Some statistics on this Smokespotter website

I just had to go into the "back" of the website to check on something and noticed the stats counter for the site.

This Helidon Hills Smokespotters website has been online for just over 18 months (since September 2012).  In that time there have been 4,509 hits on the site - not bad considering that this is a site serving a relatively small area - maybe 350 square kilometres - with a very low population level (due to the fact that around 9,000 ha is National Park and the remainder is largely rugged country with relatively large properties).

Clearly the site serves a need, but more than that, it shows that the Smokespotter Group serves a need within the larger community.

Personally I think that another statistic is worth mentioning.  Over the last 12 months there have been very few reports of smoke in the Helidon Hills.  This period includes one of the driest winters and early summers on record, with very high fire danger levels - and during that period there were only a few smoke sightings reported, and these were either outside our area or were of very short duration suggesting a permitted (or at least closely controlled) burn.  I think there were probably two reasons for this - first, the community in general took the fire risk very seriously and, second, the presence and effectiveness of the Smokespotter Group have become more widely known and this may have deterred some who could previously have risked burning off on the assumption that they would never get caught.

Gradually gaining recognition

It is heartening to see that more and more we are being advised of planned light-ups of permitted burns.  And not just by individual landowners - corporate and government landowners are beginning to give us advanced warning of light-ups.

This is an important development for a voluntary group like ours, where each smoke sighting can consume the time of lots of people.  For an "easy" fire, from the time a Coordinator receives the first notification with a bearing on the smoke to the point of filing it away as one of the following: a permitted controlled burn; a known wildfire; an unreported wildfire; or outside our area of interest, at least three Smokespotters will have been involved for varying periods, and it will have taken around 40 minutes of the Coordinator's time.

A fire that is more difficult to locate (perhaps due to strong winds, smoke haze, or other atmospheric conditions) may have involved both Coordinators for more than two hours, maybe seven or eight Smokespotters, and one or two government agencies.

Obviously, where we have advice of the lighting up of a planned burn, the time and number of people involved is likely to be much less.  The more we can achieve this situation, the longer we are likely to keep Coordinators and Smokespotters motivated to be involved in the group.  And, equally important, the more accurate we can be in our identification of the source of smoke, which translates into fewer "false alarms" to FireComm and Rural Fire Brigades.  Our credibility is the key to obtaining a quick response from the relevant agencies to our identification of unplanned fires.

So, please, encourage your friends, neighbours and employers to give one of the Smokespotter Coordinators a call when they are about to light up a permitted burn.  It's not that difficult to give us a call at the same time as they call FireComm to report they are lighting up (which is a condition of the permit).