Fed: Lessons learned in 20 years since Ash Wednesday
By Charisse Ede
MELBOURNE, Feb 14 AAP - Twenty years ago, Victoria's volunteer firefighters were sentto the Ash Wednesday bushfires armed with little training and tin-pot fire engines.
Residents battled the fires which swept across the state on February 16, 1983, withtheir garden hoses and dressed in little more than shorts and singlets.
It was a recipe for disaster.
The radiant heat from the Ash Wednesday fires was estimated to be 120 kilowatts permetre; an exposed person standing 100 metres from the firefront would have been burntwithin five seconds.
The firetrucks did not have heat shielding and ran on petrol. It is believed the firefighterswho perished that day were exposed to not only the intense heat, but petrol fumes.
In all, 75 people in Victoria and South Australia lost their lives on Ash Wednesday- 47 in Victoria.
More than 2,400 homes, from Warrnambool in Victoria's west, through the Otway Rangesand to the Dandenong Ranges, east of Melbourne, were destroyed.
Most of the losses of life and property occurred in the hour following the south-westerlywind change late in the afternoon.
The fires caused an estimated $200 million damage in Victoria, and about $50 millionin timber plantations.
It remains the biggest loss of life and property from bushfire in Australia's historyand is regarded as the nation's blackest day.
Only the 1939 Black Friday bushfires compare, when almost two million hectares wereburnt and 71 people died in Victoria.
But the devastation of that ill-fated day has resulted in one of the best firefightingforces in the world and an increased community awareness of Victoria's bushfire vulnerability.
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) and the state government firefighting authority, thenknown as the Forest Commission, undertook major reviews of their facilities and trainingin the Ash Wednesday aftermath.
They realised that firefighting was too territorial, with little to no communicationbetween the public and private forces and across CFA boundaries.
They improved firefighter training, ensuring they no longer put themselves in the lineof danger, and boosted resources.
Fire trucks are now covered in heat shielding and sprinklers that stop them catchingfire when trapped in a firestorm, and firefighters are armed with better communications.
Community fireguard groups were established to inform residents about defending theirproperties - and saving their own lives.
The current bushfire crisis in Victoria's north-east is a testament to what has beenlearned: only a handful of houses has been lost, and no one has died.
And this is despite great similarities between this summer and the bushfire seasonof 1983, with Victoria gripped by drought, low water resources and tinder-dry forests.
CFA communications manager John Tindall was the captain of the Berwick fire brigadein 1983 and vividly remembers the difficulties firefighters faced on February 16.
"There was no system of control as such ... we tended to operate as independent groups," he said.
"Now we operate vastly differently and our command and control systems are vastly improved."
Richard Rawson was a fire research officer with the Forest Commission (now the Departmentof Sustainability and Environment) in 1983.
Mr Rawson said "all sorts of things" had changed since Ash Wednesday, particularlythe cooperation between the DSE and CFA, and community education.
"If you're to manage these things, you can't be territorial," he said.
"The bloody things don't all just occur in forest or in private land, but they crossboundaries willy-nilly.
"And so the relationships between the bodies that are managing that need to be powerfuland right here and now the relationship is a very strong and integrated one."
But despite these advances, firefighters fear the losses suffered on Ash Wednesdaycould still be repeated.
"Certainly there is a possibility of loss of property," Mr Tindall said.
"The conditions that prevailed on Ash Wednesday were similar to the conditions thatprevailed in Canberra a few weeks ago.
"In those conditions, it is simply beyond the capacity of fire brigades to put thosekinds of fires out."
The Ash Wednesday wildfires hammered home an invaluable lesson to Victorian firefighterson the need for improved operations and equipment.
But there was another lesson in the deadly flames of February 16, 1983, that is astrue now as it was on that tragic day - never underestimate your enemy.
AAP ce/jlw/gfr/gl/de
KEYWORD: ASH ANNIVERSARY (AAP NEWSFEATURE)
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