As a nation who celebrates “droughts and flooding rains” it is odd that we are so resistant to accepting the persistence of bushfires at the urban interface. Bushfires are a part of Australian environment. However, their inevitability does not equate with admitting defeat in the face of overwhelming odds. It does require sound risk management and integration of a range of measures to reduce their impact and to build resilience from their impact. Lew Short has recently left the NSW RFS and will outline some of the challenges that bushfires present to practitioners

1. Bushfire Persistence & Why
Resilience Matters
Lew Short, Principal Emergency
Management & Resilience

2. “The world has entered the era of ‘mega crisis’
or catastrophic emergencies’ whose force
and magnitude defy even the best laid plans
and the most robust response systems”
Professor Paul ‘t Hart

5. Limittodirectattack
Parallelattack
Indirectattack
Defensive
Limittosafeoperationof
helicopters(~50km/h)
Potential:
• Loss of radio &
telco towers
• Loss of situational
awareness

6. Capacity of community to
receive and act on triggers

8. Out of Scale Events
• Big events expose the vulnerability of
government
• Wicked problems and leaps of faith
• The system will break
• Blue Mountains
197 house losses
No deaths
173
374
Deaths
Black Saturday
fires
Associated
heatwave
What level of risk is tolerated?

9. Sydney Basin drained
of fire fighting
resources and sent to
the Mountains
• What if fires had been burning in northern or southern
Sydney OR started in these places when the resources
were away?
Winmalee http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-26/nswfire-warnings-disaster-relief-winmalee-meeting-
bushfires/5047638

10. • “Victims of the
October 2013
Springwood,
Winmalee and
Yellow Rock
bushfires are
launching a class
action against power
company Endeavour
Energy”
~$200m

11. • In 2012 alone, the total
economic cost of natural
disasters in Australia is
estimated to have exceeded
$6 billion.
• These costs are expected to
double by 2030 and to rise
to an average of $23 billion
per year by 2050
Forecast of total economic cost of natural disasters
2011-2050
> 3.5% p.a.
• Brittle & costly assets
• > population growth,
• concentrated infrastructure
density, and
• internal migration to
vulnerable regions
• > high consequence events

12. • working in a swift,
compassionate and
pragmatic way to help
communities recover from
devastation and to learn,
innovate and adapt in the
aftermath
•Triage
•education systems
•well-coordinated
response
•Shared
responsibility
• Emergency Planning
arrangements
• Insurance
•Mitigation works
• Warning systems
• Inform people about
how to assess risks
and reduce their
exposure
• risk-based land
management and
planning arrangements
• building site location &
purpose built design
• Critical infrastructure
assessment and
mitigation works
Prevention Preparedness
RecoveryResponse
All Hazards, All Agencies

13. Our Options
• An integrated approach to “all hazards”
• Risk management: natural hazard identification,
quantification, assessment, constraint mapping
and prioritisation of works
• Resilience: enhancing the stability of existing
approaches (mitigation, hardening of existing
assets, warning systems) and implementing
works
• Transition: incorporating incremental change into
the maintenance of existing regimens
• Transformational change: the application of new
approaches to risk reduction & problem solving

14. Constantly Changing Environment
10/50 vegetation management
owners in bush fire prone areas to remove
trees within 10m of a home and vegetation
within 50m of a home without approval
URA bushfire Prone Land Mapping
The Commissioner of the RFS can now
amend bushfire prone land maps if an
application shows that the bushfire risk on
that land has changed.
Streamlined Subdivision
Assessing bushfire planning at the
subdivision stage can eliminate the need to
do a second assessment of bushfire risk
when development application lodged
Transformational
Transition
Transition

15. Challenge: How to
make information
accessible
• In a way that provokes a
response
• Gives greater
understanding of risk
• Initiates action and
adaptation
• Builds capacity
• Enhances resilience

16. Lew Short
Principal, Emergency Management &
Resilience
Eco Logical Australia
Lews@ecoaus.com.au
Lew Short
Lewshort14
http://www.slideshare.net/LewShort