-down operation.
“We are all so busy we don’t need to be lectured and given homework. We need a way of making priority responses easy.
“I joke that we need council rebates, insurance incentives and Jim’s Bushfires — you know, hiring bushfire dudes to do whatever needs doing; ember guards [meshes that go into house cavities], getting fuel loads in gardens down, that sort of thing. And we need a program to help people tackle the fire problem in their suburb, like a Landcare for bushfire.”
We need to switch gear from futile talk about blame, he insists. “We’re no longer talking about a hypothetical future. We are now experiencing climate change and its impacts.
“The future is now.”
Are you bushfire ready? Find more information, including videos, on how to prepare, act and survive at fire.tas.gov.au
World-leading program which has reduced dementia risk by 25%
A five-year dementia study run out of UTAS is showing drops of 25 per cent in the dementia risk of its study participants. Here is what they are doing to stay healthier for longer.
Make sure you pack an appetite for this hidden Italian gem
With an Italian restaurant on what seems to be every corner, we are spoiled for choice. This new offering serves up sophisticated food with a big heart, writes Stephanie Dalton