After the drought, another disaster

Former emergency chief Lee Johnson warns we’re locked in a cycle of bushfires and terrible storms, and the Gold Coast has to stop building on floodplains and in forests, throw away the town plan and start again

THIS is not a drill.

In the new normal of natural disasters, Queensland Fire and Emergency Services former commissioner Lee Johnson says it is literally sink or swim for the Gold Coast. As one of the 23 members of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, Lee is calling on the Government to minimise our impact on the environment, as well as to urgently escalate emergency services’ resources and planning as they deal with unprecedented disasters. And for our city, he says that means rewriting our town plan to cope with this new climate of change. For 40 years, saving lives was Lee’s life. And although he retired in 2015, he just can’t quit.

While Lee and the other members of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action await a meeting with Federal Minister for Natural Disaster and Emergency Management David Littleproud next month – six months after requesting a meeting with Prime Minister Scott Morrison – Lee says local leaders also need to take action.

As bushfires continue to burn across Queensland, he says the Gold Coast is especially vulnerable, not just from Hinterland blazes but from storms, floods and cyclones.

“There are a lot of people on the Gold Coast living in places that are just not safe any more. We need to throw away the current town plan and start again.

“Why are we still building on floodplains? Why are we living in areas in the heart of bushfire danger? Why is the Gold Coast full of brick and tile homes on concrete slabs when storm surges, cyclones and floods are not just a possibility but a probability? “The world has changed, the climate has changed and the way we live in our cities needs to as well. It’s an issue across Queensland and all of Australia.

“Emergency services are the ones who pay the price for poor town planning and development. On a bad day when things go wrong, we are the ones under the microscope for how we respond, but we need to go back a step and ask why are people still living in these places?

“We’ve had huge fires in Queensland previously where 1000ha has burned but no one was hurt, no infrastructure was damaged and it just burned out, because no one was there. That doesn’t happen any more. It’s not an easy thing to do, but we need to accept the new risks and mitigate against them. Does this mean decreasing the density in Hinterland areas? Does this mean changing the rules of how we build? If we’re interested in safety, then yes.”

Beginning his career as a firefighter in Townsville in 1975, Lee worked across the state, including years on the Gold Coast, before being appointed as commissioner in 2002.

He says the environment in which he first worked no longer exists, and it was literally his job to adapt the QFES in order to fight against the ever-increasing risk of natural disasters.

From bushfires to floods and cyclones, Lee has seen it all – and mostly in the past 15 years.

“It used to be that you were called out to a fire, you put it out, you cleaned up and you went back to the station and waited for the next call-out,” he says.

“But, on reflection, it seems everything changed after Cyclone Larry in 2006. Since that time, it seems every single year the state is hit with yet another natural disaster. Cyclone Yasi, Debbie, the inland tsunami in Toowoomba, Brisbane flooding, Townsville flooding, Bundaberg … the list goes on … I haven’t even touched on the fires.

“As commissioner, it was my responsibility to change the whole service so we could adapt to the changing environment.

“We needed to be able to respond with good capabilities to disasters on a broad geographic scale.

“We went from being a fire service into essentially an organised military operation in terms of logistics and planning, with the ability to have people on the frontline in the field 24 hours a day.

“We also had to expand into swift water rescue. The amazing thing is that the very first year we introduced it we performed 100 life rescues. That means someone was not just evacuated but physically rescued from a precarious and life-endangering situation.

“I was just in disbelief when I saw the numbers. I thought, where did all of these customers come from? Who saved them before we were there? It’s like we built it and they came. But actually, the environment for those disasters wasn’t there before.

“I’m very proud of what we achieved but when you think about it, it’s frightening that QFES had to expand our entire operation to deal with the environmental changes.

“It’s not just residents who are at risk but the first responders as well. The truth is that we’ve been dealing with climate change in our practice for years now, but we’re still waiting for governments to listen.”

Indeed, it was Lee’s own observations, as well as concerns for his children and grandchildren, which led him to join the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action.

He says he is not interested in the politics of the debate, but simply in creating change.

And he is more than willing to put his reputation on the line, just as he once did his life.

“I saw things change in real time, but it was when I took a step back from day-to-day operations that I really started to see the pattern.

“Something has changed. Primarily in Queensland we

‘The Gold Coast is well overdue for a flooding event’

have always been more worried about floods and cyclones than bushfires but that has changed dramatically in the last couple of years.

“The loss of property too is simply unprecedented. Never have we lost so many homes. Ever.

“When you see fires like at Woodgate and Pechey, the size of those flames just means total destruction of the environment.

“So when (former NSW fire and rescue commissioner) Greg Mullins called me about joining the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, I was in. I felt that, speaking as experienced emergency services leaders, we could cut through the politics. It’s just not helping the Australian community.

“It doesn’t matter how many jobs we have if we can’t survive. Let’s choose not to pollute our air, water and soil.

“I’m a pragmatic person, not a scientist or academic, but what we put into the atmosphere affects our climate and our climate drives our weather. Our weather has always been variable but as we get warmer, it’s getting angrier. Let’s do something.

“There are so many areas where we can make changes. It’s not just a matter of cutting emissions, but in better equipping our emergency services – for example, with aircraft that give us a hope of controlling fires.

“We should be employing more indigenous rangers to do burns on country as well. I’ve been strongly advocating we give increased resources to our national parks and the people managing government land.

“It’s personal for all of us. I’m worried about my own children and grandchildren. Where will it end? We only have one planet.”

Lee says a climate of fear has been created by politicians, but that change is possible.

Indeed the UK, once the world’s largest coal consumer, has all but ended its coal addiction. In the 1970s, conventional coal and oil power plants accounted for 88 per cent of electricity supplied to the UK market, with coal’s share dropping to just 5 per cent in 2018 – and in June it hit a low of 0.6 per cent.

Lee says world history proves that when one industry ends, another begins.

“Right now we’re stuck in this cycle of fear. People are worried about change because of how it could affect the economy, especially in Queensland where we rely so much on jobs in the fossil fuel industry.

“But we’ve changed before. Why do you think we stopped using steam trains? In London they had to stop burning coal because of the pea soup pollution.

“We can change, we can adapt. Think about when we banned CFCs in aerosols, that wasn’t some mad, greenie conspiracy. Scientists pointed out a problem and a solution and we just got on with it, and to the great benefit of the ozone layer.

“The irony is that the real damage to the economy is being done by these natural disasters and Queensland has been the hardest hit. The Gold Coast itself is well overdue for a flooding event.

“Right now we’re starting to worry again about water levels, but the next concern is that when this drought breaks, it won’t be from a soft, gentle rain. It will be another disaster.”

It seems the new normal is anything but natural.

But at least Lee is once again fighting from the front.