Bushfire burn-off targets to be replaced with risk-based strategy in Victoria

Nice to see some common sense being applied to bushfire risk reduction in Victoria.

Land most at risk of dangerous bushfires will be targeted for burning during the off-season under a new risk-based strategy for Victoria's fuel reduction burns.

The new policy would dump the existing program of 5 per cent burning of public land every year, which was recommended by a royal commission in the wake of the Black Saturday bushfires.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/bushfire-burnoff-targets-to-be-replaced-with-riskbased-strategy-20150521-gh6mif.html

Defining defensible space around homes - based on 2000 bushfire-threatened houses

There's a new paper published in The International Journal of Wildland Fire October about the importance of defensible space around houses. It has some good tips on preparing at the macro scale for bushfires. Unfortunately it costs $25 to get the full text.  Let me know if you have a pdf copy you are willing to share.

Here's part of the abstract:

"Although state and local governments publish specific guidelines and requirements, there is little empirical evidence to suggest how much vegetation modification is needed to provide significant benefits. We analysed the role of defensible space by mapping and measuring a suite of variables on modern pre-fire aerial photography for 1000 destroyed and 1000 surviving structures for all fires where homes burned from 2001 to 2010 in San Diego County, CA, USA. Structures were more likely to survive a fire with defensible space immediately adjacent to them. The most effective treatment distance varied between 5 and 20 m (16–58 ft) from the structure, but distances larger than 30 m (100 ft) did not provide additional protection, even for structures located on steep slopes. The most effective actions were reducing woody cover up to 40% immediately adjacent to structures and ensuring that vegetation does not overhang or touch the structure."

This is the kind of science-based information that we need for making our bushfire preparations maximally effective.  Interesting to note that distances larger than 30m did not provide additional protection, even for structures located on steep slopes, though I guess that could be interpreted to mean that if it was going to burn anyway because of the location on a steep slope, then creating a defensible space out beyond 30m wasn't going to change that.

The Abstract and pdf download can be found here:  http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/114/paper/WF13158.htm

The citation for the report is:

Syphard, A. D., Brennan, T. J., & Keeley, J. E. (2014). The role of defensible space for residential structure protection during wildfires. International Journal of Wildland Fire. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF13158.

You can find more tips on bushfire preparation at Ignite Change.

Another citizen bushfire blog

I was contacted today by the owner of the Ignite Change: Bushfire Awareness blog.

Ignite Change is a social initiative to encourage all Australians to be more cautious in their actions this bushfire season because more than 50% of bushfires are caused through reckless human activity.

You can see the blog author's very personal story of loss in the Merimbula fires two years ago here.

It's great to see another blog raising bushfire awareness.  Please have a look at it, and leave a comment if you feel inspired by this effort.

A worsening fire outlook and a 50% chance of an El Nino developing in September

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.

In fact the southern two-thirds of Queensland has experienced an extended period of drier than normal conditions according to the 2014 North Australia Bushfire Seasonal Outlook (this link opens a pdf of the report from the Bushfire & Natural Hazards CRC).

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.

Introducing fire-relevant websites: the Google Australia Crisis Map

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.

Fire in Bushland Conservation in Southeast Queensland

One of our Smokespotters has drawn my attention to a publication on the role and use of fire in biodiversity conservation in Southeast Queensland (thanks Geoff).

Fire in Bushland Conservation: the role of fire in the landscape and how we can manage it for biodiversity conservation presents a very good overview of both the role of fire in the ecology of SEQ habitats and the conservation implications of fire frequency and intensity.

The document is available as a pdf file at: http://www.fireandbiodiversity.org.au/_literature_48156/Fire_Ecology_Booklet or as a hard copy from the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service Regional Bushcare Facilitator (contact: 07 3202 0233).  (As the document is undated, I'm unsure whether this position still exists after the recent cuts to government services in SEQ, but it is definitely available on the Fire and Biodiversity Consortium web site).

Introducing fire-relevant websites - the Current Bushfire Incidents Map

This is the first of a series of posts introducing websites with some relevance to bushfires and/or emergency situations in Southeast Queensland.

The Current Bushfire Incidents Map

This map is on the Queensland Rural Fire Service website at: https://ruralfire.qld.gov.au/map.html

The map distinguishes between "bushfire incidents" which are shown by default on the map when it opens (above), and "current permitted burns" which are shown if the tick box on the lower left of the map is clicked (below).

Both maps can be zoomed, either by using the controls in the top left of the map, which tend to move in fairly large "jumps", or by "double clicking" on the area on the map where you want the centre of your view to be.  Combining the on-map controls with dragging the view area is better for getting to the general area of interest (there frequently isn't space to click between the symbols in the zoomed-out view).  Once in the general area double-clicking changes the degree of zooming in smaller increments.

The blue flame icons indicate that "a fire or other emergency has started in the area however there is no immediate threat" (see the Legend below the map for the meanings of other symbols used). But note that there is a warning at the bottom of the web page that "The symbols represent the general area of the fire, not its current location or spread."

Clicking on one of these symbols provides an overview of the information available.  The difference between the Reported date and the Latest Update date can suggest whether the fire is a large one (longer duration).  The fire location is given, though this has to be treated with some caution.  The location may be the nearest street to the fire, and where there are large properties involved, or a property has access via a long easement off a public road, the fire may be a considerable distance from the address given.

Clicking on the "More information" link opens the QFRS Incident Page for that particular fire in a separate window.

The key information on this page is the "Current Status" field.  "Going" means that firefighting resources are deployed to the fire.  You can find the explanations of other status types in the Legend below the map.

The overview information available for Permitted Burns (represented by document icons) show the Reported and Latest Update dates.

Because the QFRS Incident Pages associated with permitted burns always give the Current Status as "Going" I assume that permitted burns do not appear on the Incident Map until they are notified to FireComm immediately prior to lighting up.  But two things are important to note in relation to permitted burns. The first is that the "Going" status refers to the date of the Latest Update, not the date on which you access the Incident Map.  The second is that not all permitted burns are notified to FireComm, even though this is a condition of permit, so they will not appear on the map, and our experience is that not all permitted burns notified to FireComm appear on the Incident Map.  This seems to be particularly the case in our area with permitted burns in the southern part of the Helidon Hills.

It is also possible to subscribe to an RSS feed of with a list of current incidents from the QFRS which includes GeoRSS data and summary information where available.  There is also a KML Incident feed which opens in Google Earth and displays incident locations.  Information on these feeds is at: https://ruralfire.qld.gov.au/mapfeeds.html.  Both are updated every 30 minutes.

Has bushfire risk increased due to climate change?

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.

You can read the whole article here.

Bushfires can occur year round: we have to be prepared

By Richard Thornton, Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC

reblogged from:

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.


This article was originally published at The Conversation.
 
Read the original article.

The Fire Season is Here

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.

Smoke in the Spring Creek, Adare, Vinegar Hill and Ringwood areas - Saturday 15 December

The smoke in the Spring Creek, Adare, Vinegar Hill and Ringwood areas today (Saturday 15 December) is coming from a controlled burn at the Spring Creek jail.  The Gatton Springdale Rural Fire Brigade was in attendance at 10.00am this morning.

There was a fire in the Spring Creek jail land last weekend, though on that occasion some of the Smokspotters lost a lot of time in identifying the location.  This was because:

• the cross bearings we obtained on the wide front of smoke suggested that it was in either the eastern edge of the Lockyer National Park or in the land owned by the jail;
• the Queensland Rural Fire Service Current Bushfire Incidents web page showed a permitted burn with fire crews in attendance at the junction of Millers Road and the Gatton-Esk Road (the jail is at the other end of Millers Road).  This was approximately 5 km from where we had identified the fire location (were our bearings wrong?);
• when we were unable to contact the Grantham Rural Brigade First Officer we contacted the Deputy, who had not been informed any controlled burn in that area (though from our bearings the fire was in, or on the edge of, the Grantham Rural Fire Brigade area);
• we then spent more time trying to find Smokespotters who could give us a better bearing on the smoke, but without being able to improve the location.

In the end it was decided that the fire was either in the jail land (in which case it was under control) or in the edge of the Lockyer National Park, so a message was left for the QPWS Duty Officer to contact one of the Coordinators. He/she didn't.

It was not until the next morning, when the smoke was still thick in the area, that the source was identified as the jail lands.

Today the Current Bushfire Incidents web page again showed a Permitted Burn at the corner of Millers Road and the Gatton-Esk Road.

The X shows the approximate location as identified by Smokespotter bearings (see image below for a more accurate location), the XX shows the location of the nearest point of the fire to the indicated location.

Here's a picture of the situation this morning (Saturday 15 October) plotted on a Google Earth base - you can click on the image to see a larger version, but unless you open it in a new window you won't be able to see the text at the same time:

The area outlined in yellow is where the fire was burning.  Our bearings (red lines) were within one km of the nearest fire - not bad considering that James W's bearing was taken over a distance of 15km (the other was only 6km) and the smoke was "smeared out" by a northeasterly wind.  The expensive bearing compasses we use are well worth the money.  In fact the projection of James' bearing was right on the fire.  It was my bearing over 6km that was off the mark; I'll blame the wind.

The place pin on the right shows where the Queensland Rural Fire Service's Current Bushfire Incidents map located the permitted burn - over 3km from the nearest point of the burnt area.

I've made efforts in the past to have the Smokespotter Coordinators notified when there is going to be a planned burn on the jail lands because of both their proximity to the Lockyer National Park and the unreliability of the Permitted Burn locations on the Current Bushfire Incidents web page (which means that we waste Smokespotters' time in trying to fix the location of sighted smoke).  Clearly I haven't yet found the key person who will see that this happens, but I'll keep trying.