The Upcoming Bushfire Season

Almost four years on from Black Saturday, what does this year’s summer hold for Victoria?

Since Black Saturday

We’ve had some relatively mild summers since February/March 2009. Considering the tragedy of Black Saturday, that’s been a good thing as the Victorian community recovered from the trauma and heartbreak of our worst bushfires ever.

Most Recently

It’s only early October as I write this, but last Friday the CFA were kept busy with our first higher-temperature day of the season. They handled the day well, with good results under control quickly.
On the other hand, up in New South Wales on the same day, it wasn’t going quite so easy. The community of Wyee was endangered for at least a day, with cool weather on the Saturday bringing the needed assist.

Queensland and South Australia, too, had their share of work to do against bushfires as well over the weekend.

Again, it’s only early October. There’s still all the way through to March to get through yet.

SMEM

The social media aspect of emergencies is starting to improve greatly, with more and more emergency services adding Twitter and Facebook to their communications arsenals. Social Media Emergency (SMEM) is coming a long way since most of us had to think on our feet and learn at the deep end back in February 2009.

Then again, social media proved an asset in early 2011, with the amount of natural disasters hitting the Australasian/Oceania region in the first quarter of last year. Victoria, instead of having to face bushfires, instead faced floods, as did Queensland and especially Brisbane. Then came the Christchurch earthquake, followed by Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear power plant problems.

The amount of Twitter and Facebook volunteers, in each of these countries or abroad, showed how social media could work with mainstream forms of emergency communication.

Complimentary Role Of Social Media

There’s definitely a complimentary role for social media to play in this field. Accent on the word complimentary…as it would be impractical to replace proven radio and other systems entirely with social media.

The Upcoming Season

Still, it’s hoped that the 2012/2013 summer brings less disaster than early 2011…I can remember being pooped completely after three months of having to relay emergency information on Twitter back then and I can tell you how exhausting it gets. That’s just the communications side…you can imagine how it would be for those in the front line, the firefighters, the emergency services (SES) people, nurses, doctors and police in any of the situations our region faced almost two years ago.

Also, just remember it’s up to each of us to be prepared and respect the conditions we have in such seasons. Fireready, firesafe.

And let’s hope the bushfire season in Australia is a quiet one.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Two Years After Black Saturday

I can still remember that fateful day two years ago.

The hottest day I think I'd seen in my life.  I only ventured out into the heat twice that day, once to buy something from the local Officeworks store, then later to pick up my son's bike from a repair shop.  It was still early afternoon and I was looking at a Twitter clone app on my iPhone, messaging about it.  A follower wanted to see just what it looked like, so I took a shot of the sky, although I don't remember if that were a great indicator of things or not.  However, at that part of the afternoon we still had no idea what was to come.

The news later brought it home all too vividly.  Then there was the realization that my niece was in one of the endangered areas up in Gippsland.  That led to a frantic couple of phone calls and to taking a better look at Twitter clients, as I remembered reading how effective Twitter could be in emergency situations.  I also set up a Twitter application on the desktop computer.  I had to learn and adapt quicker than I'd liked, but it was crucial to finding out quickly what was going on and wheter I could find anything that would help my niece's situation.

Over the next six weeks, every spare moment was spent on that computer and my iphone keeping track of what was happening, in addition to collating and relaying important information out through Twitter.

That first night, however, was the hardest and perhaps the worst.  It caught so many by surprise.  Even with the earlier heat that day, nobody had really expected the horrendous fires that occurred.  About the only thing we could do that night was figure out how to recover from the shock and try to handle it as best we could.

I think I can safely say it's something most Victorians hope we never see again.

Then again, we didn't think we'd see two lots of Victorian floods in the space of just under a month.

That's the thing about Australia and its weather conditions...it's either fire or its floods.

Black Saturday Anniversary

I've just come back from the commemorative service at Flowerdale, stopping in for a short time at Kinglake, Kinglake West and Whittlesea. Today was the first anniversary of Black Saturday.

There are times when words are inadequate, even on a day when we pause to remember the lives of so many lost a year ago.

What follows are the only two photos that felt okay to take in both Flowerdale and Kinglake. These are more eloquent.

Flowerdale, Sunday February 7, 2010.

Kinglake, also Sunday February 7, 2010.

First anniversary of Black Saturday and the loss of over 170 lives to bushfire.

FireReady In November...

Mid-November 2009. Tomorrow the temperature is expected to be 36 degrees Celsius or above in Victoria. Over in South Australia, the fire level is already raised to Catastrophic under the new fire danger system. New South Wales is also expecting high temperatures too.

Those of us who were the Twitter volunteers in February and early March are already keeping our eyes on the information flow and building new resources to do a better job.

This time, the job is to prevent a recurrence of Black Saturday.

There has already been one period a week or so ago of high temperatures, so far kept under wraps by the efforts of the CFA and DSE. The alerts, prior to tomorrow, have been relatively free of anything to worry about.

Thanks to Twitter's new Lists feature, we can group those we follow and look up a whole List for a specific type of resource, be it news, CFA alerts of various types or the people we know who will do a good job. By contrast, the beta Retweet function on Twitter's web page is less useful at the moment. It doesn't RT out to third-party clients. So, it's still the standard type of retweet that will be of value in an emergency.

On the App Store for iPhone, there is now the app shown here, Fire Alerts Victoria. It is essentially a dedicated RSS reader covering all CFA information and district alerts. One drawback is that you can't retweet from it, but if you've got it on your iPhone, you'll at least have a rough idea from the CFA of areas of concern.

FireReady, now called Living With Fire, is about preparing, acting and surviving.

Preparation is crucial to avoiding a repeat of February's Black Saturday. The more you prepare, the more resources available for deciding, the better you act in a crunch. And the better you and your community survive.

That's something we all have to remember.

Not Long Till The Next Fire Season...

It's now weeks before the expected start of the next bushfire season.

We'd like to hope we're more ready for it than we were last season. If sensible people have learnt any lesson from February, it's that any potential bushfire fuel should be cleared well before the expected time. Thankfully, some immediate recommendations from the Bushfires Royal Commission regarding that are already being implemented, with some people already starting to clear such fuel from the immediate surrounds of homes in potentially-affected areas. The CFA is also working on fuel-reduction as well.

Recommendations concerning better warning systems, though, might be problematic to implement in time for technical reasons. However, things like Twitter and some of the other social media will be ready and the volunteers from February and March will be amongst the earliest responders monitoring and ready to provide important safety information. People will know a bit better in coming months that Twitter can be highly effective.

We've already heard that it is expected to be a potentially-worse season than the last. That doesn't mean we want it to turn out like Black Saturday. Far from it. People will be more vigilant, quicker to respond and move.

In the meantime there are two regional hearings of the Royal Commission, at Myrtleford and Horsham. At a later date, there will be a hearing in the Gippland area.

After the 21st of September, the Commission will investigate deaths from the last bushfires, with the intent to evaluate the "stay or go" policy.

Let's hope this next season, some commonsense enables more to be done to protect lives and make the upcoming season far safer than the last. But let's not just hope, let's do.

Bushfires - The Next Season

Victoria has barely started the recovery from one bushfire season before being told, this week, to expect an upcoming season that could be potentially worse.

I suppose a lot of people are praying for a LOT of Spring rain and for milder temperatures than what is expected. However, prayer's one thing...giving God a hand by doing some safety-oriented preparation is another.

But essentially, the State of Victoria, as individuals and as a community will have to prepare and work hard to ensure we do NOT get a repeat of February 2009.

That may mean even the staunchest conservationist thinking about clearing a safety buffer between his home and dangerous trees which become fire fuel. It may mean making sure emergency sirens are ready to warn any small town at a moment's notice, hang former regulations on not disturbing people.

It means emergency communications being better able to handle things than back in February. It means better planning by the relevent authories and getting their acts together.

It means learning some valuable lessons from February and applying them. NOT ignoring them.

The thing is, next fire season, we can't be at the level of complacency we were at before February 7, 2009.

The Road To Kinglake, Phase Two...

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to go to Kinglake West, to film the Sustainable Building Workshop there.

It was my second visit to the Kinglake region in the past couple of months, the first done in daytime.

It's a better view in full light. You get to see the regrowth of grass, lush and green. By the same token, you also get a more detailed view of the extent of the destruction caused by February's bushfires.

It's when you get a couple of kilometres past Whittlesea that you begin to see the still-burnt trees, the homes still broken, bent, burnt or melted. Over to my right I could see one metal building still badly bent out of shape.

Admittedly, on this particular side of Kinglake, you get to see some areas that were untouched, or minorly-damaged, as opposed to the kilometres of burnt trees all the way from St. Andrews to Kinglake.

I finally reached the turnoff from the Whittlesea-Yea road to where I was going, stopping for five minutes to chat to the proprietor of the small milk bar/licensed post office that sits near the intersection. I later found out this small, temporary structure replaced the original shop which was destroyed back in February.

Because the workshop started after midday, I had sufficient time to take a quick trip to Kinglake Central, observing quietly everything I passed.

Pheasant Creek and the part of Kinglake West near it were relatively better than closer in to Kinglake Central. All along the drive one could see where dead trees had been moved from the road side and cut into lumber. Some properties I passed had caravans in them, a cold way to spend the winter while rebuilding. One property's gate was blackened and burnt and I had to wonder if anything was left further in that place.

Of course, there was the odd little Aussie flag flying from a tree stump or two, a determined statement about the Australian Spirit in adversity. And on the way back from that little jaunt, I also noted a hand-painted sign which read: "This is STILL our home."

On my previous trip, my family and I stopped at the Kinglake Diner for fish-and-chips and this time round, I stopped in for some directions. As I came out, I noted something I hadn't seen on the last, early-evening trip: next door to the diner and the other shop on the block, the trees were burnt. These shops were untouched, but they'd come incredibly close to disaster back in February.

After the workshop back at Kinglake West, I went out the back to look at the area behind and between the Hall and the CFA building. A sports reserve beckoned, clear and green. But over to my left, in the next property, a few half-blackened trees. I took a guess the CFA had worked hard to protect this particular patch and any people sheltering on that oval...but one could imagine they'd still had a fight on their hands doing it.

During breaks, I talked to some of the locals about some of the alternative building methods we were hearing about, but we also spoke about the effect of social media (Twitter et al) in an area where, at the time of Black Saturday, a substantial part of telecommunications was out of action or destroyed. I had often wondered if the bushfire-related tweets I and others had made back in February had gotten to the very people we were trying to help that day in this specific region. Everyone I talked to on this point agreed the current method of telecommunications has its limits when it can be adversely affected by natural disaster.

After the workshop, I took one last drive back into Kinglake before bidding it farewell for this trip.

Six months on, people are getting back into as much as they can, rebuilding where they can, adjusting to conditions. I feel a lot of them will feel a heck of a lot better once they've passed the first anniversary. But it's good to see they're still a determined bunch out there.

Yes, parts of that area are still blackened, parts of that area not yet fully-recovered from the scarring to the land. But that green starting to spring up is still a sign that regrowth is still a part of the cycle even after such a disaster.

Kinglake will get there. With our support, they'll get there.