Hot topic fire season
By John Ross

After two years of drought, the summer bushfires that sweep through our National Parks are especially devastating. But the damage to our parks is rarely noticed by the public, unless the fire spreads and human property becomes a prey of the blaze.

Loss of private property often leads to public criticism of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service’s fire management regimes. Yet of the 2400 fires that the service has fought in the past eight years, just 11 percent spread outside the parks. John Ross of the Department of Environment and Conservation (DEC) provides facts on how the department has prepared for the hot summer ahead.

Parks service battles summer blazes
The Parks Service Division of the Department of Environment and Conservation is responsible for the management of some of the most rugged and remote bushfire-prone country in the world.

Fighting the fires with helicopter "Georgia Peach". Photo M Cufer NPWS

Australian flora and fauna have adapted to fire and, in fact, often benefit from it. However, people and their property have not. Consequently, the highest priority for National Parks staff is always the protection of people and property.

With its strong emphasis on developing staff skills, the Service now has more than 900 trained firefighters and over 450 incident management trained staff with a full range of vehicles, plant, equipment and aircraft for fire management operations, particularly in remote areas.

During the peak of the 2002-03 bushfires, they were involved in the fire suppression effort across the state, fighting fires within and outside national parks during one of the worst fire seasons in living memory.

In fact between July 1995 and June 2003, the Service was involved in suppressing some 2,400 fires. Of these:

• 67% (1614 fires) originated and were controlled within parks
• 11% (258 fires) originated within parks and spread outside the parks; and
• 22% (519 fires) originated outside the parks and were controlled there.

The Service has statutory responsibilities to protect human life, property plus natural and cultural heritage from bushfires on the land it manages.

Its fire management activities fall into two categories: preventing high-intensity fires wherever possible, and suppressing those fires that do inevitably occur. Prevention includes creation and maintenance of fire management trails and reduction of fuel loads. This hazard reduction is accomplished through burning and by mechanical means such as slashing, clearing, mowing and spraying.

The Service’s prescribed burning operations are primarily directed at protecting life and property in neighbouring areas, using asset protection zones along park and reserve boundaries where appropriate. Prescribed burns are also focused through strategic wildfire control zones across parks in order to provide fuel-reduced areas that help to break up and minimise the spread of wildfires and allow for safer access for firefighters. Burning is also conducted in order to implement fire regimes appropriate to maintaining biodiversity on Service-managed lands.

Hazard reduction burning is not a panacea. While it is very effective in particular circumstances, it can make little difference in extreme conditions, where wildfire often burns straight through areas that have been hazard reduced.

Moreover, hazard reduction burning is complex, sometimes dangerous, and completely dependent on the weather. There is only a small window of opportunity for planned burning. In many years there can be as few as 20 days in which the weather conditions are right for hazard reduction burning due to rain, wind and other factors.

While the Service is committed to hazard reduction and sets ambitious targets of prescribed burns, it is rarely possible to complete them all. Yet despite unfavourable weather conditions, the Service was able to conduct 173 prescribed burns over more than 42,000 hectares during the 2002/03 financial year. In addition, from 1 July 2003 more than 100 prescribed burns, covering over 12,000 hectares, have been undertaken.

The Service has worked extremely hard to prepare for what is expected to be another difficult fire season.

It is committed to cooperative and coordinated fire fighting, involving close liaison with the NSW Fire Brigades, Rural Fire Service, NSW State Forests and Sydney Catchment Authority. Memoranda of understanding involving these agencies are currently being developed and refined. The Service also maintains a cross-border cooperative fire fighting agreement with Victoria.

The Service is an active member of the NSW Bush Fire Coordinating Committee and its various standing and working committees. It is also represented on all the local bushfire management committees in districts where it has parks and reserves.

The Service is also a player in a joint venture to develop new software for information on wildfire incidents, risk management activities and incident resource tracking.

It is also working towards the establishment of a Bush Fire Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), which will bring together universities and research centres across Australia and New Zealand in coordinated research into bushfire issues.

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