Fire lessons from the Australian capital, where a 2003 inferno changed everything
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The residents of Canberra might know a little about what Los Angeles is going through. Exactly 22 years ago, a wildfire became a devastating urban fire in the Australian capital.
On Jan. 18, 2003, what began as a bushfire — as they are known in Australia — started by a lightning strike in the outlying mountain ranges quickly pushed its way into residential suburbs, propelled by powerful gusts. Feeding it were the trees and grasses that give the city its “bush capital” moniker but were primed to burn by the previous year’s drought.
The inferno, which burned for five days and saw walls of flames 18 miles wide, killed four people, injured hundreds and destroyed more than 480 homes in the city of half a million.
Along with the 2019-2020 bushfire season known as Black Summer, which killed 34 people and destroyed more than 3,000 homes across the country, the 2003 fires remain a painful memory for many Australians.
As the Palisades fire raged, critics blamed overgrown vegetation for driving its spread. But some scientists and fire officials say removing it may not have made much of a difference, and also risks making the landscape more flammable in the long run.
”It looked like it was raining fire because there were so many embers and there were really, really strong winds,” said Rohan Scott, a firefighter on the scene at the time.
Today, Scott is the chief of the Australian Capital Territory’s Rural Fire Service, which oversees Canberra’s outlying regions.
The Times spoke with him about the 2003 tragedy and how it changed the city’s approach to fire prevention. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What was your reaction to the L.A. fires? Did anything remind you of Canberra in 2003?
If you look at the devastation and the conditions, just the sheer fire behavior, the wind, there are similarities.
In 2003, if a house was on fire, we had to leave that house on fire. We had to protect the ones next to it because the winds were so strong. Even if we had a truck at every house, I would probably say we would still have lost houses.
I think the firefighters in L.A. did an exceptional job considering the winds. People have to understand that those embers are really, really small. They get into the smallest cavities of a house by the time they’re taken hold, it’s gone.
How did the 2003 fire change Australian firefighting or fire prevention?
We now have what we call asset protection zones and bushfire management standards. Between a house and the vegetation, there has to be a zone that has to be maintained. So if it’s a grass buffer, it must be mown and kept to a certain standard. If there are trees, the tree fuel loads must be kept to a certain standard.
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We’ve also got bushfire modeling software and we know where a fire is going to run in a bushfire-prone area. And if you build on those areas now, there’s a certain standard that your house must be built to. There are certain building materials that you must use to make it more fire-resistant.
I myself live in a bushfire-prone area and I’m building a deck off the side of my house. I’m using not a timber product but a renewable plastic product because it’s not susceptible to fire.
How strictly are these vegetation management regulations enforced?
Our bushfire management standards are legislation — they’re law. We actually go out as a fire service and audit those bushfire abatement zones and asset protection zones.
We also have crews that will go out and remove that vegetation: the dead leaves, the dead sticks and branches that are on the ground.
And when you rebuild a property, we encourage people to grow certain types of plants that are less prone to fire.
Los Angeles has been reluctant to use controlled burns to reduce the buildup of fuel. What does Canberra do in this regard?
It’s just one tool that we can use out of many.
It does reduce fuel, but it can only be done under certain weather conditions. The wind has got to go in the right areas. Otherwise it’s either going to be too effective and actually destroy the environment. Or it might be not effective because it’s not burning hot enough.
On a typical fire, hazard reduction burns would slow the progression but we’re only talking about those surface and ground fuels. If it’s a big strong fire that’s in the canopy, you can’t reduce those fuels — it would carry fire, anyway.
Grazing is another option, particularly for noxious weeds. In some of the areas here, we’ve got really thick native blackberry bushes. They’ve used herds of goats to reduce that fuel down, with no burning required and no impact to the environment. Goats will eat anything. They’re happy just munching away on these weeds. So it’s a win-win.
What sort of changes were made in preparing communities for fires?
Every piece of land in the capital territory has got some sort of plan over it to reduce fire risk or on what we would do if there was an incident, whether it’s government-owned land, privately-owned land or rural farmland.
It’s a shared responsibility between the community and fire services. For you as a homeowner, we ask you to prepare your property as best you can. That includes cleaning your gutters, removing any combustibles from around your house, making sure that embers can’t enter into your roof or your other cavities within your building. Make sure you’ve got a hose that reaches around.
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We now expect you to enact your fire plan. That fire plan is to leave early or stay and defend. If you’ve got an evacuation bag, you should have these products in it: mobile phone, critical papers, medications. How long does it take to relocate your pet? Take that into consideration.
What about evacuation orders like those in Los Angeles?
Forced evacuations we don’t typically do here in Canberra.
That’s when you put people at risk because you’re asking them to leave and it may be too late to leave whereas if they stay and defend, they’re prepared and we make sure they’ve got themselves garden hoses, buckets, water supply, their own personal protection.
If you’ve got a well-prepared property, if you as a family unit know exactly what you’re going to do in the event of a fire, that means that I can allocate my firefighting resources to put the fire out rather than trying to rescue you.
Both the L.A. fires and the Canberra fires were said to be unprecedented events, which opens up difficult questions about prevention. How much should we spend public money to protect against rare events?
You look here and we had those really bad fires in 2003. We had the 2019-2020 fires as another once-in-a-generation fire. So now I’ve experienced two once-in-a-generation fires just during my lifetime.
Our biggest challenge is climate change, unfortunately. The fire intervals are getting smaller. Historically we would get a fire interval between 20 to 30 odd years that’s now been reduced to 15 and it may even come down to seven years and less. So those big fires are occurring more frequently, the vegetation’s growing back quicker because of the changing climate.
So we don’t know what’s next. We can only try and manage the risk.
Australia and California have historically helped each other with each other’s fires because their fire seasons didn’t overlap. Can this arrangement continue given that both places are now vulnerable to fire year-round?
We are in fire season, but again, that shouldn’t discourage anyone from asking for assistance. Where we can, we will definitely be able to offer resources.
But you did make a good point. We’re used to getting some of our aircraft from the Northern Hemisphere, because they used to do the fire season up north and then come down to the Southern Hemisphere. That’s starting to overlap now.
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