WHERE HOMES AND FORESTS SHOULD NOT CO-EXIST
Scientists have published an independent review of the Port Hills fires in Christchurch. Has anything been learned? Any action taken? Not enough, they say. Will Harvie reports.
It should be a warning cry – look this is dangerous and the nation needs to pay attention. Wildfires on the edges of New Zealand’s cities and towns are a real risk. Christchurch taught us this in the Port Hills wildfires of February 2017.
About 1650 hectares burned – that’s about 1650 rugby fields. Nine homes were lost completely and five others damaged. At least 450 households, with an estimated 1400 people – but perhaps as many as 2800 – fled. The insurance payouts cost $17.7 million and total cost has been estimated at $30m to date. Worst of all, helicopter pilot Steve Askin lost his life.
Now, 16 fire and other scientists have come together to publish a special edition of the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies. It is devoted to the wildfire; what happened and why, but mostly what can be learned.
Saturating most of the seven articles is the sense that ‘‘urban fringe’’ fires are a risk the country has not acknowledged. These areas feature lifestyle blocks, small holdings and growing subdivisions.
They also feature heaps of fuel – pine plantations, native bush, gorse, grassy paddocks – that burn
‘Fsavagely when conditions are dry and winds blowing.
Although it didn’t happen in Christchurch nearly two years ago, proper suburbs and even small towns can be consumed, as happened in Australia, California and Europe in recent years. The urban fringe may be sparsely populated, but next door live thousands.
‘‘The time has arrived to awaken fire managers to the specific risks of wildfires on the fringe of major urban centres,’’ wrote Lisa Langer and Simon Wegner of Scion, the Crown research institute that mostly works on forestry but also has a role in rural fires.
‘‘New Zealand cannot wait until the next Port Hills-type wildfire event . . . to take more definitive action to reduce wildfire risk,’’ wrote Grant Pearce, a senior fire scientist at Scion.
‘‘New Zealanders increasingly need to learn to live with wildfire events. The [urban fringe] fire problem is not new, and options for risk mitigation are well known. Action is needed now.’’
It’s a problem up and down the country, Langer said in an interview. irenado’’ entered the vocabulary of many New Zealanders when one was reported in the heart of the Port Hills fire in February 2017.
Wildfires are ‘‘unplanned and uncontrolled’’ fires and awful. They reach new levels of hell when they generate ‘‘fire tornados" as well.
These are extremely rare, but are true tornados in a very technical sense. They can also travel outside the burn zone and wreak their own damage, while threatening firefighters and aircraft.
Scientists are not convinced a ‘‘true pyro-tornadogenesis’’ happened in Christchurch, largely because of the strict criteria needed for formal classification.
Roy Montgomery of Lincoln University, for example, noted it took Australian researchers nearly 10 years to prove a proper tornado resulted from the January 2003 Canberra wildfires, which killed four people and destroyed about 500 homes. It is the only case of a documented fire tornado in Australia’s long history of wildfires.
Grant Pearce of Scion called the Port Hills event a ‘‘possible fire tornado’’ and described its occurrence and scale as ‘‘still debated’’.
However, he drew attention to
Wellington and Hamilton, New Plymouth and Tauranga, are all at risk.
So what’s to be done?
Well, reports have been written. Too many reports, suggested Roy Montgomery, a Lincoln University senior lecturer with expertise in environmental policy and planning.
Fire and Emergency NZ (Fenz), which replaced the Fire Service in July 2017, got a review of operational firefighting activities. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet commissioned its own review of civil defence after a number of recent natural disasters, including the Port Hills fire. other extreme fire behaviour. It’s estimated that the fire spread rate was as high as 15 metres to 30m a minute, or 1kmh to 2kmh.
Head fire intensities must have been about 15,000 to 35,000 kilowatts a metre, which corresponded to flame lengths of 6m to 10m.
The upper limit for successful fire suppression using conventional means, including heavy machinery and aircraft, is a fire intensity of 4000 kilowatts a metre and flame lengths of about 3.5m.
‘‘This places the main fire spread . . . outside of the realm of suppression.’’
Christchurch City Council issued a ‘‘lessons learned’’ report as well as a post-fire recovery plan. Selwyn District Council also published a recovery plan, because the fire burned some of its stuff.
‘‘A plethora of separate reviews around one event or across a number of unconnected events can actually compound the situation rather than resolve it,’’ Montgomery wrote.
He was most agitated by the ‘‘lessons learned’’ rhetoric in these reports, which seemed like ‘‘panicked busy work’’ rather than useful. An exception was the Christchurch lessons learned report, which he thought was ‘‘arguably . . . constructive’’.
The city council referred comment on the issue to Fenz. However, Fenz has not responded to a request for comment. It turns out there’s an emerging field of research and best practice called ‘‘lessons management’’. One key is that the behaviour of officials, planners, firefighters – and residents – must change or nothing has been learned.
So, for example, Christchurch is well into the recovery process in the Port Hills but it ‘‘largely reinstates the spatial patterns which heightened the risk, scale and impact of the 2017 fires’’, according to three writers from Lincoln University.
Lifestyle blocks are going in, forests being replanted, grass and gorse are growing. Fuel management might be practised by individuals – clearing defensible perimeters around residences and building less flammable homes, for example.
But there are places on the urban fringe where homes and forests, say, shouldn’t co-exist. This is true in Wellington and Hamilton as much as Christchurch. ‘‘Strong and sustained leadership is needed to implement land-use planning that reduces, rather than increases, wildfire risk,’’ the trio wrote.
Another example: Communication with residents about fire risk has typically been ‘‘one way’’ – from officials down to residents using brochures, fire-risk signs and press releases.
A better way might be ‘‘participatory’’ education that brings residents into conversations and encourages mitigating behaviour well before the first spark, suggested Langer and Wegner of Scion.
‘‘This urban fringe represents a different context, not only in terms of the landscape but also of the people living within it,’’ they wrote.
FIRE PLANNING FOR ANIMALS
Urban-fringe residents are neither rural nor urban. They’re slightly different and choose to live in areas that are more dangerous, it turns out, than most city neighbourhoods.
Many also have lots of animals – dogs and cats, of course, but also horses, goats, pigs, cattle, poultry, alpacas.
Given the emotional bond between humans and animals, deeper thought has to be given to animal welfare in wildfires, argued four academics from Massey University.
Otherwise, animal owners won’t evacuate early enough. Or they’ll breach cordons to recover their animals. Or they won’t have the gear to move, say, 20 horses in three hours.
And where does the guy with 20 horses put them once out of the danger zone?
‘‘Animals must be included in wildfire awareness and planning, not only to prevent animal suffering, but to improve . . . human and community safety and resilience,’’ they said.
Last word goes to Montgomery, who stressed that the Port Hills fire wasn’t necessarily a natural disaster. There were two ignition points, about 4km and 70 minutes apart. The two fires later merged.
Police are still investigating whether one or both were deliberately started – arson. Carelessness remains a possibility too.
But Montgomery goes further: ‘‘It was in effect a $30m crime which involved the loss of human life.’’