5/12/14 Mt Direction - TFS State Headquarters - TFS Cambridge

Jeremy Smith briefs the study group at TFS HEadquarters

Another full day in Tasmania.  We started our day by walking to the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) State Headquarters & Fire Operations Center.  The headquarters is their 911 center for the
state as well as finance,, communications, HR, equipment and dispatch.  In Tasmania, there are not two branches that handle rural and urban firefighting- both of those are handled under one agency, TFS. The headquarters has been here for 130 years and is a working fire station with two active brigades.  The center also issues all the public warnings for the whole state and for all agencies.  They have 230 brigades, 500 trucks, 5200 volunteers, 300 staff and 150 support staff.  The state control center stands up maybe 4 or 5 times a year when there are total fire bans in place, and then reps from all agencies come to work together at the Fire Operations Center: police, fire, Parks, Forestry Tasmania, etc.

Chief Officer Michael Brown said 1967 was the most serious fire year when 67 people around Hobart died.

TFS Chief Officer Michael Brown

 He says the weather has been changing - there is more drought and more severe weather days and extreme fire behavior. Dry liughtning is much more common than it used to be and the seasons are longer. Brown stressed that it is the relationships and cooperation among all the agencies, working across jurisdictional boundaries that makes it work so well.

Steve Whiteley, the Chief Executive Officer for Forestry Tasmania (FT) agreed, saying collaboration was the key along with interoperability.  He pointed out that FT values fire and feels its critical to land management.  FT focuses on training firefighters and helps train other agency personnel and contractors as well.

We were also honored with a welcome from the Minister of Police and Emergency Management, Rene Hidding, sort of a state commissioner level person, who came to say hello and talk a bit about planned burning from his viewpoint.

Then it was off for a field trip to Mt Direction where we heard from Kent, the Operations person, on a urban interface prescribed burn just across the bay from Hobart.  It was urban interface because of the homes in the immediate area and the significant view it would provide to all of Hobart.

The view of Hobart from where the burn was done

Kent says it took a  very long time, maybe a year, to get all the agencies and private landowners to agree to the burn. TFS, with an IMT, was burning but the land belonged to Parks and private landowners. Stakeholders involved in discussions were Southern Water Company, the prison, the aboriginal community, the power company because of a transmission line, there was a chlorine dump, a radio communications tower, and T & E species.  Each homeowner was visited and told about what the risk would be from the burn, and how bushfire risk would be reduced after the burn. Kent says it was not the best day for burning, a bit late in the season, but it had to be delayed long enough for the grape growers to pic k grapes to avoid taint from the smoke.  And it went very well, and set the stage for several other urban area burns done shortly after.

Then back to Cambridge to hear from Doug Taylor, a Senior Planning officer from Parks. Doug was instrumental in developing a Bushfire Risk Assessment Model, as part of the Strategic Wildfire Management

Doug Taylor - Senior Planning

Plan to try and balance perceived risk and actual risk.  It was very technical modeling stuff but here is the gist: he looked at likelihood and consequence to society of an event happening (which includes ignition potential, suppression capability, fire behavior potential and values at risk) and basically verified scientifically, what Parks has done historically.  He found that 8.5 out of 10 times they have been focused on bushfire risk where and when they should be.  The information and modeling he has done is shared with local community councils to help them design community plans.  There was a LOT more to his talk but its so far out of my lane I had trouble following!!



I have more on this day which I will finish later since this only gets us to lunch.  But its dinner time  now so check back!