The ‘Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’ is doomed to fail

By Roger Underwood AM

Environmental activists and green academics in Western Australia are pushing the government to make radical changes to bushfire policy and operations. In place of the current approach, which integrates pre-fire mitigation with post-fire response, the activists are pushing for “response only”, otherwise known as ‘the Aunt Dolly Bushfire System’.

Specifically, they want the government to abandon the program of mild-intensity prescribed burning, a strategy aimed at reducing fuel levels in a mosaic pattern across south-west forests so as to make it easier, safer and cheaper to control fires under the worst case scenario situation.

The burning program is strongly supported by bushfire scientists and firefighters. Over time it has helped to ensure that wildfires do less damage. Despite the best efforts of the academics, and numerous inquiries over the years, no deleterious ecological impacts from periodic burning have ever been demonstrated.

The activists assert that fuel reduction will be redundant if only a “new” system of super-detection and hyper-rapid response is adopted. This will comprise futuristic technology, including high-tech computer-operated, tower-mounted cameras scanning the forest, with heat-seeking satellites circling above, plus fast-attack drones and a massive fleet of water/retardant bombing aircraft.

The success of this proposal presumes three things: first, that every new ignition in the forest will be detected and precisely located almost immediately after the first spark; second, that suppression forces will be able to find the fires and extinguish them before they get going; and third, that there will be a sufficient resource of firefighters to deal with many simultaneous fires on days of extreme fire weather.

All three presumptions are unlikely, if not improbable.

The activists justify their proposal by claiming that periodic low-intensity fire (which is what the prescribed burning program amounts to) is somehow “un-natural” and is destroying the forest’s biota. Native flora and fauna are being decimated, they say, referring to those doing the burning as “ecological vandals”. To top all this, a startling new concept has recently been added: pre-emptive burning (they assert) is not needed, because if the bush is left unburnt it becomes non-flammable, bushfire fuels having disappeared.

In fact, there is no evidence of any ecological collapse in WA forests as a result of periodic burning, nor has any area of forest ever been discovered in WA’s south-west where bushfire fuels have disappeared in the absence of fire. Both assertions are pure fantasy.

What is not fantasy is the fact that every summer in the southwest of WA, the so-called ‘firefighter’s nightmare’ can, and usually does occur. This is when there are multiple simultaneous ignitions (usually caused by lightning or arson or both), on a hot, windy day, in remote or inaccessible areas, burning in heavy fuels. Land managers know that unless we have in place a system that can cope with this scenario, we are not doing our job: firefighters will be overwhelmed, and the outcome will be calamitous. We also know that firefighters never succeed in controlling multiple fires under extreme conditions, unless the firegrounds have been prepared in advance by systematic fuel reduction. This is not academic theory, it is the real world, derived from decades of practical experience.

I will never forget the words of an old firefighter with whom I once attended a fire in wandoo forest on a 42 degrees summer day. Thanks to the prescribed burning program the fire was merely trickling around in light fuels: “My Aunt Dolly could have put that out with her garden hose”, Jack had remarked.

Of course, the ‘response only’ system proposed by environmentalists and green academics in WA will succeed very nicely … but only with “Aunt Dolly Fires”. On the other hand, it will collapse comprehensively when most needed, i.e., when there are multiple fires on an extreme day burning in heavy fuels. The lessons from NSW and Victoria in Black Summer are stark reminders of these horrific outcomes.

WA governments over recent years have stood firm in rejecting green demands to shut down the fuel reduction burning program, but the situation is fragile. We have already seen the present Labor government fold to green pressure and shutting down the State’s hardwood timber industry, ludicrously false justifications having been manufactured by the greens. Some current Ministers and government MPs are clearly prepared to do whatever it takes to garner green electoral support and would sacrifice the forests and south-west residents to wildfires, if necessary, to get it.

However, and quite apart from helping to minimise the consequences of nasty wildfires, one important thing favours retention of the current approach. The green’s ‘response only’ proposal will be enormously expensive to implement and then maintain. It will require acquisition and installation of new and costly equipment, the recruitment and training of specialist technicians to operate it, the building of new specialist technical centres where information from cameras and satellites can be received and analysed, and will require the development and maintenance of a large standing army of firefighters plus an air force of drones and water/retardant bombers with all the necessary support services. Furthermore, it will need back-up systems to guard against the notorious fallibility of computers (and humans).

By comparison, the burning program (although it is under-resourced at present) is cheap, requires no new technology or know-how and if done properly, means that fewer, not more firefighters and aircraft will be needed. The current system has been field-tested under all conditions, and steadily modified over the generations in the light of experience and research findings.

Yes, the ‘response only’ bushfire approach advocated by WA’s green activists will handle Aunt Dolly fires. But all this does is highlight their profound ignorance of the basics of bushfire science and control, their sorry lack of experience faced with the challenges of multiple fires on a bad day, and their continuing descent into a world of fantasy. Any government who adopted their proposals would rightfully stand accused of irresponsibility and inhumanity.

Roger Underwood AM is a retired forester and bushfire specialist. His first job after leaving school was in a fire crew at Dwellingup in 1958, and he has been involved in bushfire science, operations and policy ever since. He publishes stories about trees, forests and bushfires at www.forestleaves.blog.