All-female hazard reduction burn in Australia

all-female Hazard Reduction burn at Scheyville National Park
Participants in an all-female Hazard Reduction burn at Scheyville National Park in 2019. Screenshot from the New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service video below.

In July, 2019 an all-female group of firefighters in New South Wales, Australia conducted a hazard reduction burn in Scheyville National Park.

We are a little late to the party, but here is an excerpt from a news release by the NSW Rural Fire Service at the time:


A hazard reduction burn in Scheyville National Park today is business as usual for NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) firefighting staff. However, there is cause for celebration as the operation marks the first hazard reduction burn with an all-female crew.

NPWS acting Executive Director of Park Operations, Naomi Stephens congratulated NPWS for providing equal employment opportunities and a supportive working environment for women.

all-female Hazard Reduction burn at Scheyville National Park
Participants in an all-female Hazard Reduction burn at Scheyville National Park in 2019, New South Wales National Parks & Wildlife Service image.

“Working for the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service offers a vast range of opportunities for those looking for unique employment,” said Ms Stephens.

“Firefighting is just one of the many vital services provided by NPWS to protect local communities and wildlife.

“It is fantastic to see women thriving in a male-dominated field.

“While today may be the first time an all-female crew is running a hazard reduction burn, increasingly women have been playing a vital role in day to day NPWS firefighting.”

“Having an all-female managed burn highlights the growing number of women at NPWS taking on roles in the firefighting field.

“Although we have women in just about every different role when it comes to firefighting, we’ve never conducted an all-female burn before. It’s one thing to say that women are every bit as capable as men, but actions speak louder than words, so we decided to prove it. And it’s fantastic that women from the RFS and Fire and Rescue NSW are joining us on the burn today.

“Twenty percent of NPWS firefighters are female and women make up 23% of incident management specialists, which is significantly above the average in the fire and emergency sector.

Aerial firefighting simulator installed in New South Wales

Located at their new Training Academy in Dubbo

This article first appeared on Fire Aviation.

NSW RFS Training Academy Aviation Centre of Excellence
Flight simulator at the NSW RFS Training Academy. NSW RFS image.

In 2019 our Australian friends in the New South Wales Rural Fire Service built a Training Academy in Dubbo for improving the skills of fire personnel when responding to emergencies across the state. They soon will be adding an Aviation Centre of Excellence which will have four flight simulators.

NSW RFS Training Academy Aviation Centre of Excellence
Flight simulator at the NSW RFS Training Academy. NSW RFS image.

One of those simulators is being used now in the Academy, and is based on a helicopter cockpit for trainees wearing virtual reality helmets. The immediate plans are for air attack supervisor roles and later for other airborne positions.

NSW RFS Training Academy Aviation Centre of Excellence
Flight simulator at the NSW RFS Training Academy. NSW RFS image.

The system will be for maintaining currency, and to give trainees new to aerial firefighting the chance to find out if the role is for them.

NSW RFS Training Academy
NSW RFS Training Academy. NSW RFS image.

The simulator was delivered in December and the staff has been building training scenarios, with some based on actual fire situations.

Located at the Dubbo City Regional Airport, the Academy includes classroom and practical training with a large auditorium, lecture theater, indoor and outdoor training areas, gym, and catering services with a commercial kitchen. The academy will ultimately have 97 bedroom accommodations for trainees.

“I think it’s really important that apart from the fact that we are launching the simulator here, it becomes another building to support our academy,” said Commissioner of the NSW RFS Rob Rogers. “This is the first of four simulators that we will have in that building. Having the ability to train our own people and use simulator systems like this to be able to upskill people in a non-hazardous environment and obviously then complement that with actual flying will help our people become better trained and have access to better technology.”

The video below is an introduction to the flight simulator.

The next video is about the Training Academy.

NSW RFS Training Academy Aviation Centre of Excellence
The planned Aviation Centre of Excellence. NSW RFS image.

Report released for the bushfire that burned much of Kangaroo Island in South Australia

The findings included insufficient numbers of firefighting resources, and working against the chain of command

Satellite photo showing the fires on Kangaroo Island
Satellite photo showing the fires on Kangaroo Island South Australia, January 6, 2020 local time. NASA.

A report on the 210,000-hectare bushfire that burned almost half of Kangaroo Island southwest of Adelaide, Australia found that there was a shortage of resources, a lack of strategic planning, and cases of not following, or actively working against, the chain of command. The fire killed two people and nearly 60,000 livestock, and destroyed 87 homes.

The 2019-2020 bushfire season in Australia was one for the history books. The 10 million hectares (24.7 million acres) blackened were more than the area burned in the Black Saturday 2009 and Ash Wednesday 1983 bushfires combined.

One of the largest was the Ravine Fire that spread east across the 88-mile long Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia, burning 48 percent of the island, more than half a million acres.

The South Australian Country Fire Service (SACFS) commissioned a private company, C3 Resilience, to conduct an independent review of the Ravine Fire to “assist with ongoing operational improvement.” The resulting 95-page report states that it is based on 6,359 observations, 522 surveys, and 63 individual and group sessions.

The SACFS said upon releasing the report, “The men and women of the CFS acted in the best interest of the community despite extremely limited resources and facing circumstances which had never previously been anticipated. Many of these men and women did so at their own risk to their welfare and safety. The report notes many positives and clearly defines the need for better resourcing for the CFS.”

Some excerpts from the document:

  • Due to the operational load within the organization, the process of only sending endorsed IMTs [Incident Management Teams] ceased, replaced with an ad-hoc manner of the selection of staff for IMTs including field command positions. This lack of competence resulted in communication deficiencies between the ground, lack of integration of local knowledge. The breakdown at times with communications across the IMT in the planning and operations cells, for example, on the Ravine fire provided a basis for the failure of operational planning occurring at critical times.
  • The design of doctrine, combined with a lack of capability and competency programs for regional staff along with fatigue led to the RCC [Regional Command Center] being overwhelmed. This led to a lack of strategic resource planning, including using what capability existed within their own region to support operations on KI [Kangaroo Island].
  • Much of the good work completed was discounted by a culture of some not following, or actively working against, the chain of command. Secondly, there was a lack of accountability by some crews for the mopping up and blacking out procedures led to further fire spread. The lack of technology gave the IMT little intelligence picture to work to in collecting the achievement of tactics where successful, and detecting issues of lack of accountability where they occurred.
  • The SACFS [South Australian Country Fire Service] has a lessons management system, however it failed implementation for the KI fires, as the lessons have not translated into planning across coordinated fire fighting agencies.
  • The fires on KI needed every capability they could get. The insertion of the ADF [Australian Defense Force] was a welcome one, however the tasking process took some time to adjust to and work through. The integration of the forestry industry was mixed between fully integrated and not at all.
  • There is significant opportunity to achieve good community outcomes by further integrating FFUs [Farm Firefighting Units] into operations of fires across KI. By all parties agreeing on a coordination model, and common standards of PPE [personal protective equipment], safety standards and how to communicate, it will only increase positive outcomes for the community.
  • Aviation responded well to support ground crew efforts. The establishment of a TRZ [Temporary Response Zone] could have assisted with a more rapid deployment to the Ravine Complex. An even closer relationship between IMT and aviation specialists will increase the outcome for fires on KI to integrate air and ground tactics.
Ravine Fire Kangaroo Island map
Satellite photo from January 3, 2020 local time showing the Ravine Fire on Kangaroo Island in South Australia. The red dots represent heat. Later the wind shifted, blowing the smoke toward the northeast. NASA.

More than 110 plant species in Australia had their entire ranges burned in the 2019-2020 megafires

Most are resilient to fire, however the scope of the blazes may leave some ecosystems susceptible to landscape-scale failure

Bushfire in Victoria, December, 2020
Bushfire in Victoria, December, 2020

More than 19 million acres in Australia burned in the bushfires of the 2019-2020 season, with seven individual fires exceeding 1 million acres. Researchers who have studied the impacts on the vegetation have determined that the entire ranges of 116 plant species burned along with 90 percent of the ranges of 173 species.

Most of the affected species are are resilient to fire. However, the massive scope of the megafires may leave some ecosystems, particularly the rainforests, susceptible to regeneration failure and landscape-scale decline.

Below are excerpts from a study by Robert C. Godfree, Nunzio Knerr, and Francisco Encinas-Viso, et al., published in Nature Communications February 15, 2021.


Our data indicate that 816 vascular plant species in mainland south-eastern Australia were highly impacted by the Black Summer fires, of which 325 and 173 were >75% and >90% burnt, respectively. All known populations of an estimated 116 species (14% of the total) burnt, which is more than double the number of plant species endemic to the British Isles.

The fires clearly impacted a broad range of species that contribute to both floristic diversity and habitat heterogeneity of forests and woodlands on local to bioregional scales. These characteristics underpin crucial ecosystem services that include biomass production and carbon sequestration, surface-atmosphere interactions and the provision of foods and habitat for animal assemblages, and transformational changes in these processes are likely to be of great importance in the wake of the fires.

Extremely and very range-restricted species experienced fire over an average of 90–95% of their ranges compared with 57–60% for the most widespread species.

Despite the immediate potential impacts on south-eastern Australian vegetation revealed in this study, the ability of many plant communities and species to recover and regenerate after megafires of this scale remain poorly understood. As we have shown, the size of species ranges and the geographic position of the fires both played an important role in determining the diversity and composition of the fire-affected flora. The demographic impact of the fires on specific taxa will also depend on their ability to survive and recover from fire

Our data show that the majority of species affected by the fires are primarily found in sclerophyll forests and woodlands or shrublands and heathlands. Fire is a natural part of these ecosystems and many species are highly fire-adapted with traits such as a soil-stored seed bank, serotinous cones or fruits, smoke- and/or heat-induced seed germination, fire-cued flowering, thick protective basal bark, epicormic buds or underground lignotubers that either provide protection from fire and/or ensure subsequent recovery. Evidence from 270 species in our study confirms this pattern: 251 (93%) across 93 genera are reportedly fire persisters that can resprout or regenerate via propagules after fire, or both.

For widespread endemic species with ranges of 500 km or more the demographic consequences of the 2019-2020 fires are likely unprecedented over at least the past two centuries. While the majority are also likely to be fire-persisters, they are now at risk of novel range-wide threats during the recovery phase such as dieback and inhibited post-fire recovery caused by myrtle rust (Austropuccinia psidii), herbivory of regrowth by invasive animals, and drought. Rainforest taxa capable of surviving fire but unable to compete with subsequent incursion of weeds or sclerophyllous species may be under similar pressure. Obligate seeding woody species such as the ash eucalypts (e.g., Eucalyptus fraxinoides) are likely to be under threat if fires return prior to completion of their typically long sexual maturation periods.

Collectively, there are grounds for cautious optimism that most plant species identified here will recover from all but the most intense fire. Despite this resilience, however, recent evidence from forested ecosystems globally suggest that catastrophic fire events are increasingly catalysing dramatic changes in species composition across large areas. In the most extreme cases tipping points are being reached, resulting in transitions from forest to non-forested vegetation.

Impairment of post-fire regeneration has been specifically linked to thresholds in vapour pressure deficit, soil moisture and maximum surface temperature, as well as fire intensity and seed availability. This is particularly concerning because much of the vegetation affected by the Black Summer fires was already suffering from extreme drought, record high temperatures and patchy canopy dieback prior to the onset of the 2019-2020 fire season. Even in the absence of fire these factors can drive rapid shifts in the dynamics and distribution of forest ecosystems. In regions where the Black Summer fires burnt areas that had only recently recovered from previous fires, increasing fire frequency will be an additional stressor.


From: Godfree, R.C., Knerr, N., Encinas-Viso, F. et al. “Implications of the 2019–2020 megafires for the biogeography and conservation of Australian vegetation.” Nat Commun 12, 1023 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21266-5

As bushfire conditions in Eastern Australia have eased this summer firefighters train and conduct prescribed fires

Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct prescribed fires.
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct prescribed fires. Forest Fire Management Victoria photo.

The cooler and wetter weather in the Eastern Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria this summer has resulted in a very different bushfire season than the one that led to multiple very large fires a year ago.

Firefighters in Victoria have taken advantage of the conditions to conduct rappel training and complete prescribed fires.

Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct prescribed fires.
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct a briefing before a prescribed fire. Forest Fire Management Victoria photo.
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct prescribed fires.
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct a prescribed fire. Forest Fire Management Victoria photo.
Firefighters Victoria, Australia rappel training
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct rappel training. Coulson photo.
Firefighters Victoria, Australia rappel training
Firefighters in Victoria, Australia conduct rappel training. Coulson photo.

In the video below Victoria’s new Deputy Chief Fire Officer Geoff Conway and CFA’s Deputy Chief Officer for the South East Region Trevor Owen provide an update on how the bushfire season is going and what to expect ahead in the Gippsland region of Southeast Victoria. It was recorded February 10, 2021.

Premier says $4,000 available for those whose homes were destroyed during Perth Hills Bushfire

The blaze has burned 10,579 hectares (26,133 acres) in Western Australia

map Perth Hills Bushfire
Map shows heat detected by a satellite at the bushfire northeast of Perth, Western Australia as late as 7:06 p.m. local time Feb. 4, 2021.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan announced $4,000 emergency funding will be provided for those whose homes have been destroyed by the fire northeast of Perth. In addition, $2,000 will be made available for those whose homes have been damaged.

The Premier said the Shady Hills area has been saved, “a remarkable achievement given the ferocity of the fire,” he said, but the total number of homes destroyed in the bushfire is now assessed at 81.

Fireys could get some relief Saturday with a 90 percent chance of rain, about 10-20mm according to the forecast. The high temperature Saturday will also drop to 21°C.

One more large air tanker was flown across the continent to assist with the blaze that has burned 10,579 hectares (26,133 acres) according to a Friday morning update from Emergency WA.  This brought the fleet of large air tankers temporarily in Western Australia up to three — two 737s operated by NSW RFS and Coulson, and one Coulson C-130.

NSW RFS 737 dropping on the Perth Hills Bushfire
NSW RFS’ 737 dropping on the Perth Hills Bushfire. ABC image.
large air tankers working Perth Hills Bushfire
Tracking the large air tankers working Perth Hills Bushfire, reloading at Busselton. Coulson image; two 737s and one C-130.