By Tom Kelly
The people of New South Wales are looking back on the state's most serious bushfire crisis for 50 years. Yet with many fires still burning, what is usually the worst part of the bushfire season is still to come.
The fires have killed four people, destroyed almost 200 houses, and scorched and blackened over 600,000 hectares.
Heroic efforts by firefighters, volunteer and professional, from NSW and interstate, have played a large part in keeping the number of deaths so low, considering the number and range of the fires and the difficult conditions under which they have had to be fought.
A much less admirable feature of the fire crisis has been the response of state parliamentarians. From the moment the crisis became apparent, their main response was to try to avoid taking responsibility for any shortcomings in our level of preparedness. A search for scapegoats has been a significant theme in government fire propaganda.
As the crisis escalated, the ability of the state to act effectively to avert a potential disaster became a key question. It was in this context that acting premier Ian Armstrong, indulging in strong talk and symbolic action, projected tougher penalties for arsonists, whom he described as potential mass murderers.
In true parliamentary tradition, Armstrong was outdone in his grandstanding by the acting opposition leader, Dr Andrew Refshauge, who multiplied Armstrong's proposed fines by 10, and called for arsonists to be charged with murder if deaths resulted from their fires.
Apart from the fact that such proposals could have no impact on the fires already burning, Refshauge ignored the importance of intent in legally delineating murder from manslaughter, and both ignored the likelihood that increased penalties would have little influence on the irrational motivations of arsonists. The main impact of their theatrics was simply to divert attention from the most pressing questions of the moment.
On January 6, with 90 fires burning out of control, NSW Bush Fire Services commissioner Phil Koperberg warned that the fires could endanger most of the population living on the state's urban-bush interface. That day the premier announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of arsonists.
Around this time, a number of government backbenchers began to use the fire crisis to bait the green movement and to bolster their opposition to the declaration of 350,000 hectares of wilderness - a pledge made by the government shortly before Christmas.
Coalition MP Russell Smith claimed that wilderness areas and national parks were obstacles to fire control, limiting access by firefighting personnel and machinery. He also accused the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of allowing the condition of fire trails to deteriorate.
Smith and two other backbenchers opposed to the declaration of the new wilderness zones in their electorates have threatened to resign from the government and sit on the cross benches as independents - a move that would leave the minority Coalition government with fewer lower house seats than the Labor Party. Their position was further strengthened the following week when the government-aligned independent Tony Windsor demanded the government look again at the issue. He argued that protection of land through wilderness classification risked destroying the areas intended to be preserved, citing the fires as proof of his claim.
Around the time of this move against the wilderness areas, Bob Frank, a field officer of the NSW Farmers' Federation, accused the NPWS of cutting back on hazard reduction burn-offs and neglecting the maintenance of fire trails.
These claims and accusations appeared to mark the beginning of a push by anti-green elements to scapegoat the green movement for the bushfires.
By January 7, acting premier Armstrong was questioning whether the NPWS had adequately responded to a build-up of fuel with strategic burn-offs to minimise bushfire risk. Newspaper articles, letters columns and radio talkback shows presented numerous examples of individuals claiming that the "green movement" had directly opposed hazard reduction burning and that the result had been a cutback in such burning in recent years.
Even a quick glance at press releases issued by a wide range of green groups, including the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the Wilderness Society and Greenpeace, indicates that none of these groups are opposed to the use of hazard reduction burning to reduce the threat posed by fire to life and property. In fact, a Wilderness Society policy statement also recognises the value of hazard reduction burning in protecting the bush from fires entering from farmland or state forest.
Interestingly, Rod Knight of the Wilderness Society points out that "only one in 10 wilderness areas has been affected by the current fires, with state forest fires outnumbering those in national parks by three to one". He also points out that, on average, more fires escape from state forests into national parks than vice versa.
The fact that the NPWS is bearing the brunt of the attacks regarding fire prevention measures, rather than the NSW Forestry Commission, suggests that these attacks are promoted by those with a hostility to conservation rather than to fire.
It is true, however, that environmentalists do not have a blanket enthusiasm for hazard reduction burning, and are having a difficult time getting their perspectives through the hysteria of the mainstream media.
For example, Dr Judy Messer, chairperson of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, rejects attempts to lay blame for the current fires on green opposition to hazard reduction burning, pointing out that the council's policy "allows for hazard reduction burning to be carried out where a fire risk is clearly identified to life and property". Speaking to Green Left Weekly, she also drew attention to the council's long involvement with the Bushfire Council and regional bushfire advisory committees.
At the same time, Messer made clear that the council does not support the notion that wilderness areas should be subject to broad acre intentional burning. She pointed out that this position was quite different from a management strategy for perimeter areas of national parks, which need to be regarded as buffer zones to limit the spread of fires.
All the recriminations against greens and the NPWS over hazard reduction burning have served to obscure two more fundamental issues for which the government bears primary responsibility.
First is its failure to act on warnings in the 1991-92 Department of Bushfire Services report. This expressed concern at a marked decrease in hazard reduction activity undertaken during the winter months and the threat posed by considerable amounts of ground fuel that remained as a result. These concerns were repeated in the 1992-93 report, released last November. The latter report also criticised the growing dependence on fire suppression necessitated by the failure to take adequate preventive measures.
Secondly, much of the equipment used by NSW firefighters is very old; some of it was bought from the Victorian Country Fire Authority in 1983. The Victorian equipment was sold because it did not measure up to new standards set by firefighting crews after their experience in the Ash Wednesday disaster.
Given the criticism of growing dependence on fire suppression, the fact that some of the fire suppression equipment being used was rejected by firefighters who experienced Ash Wednesday puts the NSW government in a very poor light. It also highlights the efforts of the firefighters under these difficult conditions.
The conditions, however, can get much worse. The fact that we seem to have escaped this round relatively lightly must not lead to neglect of the task of adequately equipping firefighters and developing more effective fire prevention regimes.
It is sobering to consider some facts provided by David Packham of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, quoted in the January 12 Australian. The rate of spread of the NSW fires was only about a quarter of that of the Victorian Ash Wednesday fires. The fuel load was about half. Combined with a higher fuel moisture content, these factors resulted in a fire intensity of between one sixth and one quarter of that of the Ash Wednesday fires.
Clearly, the relative success in dealing with the NSW fires is no basis for complacency.
If we need any more reason to be wary of the future dangers posed by fire, we need only look at climatic trends. High temperatures were a key factor in the NSW bushfire outbreaks. The average maximum temperature in Sydney during the first nine days of January was over six degrees above the January average, with the NSW mid-north coast experiencing its highest temperatures on record. Previous loss of forest cover contributes to such weather extremes.
These high temperatures also occur in a wider context that is ominous. According to Greenpeace climate campaigner Lyn Goldsworthy, 1993 was the sixth hottest year on record. The seven hottest years on record have all occurred since 1980. 1990 was the hottest. Greenpeace believes that the increasing frequency of extreme climatic events is consistent with global warming.
The people of NSW and the Fahey government are fortunate that attention has been drawn to crucial issues of fire prevention and the adequacy of firefighting equipment by a situation much less extreme than the Ash Wednesday fires.
It gives us time to ensure that firefighters get the best available equipment to protect their own lives as well as those of the rest of the community, and to demand that far more attention be paid to fire prevention work, particularly at the interface of bushland and urban areas.
Experience shows that social priorities are not taken on board by governments without the exertion of strong community pressure. The danger is that the lessons learned from this round of fires will be conveniently forgotten, just as they have been forgotten many times before, by governments more concerned about profit rates and tax cuts for their mates in business than about the long-term safety of the community. And it is clear that the development and implementation of an effective fire management strategy, one that also recognises ecological priorities, will require the mobilisation of considerable resources.