THE best fire-fighting units available are worthless in the face of a bushfire whipped up by heavy fuel loads—so why does bushfire policy pay such scant attention to fire prevention?
The Australian Farm Institute’s latest Farm Policy Journal questions bushfire policy from a number of angles, but with the central theme outlined by AFI executive director Mick Keogh in his introduction: various inquiries are probing the adequacy of the response to the Victorian fires, but far less attention is focused on preventing such fires developing in the first place.
That, in the view of bushfire expert Phil Cheney, is exactly what’s wrong with the system.
Mr Cheney, who led the CSIRO Bushfire Research Group from 1975 to 2001, and who remains an honorary research fellow with the organisation, observes that the only bushfire variable over which people have any real control is fuel loads.
It takes surprisingly little fuel to make a dangerous fire. Even a fire across eaten-out pasture can be unstoppable.
Mr Cheney wrote that humans have a limited tolerance of heat. The full summer sun delivers about one kilowatt per square metre (1 kW/m2) of radiation, and the human pain threshold is 1.25 kW/m2 - the limit of the radiation a person can survive in a fire.
An intense forest fire generates 100 kW/m2.
“... even if you can survive the radiation and combustion gasses from the tall flames of the fire front, you have to seek protection from the radiation from slowly burning material behind the flame front, which may persist above the pain threshold for up to an hour after the front has passed.”
This human frailty limits our ability to suppress fires. Better, Mr Cheney argues, not to have to confront huge fires in the first place.
That means prevention, which means prescribed burning - in Mr Cheney’s view, the most practical and ecologically-sound way to reduce fuel loads.
But knowing what to do is the easy bit. How to do it is a far greater challenge.
“The first step is for all land managers, be they owners of a suburban block or managers of public land, to take responsibility for fire suppression on their land,” Mr Cheney suggested.
“If they take this responsibility, they will soon recognise the part that reducing fuel volumes plays in allowing efficient suppression.”
“Where the responsibility for suppression is left to the emergency service authority and is separate from the land management, there is little incentive for the land managers to increase their level of fire preparedness.”
The vast areas of Australia, particularly in the north, where year-on-year management of fuel loads is impractical, could be declared “legally unprotected”, Mr Cheney suggests.
Landowners would not be responsible for fire burning out from their property; but neighbours protecting their assets by burning around the perimeter of unprotected property would not be responsible for damage from escaped fires burning in.
The problem with prescribed burning is the ability of landowners to effectively apply it.
“To many people, including volunteer firefighters, plantation owners and land managers, prescribed burning is ‘burning off’,” Mr Cheney said.
“It is something they feel anyone can do and all is required is to pick the right day and light the match. ‘Light it and see’ is used too often.”
He places the onus on government land managers to train up staff in the skills of assessing and applying prescribed burning, “and set an example for other land managers to follow".
Five other experts also contributed to the bushfire policy edition of the AFI’s Farm Policy Journal: Michael Stephens of the National Association of Forest Industries; Graeme Ford of the Victorian Farmers Federation; Tom Harbour, Director, Fire and Aviation Management, USDA Forest Service; Albert Simeoni, Sciences Pour l’Environnement, University of Corsica, Corte, France; and forester David Geddes of Geddes Management.
* The Journal can be obtained on the AFI website: www.farminstitute.org.au
Email a friend