Page 2972 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 September 2006
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comprehensive, advanced and forward-thinking document. Further, the bushfire operational plans stemming from the SBMP are audited on an annual basis to ensure that they achieve the guidelines that are set out. This ensures that the benchmarks set out in the SBMP are achieved. These audits are carried out at both desktop and field level, with both quarterly and annual reports being submitted to the commissioner of the ESA and land management agencies.
Prevention activities such as fuel management and fire trail works are targeted to effectively address pre-identified bushfire risk strategic areas and to ensure that the works undertaken provide the most effective means to reduce this risk. A critical component of this work is to ensure that across the territory there are strategic areas surrounding properties and assets from which firefighters and residents can protect their homes. This work is undertaken around the urban interface adjacent to critical assets and back fences of properties, as well as along rural and arterial roads.
It is a totally unrealistic expectation that every blade of grass behind every ACT fence will be slashed on a continuing basis through the summer. This is simply impractical. However, the strategic bushfire management plan guidelines and the bushfire operational plans ensure that all urban edge areas of the territory that are vulnerable to bushfire are identified and treated according to their level of risk and vulnerability. Canberra’s urban interface is managed in this way.
It is also inevitable that there will be areas where long grass or other bushfire hazards cannot be fully cleared due to rocky or steep slopes that prevent the safe use of mechanical slashers. The land managers, either by reshaping the land or using hand tools or burning, are systematically reducing hazards in these difficult areas. Critical slashing work is complemented by the prescribed burning of grassland areas and roadsides over the summer months to provide strategic breaks across the landscape as well as reducing fuel adjacent to back fences. This is the first time in many years this burning has been undertaken in the ACT and it not only provides increased protection but also is a critical means of training our firefighters.
This government takes a long-term strategic and landscape level view of the bushfire threat based on a sound historical understanding of fire behaviour. There is far more to bushfire management than just managing grass at the back fence. Ensuring the safety of communities from the threat of bushfire is a complex task and there is no single, simple solution to it. It is critical to ensure the community is educated and resilient to bushfires and that people know what to do when bushfires occur. This government has put in place a range of strategies to ensure home owners are more aware of and more resilient to the impacts of fires.
The government has instituted the all hazards warning system that provides a staged process for warning the public of impending threat from bushfire or, indeed, other hazards. At the same time, advice was provided on how householders can prepare for bushfires to make their homes more capable of withstanding bushfires. There is a saying in the business that people protect houses and houses protect people. The government has acted to ensure these concepts are understood and applied. The ESA has been applying these guidelines to evacuation strategies and they have been published in Bushfires and the bush capital and the all hazards guide.
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