Letter to the Editor: Australian ‘fire chiefs’ are letting us down

DEAR News Of The Area,

THE outcry in the media from “fire chiefs”, asserting that the eastern seaboard bushfire crisis during Black Summer was the result of climate change, begs an embarrassing question. 

Embarrassing for the “fire chiefs” that is.

“Where were you when the root cause of this crisis was being laid down in the bush over the last 20 years, while you were in charge?”

A second question might be: “And what are you doing today to ensure the bushfire crisis is not repeated?”

Although the “fire chiefs” are not facing up to it, the reality is that, far from being the result of climate change, serious bushfires are the result of the deadly combination of drought, heavy fuels, multiple ignitions and ill-prepared communities. This combination is hardly unprecedented.

It has been associated with almost every bushfire disaster all over the world during the last 100 years.

Anyone with the slightest knowledge of bushfire history, or the merest understanding of fire science, knows that the combination of drought and heavy fuels inevitably spells uncontrollable bushfires.

Fires start all the time in the bush, year in and year out, but only those burning in dry, heavy fuels become the ugly “killer fires” that destroy towns, farms and residential areas, and take human lives.

But why on earth did our “fire chiefs” not know this, or if they did know, why did they not do something about it?

Indeed, you would think that a basic knowledge of bushfire history and fire science, plus having special insights (as they claim to have) into the recent “dangerous” escalation of bushfire weather thanks to CO2 emissions, would have made the “fire chiefs” doubly concerned with getting rural communities and bushland well prepared for an inevitable doomsday.

What did they do instead?

Focused on building up their suppression forces, buying and hiring more and bigger water bombers, and developing super-jazzy firefighting coordination centres.

The ruling philosophy of most of our “fire chiefs” in Australia (WA currently excepted) these days seems to be “if you give me enough troops and equipment we will control any fire”.

Nobody mentions the ‘F words’ – fire fuels, and the need to remove or reduce them in the expectation of a fire on a bad day.

The fact that this philosophy has failed so dramatically needs to be rammed home.

Instead, foolish politicians support it, blaming global warming for the bushfire threat.

Of course they do, as this absolves them of all responsibility for not having addressed the problem responsibly themselves.

Only in Western Australia at present do we see government Ministers and senior fire bureaucrats demonstrating an intelligent understanding of bushfire science and history and doing everything to get the bushfire house in order before trouble strikes… although it must be said that this is being done in the face of relentless criticism from environmentalists and university academics that is undermining good policy.

An international perspective is also needed.

Failure to invest in preparedness and damage mitigation, and focusing only on putting fires out after they start, is a strategy that has always failed and not just in Australia, but in the USA, Canada and in Mediterranean countries.

Once a bushfire gets going in heavy, dry fuels, pushed by strong winds, the firefighting resources of the entire world cannot stop it.

And if there are multiple simultaneous fire starts, suppression organisations are soon swamped, and the situation becomes hopeless… as it was in NSW and Victoria during Black Summer, and in the Californian fires of 2025.

Investing in bigger and more expensive water bombers amounts to nothing more than spending more money for the same outcome: still uncontrollable bushfires.

As Albert Einstein said: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing yet expecting different results.”

To my mind, the Australian “fire chiefs” who blame bushfires on climate change and do not support mitigation and preparedness, are doing the community a grave disservice.

In the first place they do not take effective action to make fires easier, cheaper and safer to control when they are in a position to do so. In the second place they take refuge behind something (climate change) that cannot be tackled with certainty that it will  make a difference to the current ghastly situation.

If Australia achieves “net zero” emissions of CO2, as the “fire chiefs” (and many politicians) advocate, will it really mean the end of droughts, lightning strikes and hot northerlies?

And even if it does, the outcome (“new” climate, free from drought and hot weather) is not expected to be achieved for at least another 25 years.

Turning the focus of bushfire management to climate change is a serious distraction, and a disincentive to political and bureaucratic leaders to get on with the business of getting an effective bushfire management system up and running.

No doubt our Australian “fire chiefs” are well-intentioned.

But each of them needs to face up to the realities of bushfire management in Australia: unstoppable bushfires are basically a product of drought, weather and fuel, and only fuel can be dealt with.

We need political and bureaucratic leaders who are committed to measures to ameliorate the bushfire threat today, not in 25 years-time, and if the current “fire chiefs” are not up to the job, they need to be replaced by people who are.

Finally, for their own credibility the “fire chiefs” should resist being used for someone-else’s political agenda… or they should try to refocus on promoting a real-world, practical and field-tested bushfire management approach, free from ideology.

This will require our communities and firefighters to be supported by effective programs of preparedness and damage mitigation, especially fuel reduction in bushland, not abandoned to the horrors of killer bushfires.

Regards,
Roger UNDERWOOD AM,
Forester, writer and historian.