Final Report of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry
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Final Report of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry 31 July 2020 This publication is protected by copyright. With the exception of (a) any coat of arms, logo, trade mark or other branding; (b) any third party intellectual property; and (c) personal information such as photographs of people, this publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. The licence terms are available at the Creative Commons website at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. The Hon Gladys Berejiklian MP Premier Parliament House SYDNEY NSW 2000 Dear Premier, Report – NSW Bushfire Inquiry In January 2020 you announced the establishment of the NSW Bushfire Inquiry, noting it was to be completed by 31 July 2020. We now submit the final report of that Inquiry. The 2019-20 bush fires were some of the worst in the world and in recorded history. The Inquiry has worked to understand what happened during the 2019-20 bush fire season and how it was different to seasons that have come before. It makes 76 recommendations for future improvements to how NSW plans and prepares for, and responds to, bush fires. Some of these recommendations are for immediate action; others for actions that need to start now but will take some time to complete. Noting the breadth of the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, the recommendations range from improvements to operational systems and processes through to significant research and strategic policy frameworks that require further development and consultation with key stakeholders. In presenting this final report we wish to acknowledge the assistance of many people – those who took the time to write submissions or talk to the Inquiry; the NSW fire agencies; colleagues from government departments in NSW and other jurisdictions; colleagues in industry, research organisations, and professional associations; and the Secretariat and Advisors to the Inquiry drawn from several government departments who worked hard to help us make sense of a complex matter. Yours sincerely, Dave Owens APM Mary O’Kane 31 July 2020 31 July 2020 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY On 30 January 2020 the Premier announced an Inquiry into the 2019-20 bush fire season to make recommendations in relation to bush fire preparedness and response and to report by 31 July 2020, ahead of the 2020-21 bush fire season. The Inquiry has worked to understand what happened during the 2019-20 bush fire season and how it was different to seasons that have come before, and to make recommendations for future improvements to how NSW plans and prepares for, and responds to, bush fires, rather than to attribute blame. The Inquiry was not asked to and did not examine bush fire recovery issues. The focus of this report is to provide analysis and recommendations for change to ensure that, when bush fires like this happen again, there is less damage to property and our environment and, as much as possible, there are no lives lost. The 2019-20 bush fire season was extreme, and extremely unusual. It showed us bush fires through forested regions on a scale that we have not seen in Australia in recorded history, and fire behaviour that took even experienced firefighters by surprise. The total tally of fire- generated thunderstorms in south-eastern Australia since the early 1980s increased from 60 at the end of 2018-19 to almost 90 at the end of the 2019-20 bush fire season – an increase of almost 50% in one bush fire season. Fire-generated thunderstorms are extremely dangerous phenomena that produce extreme winds, lightning, tornadoes and black hail. The season showed us what damage megafires can do, and how dangerous they can be for communities and firefighters. And it is clear that we should expect fire seasons like 2019-20, or potentially worse, to happen again. A number of factors combined to make this season so extraordinary. Climate change as a result of increased greenhouse gas emissions clearly played a role in the conditions that led up to the fires and in the unrelenting conditions that supported the fires to spread, but climate change does not explain everything that happened. The 2019-20 bush fire season challenged conventional assumptions. For example, it appears that the extreme dryness of forested regions over large continuous areas was the determining factor in the size of the fires. When taken together with the weather conditions experienced, the fires became extreme, burning through forests and across bare earth. Previous prescribed burning and hazard reduction activity appears to have reduced fire severity in some instances, but in others it appears to have had no effect on the severity and spread of the fires. This season also challenged assumptions about how we fight fires. The scale of the fires stretched the capacity of fire authorities and the underpinning systems to respond, even with interstate and international support. We couldn’t get to all new fires early enough, many of which were started by lightning in remote or rugged terrain and quickly got to the point where suppression was extremely difficult. It is also clear that, despite the bravery and ingenuity of our firefighters in the face of enormous risk, capable Incident Management Teams coordinating the responses to the various big fires, and the huge expenditure on fire fighting, we need to know much more about bush fire suppression methods and how effective they are, especially in the face of megafires like these. Techniques and strategies that worked in previous seasons often did not work as well in the 2019-20 season. There is a need for much more research into fire iv fighting strategies including improving capabilities for immediate detection of new ignitions, especially in remote areas, and fast responses to keep new fires small. There is a need for more research into conventional fire fighting techniques like backburning, and we need to understand and predict better when fires might escalate into dangerous, extreme fires that require firefighters to leave the fireground. But our systems served us well in many cases. Lessons from the Black Saturday bush fires that have informed much blunter messaging about leaving early seemed to be very effective in getting people out of harm’s way. Many people involved in fighting the fires said that the coordination between different agencies and fire fighting authorities was incredibly effective. The relatively new NSW RFS State Operations Centre at Homebush proved very successful as an overall operational centre. This report aims to help NSW and Australia improve systems to be more ready for extreme fires. That said, it shows there are still lots of unknowns requiring continuing work, and many of the Inquiry’s recommendations go to that point. Some immediate fixes will improve things, for example, checking and auditing that processes that are supposed to be followed are actually happening, improving accountability processes, and improving safety equipment and systems for firefighters (truck cabin protection, aircraft, respiratory protection, sustenance, personal protection, etc.). There are important fire fighting enhancements needed – more emphasis on getting fires out early; improved backburning protocols, training and information around heavy plant use; the right mix of aerial fire fighting assets; and increased aerial night fire fighting. There is also a need for improved telecommunications, both to ensure the community can access the information it needs to make timely and appropriate decisions, and to enhance fire fighting capability. This varies from improving power backup arrangements, to expanding fire information apps, to improving firefighter access to radio public safety networks. When evacuations are required, there are more things we can do to ensure that the community, especially the more vulnerable, are appropriately looked after. Over the longer term, some major changes are needed. We need to push available technologies harder, especially fire science, remote sensing, data science and artificial intelligence to equip us better to understand what happens during a bush fire and respond more quickly. Many government systems also need to be improved, especially strengthening cross-agency accountability and governance; training; being more strategic in our land use planning to account for bush fire; and better managing critical infrastructure including fire trails and roads to minimise property and asset damage. Central to the way forward must be improving local preparedness and resilience. Fires of this kind are hard to suppress, regardless of how well-prepared fire authorities are, and the community needs to be physically and mentally prepared. At the centre must be individual responsibility for managing risk and making properties as safe as possible starting from the most local of levels. Enhanced community education and engagement and individual and community ownership of risk (informed by high-quality information) should be central to the Government’s response. Inquiries like this one are important, but they must not be the end of the examination of the 2019-20 bush fire season. No one yet fully understands exactly what happened in every location and under every variation in weather, terrain, vegetation type etc. In some ways, this Inquiry will be a success if it is superseded because further research, that was not possible in the timeframe, can bring important new insights that will better inform our approaches to v preparing for and responding to bush fires. A good example of this is the Royal Commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bush fires in Victoria. Lessons learned from that event, for example, the evolution of messaging to get people out quicker, appears to have been critical in saving lives during the 2019-20 season. But other issues, like recommendations for an area-based hazard reduction target on public land, have now been superseded by more strategic, risk-based approaches driven by much better data and modelling.