AS AUSTRALIA comes to grips with the deaths of at least 200 people in the deadliest bushfires in its history, officials here say they will take a hard look at the much vaunted “leave early or stay and defend” policy, which trains homeowners to defend their homes and is being considered for adoption in Europe and some parts of the US.
Even as firefighters in the state of Victoria struggle to reach stricken communities, authorities say some people were killed while actively defending their homes, a choice researchers say has rarely resulted in death.
In addition, authorities expect that a large number of fatalities will have occurred in motorway crashes during panicked evacuations, the very scenario the Australian policy seeks to avoid.
Australia adopted the “stay or go” approach about a decade ago following what was then the nation’s worst natural disaster – the “Ash Wednesday” fires in 1983 that killed 83 people and injured 2,600. Researchers found after those blazes that the most frequent cause of death in wildfires was people being trapped in their cars trying to flee. They determined that properly trained homeowners would be at less risk if they stayed off the roads and took shelter.
The policy includes extensive training that emphasises homeowner preparation that calls for measures such as clearing a defensible space, storing water, prestaging fire equipment and establishing a fire plan.
Research further demonstrated that during wildfires homes burn, not in a wall of flames, but instead succumb to small spot fires sparked by windborne embers, often carried miles ahead of the fire front.
Homeowners are instructed to stamp out small fires – often with mops – and take shelter in their homes as the fire moves past.
Officials say the “stay or go” policy has been demonstrably successful in saving lives and property in Australia, and is now the most talked-about strategy in the firefighting world. Australian fire officials travel the globe explaining their ideas to officials looking for ways to better deploy fire crews.
A decade of concerted public safety announcements and community-based education was thought to have nearly blanketed the populace with the details of the programme. However, the proven policy can break down in the face of raw panic.
“Even if you have been to the lectures and have had somebody of experience tell you what happens, and you rehearse what you are going to do . . . you still don’t completely understand the ferocity of that fire when it comes,” says Daryl Wells, captain of the fire brigade in Werribee, a western suburb of Melbourne.
“All the information that we provide for the people – part of the psyche is they think they know better, they think they can do it. But when they feel the heat, and then noise, as the fire starts to come over the hill, that causes panic. They say, ‘Let’s get in the car.’ When you get up in the morning and conditions are like that, that’s when you decide if you stay or go. By the time the smoke is coming up the hill behind your house, it’s too late.”
According to researchers, the vast majority of deaths occur when panicked residents race on to smoke-obscured roads, often littered with downed trees, charred wildlife or emergency vehicles.
Reports from last weekend, where hundreds of individual fires raced across southeastern Australia fanned by high winds, suggest that in some hard-hit communities residents organised convoys of vehicles that fled one fire only to be consumed by another of which they were unaware. "What seems to have happened in some cases was people had a perception that a wave of fire was coming over the hill at them, and they ran from that," says Kevin Tolhurst, a fire researcher at the University of Melbourne. "But in fact they may have been surrounded by fires in many directions and taken by surprise. That complexity is lost to some." – ( LA Times- Washington Postservice)