Living with fire and ememrgency response

If you live in Victoria as I do, unless you have been comatosed for the last couple of months you would be aware of the Royal Commission into the Black Saturday Fires. Media and political interest often fuel these inquiries into disasters... because some has to be at fault... right!

Funny thing is anyone with even half a brain knew that we were in for one hell of a day on February 7th. A week of sky high temperatures, very low humidity across the state had already laid the ground work for a disaster. The Bureau of Meteorology forecast high winds and high fire danger days before. It was just a matter of when and where disaster would strike, not if.... Or at least that is the way our fire fighting forces should have viewed the situation.

Now the CFA has copped a lot of flak over its handling or rather miss handling of the days events and rightly so. We should however separate the CFA into two parts. The teams on the ground busting their guts doing everything in their power to save lives and property and on the other hand the administration and management division. One group literally laying their lives on the line every time they turn out to a fire or emergency. The other group charged with the responsibility of ensuring crews on the ground are trained, equipped and provided with timely up to date information, enabling rapid and safe deployment in the advent of a disaster situation arising.

The failures within the CFA appear to primarily lay with management. Failure to adequately ensure the CFA was ready to handle an event of this magnitude. Failure to have in place a communication system that worked. Failure to disseminate information to its own members and failure to provide any relevant and useful information to the public. Who by the way are not totally free of blame here. There was plenty of information available to suggest that there was a clear and present danger. We all have to accept some responsibility for our own well being. " Oh look Bill there's a bloody great fire up wind of us... awesome, now let's crack a coldie and watch the cricket".

Ultimately we all need to take responsibility for our well being. Choose to live in a flood plain, expect your house to be flooded. Construct your dream home on top of an active volcano, expect your life to reach new heights. Choose a beautiful, forested mountain area in South Eastern Australia in which to live and you will need to accept that bush fire is inevitable. Prepare for the day, don't expect help to come, be self sufficient, arrange your own defenses and expect external utilities such as water and power and phone to be cut. If the additional cost of providing your own protection or the worry and uncertainty are too much for you.... move.

A communication meltdown may have been due to an overwhelming event... But that's what disaster management is about, being prepared to handle events lager than normal. If we only prepare for day to day work loads, we are always doomed to failure as soon as work loads elevate to a higher magnitude. In this case we had an advanced warning of several days, in fact months. How would emergency services cop with a spontaneous disaster. A large aircraft crashing into a small remote rural community during summer. No chance then to think about chains of command and protocols.

Governments have to ensure that our emergency response services are in a position to immediately assume control of a situation. They must ensure that the people at the top of these organisations are capable of immediately initiating a chain of command, utilising suitably qualified personnel, not desk jockeys who collect a salary and sip cups of tea at a political level. Management figures who wilt under pressure, and fail in the most basic of managerial practices have no place in any emergency organisation.

However the failures of emergency response organizations pale into insignificance when compared to successive governments over the last 30 odd years, who have slowly eroded any advances made after Victoria's last significant fire event. The implementation of fire refuges to name one. Demanding management that is capable of performing their duty is another. We have a Royal Commission into this latest fire which from memory our Premier said "will ensure that this never happens again". I just wonder if we will have exactly the same reaction to a catastrophic fire event 30 years down the road.

If you think I'm being a bit harsh, take a look if you will to our emergency response to Swine Flu. Had this been indeed a killer virus we would currently all be dead. Could our already struggling health system cope with even a minor terror attack? Would our response be to meet the challenge head on, or would we, as in the case of Black Saturday, make provision to change the triage conditions of incoming patients . I believe you normally require burns to 10% of your body to be admitted to the critical burns unit, but I understand that was to be raised to 30% on Black Saturday. Although this was not implemented, due primarily to a high mortality rate with few people caught in the inferno surviving long enough to need hospitalization.

OK rant over have a great day.