Australia needs a “major change” in its approach to firefighting as climate change makes blazes harder to control, a new report from Emergency Leaders for Climate Action says.
Following the massive blazes that burnt 11 million hectares earlier this year, the group of former fire chiefs held an emergency summit and consulted with 150 experts and affected community members to outline 165 recommendations.
In their report, the Australian Bushfire and Climate Plan, they say the focus on firefighting efforts must shift from containing fires to rapidly extinguishing them while they are still small.
“This is a major change in our approach and requires significant investment in early detection and rapidly deployable aerial and ground firefighting forces,” the report said.
It also recommends a levy on the fossil fuel industry to pay for climate-fuelled disaster responses.
Former Fire & Rescue NSW Commissioner Greg Mullins told news.com.au the change in the ferocity of fires required more of a focus on “first attack” responses including systems to rapidly identify any blazes when they first start such as lightning detection, aerial reconnaissance and satellites.
“The basic premise is that all big fires start small, so if you can round them up when relatively small, then we are able to move on to next outbreak,” he said.
This approach would also require more remote fire teams, which can be dropped by helicopter into certain areas to get blazes under control quickly.
These specialist firefighters were used to great effect during the Gospers Mountain blaze in NSW, when they helped save the last of a remote patch of Wollemi pine, known as “dinosaur trees”, from being razed.
Australia would also need to invest in more aircraft for attacking fires quickly, such as water scooping aircraft like the CL-415, an amphibious aircraft known as the “superscooper”, which is used in many other countries for collecting water to douse flames.
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NATIONAL CLIMATE DISASTER FUND NEEDED
The report says Australia needed to become more self-sufficient rather than relying on the availability of aerial assets from overseas, which are increasingly difficult to source due to overlapping northern and southern hemisphere fire seasons.
It also recommended the Federal Government consider paying or reimbursing volunteers who were required to fight fires for long periods of time, and had suffered hardship or loss of income.
The report says a national climate disaster fund should be created, funded by a levy on the fossil fuel industry, which will help meet the increasing costs of climate-fuelled disasters.
“There is no longer any argument that climate change is happening or that it is affecting national disasters,” Mr Mullins said. “It is settled science and the Prime Minister has acknowledged this.”
While some blame the lack of hazard reduction for driving the mega blazes, Mr Mullins pointed out that some spot fires had jumped up to 12km ahead of the main blazes.
“A fire break, even 1km wide, won’t make a fire that can jump 8km ahead sneeze,” he said.
However, he believes regulation and red tape around fire hazard on private property could be improved, and a strategy to better harness the knowledge of Indigenous experts should be created.
“They understand when birds are nesting and when trees have berries, (their burning is) very sophisticated and it heals country. You can’t just train the local RFS to do it, it has to be done by people who live off the country. We need to look at the regulatory framework that stops that from happening.”
Ultimately, Mr Mullins said if Australia wanted to reduce the risk of more Black Summers then it needed to deal with climate change being driven by carbon emissions.
“We can plan to help mitigate national disasters but nothing can stop it except net zero emissions and bringing temperatures down, which will take decades,” he said.
The former fire chief still gets emotional when thinking about the scenes he witnessed last summer.
“I saw kangaroos on fire in Batemans Bay, I’ve never seen that before in 50 years of firefighting,” he said.
“I remember being on the highway and seeing something black on the side of the road moving, they were dead and dying kangaroos that couldn’t escape. That moved me to tears. It’s not like it used to be.
“This planet is in trouble because of us.”
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Mr Mullins said he hoped that there would be “no more ridiculous statements”, such as climate change didn’t start fires.
“(The PM) has finally said it’s a given that climate change is exacerbating the fire problem, let’s go from there. Let’s deal with this problem rather than just filling in the cracks.”
Climate Councillor and public health physician Dr Kate Charlesworth said the fires led to more than 400 deaths and more than 4000 hospitalisations from bushfire smoke.
“The climate-health crisis is affecting Australians now, and is the number one threat to
people’s health in the long-term. We urgently need a national climate and health
strategy to protect Australians,” Dr Charlesworth said.
KEY RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Better resource fire and land management agencies to manage fuels, and rapidly
detect and attack new outbreaks;
2. Add self-sufficient medium and large aerial firefighting capability to Australian fire
services;
3. Create an Indigenous-led National Cultural Fire Strategy to complement and
inform fuel management by agencies;
4. Establish an independent insurance price monitor so that Australians in
disaster-prone areas can insure and be more resilient;
5. Set up a national climate disaster fund to meet climate-fuelled disaster costs and
build resilience — paid through a fossil fuel producer levy; and
6. Develop and implement a national strategy on climate change, health and
wellbeing.
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2020-07-29 22:30:00Z
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