Planning Blog 6: Coping with disaster: Victorian Bushfire 2009

This seminar was one of the most interesting of them all because it explored a concept of planning that I have not thought about before. The seminar was based on the 2009 Victorian bushfires that killed 173 people and left 3,500 structures in the areas destroyed. This occurred because of the drought facing Australia at the time coupled with February 7^th being the hottest day in Melbourne to date and strong winds reaching up to 115km/h (Bureau of Meteorology 2009). All these factors led to this large bushfire that cost 4 billion dollars in damages.

As the seminar presenter discussed there were fire policies that were in place but were not adequate enough to predict and cope with such a disaster. One of the major policies that was in place was the idea of stay and defend or leave early policy. But this idea did not really work because it leads people to stay and see what happens, which means they could leave too late. Also there was lack communication and many people did not have a plan of their own in case of a bushfires (Royal Commission 2010a). A lot of these factors led to the death of many individuals. 

There were a couple of interesting planning ideas that the presenter mentioned. One was the introduction of multi-tiered fire areas, meaning a much more comprehensive map of the most fire prone areas. There was also the idea of using incentives to make people not want to live in very fire prone areas. Almost half of the deaths were aged less than 12 and more than 70, leading to the idea of making high risk buildings such as schools, child care centres, hospitals and aged cared facilities to be fire proof (Royal Commission 2010b). This would help these at risk people survive better and also create safe haven. This topic was very interesting and I would like to explore disaster planning more.

Bibliography

Bureau of Meteorology, (2009). Bureau of Meteorology, Fire Weather Forecast. [online] Available at: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Documents/Document-files/Exhibits/WIT-004-001-0493.pdf [Accessed 4 May. 2014].

Royal Commission, (2010a). 2009 VBRC - Final Report - Summary - Interactive Version. [online] Available at: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report/Summary/Interactive-Version [Accessed 8 May. 2014].

Royal Commission, (2010b). 2009 VBRC - Final Report - Vol 2 - Introduction. [online] Available at: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/Commission-Reports/Final-Report/Volume-2/Intro-pages/Introduction [Accessed 9 May. 2014].