Human dimensions of wildland fire

The Front Ranges, Colorado. Despite the snow and high altitudes very large areas of these ranges are regularly burnt by wildfire. The US, like Australia, is experiencing increased wildfire risk associated with city dwellers moving to natural areas for lifestyle reasons.

by Leith Hillard, CFA Public Affairs

While CFA and the Australasian Fire Authorities Council are regarded as innovative in the international wildfire community for the “Stay and defend or leave early” approach and related community safety programs, the US is leading the way in the new field of social science research into people management in the wildfire context.

Last October, Community Safety Director Lisa Sturzenegger, Land Use Planning Coordinator Owen Gooding and Manager Community Safety Research and Evaluation Alan Rhodes attended a conference in Colorado called 'Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire'. The conference aimed to “open communication between wildland fire managers and social scientists and consider the broad range of approaches, issues and ideas in wildland fire management.”

Owen presented a paper on the first day of the conference entitled Lessons from the Australian interface: reconciling wildfire risk with biodiversity conservation objectives.

“Often areas mapped for high wildfire risk also have high conservation value,” Owen said, “so there’s traditionally been a conflict between wildfire risk management and conservation. I talked about CFA’s Property Bushfire Preparedness and Native Vegetation Management project and how vital the close working relationships between CFA, DSE and local government have been to its success.

"Wildfire is agency-blind so we have to know each other’s business. It’s also clear from our research that regulatory approaches to wildfire safety must be linked with effective community engagement programs.

“People who live in interface areas value the bush around them – that’s why they’re there – but they often don’t understand wildfire risk or how to manage it. From my perspective, it’s about teaching the public that vegetation management for wildfire safety is not the enemy; we can keep bushland values while also being fire ready.”

The conference featured a session dedicated to the Australian “Stay or go” approach and studies of community response during wildfire. “Stay or go” is supported by all Australian fire authorities and encourages people to either leave long before a firefront arrives or stay and actively defend their homes.

Among the speakers, CFA’s Alan Rhodes talked about house survival during wildfire and the danger of late evacuation as well as patterns of community response to wildfire threat.

“There was a real buzz around the Australian perspectives,” Owen said.
“There’s a long tradition of wildfire science but social research around public attitudes is a new twist and it was fascinating.

"In Australia we’re about 20 years ahead in community education because the reality in an emergency situation is that we can’t have a firetruck in every street, so community safety is about resilience and self-reliance powered by education. In the US there’s still the public attitude that the emergency services will get in there and save you.

“I’d been told that CFA was advanced in world terms when it comes to community safety but I didn’t have a real appreciation of that until the conference. It made me reflect on what’s different about Australia. Maybe it’s our give-it-a-go attitude, which values people and communities being self-reliant. We’re lucky we can be realistic about what we can all do and what agencies can do. We’re lucky to have these opportunities.”

Smoke haze from the California 2007 fires lends an eerie orange glow to the grand canyon viewed by the Australians returning from the international wildland fire conference.