It looks more and more like we are heading into a bad bushfire season.
In our end of the Helidon Hills (Vinegar Hill locality, 5km north of Gatton in the edge of teh Hills) it has been the driest January to June period of the last seven years (we've only been keeping records that long).
In the three months to the end of June we had only 77mm, and in July we had only 2mm. Quite a few mature trees are showing patches of dead leaves.
According to the Bushfire Seasonal Outlook "Most climate models surveyed by the Bureau of Meteorology along with recent observations continue to indicate El Niño is likely (70 per cent chance) to develop later this year." - suggesting a dry summer and high bushfire risk.
Chances of exceeding the Mean Maximum Temperature [Bushfire Seasonal Outlook Report]
As of the end of July the areas of Above Normal Bushfire Potential for the 2014/20 bushfire season had already been assessed for northern and central Queensland with fairly large areas being rated as having above normal potential. Regions of South East and Western Queensland south of latitude S25º were scheduled to be assessed during the Southern Australia Bushfire Season workshop in August.
I'm not sure whether or not that assessment has yet been released, but the ABC has published an article this week which predicts that Queensland could be in for one of its worst bushfire seasons in five years. Here's some of what they said:
"The Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre has shown a 50 per cent chance of El Nino weather patterns starting in September, which could potentially see increased fire danger periods, increased fire incidents and an extended fire season. During the last El Nino weather event in 2009, there were 16,000 vegetation fires - a 30 per cent increase compared to the 12,5000 fires seen in an average season. The prediction came as the state launched its official bushfire season today - about three weeks earlier than usual.
"This weather pattern would mean above average temperatures and below average winter/spring rainfall which would result in increased grass and forest fuel loads," Mr Johnson said. He said people in high danger areas need to have an emergency plan in place. Currently, more than 60 per cent of the state is drought declared, and very dry and hot conditions are creating ideal conditions for fire. Since April, more than 4,900 hazard reduction burns covering in excess of 421,000 hectares have been performed."
Read the whole article here. I'll keep an eye out for the Above Normal Bushfire Potential for southern Queensland and will post a summary here when I see it.
A couple of days ago I posted an article on our blog about living with and understanding fire risk. Some time in the next few weeks I'll post something there on our strategy for preparing with and dealing with fire - we are in the process of concurrently updating our strategy and putting it into effect.
During the recent NSW bushfires Google extended their Crisis Map coverage to Australia. There is a site which provides an overview map of Australia, currently showing information for five states (including Queensland), and a NSW map showing fire and some emergency events for that state. The NSW site appears to be a beta site at present.
Similar icons used for Qld and NSW. Some 'other emergency' information for NSW (the white icon). All icons are clickable to retrieve basic information about the event.
Both sites show fire data drawn from the relevant fire agencies, using the same icons for Queensland and NSW as the Queensland Rural Fire Service's Current Bushfire Incidents website (you can find my overview description of this site here). However the permitted burn data from Queensland is not linked to this map.
The NSW site currently has satellite images from a few of the January fires, available as layers that can be individually selected, as well as links in the sidebar that zoom directly to particular satellite image overlays.
The overview site opens with a map of Australia, with options in the sidebar to zoom to particular states. The sidebar provides a legend for the symbols used in each state.
The Australian overview site shows traffic levels for the capital CBD and nearby freeways for several states.
From a bushfire information point of view, in its current state of development the site provides less information than the RFS Bushfire Incident Map website (no permitted burn locations), but with Google's resources behind it is one well worth monitoring for future developments.
That's a pretty topical question, albeit one that has been around for a few years now.
Roger Jones, a Professorial Research Fellow at Victoria University, has published an article in today's issue of The Conversation which reports on research work which looks at the evidence.
"In research
I did with colleagues earlier this year we looked at the Fire Danger
Index calculated by the Bureau of Meteorology, and compared how it
changed compared to temperature over time in Victoria.
South-east Australia saw a temperature change of about 0.8C when we
compared temperatures before 1996 and after 1997. We know that it got
drier after 1997 too.
We then compared this data to the Forest Fire Danger Index, to see if
it showed the same pattern. We analysed fire data from nine stations in
Victoria and did a non-linear analysis.
We found that fire danger in Victoria increased by over a third after
1996, compared to 1972-1996. The current level of fire danger is
equivalent to the worst case projected for 2050, from an earlier analysis for the Climate Institute.
While it’s impossible to say categorically that the situation is the
same in NSW, we know that these changes are generally applicable across
south-east Australia. So it’s likely to be a similar case: fire and
climate change are linked.
Yesterday’s fires in Sydney’s western outskirts are a timely warning for all Australian communities. Being prepared for a bushfire is not just a summer job – communities in bushfire prone areas, and in the ever-expanding urban/rural interface surrounding our cities and major towns, need to be prepared 12 months of the year.
When the conditions are right, hot and windy days, with dry vegetation, fires will occur. They are a fact of life in the environment we live in. We all must be vigilant about our local conditions.
An earlier fire season?
While summer is usually the time associated with the highest bushfire risk in the southern states across Australia, bushfire seasons are starting earlier and lasting longer.
With these longer fire seasons, fire agencies need to continually refine the education and warning messages for communities in fire prone areas. Much of the new research into bushfires is now about how best to keep communities educated and informed about these changing and evolving circumstances.
Seasonal outlooks help Australia plan for fire season. AAP Image/Dean Lewins
Part of this is the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre seasonal bushfire outlooks. Every year since 2006, before the northern and southern Australian fire seasons, the Bushfire CRC has brought together fire managers from all states and territories with Bureau of Meteorology scientists to produce seasonal bushfire outlooks for the relevant fire season. The seasonal outlooks are a useful insight for fire and land management agencies about the expected fire season, so they can plan accordingly.
What’s the outlook?
Broadly, there are two fire seasons in Australia – northern and southern fire seasons. Across northern Australia, the fire season coincides with the northern dry season during winter. In southern Australia, the fire season begins later in the year, in the lead up to, and including, summer. Depending on the location and conditions experienced, southern Australia’s fire season can run through to March or April.
Bushfire CRC seasonal bushfire outlook. Bushfire CRC
Last week the Bushfire CRC released the Southern Australia Seasonal Bushfire Outlook for this fire season. You can see from the map above that large areas of southern Australia, especially along the east and west coasts extending inland, face above normal fire potential for this fire season.
This above normal forecast is due to abundant grass growth across inland Australia, as a result of above average rainfall between May and July 2013. Grass fuels grow quickly, and this short burst of above average rainfall across inland Australia, coupled with above average temperatures across the country since January 2013, has been enough for the above normal bushfire potential to be declared.
In forested areas, a combination of factors, such as Australia’s hottest summer on record and above average temperatures over winter, has seen the bush begin to dry out.
How can we be prepared?
We know that bushfires will happen in Australia every year. But we also know from research on recent large fires that many people living in high risk bushfire areas are still under-prepared and ill-informed on the dangers and the preparations needed.
Changes to bushfire policies in the last decade have seen increased emphasis on early warning, focus on protection of human life over fighting the fires, the need for shared responsibility between official agencies and the community for bushfire safety, and the use of personal bushfire survival planning and protection areas around the home.
This week’s bushfires in NSW have taught us we don’t know everything about being prepared.AAP Image/Dean Lewins
This change in the way that bushfires, and indeed other hazards, are managed has been strengthened by the extensive and concerted research efforts. The psychological motivations and other reasons behind an individual’s decision to act or not to act in advance of a fire, sometimes despite their best intentions, is better understood by fire agencies applying the research.
The scope of work such this, so important in helping agencies communicate fire preparedness, has now been extended to include other natural hazards in Australia through the newly formed Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC. There are many common areas between fire and other hazards. For example, with fire and flood, community issues are comparable, response issues and incident management are similar and recovery issues have many common threads.
The bushfires on Sydney’s urban/rural fringe yesterday, before the official, declared fire season in New South Wales, are another demonstration that we do not know everything about being prepared for emergencies. We need to urgently find new and better ways to help people understand what it means to live with threat of bushfire, flood, cyclone and other natural hazards, year round.
We need to ensure lessons are learnt from each event, and that policies and practices are changed, based on sound, scientific research, to safeguard the community. There is still a lot more to do.
Both the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC and the Bushfire CRC receive funding though the federal government’s CRC program and state and territory fire, land management and emergency service agencies.
Looks like the fire season in the Helidon Hills has arrived.
I have started up the daily Fire Danger Rating map (in the box to the right) which is clipped from the official state-wide map released daily - see the links to this elsewhere in this blog.
We have had three fires located by the Smokespotter group this month. Two were controlled burns - we had been notified of the lighting up of these by Private Forestry Services Queensland (a private company contracted to carry out the controlled burns), and they assisted us in confirming that the smoke sightings were in fact their burns. The third was outside of our area of interest, and was around 8km north of the turnoff to the Spring Creek Prison.
The practice of Fire Wardens in our area of adding a note to Fire Permits that the Helidon Hills Smokespotters should be advised at the time of lighting up (when FireComm also needs to be notified) is very much appreciated.
Locating these fires provided a good refresher for the Coordinators (me and KP - see details under the Coordinators above) and a few members of the Smokespotter group.
We are starting the season with a new Smokespotter on a high point in the Iredale area from where he has a good view of a significant part of the Helidon Hills. I delivered his compass last week, as well as another to one of our group on the edge of the Toowoomba range (he had been using a hiking compass till now). These compasses were part of a set of ten new Silva bearing compasses given to the Smokespotters by the Lockyer Valley Regional Council.
