stay or go

Yesterday's firestorm north of Melbourne took me back to this Los Angeles Times article, published last August during the California fire season, that compares Australian and American attitudes toward wildfire.  Where rural Americans are urged to evacuate in the face of any advancing wildfire, rural Australians are encouraged to stay and fight, and are offered the training they need to do so. 

There's an important nugget of pure cultural difference here.  The deep American idea that "government is the problem" results in an eagerness to limit government and drive down its quality, yet Americans still retain an almost infantile sense of entitlement that government will be there for them in an emergency -- even when the task is as impossible as defending remote homes scattered all through a flammable countryside.

By contrast, Australian government treats citizens as adults and expects them to make adult decisions.  Rural Australians know that they're on their own, and that they'll have nobody to blame if they lose their home.  The policy is based on the observation that in large wildfires, much of the structure destruction is actually the result of spot fires lighted by falling embers -- fires that are easy to put out if you're there.  The government is also careful to de-romanticize the experience of protecting your house.  The LA Times piece contains a narrative about one family defending their house.  It conveys how harrowing and exhausting the job is, and that there are still no guarantees.

Yesterday's disaster may throw some of this up in the air.  The Times article contains this graph, showing how fire deaths have fallen since 1983's Ash Wednesday fires, which triggered the current policy of encouraging people to fight for their homes.

But the "'09" bar will be off the chart: more than 100 people died in the fires yesterday, which makes this the deadliest fire in Australian history.  Perhaps this is because the fire burned into towns where people are less prepared and equipped.  Kinglake and Marysville had many weekend homes, and since the fire struck on Saturday it caught many weekenders there.  Saturday's high in Melbourne was 46 C (115 F), so it's not surprising that the usually-cooler hill country where the fire raged was full of people from the city.

It appears, too, that these fires were just exceptionally fast-moving and severe, even by Australian standards, and caught even well-prepared people by surprise..  People may have done the right thing, stayed and fought for their homes, but simply lost the battle.  There are no guarantees.

Comments

[Denis Wilson]

Hi Jarrett
Interesting comparison with LA.
Your comments on the social attitude differences is very interesting.
My view (totally unachievable) is that people should not live in the middle of tall Eucalypt Forests.
But they do, and they "Love it - for the Lifestyle".
Sydney has dangerous areas, both in the northern suburbs and the southern edges around the Georges River. People are living with huge risks, all the time.
Personally I believe Government should be much more interventionist on planning controls, and design rules.
The Blue Mountains is much more strict these days. But Aussies resent Government interference. and the Local Council only gets involved in approving new dwellings.
.
The Bushfire Volunteers Services are well respected and Australians cheerfully volunteer to do service with the RFS and CFA groups. But some (just a few) of them are nutters, who supposedly light fires in order to become "heroes". That is a deep psychosis.
.
Its all a huge issue, and almost unresolvable.
.
Interestingly, there are always Royal Commissions (Inquiries) after these fire events. After the Ash Wednesday fires, the authorities were told to install insulated cables on local power lines, not the old exposed wires. In general that has been done. The huge High Tension Powerlines are not insulated, but they keep a cleared easement below them, for very good reasons.
Good posting.
Denis

[Miss Bliss]

I'm so glad you posted this today just so I know you're ok. I have NO IDEA where the fires are/were vs. where you are but now I don't have to try to find a map of Australia and then go through all my emails to find out where you are living. I totally agree with you about the average American citizen's attitude about government and lack of personal responsibility. At the same time I guess I feel the answer is in the middle here somewhere. From the sound of the fire storms you had down there I'm not sure there was any good solution. Sometimes really bad shit happens and everyone just does the best they can. I'm pretty sure that no matter what the policy would have been there would still have been a fair amount of loss of life just due to how large and fast moving those fires were...sometimes you just can't come up with a good plan no matter how much you try to anticipate a crisis. As someone who lives in So Cal...my thoughts are with everyone in Australia affected by these fires.