victorian bushfires
20 Aug 2009
Massive Failures In Bushfire Command
Victorian CFA Chief Russell Rees should resign. If he won't, Premier John Brumby must sack him, writes Ben Eltham
He's the state's chief fire officer, with "ultimate responsibility" for fires under the Country Fire Authority Act of 1958.
He was also isolated, poorly informed and badly out of touch with developing events on Black Saturday, as the Interim Report of the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission shows.
It's taken journalists a few days to read over the 300-odd pages of the interim report handed down on Monday, but already Rees's position looks untenable. In fact, the whole management of Victorian bushfires appears broken. Most frighteningly, given what we now know about the inept and chaotic CFA response to the fires of 7 February 2009, Black Saturday could happen again.
Initial reports about the report stressed that its recommendations were measured and that it did not explicitly lay blame. This is not the case. The report is scathing about the way the fires were handled.
One of the best informed reporters has been Karen Kissane of the Age, who has been covering the Royal Commission and attended many of the hearings. It's probably no coincidence that Kissane has been among the most strident critics of Rees and the CFA's performance.
When you look closely at the detail of this investigation, it becomes tragically apparent that the CFA was completely unprepared for a fire of the magnitude of Black Saturday. Its systems were inadequate, especially those for communications, command and control. Astonishingly, because of inept preparation and chaotic organisation on the day, the officer put in charge of managing the Kilmore East fire — which killed 121 people and destroyed 1,244 houses — was not trained for the job. The Incident Control Centre at Kilmore was not properly prepared. It didn't even have a working fax machine or adequate phone lines.
As a result, neither the state control centre nor local fire brigades were able to communicate with the Kilmore centre properly. Crucial warnings never even made it to the CFA website. People died.
It gets worse. Despite growing alarm, even "dread" from experienced officers at both state headquarters in Nicholson Street, Melbourne, and at a larger divisional control centre at Kangaroo Ground, control of the fire was not transferred from the manifestly inadequate Incident Control Centre at Kilmore to the better staffed Kangaroo Ground facility. As a result, warnings that were drafted at Kangaroo Ground were not released because they could not be approved by the over-stretched Kilmore centre. It was a critical breakdown.
The picture that emerges of CFA boss Russell Rees is damning. Despite being organisationally and legally the man in ultimate command, he abdicated his responsibility on the day, failing to take charge — or even an interest — in the developing Kilmore blaze.
The interim report states that "Mr Rees did not appear to become actively involved in operational issues, even when the disastrous consequences of the fires began to emerge."
And further, "Mr Rees did not look specifically at warnings concerning the Kilmore East fire nor did he, given his knowledge of the spotting potential of that fire, ask anybody to check whether the Kilmore ICC was producing timely warnings."
Rees didn't speak to either the Kilmore or Kangaroo Ground incident control centres which were "controlling" the Kilmore East fire. He didn't look at any fire prediction maps concerning the Kilmore East fire on 7 February. The reason he gave the Royal Commission as to why he did not inspect prediction maps? "The need for a state overview."
Strategy is undoubtedly important to the overall management of fire suppression across Victoria, especially on a day like Black Saturday. But what is fire strategy if it is not the prioritising of threats and allocating resources accordingly? Further, strategy cannot be formed without accurate information, which the interim report comprehensively demonstrates Russell Rees did not have, or even ask for. Rees's strategy was so overwhelmed by the chaos of Black Saturday that he was unaware of the severity of the Kilmore East fire until 5am the next morning. Russell Rees's strategy failed.
The Royal Commission confirms this. It found that not only did Russell Rees not see the fire prediction maps or know about the severity of the Kilmore East fire, neither did Gregory Paterson, the CFA's state duty officer on the day and the third most senior officer in the CFA chain of command. The Commission reports that "it is also difficult to understand how Mr Rees could properly carry out a strategic state-wide coordination responsibility or how Mr Paterson could carry out the responsibilities of State Duty Officer and the coordination tasks he described."
In fact, the CFA's response to Black Saturday was all too likely to fail because its systems were not up to managing a threat like the one faced on 7 February.
The CFA's state control centre had only recently moved from Burwood to a co-located facility with the Department of Sustainability and Environment at Nicholson Street. The move caused major disruptions to the CFA's capacity. For instance, the Royal Commission was told by Gregory Paterson that "[i]f the incident [the 7 February 2009 fires] had been run from the SECC [the old headquarters at Burwood] we would have had up to ten CFA Situation Officers on duty. Instead we had two CFA Situation Officers on duty due to lack of space." That's an 80 per cent reduction in capacity. For this alone Rees should be held accountable. But Rees told the Royal Commission that the move from Burwood to Nicholson Street "worked well and was a success".
The story of the CFA's bumbling, chaotic response to the Kilmore East fire is a tragic echo of the failures of emergency services and disaster response efforts in other countries. During 9/11 in New York and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, US authorities suffered the same sorts of breakdowns in communications and failures of command and control. Indeed, Rees's disengaged and bumbling performance on the day resembles most closely the performance of the notorious Michael Brown, the incompetent boss of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina. But while incompetence played a role, these tragedies were also examples of what US sociologist Charles Perrow calls "normal accidents": infrequent but predictable breakdowns in complex systems that lead to disasters.
Black Saturday was another such "normal accident". In the case of the Kilmore East fire, for example, the Commission found that key staff in the CFA knew how dangerous the fire would be. It found that the CFA knew it would be uncontrollable once it crossed the Hume Highway. It found that the CFA even drafted urgent warnings as early as 3pm for towns like Kinglake — warnings that were never released because of bureaucratic inertia and the organisational chaos that enveloped the CFA at both state headquarters and the Kilmore control centre. The CFA was not as prepared as it should have been for the events of Black Saturday, and, as a result, people died.
But the really scary thing about the official Victorian response to the fires has been the bluff inability of senior CFA managers and their political masters to accept blame. It's simply not good enough for Russell Rees to repeat the mantra "I did the best that I could." It's not a recipe for the kind of organisational reform so clearly demonstrated by the events of Black Saturday. If the CFA can't even acknowledge the scale of its errors, how will it correct them?
Russell Rees's "best" was woefully inadequate on 7 February. He should resign.
There is another man who needs to take responsibility here: Premier John Brumby. The Premier has decided to stand by his fire chief, toughing out the political controversy.
That's not acceptable either. If Rees won't resign, Brumby should sack him.
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What a load of rubbish , you were not there and have no idea of what the issues actually are.
"Most frighteningly, given what we now know about the inept and chaotic CFA response to the fires of 7 February 2009, Black Saturday could happen again." - absolute nonsense.
The CFA did not cause the fires , overall forest management and climatic conditions did that.
Learn to live with the fact that bushfires happen regularly . Saturday was one day of a fire that burnt for weeks .
No large bushfire is ever extinguished , they are contained until they burn out or it rains.
We are defenceless and helpless against wildfire , the heavy fuel load on that Saturday where our buildings .
You can not centralize fire fighting operations , the chief of the CFA is irrelevant once a fire has taken hold , at that point authority needs to devolve to local commanders , central acquistion and allocation of resources is all that is needed.
For example both Yark tankers where lost at Marysville so they where allocated other units.
Locally the CFA operations swung into action smoothly and efficiently to establish a base at the local showgrounds (a tent city for hundreds of firefighters) and a helicopter base at the local park, over the next 4 weeks or so they effectively controlled one of the biggest fires on record.
Despite this you condemn them for failure on one day under the most extreme of conditions - ridiculous.
The fires where a disaster , confusion , chaos and death are the normal ingredients.
Firestorm - extreme heat (plus 1200 degrees) , and ferocious speed. The CFA had no role in Marysville , their job is to mitigate and protect assets on private land with the DSE responsible for the same on public land. We insist that they do not risk their own lives .
The police and SES are the appropriate authorities for the evacuation that was required .
But evacuating is not part of our mindset , it is also a slow process , families need to gather and consult , receive information from authority and then decide. Even 3 hours warning would not have sufficed.
There was very simply no time to develop a strategy or even to implement plans for that Saturday , however in the weeks that followed CFA strategies where proven to be very effective.
The time element is completely disregarded , think country not suburban distances , it can take one or two hours travel time to deploy crews through rugged terrain , yet it took the fire less than three quarters of hour to travel from Murrindindi Mill to Narbethong.
Thick smoke , darkness , incredible heat there is no simplicity in this situation.
CFA resources are not paid for or allocated by head office , they are paid for by fundraising from the local community , this includes basics such as fax machines etc. Locally we are still raising funds to replace tankers , these are projects that take years to finance. This should change. For all the promise of millions of dollars of help , no one has considered helping with equipping the CFA , but then again the state government choses to still rely on them in urban areas such as Bayswater and Narre Warren. Go figure.
We are nothing like the US we have local agencies , CFA SES , Red Cross that act immediately without waiting for the authority to do so.
We have learnt lessons though , practical ones that may keep us alive next time :
-Actually attend CFA meetings , I haven’t in the last five years.
-Keep the hose connected in the laundry during summer so that if you wake up and the world is on fire , you can hose yourself down and hope.
-Modern polycarbonate headlights melt , and so do alloy radiators , batteries and transmission housings , so driving through a fire front is not much of an option.
- Your typical house does not stand a chance against ember attack.
- The community will rally together , organize and act immediately , everybody else follows in their wake.
- Mobile phones and electricity are the first to go so what use waiting for information from a central authority.
- Only you can keep yourself alive , look outside smoke means fire.
- Don’t seperate from loved ones , it is better to die together.
Alexandra , Victoria
The very personal, tragic loss of 173 lives in the Bush fires has paradoxically caused a counter-productive dumbing down of the societal response in dangerously ignorant, "look the other way" Murdochracy Australia..
Thus as far as I know in the Mainstream media I consume there is minimal if any mention of the following KEY concerns.
1. It is estimated by Victoria’s chief health officer, Dr John Carnie that 374 Victorians died of heat stress-related causes in the heat wave 1 week before Black Saturday 7 February 2009 as compared to 173 fire deaths on Black Saturday (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_southeastern_Australia_heat_wave ) .
2. Before the Victorian fires it was well known to Australian and overseas climate scientists and informed climate activists that the extent of forest fires in the Western US had increased by a factor of about 5-10 in the last 30 years due to man-made global warming (for details see Professor John Holdren Professor of Environmental Policy and Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University; Director, Woods Hole Research Center; former president, American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS; President Barack Obama’s chief science adviser), “The Science of Climate Disruption” (2008) – a summary of the basis of man-made global warming and the climatic disruption that has already occurred : http://www.usclimateaction.org/userfiles/JohnHoldren.pdf ).
Unfortunately, in Murdochracy Australia that is overwhelmingly politically dominated by the pro-coal, climate criminal Lib-Labs (Liberal-National Coalition and Labor) and egregiously lied to by the Mainstream media (including the gutless ABC), the impact of man-made climate change on human mortality in Victoria in January-February 2009 has been largely ignored.
The Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (members from Taggerty in the mountains to urban Eltham, Heidelberg and Banyule) has provided a detailed and documented analysis "Forest biomass-derived Biochar can profitably reduce global warming and bushfire risk ": http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/forest-biomas… .
Unfortunately 90% of Australians still vote for the climate criminal, pro-coal, pro-pollution Lib-Labs and are mindlessly rejoicing the recent A$75 billion LNG deals with China and India - ignorant or otherwise mindless of the circa 4 million tonnes of CO2 to be spewed out annually as a consequence and the ever worsening bushfire risk due to pro-coal neocon greed and dishonesty.
Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.
Everyone wants to own the good news, never the bad news, and now the bad guys are the process. Well who prescribed and enforces these impractical processes and the restrictions placed on homeowners who wanted to prepare for the bushfire season but continue to be thwarted at every level of government? when attempting to reduce fuel loads before disaster arrives again. Lazy politicians believing the greens, left dreams, don’t touch anything, otherwise our savior "sustainability" will suffer irreparable damage. What responsibility are these thoughtless green thespians taking for those who are lost in Victoria’s regular fireworks spectacular. Do they feel guilty and responsible or just run off and hide under the covers until another good new story comes along before once again appearing like a green shoot as they climb out from under their rock clutching the same corrupt policies and prescriptions.
Jonah Bones and Dallas Beaufort are spot on. It is an absolute nonsense to suggest that any earlier warnings would have significantly changed the sitation in the fires. Everything happens too quickly for anyone such as the obvious fall guy, Rees, who is not on th ground to make any useful comment or rcommendation. As observed above, smoke means fire, what better communication is there. Get out or stay. It is your decision.
The tragedy occurred because of much earlier and totally brainless decisions to forbid removal of forest from around the townships and dwellings. In fact I believe there was a requirement by local government to have trees growing right up to all the outer houses. One person had the gumption to defy authorities, paid a fine of, reportedly, $50,000 and of course saved his house. I hope his insurance cmpany has now refunded him the $50K or should it have been the Victorian government, who now have the benefits of the results of his $50,000 experiment!
Unless proper firebreaks which may need to be 500metres or more wide and similarly cleared areas around living areas, if people are still going to be allowed to build in these dangerous areas, are required to be built, the news will coninue to describe these very saddening events which ause unbelievable suffering to human beings, forests and wildlife.
It is a Lay Down Misere that fires similar to last years will occur again as they have been knoiwn to for the last 200 years, nothing whatsoever to do with global warming, simply historic occurences because of dry undergrowth, lightening strokes and the augmented assisance from fire bugs, which is where the real human influence occurs. Al of the best communications in the world will make no difference to the outcome unless firebreak precautions are taken. These will save lives, houses, human trauma, large areas of pristine forest and the uncountable deaths and suffering of native wildlife.
Lets get real. The areas required to be cleared for fire breaks are infinitesimal compared with the areas of forest devastated and totally destroyed without them.
John Nicol
So, Australia gets another bushfire investigation whitewash - no-one responsible - it was the system, the circumstances were beyond our control (defeatist approach), perhaps let’s settle on global warming to blame?
If I were one of the affected families I would be organising vigilantes.
Perhaps Brumby’s Royal Excuse Commission can consider a Root Cause Analysis, instead of tellig us what we already know in 51 recommendations.
Let’s start with what the Victorian Government’s responsibility is to protect the Victorian community!
Let’s look at the CFA and its core tas to put out bushfires! (and don’t hide behind the volunteers)
The CFA key performance metrics for putting out bushfires ought to be:
1. Publicise the elapsed time between each estimated ignition time/loation and time bushfire authorities detected it
2. Publish the elapsed time between each estimated detection time and response time for dispatch (despatch of fire crews to each ignition)
3. Publish elapsed time between each response time and the time the associated fire was suppressed.
Key problem, such record are not kept.
Such performance focus is not the culture. Instead, the prevailing CFA/DSE view is that if Victoria is prescribed burned to look like Royal Park (before the housing development) there will be no fuel, no wildlife, no risk, and so problem solved.
This is the simplistic kneejerk bushphobic reaction.
But so-called experts like Dr Luscombe don’t tell us that much of the area where the ignitions started was manageable grassland and was indeed recently prescribed burned. Ember attack flies over prescribed burning for kilometres.
The holistic answer lies in military-speed and resourced fire fighting - essentially a new civil emergency division set up within our military - satellites, central control cenre in Canverra, standby airborne fleet, the lot! But this will cost billions. May be Rudd and Brumby don’t think 173 people are worth billions, but then the total cost (economic, social, environmental, volunteer replacement) of major fires is not recorded.
Where is the root cause analysis? Where is the permananent national bush arson criminology investigation unit that doesn’t exist? Where is the media policy that treats reporting of bushfires like the reporting of suicide, so that copy cats are not incited?
Why after a major bushfire does government and the media always start at the beginning - Fire Management 101?
Lessons learned - crap!
Tigerquoll , the point is you do not put out bushfires . It is not possible. You manage them and for over 4 weeks a well trained , well resourced group of volunteers did exactly that in an operation that ran like clockwork.
Disaster management for days like that Saturday was the missing ingredient and disaster management is not the role of the CFA or DSE.
Metrics on response time would be useless , drive through the Rubicon valley sometime.
Yes , we do need to do the science on controlled burning , it would appear to be common wisdom but doubtful practice.
Changes to the forest’s normal defence against fire through timber harvesting and agriculture needs to be examine , if a mountain ash forest does not have a thick moist mulch layer to carry it through summer it is going to be very flammable.
Then there is the issue of water extraction in the Kinglake catchment , how has that impacted the forest.
jonicol , not sure firebreaks are the ultimate answer , you can see houses with cleared areas that survived but those are right next to houses covered in overgrowth and with trees leaning over them that the fire just went around , not very linear fire just a roaring chaos. Remember that our forest is very volatile , the oils and resins released create fireballs that can comfortably cover a 500m firebreak.
Murrindindi shire is sparesly populated and mostly national park , February demonstrated how flammable our buildings are and gave us an indication of the intensity and speed of wildfire , an entirely different beast to bushfire . So what of the Dandenongs, Eltham , The Blue Mountains and other areas that have filled with house that provide heavy fuel load to these fires. The trees have proved resilient , not so our fragile existence.
Ben makes some strong and relevant points.
Yes there are lots of other factors but the outcomes speak for themselves.
Clearly there were management and leadership failures within the CFA and clearly Russell Rees must accept responsibility for them. These are not ‘fire related’ factors but factors of good organisation and responsible leadership.
It was the community that paid for the failed systems that Ben reports on, the community paid for the Royal Commission and the community paid with their lives and properties for the failures by government agencies. The hard work was mostly done by volunteer fire fighters yet the people getting the big bucks, like Russell Rees, are avoiding responsibility.
Leaving Mr Rees in the job teaches everyone else the terrible lesson that there is no price for failure at the top, no matter how severely that failure affects those paying all of the bills.
So I say right on Ben.
I just wanted to make a few points in reply to some of these comments, especially in response to the remarks made by John Nicol and Jonah Bones that "earlier warnings would [not] have significantly changed the sitation in the fires."
It’s true that warnings can’t put out fires. But earlier warnings certainly could have saved lives. The facts on the ground uncovered by the Royal Commission suggest that for many in the communities of Kinglake and Stathewan, there was almost no warning - in effect completely abolishing the ability of residents there to make a choice regarding stay or go.
To argue that smoke is a warning completely misrepresents the nature of the spotting activity associated with these fires.
I don’t want to get into an endless discussion on these points, but would rather direct readers to examine the Interim Report’s chapters on the incident response to the Kilmore East fire and the Stay or Go policy. The Interim Report is a very thorough discussion of these difficult issues, and a close reading of its arguments will be far more enlightening than anything I could add in a comment post.
I contributed to the fight against this fire for three weeks. Nothing in the world could have stopped this fire, it moved at over 100km and hour in 48 degree heat. Are you suggesting that fire-fighters lives should have been exhausted to stop the fire?…..that is the only way it could have been stopped mbolan. as for the communicating side of it for 5 days leading up to 7/2/09 the CFA, State Gov issued warnings that this was going to be a hell of a day on all forms of media, every hour on the ABC Radio, everyday in newspapers in fact. You would have had to have been living on the moon not to at least hear one warning. I thought it would have been common sense that if you’re living in the bush then you are at risk of wildfires. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame some Government or volunteer agency for their own failures. Also people should remember the CFA is predominantly volunteer and the consatnt critcism is deminishing those volunteers, even the people working with Rees on the day in the IECC were volunteers so when you critics the CFA management you are also criticising volunteers. Actualy Jonah Bones your three suggestions would work well in a controlled fire where nature doesn’t have a say.
I have a friend in Lilydale who told me he got embers from the Kinglake fires - when fire travels instantly over huge distances smoke is not a reliable indicator of safety levels any more than a radio warning is. And reports of what speeds the fires reached at times suggest people needed to get out way before those fires should have triggered warnings even if the processes were working perfectly. Which of course they werent.
I havent heard much about what the CFA volunteers on the ground say about the systems and management, but I would think they would have a lot of wisdom to offer and I hope they are heard.
I think we ask a lot of these volunteers - they risk their own lives and often have to leave their families unprotected in the midst of fire while they go to help others. They, and the communities they protect, deserve an authentic assessment of what needs to be implemented to manage the world that is evolving. This might include the introduction of a professional, paid fire fighting service (or formal linking to the MFB). It might include new laws allowing landclearing - it might include bans on living in certain high danger areas. It might include a re-assessment of DSE procedures, CFA procedures, the roles of associated services, local government responsibilities, media obligations - just hanging one bloke out to dry wont solve the large challenge ahead.
I have friends living in the water catchment region outside Warburton who dread the first warm breeze of spring. They live in a high fire danger area and perhaps shouldnt be allowed to live there any more. But then again, they are growing food and that cant be done without water.
For as long as the local government zones their home as residential, they remain entitled to the protection of common sense and good husbandry - I just hope the commission is wise, and that their wisdom is acted upon appropriately and without prejudice.
Regardless of whether Rees is sacked or resigns I want my friends to know that the one road out of Warburton will not spell death for them this summer.
"This should change. For all the promise of millions of dollars of help , no one has considered helping with equipping the CFA , but then again the state government choses to still rely on them in urban areas such as Bayswater and Narre Warren."
Dead Right Jonah
Emergency services and volunteers in particular are taken for granted in this Country. Politicians are as serious as the next photo opportunity. Remember Cyclone Larry with an appearence of John Howard on cue.
Five cents in every tax dollar should go to Emergency Services or as much as the Defence Budget??.
The focus should not be on the top but on the bottom and level above that. These people should be given autonomy of action when the threat becomes local.
I would like the Interim Report to go to the defence force chiefs and strategy classes at Duntroon. "How do we preserve life when faced with such a calamity?"
We need to rationalise land use around the towns and ensure safe, viable evacuation routes in poor visibility.
If fuel loads must be reduced, as most of the players ignore, and the remove of all human habitation is their answer, how are the city’s inhabitants going to stop the burning embers from traveling with the breeze and into their backyards? All talk and no action makes these ignorant green thespians dull indeed, and probably very dead, when they have no where to run in a firestorm when their Romanesque dwellings burn.
At least Australia’s original inhabitants knew how to save themselves before common sense was prescribed to the dustbin of history and this current mob of circus thinkers took hold, as they continue to go around and around for the exercise, never quiet knowing where they will end up or who will be next on the long list of burnt offerings sacrificed on the greens alter, of convenient ignorance.
I agree with Dr Polya that climate change, and in particular effective climate policy as a means of long-term bushfire prevention, has been overlooked by the royal commission in its interim report.
Though climate is slated for consideration in the next round of public hearings, the formal consideration of climate in terms of specific recommendations will come too late in the commission’s July 2010 final report, when an earlier focus could have seen a rigorous examination of Australia’s climate policies in the lead-up to the Copenhagen negotiations. That would, of course, have proved very inconvenient for both the Victorian State Government and the Federal Government.
For more on the bushfires royal commission, see my articles on ABC Unleashed:
Royal commission must face climate change, and
Climate blindness
For the sorts of climate policy recommendations that could have been considered by the interim report, see my submission to the inquiry.
Darren Lewin-Hill
http://northcote-independent.blogspot.com
Jonah Jones is right. "You can not centralize fire fighting operations , the chief of the CFA is irrelevant once a fire has taken hold , at that point authority needs to devolve to local commanders , central acquistion and allocation of resources is all that is needed."
Ben Eltham is also right. The highly paid bureaucrat Russell Rees should either resign or be sacked, for having stubbornly held onto a cetralised structure of command and information control which quite predictably fell apart in the real situation of the fire emergency.
He cannot plead ignorance of conflagration or fire behaviour: that is what he is paid to be expert in. He is paid to know about fires and the real issues of firefighting, including how cetralised operations can fall apart under the impact of unexpected events and whatever has not been prepared for.
The Canberra bushfires of 2002 in which 4 people died and 500 homes were lost gave all the precedent that Rees needed and should have known about. It also showed one of this country’s slipperiest politicians (ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope) in top form, when he accused critics of the bureaucracy’s handling of the situation of ‘attacking the firefighters.’
Victoria conforms to a pattern; a recursive algorithm if you like:
(1) fire disaster
(2) politicians respond by setting up inquiry without delay
(3) politicians and bureaucrats close ranks
(4) Inquiry meets, makes recommendations
(5) Politicians and bureaucrats applaud recommendations
(6) No actual change in practice results
(7) Go to (1)
There are ways to get around the failure of centred communications such as based on phones and faxes. They have been in military use for years. For example radio networks (eg CB) are far more bulletproof than phones. But bureaucracy is by definition about cetralisation of both power and information, and bureaucrats are understandably very reluctant to move far off the command model. It is after all their raison d’etre.
They are also very reluctant to go down with their centralisation ship. After all, when in calm waters, it sails along just fine.
Ben Eltham has written an excellent article. A lot of people died and it is likely that some of them died needlessly, for one reason or another. An enquiry is in process and has made criticisms of the people who were charged with managing the situation. Our unelected Premier has taken it upon himself to absolve these people halfway through the investigation and give them his wholehearted support. He should pray we don’t get a repetition this summer! I have a friend who is a CFA volunteer, who has told me he thinks the CFA learned nothing from the 1983 fires and are likely to learn the same from the 2008 fires. He still volunteers but is not optimistic. When the Exxon Valdez went aground in Alaska, the third mate was on the bridge but the captain took the blame. This goes with the territory, if you are in charge you not only get the credit when it goes right, you take the blame when it goes wrong. This may not be fair but that’s the way it is. Russell Rees should resign forthwith, no ifs, buts or maybes. If the CFA is going to turn itself around it needs new blood at the top. If Brumby can’t or won’t supply it he should go as well. A further point about Brumby is that he said something on the lines, "We are all responsible for the Victorian bushfires." Sorry to disagree, we aren’t. Also, having doubts about the CFA management doesn’t equate to denigrating the people who bravely fought the fires. On the contrary, the firefighters deserve decent leadership. Once again, good article Ben.
Ben , the interim report from the Royal Commission , does not excuse the form of words you used that directly implies that the CFA were to blame for the fires.
The weather warnings were clear a week beforehand , by Saturday it was too late to leave , travel in those conditions is dangerous as , ironically, you may find yourself trapped by fire, the decision to leave needed to be made and executed early the preceding week.
By what precedent have we decided that people will heed warnings.
This is the difficulty we are faced with , we now have a keen appreciation of what we face next summer . We could deal with heavy ember attack if we could afford to prepare properly , we need a water tank and a fire pump , this is $6000 and heavy rainfall that we simply can not find by the start of summer. For us this is the irony of the tens of millions being thrown around , nothing is on offer for typical rural residents to be better prepared.
In what way is this the responsibilty of the CFA ? If we survive the next 3 or 4 summers we will have the opportunity to have purchased these items.
The dynamic seems to be that there is little interest in rural issues , until city interests have something to gain , so after a wildfire disaster the CFA can become the scapegoat in political games . Why not the DSE ? Murrindindi Shire is mainly national park and over the whole state that day a lot of national park burnt . By historical precedent
-’ "ultimate responsibility" for fires under the Country Fire Authority Act of 1958. ‘- lies with the CFA , however this is anachronistic .
What of the CFA’s struggle for resources . It is community funded , successive governments have had little interest in ensuring its effectiveness , few votes little political power is the reality for a rural community , that is demonstrated time and time again , heard of the north south pipeline.
The CFA bureaucracy exists because you have to have an interface with government , it shares bureaucratic culture with the state , allowing at least some communication and representation for the body of volunteers interested in dealing with fires within their community. That is people are needed who will form the committees , write the reports , form consultative groups and interdepartmental working groups etc , leaving everybody else free to deal with the actual function of the organization .
The problem with bureaucracy is that it demands to be invested with all authority removing autonomy from people with the threat of sanction , this inherently handicaps the adapatibilty and speed of response required during a disaster.
It is the function of the CFA , strategic priorities , allocation of resources, construction of containment lines etc that we saw superbly executed through Feb into early March. Saturday was not the fires , nor does the rights and wrongs of the handling of the firestorm hallmark the operational efficiency of the CFA . Alexandra was the centre of operations for the containment of the fires that ringed the area. During the town meeting on the last Monday the messages were as always clear and unequivocal , the fire index was set for new records , the predicted winds of a direction and magnitude to awaken the Black Range fires and push the Rubicon front through Eildon and Thornton to Alexandra. So heavy ember attack and possibly fire front , after weeks of fighting it looked like going to hell again. As it was the winds circling from the north round to the west didn’t impact on the areas as feared. But……….
So is the CFA going to be reshaped into a disaster response mechanism? Does the state have the will to seriously consider disaster planning? If I have to evacuate for weeks at a time during summer where will I be housed, who will pay and what of my lost business income?
When will we be prepared to accept that the speed of wildfire renders useless strategy?
Life is inherently risky , the reaction to this one disaster seems to by hysterical .
Give it up we are not in control and can only do what we can do as the circumstances present. The most efficient bureaucracy in the world is unlikely to have changed the outcome of that Saturday. However now faced with the reality , maybe we will be a little more cautious , people may even listen and consider that statement ‘Today is a day of extreme fire risk’.
Political authority is never a substitute for moral autonomy.
tigerquoll 20/08/09 11:55PM
So, Australia gets another bushfire investigation whitewash - no-one responsible - it was the system, the circumstances were beyond our control (defeatist approach), perhaps let’s settle on global warming to blame?
If I were one of the affected families I would be organising vigilantes.
Perhaps Brumby’s Royal Excuse Commission can consider a Root Cause Analysis, instead of tellig us what we already know in 51 recommendations.
Let’s start with what the Victorian Government’s responsibility is to protect the Victorian community!
Let’s look at the CFA and its core tas to put out bushfires! (and don’t hide behind the volunteers)
The CFA key performance metrics for putting out bushfires ought to be:
1. Publicise the elapsed time between each estimated ignition time/loation and time bushfire authorities detected it
2. Publish the elapsed time between each estimated detection time and response time for dispatch (despatch of fire crews to each ignition)
3. Publish elapsed time between each response time and the time the associated fire was suppressed.
Key problem, such record are not kept.
Such performance focus is not the culture. Instead, the prevailing CFA/DSE view is that if Victoria is prescribed burned to look like Royal Park (before the housing development) there will be no fuel, no wildlife, no risk, and so problem solved.
This is the simplistic kneejerk bushphobic reaction.
But so-called experts like Dr Luscombe don’t tell us that much of the area where the ignitions started was manageable grassland and was indeed recently prescribed burned. Ember attack flies over prescribed burning for kilometres.
The holistic answer lies in military-speed and resourced fire fighting - essentially a new civil emergency division set up within our military - satellites, central control cenre in Canverra, standby airborne fleet, the lot! But this will cost billions. May be Rudd and Brumby don’t think 173 people are worth billions, but then the total cost (economic, social, environmental, volunteer replacement) of major fires is not recorded.
Where is the root cause analysis? Where is the permananent national bush arson criminology investigation unit that doesn’t exist? Where is the media policy that treats reporting of bushfires like the reporting of suicide, so that copy cats are not incited?
Why after a major bushfire does government and the media always start at the beginning - Fire Management 101?
Lessons learned - crap!
Johan Bones 21/08/09 11:53AM presumes that unless one puts out teh fires one has no right to comment. One does not have to have done two tours of Iran or Afghanistan to assess actions are wrong. Resist your fallacious argument ad hominen and don’t be afraid of addressing the issue and the root cause!
Rural bushfire culture prevails over generations since WWII. Weel trained or iare the ignitions well left to burn? Show su sthe statistics of teh delays between ignition and CFA detection, between detection and response to the scene, between response and suppression. Such data doee not exist does it? Why not?
And so dad’s army volunteers operation "ran like clockwork".
Tell that to the 170! Tell those who survived and across other forested part of Victoria that these same bushfore strategies and resources will be there to protect rural families!
"Disaster management is not the role of the CFA or DSE" That’s bloody comforting!" Hence my vigilante solution necessitated due to government incompetence.
Having been critical, I am not proposing a simple cheap solution.
The solution will cost billions and involve federal and state overhaaul, but Brumby like other politicans will be keen to sweep it under the carpet and allow the bushfre culture to continue business as usual…and it will happen again - guaranteed!
tigerquoll , I have no special place in this argument , just that unlike journalists like Ben Eltham , I live in the area , experienced the month cutoff and isolated by bushfire , everyday I talk to the survivors and listen to their stories , my partner knew most of those who died in Marysville. The lass who served us coffee a few weeks before was one of the victims.
I am frustrated with mainstream nonsense that focuses on just that Saturday , over the next weeks we nearly lost Eildon ,Thornton, Yea and Alexandra and that was prevented by the CFA and DSE.
We seem to stand at opposite ends of the balance between the role of the state and personal responsibility.
I would prefer not to be reliant on the state for my safety this summer.
I have been analysing bushfires for some years and more particularly the Victorian Bushfires weekly since the weeks before the 7th Feb blow up.
Read the Australia Science Media Centre’s report on Wednesday 28 January 2009 entitled "Are we underprepared for the bushfire threat?" SOURCE: http://aussmc.org/bushfire_threat_Jan09.php
"As the mercury soars into the 40s this week in southern Australia, the risk of bushfires is high. But experts warn that today’s knowledge and practices on bushfire management will not meet the needs of the community in coming decades.
Climate change and drought are altering the nature, ferocity and duration of bushfires, and while the right type of fire can contribute to a healthy and diverse environment, research is telling us that the wrong type of fire – too hot or too frequent – can affect the amount of water in our rivers and the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.
These issues are further compounded by the expanding rural-urban fringe creating increasing numbers of people living in higher risk areas that are ignorant of the bushfire threat – either because they don’t consider their homes to be in a bushfire zone or they underestimate the risk."
The CFA knew the weather risks, the bushfire risks, the existing fires uncontrolled before 7 Feb, the arson threat, the tinder dry bush, yet did precious little to escalate a STATE OF EMERGENCY on 6 Feb as the forecast fires index was to exceed 300! No interstate resources called in. No airborne resources called in.
Then we hear of Brumby’s incitement to dormant arsonists on the TV the night prior. He was neglegently reckless to do so.
I am from Melbourne and have bushwalked through Kinglake National Park. It is big timber country, up on ridges, tinder dry and with known forecast weather off the fire index 200+!
Importantly, compare the Tulka Fires [2001] to the Wangary Fires [2005] in South Australia. No lessons were learnt from Tulka and so 9 died four years later. No one is learnng from the arson attacks annually in Greece and California. The dismissive ‘fire bug’ terms needs to be removed from the vernacular. This is ‘pyroterrorism’ - look it up!
The media and politics have conveniently focused on Marysville. The Victorian fires comprised the Kinglake fire complex, the Dandenong Ranges Fire, the Beechworth Fire, the Murrindindi Mill Complex Fire, the Churchill Fire, the Bunyip Fire, the Bendigo Fire, Redesdale Fire, Narre Warren Fire, Wilsons Promontory Fire, Horsham Fire, Coleraine Fire, Weerite Fire, Tallangatta Fire and a few smaller scale ones. Go back to the media reports - it started with that arsonist at Delburn in west Gippsland in late January.
The Royal Commission terms of reference are about identifying specific causes. Lightning is one; arson another. Multiple spotovers resulted in consequential fires fanned by strong changing winds and tinder dry bush and forest. Again we hear of steep and difficult terrain, yet the year in year out bushfire funding is blindly channelled into more fire trucks which are incapable of accessing remote ignitions in such country.
The scale of the impact was massive and perhaps unprecedented, but indeed sets a precedent and DSE/CFA and Brumby are warning us of a repeat!
How bloody irresponsible for a government to not only fail to protect its citizens from a pre-warned catastrophe, but then afterwards to proclaim it will all happen again and that our government cannot do anything about it! Why do we pay taxes?
What is inescapable is that rural bushfire management has a duty to protect life property and (now popularly accepted - ecological assets - that is, the bush too.
Last February was a catastrophic failure, but then many years across Australia has repeatedly seen catastrophic failures to save lives, property,livestock and ecology. Yet tie and again, state governments whitewash over the coronial enquiries, throw token millions to pacify the public then distract the public with other news, until it all happens again.
Detection of ignitions comes too late, response is too late, airborne resources come too late. None of these core performance measures are recorded! The fires cost billions, but again the TOTAL COST OF FIRE, is not recorded. Internal efriefing fails to record elapsed times between estimate ignition and detection and then suppressions - we are talking days in some cases - unacceptable! Look at what happend to Wilson Prom - twice now! - left to incinerate.
Our current military is inadequate, untrained and incompetent to handle such national bushfire emergencies. The Army is not set up for this. They can’t even get peacekeeping right - cite Dilli 2006!
Emergency Management Australia
I am advocating is winding up of urban fire brigades, the SES, CFA, RFS, CFS, DSE, EMA. Instead, establishing Emergency Management Australia as a brand new specialised division of the ARMY (as a full paid, trained and resourced National Guard equivalent) for all natural emergencies - fire, flood, storm, earthquake, etc.
This necesitates billions in investment - national satellite monitoring across SE Australia, an airborne division (aircraft, helicopter and RAFT), thousands of ground firefighting forces with state-of-the-art equipment, cross-training and communications, recruitment and skilling up existing bush firefighting crews and fire brigades into a new national profession force. The cost is cheap if we measure the TOTAL COST OF FIRE each year. I can justtify military budgets protecting people in our region (Dilli and Solomons), but let’s rethink pouring Austrlian taxpayer billions into Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s all relative and it’s all about political will.
Without such massive billions in a single national professional military style organisation, we can expect poorly resourced and taken-for-granted dad’s armies of volunteers to repeatedly share in future incinerations of rural communities. I am not blaming the volunteers. They have little choice.
But show me otherwise how such catastrophies will not be prevented?
Look, there is only one simple answer to this. Sue the Government. They are ulitmately responsible for this fire and its outcome. Everything was avoidable, and holding them responsible in this manner would be about the closest people will get to ensuring that this will not be turned into a farce. Sadly money is all politicians care about. And it was money that could have saved those lives. Money for land clearing and responsible environmental management. Money to fund the local council and CFA so they could do their jobs properly. Money for better communication and early warning systems. It was ultimately this government and the preceding governments who are responsible for the negligent management of outlying areas. It’s really as simple as that. If they see possible community and legal attention arising, they will bend over backwards to accomodate everyone. Winning elections is the ultimate issue after all.
why can’t things be kept simple and stupid, such as those living in those bushing place should be allowed to clear land around their homes so that may help, or let them build fire prevention system on their property (i.e. sprinkle systems)?
but by the way the law is, the bushes are more important human lives.