The NIMO Teaching Toolbox: 5/10/14 Tasmania - Hobart

After flying to Tasmania Saturday morning, an island south of the Australian continent, we were met by Forestry Tasmania and taken to their headquarters office in downtown Hobart. They have an amazing office that used to be an old sawmill and uses a great deal of recycled material, including Ponderosa Pine from the 1800's. It is planted with flora native to Tasmania and is a bit jungle like in the center atrium!

Tasmania is about 26,500 sq miles and is the 2nd oldest city in Australia, built in 1803. The area has a strong background in agriculture but also has a mining & a fishing industry. 500,000 people live hear but according to our hosts. it is an aging population as young people leave. Power here is almost all hydroelectric which are on the west side, the very wet side, of the island, which gets about 100 inches a year. The population is very anglo celtic, with a few asians, some african refugees and large aboriginal population, many of which are of mixed race.

20% of the land is forest, 40% private, 40% reserves. Forest lands are disappearing as the current political party, called the Green Party, gets them moved into reserves. The island is mountainous with the largest 1200 -1500 meter mountain in center of state.

Forestry Tasmania was the Forestry Department but became a corporation in 1994. It is now a government business enterprise, like the Forest Corporations we saw in NSW and Victoria. They have 4 districts, a head office and 300 staff. Fire is used as a tool for fuels management and for regeneration. There is also a Parks and Wildlife service that has been a stand alone service since 1971. They have the same use for fire, despite having a relatively small fire management section, but everyone participates in fire.

The Tasmania fire service was created in 1979 by joining the State Fire Authority, the Rural Fires Board and 22 urban brigade Boards. There are 230 fire brigades across state, with 250 career people and 4800 volunteer firefighters that provide fire protection on private land. The volunteers do both structure fire and bushfire and are trained for both and they have a strong community protection program.

Land owners pay a fire service levy but responsibility is shared by all services. Minor fires are handled by Forestry Tasmania (FT) and Parks & Wildlife Service (PWS) with Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) acting independently but cooperatively. On large fires, TFS is the lead, supported by FT and PWS. On big fires, they do have complex incident management teams that are comprised of people from all agencies but they don't have standing teams like we do. They are ad hoc and pull from who is available.

Tasmania has a robust Interagency Fire Management protocol which was started in 1990s. and is used by FT, PWS & TFS. It is a statement of cooperative principles that focuses on what important to Tasmanian agencies. In 2014 they are on their 13th edition.

Saturday Market in Hobart

Then the rest of the day we had off to sightsee, go to a Saturday Market to shop and have dinner out. As a port city Hobart has a beautiful dock area and really good seafood.