Fires have changed in Australia. I leave the reasons for science to argue but culprits likely include, in no particular order:
- population increase,
- increasing populations in particularly fire prone locations,
- increasing numbers domiciled without the relative fire protection that surrounding farmland occasions,
- climate change
- resistance to regular fuel burning
- having response subsumed within centralised emergency management organisation
- media propensity to quick frenzy when hyping misfortune
I am old enough to have seen very different fire ‘seasons.’ Even then there were the Black Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays (along with an Ash Wednesday) all bringing great calamity, usually as they strayed into built-up or more densely poplulated areas. The fires I saw however were much less aggressive; more manageable. The response was much more local.
The first experience which seems significant was as a baby when a kerosene refrigerator ‘blew up’ in the kitchen. Ten or a dozen months was enough to assure me that life was something I wanted to maintain and to have built a healthy notion of what was safely normal or otherwise. Matching the intensity of the blaze in the kitchen adjacent my room, my screaming managed to penetrate solid masonry walls and wake my sleeping parents in the room beyond. I am here to tell the tale but that, by all accounts was a close one.
At age, around five, I was driven with other kids into a freshly burnt field while people dissappeared into the smoke to do battle with fire. I remember clearly their gradual re-emergence through the smoke all at much the same time but different directions. That was a grass fire across dry paddocks and was handled with confidence. A few fences and a couple thousand acres blackened but even the sheep were able to move on.
Next, months either side of age 7 on a scorching hot day a fire started in our back yard. I always thought it a possibility that my younger brother may have been playing with matches…again. However it did start very close to the chimney where our slow combustion stove would have been burning proudly dealing with hot family lunch, bread, cakes and the like. My mother and father were off working up one of the back paddocks when I noticed the fire. It had just then burnt maybe a hundred m2 of dry garden. Quickly getting wet wheat bags and through beating hard, it appeared to be coming under control. When it reached the fence between the garden and the orchard it did get out of hand. Moving my younger brothers onto a verandah where they could quckly move to the burnt area I took to the orchard but was certainly on the losing end of the engagement. Soon, my parents came and the action stepped up a notch or two. but the fire was racing by the time it had reached the other side of the orchard. By that time neighbouring farmers were appearing from every direction. Inside perhaps a 1000 acres of grassland the fire was out with only a few handfuls of trees and stumps to keep an eye on.
From a few years later response would be fairly regular during fire seasons but always of a likely un-threatening nature. Local co-ordination was growing though and I am not sure that it was always necessary. Farmers see the feintest puff of smoke on a blanched sky. They are built that way. At first puff they are on their way.
At or around age 15 I had been operating the header (harvester) on a neighbours property. Finishing, the last load was augered into the over-laden truck. After parking the header in a clear area the task was then to take the truck out via the neighbours paddocks around the road to our place to grab a fresh water bag and take the load to town for the pleasure of waiting who knows how long in line at the silos. The old truck had other ideas. I didn’t blame it. Thirteen tons on a 3 or 3.5 ton truck is asking a fair bit. Whether it was that or perhaps that the stinking hot day was vapourising fuel, or, whatever, getting it going was an effort. When it did go it must have blown a spark as some chaff ignited. Quickly then moving the truck to relatively clear ground, and not having a wet wheat bag nor a water tank with pump the best I could do was go at the flames with my clod-hopping farmer’s boots and a shovel. That was another losing campaign. More had to be done.
Getting the truck started again was another issue. Accordingly, I set off running home directly. The indirect route would have been a good 4 kilometres through quite a number of gates while only about 4 fences and a couple kilometres separated myself from home, where, although everybody else was out a ute was already set up with tank and pump. A stocky lad not prone to ultra fast running I never ran so quckly. Likewise, I had never managed to leap a 3 strand barbed wire fence without straddling a hand placed on a post as I did so. This time at least two fences were taken like the high jumper I was not, all in long racing stride. The 45 degree day burst the boiler though. About halfway home my nose burst so that already filthy work clothes were covered in blood upon reaching the homestead and firing up the ute. A full speed run around to the fire site and there, fortunately, about three neighbours already had it nearly out.
Immediate necessary action and local preparation always seemed to work well in that area. There were hic-cups though.
A year or two later at a fire consuming a large swathe of the nearby ranges, there were organised groups from several areas coordinating action to keep it from going wild elsewhere. I was ordered to light up the base of the mountain on a completely clear face where a remnant koala popluation was said to be hanging on. I argued that we could stop progress of the fire just as well by moving back a couple hundred metres and burning narrow margins which we could extinguish until we reached the base of the ranges and not thereby endanger an area which may not otherwise burn. Just a kid and quite possibly an ignorant one; my experience was not great enough to be sure at the time. Anyway a 180 degree wind change obviated the need for me to refuse to comply and we were relocated elsewhere. Any koalas if they existed would have been untouched but I have never heard of any having been seen of since.
A couple years later another fire broke out on the boundary of one of our properties. I was not there then so this is heresay and it comes from my two brothers. One of those is given to telling fishing tales but I take this as verbatim. Upon seeing the fire they immediately grabbed a truck already loaded with a full water tank and pump. Arriving at the fire site they were met by two fire captains, one for each of the volunteer fire fighting cells the boundaries of which the fire had transgressed. Orders had to await a long argument as to whom may be in charge. This became quite heated so my brothers snuck off and put the fire out by themselves. They returned to hear out the argument.
In these fires of Christmas 2019, New Year 2020 communities have come together strongly to deal with particularly agressive fires. Many have given enormous amounts of time and energy free of charge in providing the protection that fire fighting can afford. Loss has been extraordinary. There are other elements which appear as notable differences with previous experience however. There has been a media frenzy. This can run counter to the interests of any society that seeks a discerning appreciation of cause and effect if not potential.
Do we really need a blow-by-blow, non-stop description? does it help?
There has also been a considerable amount of expectation, not a focus on outcomes but on entitlement and that surfaces as whinging. I never saw any of that at all in my clearly less challenged years. I admit to suspecting that it may come of media exposure and hero-making. Heroes may exist and something of their resolve and strength may exist widely but nobody who goes to fight a fire is normally a hero except in American sitcom mythology, they go to protect what they regard as important or they do a paid job. Like a soldier in war they focus on the task at hand and hope they manage to keep their heads down at the right times. it is an honourable exercise but few ever see themselves as heroes. Media is different, it seeks people to hold up as simple models even if it needs to build them. Again, some definitely turn out that way and the honourable nature of the activity does make it understandable that media attention can tip from respect to fawning but there are dangers. By objectifying and heroizing individual capability and genuine resolve can be neutered. Norms can be instituitionalised.
We need to focus on understanding. Real data, real trial and error real people and real effects upon the planet. We need to more fully understand the mechanics givng rise to agressive fire states and mechanisms which can side-step or defeat them; the total costs of the fires and resisting them and the losses associated with them. With that we can agree on a reasonable balance of meaures and costs. The only ideal wildfire is no wildfire. Yet, while there is fuel available fires will burn so there is balance to be found and in the face of quite a grim alternative, all should see themselves as a responsible part of that resolution.
The challenge is significant. It is mportant not just in immediate human terms; not simply in the number of lives and quantity of property lost. Australia has regarded it as important that it adopt carbon targets. It regards reduction in emissions as essential. This has impacted its vehicle industry and ownership, it greatly impacts the construction industry, the mining industry, manufacturing generally and many other areas. These reductions are largely effected by across-the-board rule-making. This may aid targets but since it is not based on equality or on equality of risk it can negatively impact liberty. It can micro-manage life in a way which runs counter to the greatest tradition that this nation can claim and that is the unique variety of freedom it is building. The current fire events could easily reach the emission levels of an entire year at the nation’s current rate of reduction.
Minimising the risk of fire related calamity can in itself increase emissions and is likely to. Fuel reduction burning and associated activity appears very likely necessary. This may mean an overall reduction in massive fire events but it will mean commitment to regular, more minor but general intervention and the emissions that entails. It is also likely to impact a wide range of other areas including the nature and resolution of our individual compact with government.
We can have the pie and eat it too but given the complexity and extreme importance of issues involved it will take very careful refinement of opportunity. Successful leadership will come from those capable of taking a long-term view while being able to perceive the benefit of immediate planning to maximise and secure the future, their and our, place in it.