Victoria’s Bushfires Royal Commission has politely damned the performance and policies of the state’s fire agencies. In doing so it has overlooked the inherent dangers of politeness.
Premier Brumby knew immediately after Black Saturday that the catastrophe could threaten his government. He chose to brazen it out, heaping fulsome praise on the fire chiefs and responding truculently to any hint of dissent.
The Commission underestimated the ruthlessness of politicians and the thickness of their hides. Universal criticism by the media for the administrative and policy failures on Black Saturday will not faze the Premier. Neither will smouldering public anger.
Brumby diluted the concept of responsibility to homeopathic proportions. His final formulation was audacious: “all Victorians feel a responsibility for … February 7th”.
Far from allowing the Commission to do its job unhindered, Brumby repeatedly pre-empted it. After banning separate legal representation for the various authorities, his most serious interference was the reappointment of CFA chief Russell Rees.
In spite of this white-anting, the Commission produced 360 pages of cogent analysis after a mere 35 days of hearings, and digested 1260 written submissions. A magnificent effort. But will key reforms be implemented? What, indeed, are the key reforms? The Interim Report recommends changes to virtually every aspect of wildfire policy. Sirens, websites, roadblocks, warnings, forecasting; it’s a plethora in search of a principle. Have the deep, twisted roots of fatal bushfire policy been cut?
Five myths have to be debunked to clear the way to genuine reform:
- Is that radical change can be implemented by those who have based their entire careers on the very assumptions which led to disaster. All the compromised chiefs must go. Rees, Esplin and Waller are architects and executors of failed policy and false beliefs.
- The impotence of the CFA in the face of severe wildfire must be revealed, not least to itself. The public believed that the CFA can stop firestorms. It can’t. It merely tries to contain them and waits for the weather to change. The Prime Minister’s excruciating bushfire memorial speech in which he said “Courage is a fire fighter standing before the gates of hell — unflinching, and unyielding and with eyes of steel, saying this: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other'” was horribly and inadvertently accurate. Infantile adulation of the CFA must cease.
- That “families” can defend property. If it’s too dangerous for the CFA to fight fire fronts, how can untrained, ill-equipped people do it? Allowing the CFA to assess the “defendability” of properties is a trap for both the CFA and residents. By all means assess and prepare property, but the rule for adults should be “go, or stay at your own risk”. Evacuate children. The phony ideology of citizen “empowerment” is finished. It’s a figleaf covering the CFA’s nakedness. In fact the entire CFA strategy has been based on “families”, ignoring schools, factories, shops or travellers. Regions and towns should be classified according to risk. The bad fire zones should be “no-stay” areas. Removing leaf litter and flammable vegetation close to houses and tightening building regulations is fine, but are not reasons to stay. In a firestorm, all that preparation may be as useless as a mop.
- That “people protect houses; houses protect people”. The worst advice possible. In severe wildfire, houses are fuel, not refuge.
- That a half-baked “relocation” policy will suffice. California copes with evacuations, so can we. So-called “neighbourhood safer places” is polly waffle, a recipe for mass death. A hierarchy of refuges is necessary, ranging from emergency bolt-holes to a truly safe refuge within every population centre. And these have to be defended by the CFA. Engineering solutions do not have to be cripplingly expensive, but even large open spaces will need radiant heat barriers.
Has the Royal Commission demolished these myths? Brumby kept the fire chiefs, and the commission was too polite to insist on new leadership. On CFA impotence, the Commission could be clearer, though it has unequivocally put life before property. On residents fighting fires, the Commission is more forthright, but recommending the CFA advise on “defendability” has left a loophole. The bad old policy could squeeze through. And who’s to say the unreconstructed CFA is a good judge of safety? In Anglesea in June, I listened in amazement as the CFA told elderly residents that the “stay or go” policy was “110% right”. Even in a severe fire, only the edge of town would be undefendable. “The rest is spot fires. You can handle them,” we were told.
The report does crush the “house as refuge” myth but this is vitiated by the ambiguity of “defendability” and the timid “relocation” policy. I don’t care if the vaunted “Wilson House Survivability Meter” (a crude rule of thumb masquerading as science) says your house has a 99% chance of survival, if it’s in Anglesea, leave early.
Quite rightly, the commission dealt first with urgent practicalities. The final report is due in July 2010. There’s time to rout the dark forces which shaped Victoria’s strange wildfire policy. There’s also time to expose the sixth great myth, the most seductive and dangerous one of all, that prescribed burning will make us all safe.
I have been a member of the RFS (NSW) for 20 years and an informal firefighter since long before that.
I share the same reservations as the author and thus agree with this opinion piece. The science and art of fire risk assessment and preparation should… must not be left to those in authority who have risen, not through real fire skills, but through time and organisational promotion from the ranks.
We need to build the art and science of fire fighting from a fact-based platform, using the best brains possible… Engineers and scientists, supported by legal and town planning professionals.
Entrusting our communities to beauraucratic clerks, willing landowners, community representatives and other such mental midgets is not the way forward.
The amount of decoration displayed on the shoulder, the peaked cap and the breast of someone in authority over the business of running a fire brigade in no way indicates ability, knowledge or competence as a fire scientist. I suggest that there must be a disconnect between those who, on the one hand, provide the advice which informs those advancing the science and art of fire risk assessment, fire resistance of structures and communities and so forth, right up to those framing the building codes and planning law and, on the other hand, those whose business it is to administer and control the resources (including people) who respond to fires.
This conflict of interests must be addressed.
A good article. I, too, think the responsibility given to the CFA, essentially a volunteer organisation, needs a closer look. That a nice bloke – male or female – has risen through the ranks to command is no guarantee of capacity to think through the complexities, co-ordinate and rank priorities in consultation with professionals. This does not mean that professionals have all the answers: but a more professional and thinking leadership than demonstrated so far is essential.
As has already been said elsewhere the CFA chief was not available on the day, nor, as theCommissioner’s report noted, was information co ordinated meaningfully and/or in an accessible way. On 7 February I was in an area where the wind was blowing the other way – fortunate for me…! Information was available via the web, belatedly, haphazardly and often lost in the midst of long lists. The name of the fire, indicating its location altered mid way through that treacherous night.
Is the problem to do with some sort of group think, a problem of internal culture ossified into fantasies of glory, bar a few mistakes along the way? The only way through is calling the situation for what it is, naming facts, however unpleasant, debunking myths and reviewing all the ‘can’t be dones’afresh. It risks piquing a few egos along the way. Better than more fatalities,
A few thoughts.
1. thanks Frank, voice of experience over pollie waffle
2. Russell Rees was in trouble from the moment he did that 4 Corners interview ‘hail well met, awe of the beast’ style in the backdrop of CBD of Melbourne. He sounded like an adrenalin junkie and voyeur. I know that’s cruel, but when people die, lots of people, a leader needs gravitas and decisive qualities, not reverie at our collective inferiority to the elements, or one’s now central role in the lime light. Oh dear. A governmental disaster unfolds. Nice bloke victim of the Peter Principle. In NSW for better or worse Phil Koperberg did gravitas very well before moving into formal politics.
3. It was clear when the government state and federal indulged greenie bashing those first few days and weeks that you knew they were shamelessly abrogating their paid responsibility. As I said back then and now the government is the government … is the government.
I took a photo of the first big plume of smoke north west of Sydney today. A burn off near Scheyville National Park. A drop in the ocean given the private and other land tenures all around the Hawkesbury and Baulkham Hills Shires. I reckon we are due and it already feels dry and warm enough for an early season. God have mercy.
What a load of 20/20 bollocks! Jeez, we are all geniuses in hindsight aren’t we? Where was the author on February 6, or 5, or 4, telling half a million Victorians to evacuate while they still had a chance? And where would they evacuate to? Where was Mr Campbell telling us all for 20 years that the stay-or-go policy was so self-evidently wrong?
I am sorry, but it is too easy to go scapegoating the blokes at the top of the tree. Maybe Russell Rees isn’t a charismatic leader, and maybe the chain of command was broken at too many places, but no suggestion in this article gives me any confidence that loss of life could have been prevented. If only (say) 40 people had died on February 7, would we be congratulating ourselves?
Lessons need to be learned, and policies need to change, but cutting off all the heads at the top to salve our collective consciences won’t solve anything.
What appears to be ignored in all this is the entrenched culture among the paid staff (in South Australia it is the CFS) against modern fire fighting as used by Europe, Canada & America. We have already heard how the people doing real time mapping of the spread of the fires were not taken any notice of. But how many people are aware of the opposition to a modern fleet of aerial firefighters (such as the Superscooper415)
I have a letter written by a State Minister which states the advice given to him by the Directer of the CFS re aerial firefighting. At best this advice is misleading and at worst it is totally wrong. What is really worrying is that the Director has been shown the correct facts and for reasons best known to himself has chosen to ignore them and instead gives his Minister false information!
We heard an American Professional Wildfire Fighter coming to assist last February comment on the news about our “old fashioned way”of fighting fires. They must think it hilarious if tragic when they see what we call aerial firefighting with crop dusters and a converted logging helicopter.
A modern aerial fire fighting force last February could have saved lives and property and even prevented some of the fires taking hold at all. How many more lives will it take?
The total cost of the Victorian fires in dollar terms would have paid for this fleet as well many years running costs.