Policy of prepare, stay, defend or leave early is under fire

Until the the “Black Saturday” fires on February 7 killed 173 people in Australia, many jurisdictions in the United States were considering implementing a program developed in Australia called “prepare, stay, defend, or leave early”. It hinged upon homeowners adequately preparing a defensible space around their home, made of fire-resistant materials, and then they would not necessarily have to evacuate when a vegetation fire approached. With some basic firefighting equipment, water and garden hoses, they could put out small fires around their house caused by airborne embers.

But on February 10, Chip Prather, Chief of the Orange County Fire Authority in California, told a group of homeowners in Silverado Canyon that the “stay and defend” policy would not work in Orange County. And even before that, on January 23 Harold Schaitberger, the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), a union, wrote an article for the LA Times criticizing the “stay and defend” or “shelter in place” program that was being proposed for some areas in California.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman, foreground, and Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather, background right, join other fire chiefs from around Southern California in a press conference in Diamond Bar Wednesday. Lorren Au, The Orange County Register

Yesterday at a news conference Chief Prather officially abandoned the program in favor of a new one called “Ready, Set, Go” which urges residents to clear brush and be ready for fire season, be prepared if they need to evacuate, then go at the first hint of danger. At the news conference in Diamond Bar he was joined by fire agency representatives from Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Orange counties, as well as officials from Los Angeles Fire Department, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and the California Emergency Management Agency.

Meanwhile, in Australia

While some agencies in southern California abandon the prepare, stay, defend or leave early program, a Royal Commission in Australia is getting to the bottom of what led to the deaths of 173 people on February 7.  After the first two and a half weeks of testimony, the commission has been told that the deaths were caused by grossly inadequate emergency services, lack of fire warnings and the absence of any centralized evacuation plan.

Here are some excerpts from wsws.org about some of the recent findings of the Royal Commission:

Testimony from Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief Russell Rees and Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin has attempted to justify the [“stay or go”] policy while suggesting that some fire victims failed to “read” warning signals. Most of those killed were given no emergency warnings or were given them too late.

While “stay or go” depends on accurate and timely emergency warnings, Rees told the commission that the CFA was under no legal obligation to provide official fire warnings to householders in fire-prone areas. Its role, he said, was to send information to the various regional headquarters for the service’s volunteers to respond. When asked why various ICCs had no knowledge of where the fire was, he pleaded ignorance, declaring: “I couldn’t make that judgement, I wasn’t there. I cannot say that they didn’t know where the fire was.”

Rees admitted that he was unaware that Melbourne University forestry and fire modelling scientist Dr Kevin Tolhurst and two other mapping experts were working in the IECC building on February 7. IECC fire-modelling maps are generally hand-drawn and based on information sent in from ICCs throughout the state.

Tolhurst and a team of two other fire-modelling mappers had been called in to assist the IECC and at 2 p.m. were asked to produce a map for the blaze that would eventually sweep the Kinglake, Strathewen, St Andrews and Flowerdale townships.

A hand-drawn map was completed by about 4.50 p.m., but not digitalised and emailed to local ICCs until 6.17 p.m., well after the fire had destroyed most of the communities in its path. Tolhurst and his mapping team were not told that an infrared aerial scan of the fire had already been carried out at 12.33 a.m., almost 14 hours earlier.

At 3.30 p.m., the mapping team was asked to predict the path of the Murrindindi fire, which would wipe out the towns of Marysville and Narbethong. They were unable to produce a map until 5.45 p.m. and the electronic version was not distributed until 9.17 p.m., more than two hours after the fire hit Marysville.

Tolhurst told the royal commission on May 24 that the IECC gave low priority to fire modelling maps. “We’re seen as a bit of an add-on,” he said, and “considered secondary”. He warned that if the Black Saturday fires were repeated, the state’s emergency services would still be unable to provide adequate and timely fire warnings. “We are still exposed to that risk,” he said.

In fact, the emergency services control centre information was so inadequate on February 7 that Strathewen and Marysville were still being officially acknowledged as “safe”, a day after fires had incinerated the towns. Strathewen did not receive its first official alert until an hour after the town was completely ravaged. It suffered the greatest ratio of deaths on February 7—27 out of 200 town residents killed.

Situation reports on Marysville issued at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on February 8, a day after the fire, stated: “We understand everyone in Marysville is safe and are assembled in Gallipoli Park.” Marysville recorded the largest absolute number of deaths for any location—a total of 34.

CFA chief Rees placed the blame on the fire victims during his testimony. Asked why Strathewen was not given any official warning before the fire hit or even mentioned on the CFA’s fire map, Rees said it was up to fire-prone communities to “obtain as much information (as possible) and make judgments”. When asked to explain where residents could get this information, Rees arrogantly declared: “There was smoke in the sky, there was a whole lot of things happening.”

In the aftermath of Black Saturday scores of fire survivors said that the CFA fire-station sirens could have been used to warn local residents. Rees told the commission that these sirens were currently used to summon volunteers and not as a warning system.

Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin has testified twice and on both occasions downplayed the lack of warnings, insisting that state authorities had responded as best they could under unprecedented circumstances.

Esplin rejected suggestions that there should be a mass evacuation policy and attempted to counter evidence that this policy had saved hundreds of lives in California during wildfire seasons. He told the commission that California’s freeway system was unable to cope with mass evacuation during wildfires and that there had been fatalities. He failed to point out, however, that California’s wildfire death toll has never reached the catastrophic levels seen in Victoria on February 7.

Esplin admitted that an emergency warning signal that can interrupt radio and television broadcasts was not activated on Black Saturday because authorities didn’t want to “desensitise” people to it. “It’s a balance between not overusing the … sound and therefore desensitising the community to its importance,” he said.

Thanks Dick

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