Hobart needs a plan To evacuate
The city must have a well-understood evacuation plan in the event of a bushfire disaster, writes
PEOPLE tell me I have a calm demeanour. I attribute this to my parents, who taught me to keep things in perspective but also to have a sense of agency – to believe it’s always worthwhile to take action in the face of challenges.
However, I confess it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm about climate change, which threatens to unleash conditions that will disrupt and dominate our lives.
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released in recent weeks is truth-telling on a planetary scale.
More than 230 of our most qualified scientists, drawn from 65 nations, have strengthened their advice after three years of collaboration based on more than 14,000 studies. Their ominous finding is major climate change is both inevitable and irreversible. That our pollution has caused and is causing rapid changes to the climate – including sea level rise, melting polar ice and glaciers, heatwaves, floods and droughts – is “unequivocal”.
When you dig into the report, it’s hard to find any good news about what climate change means for Australia. We will continue to see even more intense and frequent fire weather, longer droughts, severe storms and flooding. All of this will impact on our economic stability, food production and human health.
Here in Hobart, we currently enjoy a temperate climate, but the Climate Futures for Tasmania project shows we can expect longer dry periods and an increase in extremely hot days (over 40C) which will enhance the occurrence and intensity of bushfires.
While it’s tempting to turn away and try to forget about this challenge, that’s not a wise nor a responsible response. Every action we take as individuals in the next few years can make a difference to reducing the severity of the change.
Decisions about what we do and don’t buy, how we invest, how we vote and how we get around can all have a positive impact as part of a global movement of citizens doing the same.
This is also the moment when every person of influence in Tasmania – in politics, media, business and the community – needs to pivot their assumptions and plans. How will they cast off old habits to be ready for a new world that’s coming faster than we expect?
Decision-makers also need to be upfront about the fact governing in such times of unprecedented global change will become extremely difficult.
To give a personal example: I am proud of the work the City of Hobart is doing on bushfire management. We spend $2m each year on fire prevention and management, and have an exceptional group of trained firefighters. We are already going above and beyond what is seen in many cities. But I know that this is still not enough.
As the Mayor of an extremely bushfire prone city, I am advocating that our emergency service agencies develop and promote an indepth evacuation plan for Hobart based on a full range of plausible scenarios. This plan does not currently exist, and I believe its development needs to be an urgent priority.
I fully understand emergency responders need to adapt to the realities of a situation as it develops. Some decisions can only be made on the day when we have a full understanding of the conditions. However it’s not good enough to wait until we are in the middle of a catastrophic bushfire and make evacuation plans for an entire city in the heat of the moment.
It would be irresponsible not to consider the lessons to be learned from fires that have caused immense destruction across the Northern Hemisphere. Authorities in Canada, the United States, Greece and Turkey have been caught on the hop as the evacuations of thousands of people have been more urgent, difficult and complex than they could have possibly imagined.
I do not want to see the same happen here in Hobart.
An evacuation plan for Hobart needs to: UNDERSTAND residents’ intended evacuation behaviours. Evidence suggests that local populations are not engaging with the traditional and underfunded community education programs;
CONSIDER a range of potential evacuation scenarios, including the need to shift and provide shelter to thousands of people from several dense suburbs in a few hours. Fast-moving fires mean an early, orderly and safe evacuation response may not always be possible; and INVESTIGATE whether our infrastructure is adequate to get people out of harm’s way, and whether we have clearly
It’s not good enough to wait until we are in the middle of a catastrophic bushfire and make evacuation plans for an entire city
identified and agreed mass evacuation areas for extreme (but plausible) scenarios.
Publishing such a plan will help us all understand the complexity of a bushfire emergency. We have left so much of our response in the hands of emergency services – and their best efforts will always be needed – but now the task of keeping communities safe needs all of us.
Everyone has a role to play in building resilience into our local communities for the climate disruption we will face. We all need to co-design practical solutions that create a sense of “community ownership” as otherwise the task of managing this change will be too big to tackle.
Of course, governments can and should also help this community effort, starting with better resourcing Bushfire Ready Neighbourhood programs. Financial incentives to retrofit existing houses and buildings to resist ember attack would also help.
My commitment in the face of this new advice from the IPCC is to redouble my efforts to help prepare Hobart for the impacts of climate change. I will also advocate for a phase out the use of the fossil fuels that have caused this damage and for reforms that reduce emissions in Hobart.
I ask you also think about this: what are you going to do? What will you commit to doing this week, this year, this decade to be part of preparing for and limiting the impact of climate change?