5/7/14 Melbourne Water - Lookout Tower - CFA - Powelltown

Sorry about so few pictures again.  Really poor internet but there are pictures in the dropbox link to the right!!

Map of water catchment.  The yellow areas are
catchments or watersheds

Wednesday was spent about the importance of the water “catchments” or watersheds that serve the 4.3 million people in Melbourne and the efforts made to keep catastrophic fire out of that catchment. Melbourne Water Company, like the Forest Corporation, is a state owned corporation.  It serves as the wholesale water supplier to 3 retailers, also state owned, that sell the water to consumers. They are expected to make a profit and return a dividend to the government.

The land belongs to the Crown, which means its state land and is under the control of Parks Victoria.  While most National Parks (which by the way are owned by the state!) are open to the public, the water catchment Parks are closed to the public. Back in 1857 when the first catchment was built, the land was open but at some point the water got contaminated and many people died.  So they closed the parks, people stopped dying and the parks have remained closed ever since.

There are 9 catchments that supply water to Melbourne - some have dry forests and some have wet forests.  The wet forests supply 50% of the water but it’s difficult to maintain those forests with regular low intensity burning because, well, they’re wet and won’t burn!  Instead,in 2005 they created a strategic plan to burn the dry forests around the catchments, keeping them healthy and free of shrubs and other fuels that would carry intense fire into the catchment.  In addition, there are some areas with a 20 to 30 meters cleared between the general park land and the catchment to provide further opportunities to stop fires.

Fire tower at Upper Yarra Catchment

We spent the day at a fire tower owned by Melbourne Water that over looked the Upper Yarra Catchment which is about 395,000 acres.  Their objectives are simple: protect water quality and water quantity.  Some timber harvesting is allowed but its minimal, about 350 hectares a year and when harvesting is done, the water in that catchment is turned off for a year to protect water quality.

Much research has been done and is still being done about the impacts of fuel reduction measures in the catchment, on the water supply and quality.  They've looked at and tested clear cutting, thinning, stripping, burning, etc.  They continue to test the effects but they are fairly sure about the impact of severe, stand replacing wildfires.  If a severe wildfire significantly impacts a catchment there is a 50% reduction in water after 30 years.  This is because the regrowth after a fire, all the young trees trying to grow, suck up all the water for about 30 years. 

Upper Yarra Catchment

At 30 years, the stands have thinned themselves, there are significantly less trees because only the strong have survived, and the trees are few enough and old enough to not take up so much water. There is a graph the use called the Kuzera Curve created in 1985, that shows that after a stand replacing fire, it will take 50 years before recovery really starts and about 150 years before the trees and water supply are back to the way they were.

Fire fighting in the catchments focuses on aggressive initial attack.  Melbourne Water maintains 30 full time firefighters and adds 50 summer casuals and people out of the head office if needed when the season starts. They also maintain a ready supply of dozers, slip-ons (trucks with prepared modules that can just be slipped onto the truck) and other equipment so they are completely self-contained for firefighting. New fires are always lightning or non-arson because the catchments are closed and security is tight. 

Nigel talks about the critical role of roads
in the catchment as fire breaks.

Roads maintenance is a significant focus within the catchments.  There are some 1800 km of roads but they are only used by catchment workers so don’t impact the water and the roads people of Melbourne Water have depots within 60 minutes of any area of the catchment.  Some of the roads started as timber roads ages ago, but are now part of the road system maintained so they can get to a fire quickly with equipment and people.  They are started a Strategic Fuel Break Project to choose primary roads on ridge tops that are widened even further as fuel breaks.  All the roads are used to burn off of when necessary.

Fire would have an economic impact as well.  Upper Yarra Catchment is a completely untreated water supply and it gravity feeds right into Melbourne at a cost of about $20 per unit (I have forgotten the unit).  That compares to the water in treated and pumped catchments of $60 per unit so if something happens to the catchment and the water has to be treated or pumped, the cost goes up significantly.  Other impacts that are managed are the fire risk around the storage areas and the risk of pre-defined ‘slippage” areas where debris flows due to steep terrain impacted by severe fire, could impact the water supply.

Jill, with the Bushfire Risk Landscape Team, provided more information about a modeling tool called Phoenix Rapidfire.  Like FS Pro and other tools used in the US, it can spatially model intensity, convection, spotting and potential fire spread.  Across Victoria they have done modelling every 5 km, but in some critical areas they have now done modelling for every 1 km.  In those areas, they identify assets when running the model and use that to decide on planned burning to reduce risk to those assets. This is the benefit of having landscape level teams to look at risk and risk reduction, over and above jurisdictional boundaries.

We heard from Don Tompkins with CFA, or the Country Fire Authority, in the Yarra Valley area.  CFA is the equivalent of RFS in New South Wales and is responsible for firefighting and preparedness on private land. CFA relies on 65,000 volunteers and about 1000 paid employees, and has about 45 pieces of equipment.  About 400 of the volunteers are available at any one time, 24/7.  He spoke about fire refuges in communities and showed us a refuge in Powelltown.

Don Tompkins stands in front of the school in
Powelltown which is a fire refuge.

Refuges are a bit controversial.  They were requested and a few test refuges were built (the one in Powelltown is part of the pilot) after Black Saturday in 2009 when so many people were killed by bushfires.  But the focus toward private landowners has been personal preparedness, building resilient communities.  Some wonder if refuges make the community less resilient and more reliant, as some people just plan to go to the refuge.  Tompkins made it clear, they do not want people to include the refuge in their Bushfire Survival Plan.  It’s a place of last resort.

Don shows the control box available to
residents who enter the refuge during a fire.

The refuge in Powelltown is in the primary school.  Others are in fire stations or other buildings.  The refuge in the school is intended to let people survive an intense fire until it moves past; it is not a place to stay, has no food or water or other facilities for longer stays. But it is an impressive structure.  There is an entrance system connected to the state control center that has automated messages.  Inside, it will hold about 350 people (fairly crammed in) and has a cooling system to keep the building cool because it will be summer and because of the fire. 

Water tanks

There is a control box with step by step instructions on how to turn on power, turn on lights, turn on the air conditioner, and more.  They can monitor an emergency radio channel and communicate with the state control center. The glass in the building is specially made, all windows are mesh covered, outside is a cache of PPE, hoses, breathing apparatus, first aid kit, etc in case it’s needed.  There are two huge water tanks and a generator and 3 air conditioning units with an awesome amount of cooling power.
 Tompkins says its unlikely that more refuges will be built to these standards – this one was built when there were no standards. From now on, refuges will likely be a basic metal shelter or an improved underground bunker that are much less expensive to build.

At left is the generator and at right, one of
three, huge air conditioners

While in Powelltown we met a citizen, a woman named Pam who is a local government employee but also chairs the Powelltown Emergency Committee.  The community was asked if they were interested in being a pilot city to test the idea of community preparedness.  They said yes, and for about a year, the committee, met once a month to identify hazards and risks to their town. The committee is made up of about 10 or 12 interested people who were assisted by the Landscape team.  The regional team provided modeling information to educate the town about where fire would likely come from, what the intensity would be, and what assets it could potentially destroy.

Pam felt it was a goal of the community group to use this intelligence to inform the group on the best methods toward response and recovery and that it was the communities responsibility to be prepared.  They decided they wanted not just to survive but survive well.

Pam talks about her Community
Emergency Committee

First they looked at risks and bushfire was one but they looked at all hazards and assessed risks and consequences.  Second t hey looked at what they could do, alone and with help, to prepare and respond by looking at the skills of the people in town and the history of fire in the area. Pam says they tried not to duplicate the services offered by other agencies.  The focus not to find a way to stand alone, but to fill gaps in services and work as a partner to the other agencies that would already be responding.

They ID’s key assets, set up information points for residents, set up briefing and public meeting areas, identified informal shelter areas and identified where infrastructure needed to be improved to help with the plan.  After sending the plan to everyone in town, they had about 40% involvement.  However, after a fire Feb 9ht of this year where the plan was activated, they actually had about 60% involvement.

She says the key is the relationships with the other agencies which need to be rebuilt and maintained when key people move on. But she says community level preparedness is a large gap – there are state,  regional and local programs and help for individuals.  But help to allow a community to prepare together is not there.

5/6/14 Melbourne - Risk Management - Landscape assessment teams

This may be a quick post with no pictures as I wanted to get something up before we leave. We will not have wifi tonight so I will be absent for a day or two.

Learned a great deal yesterday.  Heard from a fellow name Lee who works for DEPI (Dept of Environment and Primary Industry) about Risk Management.  The words he used and the way he spoke about risk were very similar and in some cases identical to what the NIMO teams use when talking about it.  The difference is that when they do risk management here it's about reducing risk from wildfire or bushfire.  It's not about reducing risk to firefighters with better risk-based decision making.  But the process for evaluation and analysis is the same. 

There is also a huge focus on community engagement, even when talking about risk management.  Lee said they are clear with the public that "Risk Management through the use of prescribed burning" is not a panecea.  That burning will not solve their risk problems and, once again, he brought up "shared responsibility."  Its very clear here that the Aussies are very pointed in their community engagement, making clear that while the public can expect them to come when they call, that the agencies have clear expectations of the public that THEY will prepare by making their homes defensible.  Apparently, the losses suffered during the 2009 bushfires, continue to have an impact and the public remains willing to engage and take on its portion of the responsibility.

Community engagement has been a recurring theme here and winds its way through every discussion. It's important enough here in Victria that at the state and regional levels they hve a position called Community Engagement Specialist. This is not a PAO - they have communication and media people to do that work.  This is a person whose job it is to facilitate engagement with the community, like a full time liaison officer and reflective, I think, of the importance they place on doing so.  In fact they have said many times, they are trying very hard,  although not always successful, to engage in new ways; to not go to a community and say "This is what we think you should do," but rather go in and say "This is what WE think. What do you think and what do you want?" They are trying to allow communities to drive the effort, even sometimes scheduling a meeting and allowing the commuity to build the agenda around what  THEY want to talk about.

An interesting effort was the concept of Bushfire Risk Landscape Team.  These are teams of about 6 people, with different specialities: some work in modeling, some weather, some are ecologists, but basically interdisciplinary.  They work at a landscape level, across jurisdictional boundaries, to look at the best way to deal with bushfire preparedness and maintenance of biodiversity.  There is a team that serves urban Melbourne, and one team in each of the other regions.  The regional community engagement specialist work with the team to build relationships in the areas they want to work, plan public meetings and work with the Country Fire Authority in each region to mesh the landscape teams ideas and strategic plans, with those of the local CFA.

All in all a fascinating day, loads of information and a wonderful dinner last night. Today we are off to visit water catchment, or watershed areas about how they deal with fire across those landscapes. 

5/5/14 Travel day to Melbourne, Victoria

IPads at every seat on Qantas!

Coming into Melbourne

Not a great deal happened Monday.  We had a bit of free time in the morning to work on the final report we are doing on this trip and then went to Coffs Harbour airport to head to Melbourne, Victoria ending our time in New South Wales.  Had a nice flight but got into Melbourne and to our hotel just in time for dinner and bed so nothing to write about.  We will be in Victory until the 9th I think when we will fly to Tasmania.

Each evening we have had the opportunity to carry on the days work by chatting with various local fire agency people who come by to join us for dinner.  It's nice but makes for a very long day!

As I write, Tuesday is over and we had a very, very long day which I hope to write about in the morning because I am to tired now.  I will say we are not starving on this trip, in fact, we get so many meals its painful but we are doing our best!  We had tea at a winery today to learn about "grape taint" which is

Tea at Oakridge Vineyard

when the grapes are impacted by smoke.  Wineries are very big here in the Yarra Valley.  Tea was wonderful but the 5th meal since 7 am!!

Nice bus picked us up
in Melbourne!

So I'm curious if anyone is reading this.  Any comments?  Any questions we can ask down here?  Got some very interesting info on their risk management program today which I will try to explain tommorrow.

Time to go eat again!!! Love to hear some comments or questions.

5/4/14 Ngunya Jargoon IPA - Bungawalbin - Whiporie Plantation - Coffs Harbour

The tour group listens as Mark with
HotSpots, shows them Borona Pinnata

The tour group spent a fascinating Sunday getting to know more about the aboriginal culture from its "song lines" and stories, to the way their cultural values relate to fire on the landscape.  We began the day just south of Ballina in one of 4 North Eastern NSW Indigenous Protection Areas (IPA) - this one is called Ngunya Jargoon. Ngunya means "my" or "our" and Jargoon means "land."  The IPA is a conservation area that holds a huge variety of flora and fauna.  There are 62 species of orchid that grow 

and are protected here. We were shown a flowering plant called Boronia Pinnata with a pleasant, strong smelling oil, one of many plants being conserved here for its medicinal uses.  The IPA is being studied and conserved for bioprospecting, that is, looking for valuable industrial & medical chemicals and oils in its native plants.  

We were met by Oliver Costello with the Northern Rivers Fire and Biodiversity Consortium, a network of

 land managers and stakeholders working toward a landscape approach to fire and biodiversity in Northeastern New South Wales. Oliver's talk with us focused very much on the success of this IPA in building a fire management plan that was geared toward and around respect for the historic and cultural use of the land by inclusion of the aboriginal land owners, the Jali Council of the Bundjalung Nation. 

Tour group members getting
 Lemon Myrtle tea

We were met, when we arrived, with a fire over which he was making tea, made from leaves of the Lemon Myrtle tree - very good, very lemony and refreshing! 

As has happened almost every stop where we were outside looking at landscapes, the land manager hosting us begins his or her talk by asking us to recognize and honor the original owners of the land, the custodians who have cared for it for  thousands of years making it possible for us to appreciate it today.  A very interesting cultural nod!

The consortium program in place here is called the Firesticks Project which aims to reinvigorate the use of cultural burning by working closely with aboriginal communities to build trust, and thereby buy in and understanding, about the need to put fire on the land in historically appropriate ways that support the complex biodiversity of the land. Oliver says it was not a quick process.  Building the trust with the aboriginal community required time and a willingness to meet, talk and share, as well as set aside some past history, to get to a place where they could begin working together. The Firesticks approach takes into consideration not just the land but the culture of the people that live there.  

The fire management plan has a very strong connection to history.  Oliver talked about that connection all the way back to "the dreaming" which is essentially the Creation for the Aboriginal people. They had a "corroboree," similar to a pow wow among Native Americans in the US, where elders and land managers talked about the history of fire on the land and how it was used to open up pathways

Oliver Costello talks about the IPA

 used by many original people to travel "in country." Those pathways also served as firebreaks and fire scars are where "bush tucker," or aboriginal food grows. He said it's time consuming but the collaboration with the elders was a critical part of making the planning process work.  He says it has to be about more than just the paper that gets signed or it will disappear when specific elders or land managers move on.

There are several conservation areas in Northeastern New South Wales and the research and planning done in each will be used to help the government build better land management practices and research elsewhere. Once the work done in these IPAs is done, the traditional custodians of the land will be a part of communicating that research.  Its also hopes it will help them learn more about their own land and reconnect them to the land and their history.

Mathew Pope -
Forest Corporation

A short bus ride later we were in Whiporie at another pine plantation, this time with a southern pine species.  We heard from Mathew Pope about the challenges of fighting fire where the only have 10 staff members and arson can be a problem! There is also the issue of the local people burning grass to get it to have "green peaks" so its better for grazing, but then once its started burning, simply walking away. Those fire get away a lot and threaten the pine plantations.  SO much time is spent working with neighbors and the community so they recognize the pine as an asset.  For Matthew, all firefighting is inital attack and they use only heavy equipment - dozers and aircraft - to manage it, no hand line at all.   He says 90% of their fire is from re-ignition of purposely started fires. 

Big Dingo!

Following our time at the plantation  we headed back to Coffs Harbour. Along the way we found another "big thing!"  this was a giant Dingo, the native wild dog found all over the Australian Outback! And yes, it has something in its mouth but not a baby (if you've seen the movie!). It was a stuffed Christmas elf for some reason!

We were lucky enough to be done with our day about 3:45 and have some time to walk to the beach areas of Coffs Harbour and dip our toes into the ocean!  The evening ended with dinner down on the Jetty.

Toes in the ocean at Coffs Harbour

Mondays schedule involves working on some of our final report in the morning and heading to the airport to head for Melbourne and the Victoria part of our trip.

5/3/14 Symposium in Canberra - Coffs Harbour - Ballina

Very busy few days, hence missing one post. I am writing on Saturday. WIFI is scarce so adding pictures is difficult.

Friday was an all day event, the final day of the 6 nation, International Symposium on Bushfire Management.  We had some amazing speakers all day which I will not try to summarize but try, instead to generalize. There were 5 sessions in the symposium, including Tom Harbour Thursday, and 4 on Friday. The intent was after each presentation, the facilitator would distill the issues raised,  down to three subject areas and all participants broke into groups to discuss a subject area.  We listened to Jean-Michel Dumaz from France talk about ICS, HROs and other human factors related to a safety culture.  We listened to Professor Jim McLennan from Trobe University in Melbourne talk about his research about Information Flow and messaging.  Dr McLennan has worked a great deal with Sarah MacCaffrey whom many in the US know from her fire research.  We heard from Andrew Sullivan on how we determine the research priorities of practitioners and from Jean Michel Dumaz again  about some of the newest research being done for fire related tools and equipment in France. And lastly, the group took all the discussion, learning, and short and long term goals of the group and distilled them into priority projects for all 6 nations and devised a plan for follow-up.


A long day but, very satisfying to see the many similarities and few differences between all countries and the willingness to work toward solutions that provide answers for all.  We finished the day with a final BBQ put on by our ACT hosts at the Stromlo Fire Depot.    Had some yummy "snags"  kind of a hot dog looking thing but tasted way better.  And some very thin steaks, also delish, and lots of other goodies. It was a great way to say goodbye to friends from the ACT.

The "big" banana in Coffs Harbour!

Saturday began very early as we caught a 5 am bus to the airport in Canberra for a flight to Sydney and to Coffs Harbour. Coffs Harbour is a beautiful area north of Sydney which makes it nearer the equator and much warmer and more tropical.  There were palm trees at the airport and the air was significantly warmer and more humid.  Our first stop was "the big banana" the second in our tour of "big things" in Australia.  The first was a "big fish!"  I cannot explain this!  Coffs Harbour is home to many banana plantations that produce smaller and tastier bananas that we buy in the states.  They also have huge blueberry production, much of which goes to the US.

We were met in Coffs Harbour by Adrian, our escort for the north east part of New South Wales, and some of the Rural Fire Service people he works with.  We spent the day learning about the community fire protection programs in use in the area that mesh risk reduction programs with biodiversity and the historical knowledge and burning practices

 of the aboriginal people of the area. 

Overlook at Coffs Harbour

We went to a turnout that overlooks the ocean off the east coast of Australia.  It looks a lot like the coast of San Diego. Like San Diego, most of the population lives near the beach in small communities and its difficult to do prescribed burning.  But they do burn in small patches as they can, trying to return the area to its original grass ecosystem.

We were introduced to 3 people, John, Waminda and Mark, that were part of a program called Hot Spots.

Jamie, left with Rural Fire Services and
 John with Hot Spots talk about their programs

Add caption

Jamie shows the tour group a prescribed burn
done by the aboriginal owners of some land
near Red Rock River.

 It is a collaborative effort between state, local and other land management agencies to help communities with landscape restoration and community collaboration. While there are Community Bushfire Protection  programs done by the Rural Fire Service to help homeowners and "shires" build "Asset Protection Zones" in their community, RFS works mostly in larger communities. Hot Spot works in rural areas where there are larger holdings and communities are chosen by 3 criteria:  They must be at high risk from bushfire, they have to have high biodiversity value, and they must be a cohesive community that is receptive to what Hot Spot wants to do.  What's fascinating is the Hot Spot personnel meet with the community, assess property Asset Protection Zones even providing landowners with specific, closeup maps of their property.  On these maps, the land owners identify the assets on their property, the biodiversity values on their land and define the role they would like fire to play on their property.  Hot Spot will also help landowners remove hazard materials and teach them to do their own prescribed burning to maintain their property. It's very much a "teach them to fish" model in which the Hot Spots teach and the communities learn and have passed a long, even generationally, what they have learned. Hot Spots also research and talk to the aboriginal people still available who hold the history of fire on aboriginal lands and pass along past burning .

Red Rock River, an aboriginal holding.

If there is one thing the Australians have done very well, among many things, it's collaboration and building relationships.  And not just with agency partners but with the people in their communities as well, making them full partners in the process of protecting their property from fire and even maintaining the correct ecological balance.

5/2/14 Jindabyne - Parks Office - Canberra

Another day of exploration and discovery!  And hurrying!  We began the day at breakfast in a bakery near our hotel in Jindabyne.  They are big on meat pies here - they all look like small pot pies. And there was quiche, so some people had egg based pies.  I had a meat pie which was pretty good.  Odd for breakfast but good!  Then of course, since it was a bakery, we had pastries.  Our driver Mick refers to them as "naughty bits" which we thought was hysterical!  And the coffee, well, we finally got the hang of it.  The main orders are "flat white" and "long black."  Flat white is coffee with milk (there doesn't seem to be any cream used EVER for coffee) and long black is like an Americano.  Mostly loving the long black!  We have many photos and are trying to add to them. Take a look at the Dropbox link to the right.  May be duplicates, may be poor shot,s but I'll sort & delete when I have time.

So let's see, back to business.  After breakfast went to a Parks Office to learn more about Kosciuszko State Park.  Learned about the history of the place, how its structured and the role fire plays.  I don't have many details as I lost all my notes for some reason. But I do remember that the main point was the collaboration between the 3 states that border around the park: New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT. They meet regularly to talk about fire management, especially the sharing of resources and willingness to help each other on an informal basis. There are formal agreements at the state level, but local collaboration is informal. They have agreements in place allowing them to chase a fire 15 or so kilometers across the border without even calling to say they are there.  But they also help without worrying about funding.  Is not unusual for one state to fight a fire across the border that they picked up, or that the owner state is too busy to deal with.  So they fight the fire and pay for it without worrying about being repaid.  Ian Dicker says its about good will and good relationships.

Funny quote of the day, as we are finding many!  Ian referred to something that rarely happens as "Rarer than rocking horse poo!"  Now that's rare!

The drip torch on the front of the Green Dragon

Saw some "toys" used by the firefighters here in the park.  There was the Green Dragon, something also used in Florida.  An all terrain vehicle with a drip torch at the front and I think a CO2 tank at the back.  They use two people, one to drive and one to fire.



They also had what they called the blow drier seen below!

The "Blow Dryer!"

It's a truck with a platform on the back that has a large engine and a nozzle/tube maybe 6 or 8 feet long, about 12 inches across and curved.  The nozzle can rotate in any direction. When the fuels are damp or wet and they can't get a burn going, they drive along and blown on it to get it going!  Sounds like a jet engine but is apparently pretty effective!  The study group was loving it and quite envious.

Then it was back on the bus for a long drive back to Canberra where we were invited to participate in the first International Symposium on Bushfire.  Six countries represented by high level people (some ambassadors and Commonwealth Senators) involved in their nation's fire response and fire policy: Canada, Mexico, America, New Zealand, Australia and France.

Tom Harbour on far right.

Tom Harbour, Forest Service Director of Fire and Aviation (seen in picture to the left) spoke first and talked about what he saw as challenges in our future: the increased connectedness and therefore expectations of the world,  the increase in size and complexity of all fires, the paradox of a public that is feeling generally safe because we are good at what we do but that maybe aren't as safe as they feel and, maybe most importantly, the distance of most people from the natural ecosystems around them.  Many don't know where their food comes from or where water originates.

Our host Neil Cooper
addresses the symposium

In fact, he suggested that perhaps worldwide concern about the future of our water supply might be a way to connect people to an ecosystem that is important to them and thereby, to the place of fire in that ecosystem.  Harbour was followed by a French researcher talking about the Wildland Urban Interface in France.
Fascinating afternoon with more to come today.

The Symposium was followed by a very nice reception where we were able to celebrate the retirement of Gary Morgan, an Aussie who has been a long time friend of the cooperative sharing of learning between the US and Australia.  Tom Harbour gave him a chrome Pulaski.  Nice evening and we are ready for more today.