Black Saturday and Australia's Fire Policies

This is an article I wrote directly after Australia's Black Saturday fires in Victoria. This is cross-posted at the Wonk Room and the Center for Fire Research and Outreach blog.

[Thank you to Brad Johnson of the Wonk Room.]
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Even in Australia, where people have learned to live with large wildfires, February’s “Black Saturday” fires in Victoria blew away all expectations. Of the hundreds that died, those who stayed had no time to prepare, and many who fled were overtaken by the fast-spreading flames and died in their cars. Multiple days of above 100-degree Fahrenheit temperatures, extremely low relative humidity and 100 mile per hour winds resulted in an unstoppable spread of the flames, 100-200 foot flame lengths, and fire intensity unlike anything ever before recorded anywhere on the planet.

Wildfire expert Max Moritz, a professor at the College of Natural Resources and Center for Fire Research and Outreach at the University of California, Berkeley, explains these extreme conditions raise new questions:

Although we won’t know many of the details until an assessment of the recent Australian fires is completed, the weather conditions and rates of fire spread we’re hearing about are extreme. It highlights a special case for both agencies and homeowners, and we have a lot to learn from each other about what does and does not work under weather conditions that are this bad.

So what caused this colossal inferno? In pointing to arson as the cause of these fires, we miss the overall significance of the fire dynamics that gave rise to this event. While arson is a lamentable and criminal source of ignition, with relative humidity and fuel moisture at below four percent, a lit cigarette or a spark thrown off by a moving vehicle could have caused similar wildland fires. Where there are people, there are always sources of ignition — what fire scientists call the “human-ignition component.” The larger issue at stake here is what gave rise to such extreme fire weather.

Australian fire scientists say that this area of Victoria has experienced between five and 30 years of drought (depending on if you are counting by successive years or overall water balances), the worst in perhaps 1000 years. Some, perhaps rightly, blame global climate change for what is known as the “Big Dry.” Diminishing rainfall, increased temperatures, and increased atmospheric instability all lead to higher fire danger.

An open question for scientists is whether or not with global climate change, we are experiencing “novel ecosystems” with entirely new combinations of environmental conditions. Is Australia really experiencing a “drought,” which is less-than-normal rainfall, or is there a new normal? Should Australia listen to its firefighters and be preparing for a permanently drier future with much more intense fire dynamics?

Australia has a history of successful fire management. Because of the inevitability of fire in Australia’s fire-evolved ecosystems, people have learned to expect and prepare for fires in a highly efficient, centralized manner. The “Prepare, Stay and Defend, or Leave Early” policies have long protected the lives of both citizens and firefighters, and reduced damage to homes and other buildings.

In a paper out this week in Environmental Research Letters, four Australian scientists and three scientists from California including Moritz, examine the policies and recommendations that both countries have in place for dealing with wildland fire on the urban interface.

In the “prepare, stay and defend” approach, property-owners are educated in fire suppression, such as putting out spot-fires, having buckets of water on hand, filling house gutters with water, creating a “defensible space,” and so on. People who chose to stay with their homes are also encouraged to keep protective Nomex clothing and firefighting implements on hand. Those who follow the “leave early” strategy do so when fire is reported for their area to give the wildfire a wide berth.

The unusual combination of extreme fire weather and the sudden onset of fire created conditions in which neither strategy worked. Leaving early works only if there is time to send out a warning. Those who would “prepare, stay, and defend” would have been reducing fuel loads in their yards well before this event, but it is unclear whether landscape-scale fuel treatments or even lowering fuel loads in the immediate vicinity of structures lowers fire hazard in wind-driven events, such as this one.

It will be up to Australian fire scientists and policy analysts to decide if their fire strategies need review. It the face of so primal a force as fire and on this scale, fighting the fires themselves is impossible, but perhaps one solution–fighting global climate change–is not.

Thoughts on the Recent Australia Wildfires, YouTube Videos

I found two videos on YouTube that interest me:

This one has dramatic music and a strange ending, but nevertheless. The two things I want to point out about this are that in the first images you can see the speed with which the wildfire spread. In later images, you can see the Eucalyptus-bark fuel on the ground. Eucalyptus trees have evolved with "catastrophic" or stand-replacing fires, and have grown over time to be more fire conducive. The bark of certain kinds of Eucalyptus trees is a fuel that carries fire from tree to tree along the ground, or from the ground up into the canopy of a tree. Once ignited, strips of bark can remain lit and travel on the wind, creating spot fires 2 kilometers or more away from the initial flame. Some species of Eucalyptus have "serrotinous cones," which means that they only open in fire.

This video made me a little bit happier.

Southern Culture, Part Two of Many (Grabbling)

So, right. No updates. This is because I am trying to write something about the Australia wildfires, settle into my new job and home, and survive the California DMV.

These days, I would say I am homesick for North Carolina. Don't get me wrong, California is great. But North Carolina has a lot of character you don't find elsewhere, and I miss being there.

While I am working on my Australia piece, I'll post a piece I wrote about grabbling in NC.

*****

What do you do in a small Southern town at nights and on weekends? I believe there is a bar in town, but I have still not spent any time exploring Rockingham beyond finding its Chimney Swifts. There isn’t a movie theater, that I know. Nights at home can be fun when the other biologists are staying here, and sure, there’s always Seventeen-Frog Pond (now featuring 21 species of frogs and toads!), but at this time of year the frogs are mostly hanging out under the mud, and even field biologists need to go out and see people once in a while. So while we wait for the NASCAR raceway to reopen, I pass time with other local sports.


Southern Culture, Part Two of Many (Grabbling)



Lincoln invites me out mountain biking. Though I have no talent or ability in this, and no pressing desire to exercise in hundred-degree weather, I am promised a swim in the river, and this is the Diggs Tract we’re discussing here. “I’m taking you grabblin’”—says Lincoln.

We fill a chest full of ice, some water and a few beers, and head out to the river from work. We park Lincoln’s white pickup as far out of sight as possible, and offload two mountain bikes. He says we’re going to get the catfish back up the path on the bike, tied lengthwise to its side, or carry one in the backpack, tail flapping out the top if we get two. He tosses me a length of rope, and we bike many miles over pebbles and rocks and clay and torn up ground, through the oppressive humidity and down to the river.

Lincoln cuts a straight branch and whittles the end into a sharp point with the case knife he carries on his belt. He hands me this makeshift spear, and I strap it to my back with the rope. I think the idea is that if we find one of these monster fishes, we are going to poke it with the stick. This sounds like a plan put together by a four-year-old, but since I don’t have a better one, I assent. We leave whatever clothing we can do without, the backpack and our water bottles in an out-of-the-way wooded cove.

We float down the river on our stomachs for about an hour, arms and legs spread out, hands roving through the water to sense the sharp and unexpected architectures of the riverbed. Sometimes the water is deeper than we can stand in, and then all at once, we are crawling over a rocky landscape just inches from the surface. The rock drops away, and we are once again floating in unknown depths. The water is warm and the air is warmer. Sweetgums and oaks and poplars crowd clay banks that sit opposite one another at a distance of one hundred fifty meters. This year’s drought, combined with the previous year’s, layered on the one from the year before that, has dropped the water level down many feet from where it should be, and so the gentle push of the river is no threat to us. Sometimes a grabbler will get carried away downstream, and you hope he hauls out safely, as you dare not follow his lead. But the current is lazy, and the sun is shining. The world seems simple and beautiful. It is a moment in which I can’t think of anything I would rather be doing.

During our float, Lincoln explains that the spear is used to antagonize the fish. Occasionally you find a catfish that does not want to bite you, and if you are committed to a successful grabbling encounter, you need to punch and prod the fish until it is angry enough to swallow your hand and hang on. The next part is a battle of strength as the fish tries to retreat with its living bait, and you try in earnest to retrieve your ingested limb. The catfish may hold you underwater. It may break your wrist when it thrashes. It may try to pull you into its den. The rock that the fish lives in will bump and thump and boom and rumble, though it may be solid throughout and weigh more than a ton. The rope is reserved for occasions when you win. You string one end of it through the mouth and gills of the fish, and the other around your waist. You swim back up the river, and the fish travels behind you as docile and fine as a water-breathing lapdog.



Lincoln shows me a flat-topped rock as big around as a picnic table, which sits just below the water line. He calls it Lost Rock. He drops underwater, spends about a minute probing the cavity, making sure that there is no fish underneath. He surfaces and tells me it’s my turn.

“I don’t want to do this!” I balk. “This is a terrible idea! And I don’t feel like drowning today,” I pout. I am experiencing a sudden change in mood at the prospect of provoking a leviathan to attack me in an environment where I cannot see, nor hear, nor breathe. I have Lincoln’s assurance that the fish is gone, but I am not confused about the value of a trickster’s word.

“Young lady”—says Lincoln—“if you don’t dahv down there and stick your hand under that rock, ah will drown you mahself.”

I weigh my options, and find them exactly equal. I decide that I might rather take on an unknown beast than irritate Lincoln, who is sporting a serious look. I drop onto my belly underwater, and he stands on my back to keep me there. At the base of the rock is a hole, and I feel around the edge of it with my spear. The opening is about the size and shape of a fat, swaybacked dachshund. I stick the spear in and encounter nothing. I thrust the spear in the other side, and still nothing. I wave it back and forth. More nothing. I put my hand in. Nothing.

At this point, I am less surprised by the absence of the fish as by the vastness of the expanse beyond that opening. The space is rocky, but wide, and it reaches upwards towards the surface. It is an underwater cathedral I am exploring, blind. There is space under this rock—cavernous, unbelievable space. A person could fit in there easily, maybe even two. It would be nothing to load dachshunds into there, one after another. It’s this kind of permanently dark, hidden room that a Flathead Catfish seeks out to live in and lay eggs. I have an underwater sense, like smell, of a swampy, rank fishiness of the previous resident.

Lincoln is standing on me, and I am out of air. I pause for an extra moment to consider the possible outcomes of this situation and question, as always, the wisdom of my actions. I struggle under his feet, and he lets me up without testing me. Though unpredictable, Lincoln sometimes chooses to play big brother to me and has at times shown kind concern for my safety. I’m not going to drown today, which is good, because I’m about ready for that beer.

“You smell ‘im?” —Lincoln asks. I nod. I gasp for breath—“Do catfish just keep showing up here when you take one out?” A nod from Lincoln. “Why?” I demand excitedly. “Underwater, it’s still just lahk the forest. It’s cavity-limited,” says Lincoln. I think of all the birds and squirrels and raccoons and opossums and bats fighting for the few hollow logs that seem to be out there, and I wonder with new interest at the life of a fish.

We visit another grabbling rock, which has a cavity about like a rugby ball. Blue Rock also lacks an occupant, as does Great Rock. It’s late in the season to catch a catfish, but this fails to trouble me. I call it a grand success that I have not had to kill a fish with my bare hands, or haul forty pounds of dead-weight back up the hill on a bicycle. Let these non-native beasts sit and eat up all the other little fishes until someone else comes to grabble them.

XII. Arrival

"…And that's why my vacations always end in jail." Micah finishes his story while I am taking my last bites of breakfast.

"Yes, well, that's not something I generally do on vacation," I say.

"Really? Then how do you know when it's over?"

I have a few hours to come up with the answer. We spend the early morning driving through Joshua Tree National Park. I'll let someone else describe in detail all the alienness and wonder of this place. For me it is enough that the Joshua Trees, which are tall and branched and twisty—but not really trees at all—are the dominant life form in this one desert stretch, and so no other place on earth is like it. The rock formations by themselves are worth seeing, and climbing on, and falling off of (as Micah demonstrates), as are the birds (worth seeing). We see Ladder-Backed Woodpeckers, the western subspecies of Loggerhead Shrikes, and Black-Throated Sparrows.

On the highway to LA, we talk about our favorite parts of the trip. I say I liked eating boudin and crawfish etouffe in New Orleans, and hanging out with Frenchy in Austin. I liked the cranes, the flock of White Pelicans we saw in Louisiana, the Loggerhead Shrike. I liked seeing the waterless places, and the caverns. But who am I fooling? I liked it all. "What was your favorite thing?"

"I liked the things that went wrong," Micah says. "You know me. When stuff goes right, it's boring."

I know vacation is finally over when I have to drop Micah off with his grandparents in Los Angeles. This part is hard for me. Constantly moving around gives me a certain kind of freedom, but it also means that I am in a perpetual state of saying goodbye to people. Kidnapping might be an option here, but only if I want to end my vacations like Micah does. We disentangle his belongings from mine. "If you find anything more of my stuff," Micah says, "burn it and laugh."

I continue on up the California coastline for some hours. The full moon floats up over the cliffs, lighting the ocean to the left of me in choppy sparkles. I turn a corner, and the moon dips behind the mountains. Another corner, and the moon appears in an unexpected part of the sky.

The water jug in the passenger seat says nothing. It cannot read maps. It does not make screwy facial expressions with its restive nostrils. It does not tell me jokes about clowns and cannibals. I feel as though I got a puppy for Christmas and then had to give it back a week later.

I stop for the night, somewhere.

I think about sending Micah an email with subject line: "Wanted: Navigator" that reads, "I am lost without you." But although I do not know where I am any better than I might hit my location on a map of California with a dart while blindfolded, it is only in the most literal sense that I don't know where I am. I make up a map like the one Micah pulled out when we were stranded in Texas without gas, and get on with mentally preparing for whatever the future holds for me.


Maybe it's a dog.


Music: Long Gone Lonesome Blues, Hank Williams Sr.

XI. Arizona Haiku Death Match

(in which Micah and Erica compete head to head in 5-7-5, starting with Micah)

[Background note: Mesa, Arizona is the base for the online game Kingdom of Loathing. The game designers live there, as does Amplitude, the deejay who runs Radio KoL, a non-commercial talk and music radio station associated with the game.

All of our friends have started moving the Mesa to be with one another. Crossing into Arizona, I become "YerrikTheRealBad," and Micah becomes "Baron Mind."]


Ominous warning
Dust storms may exist ahead
Abandon all hope

Three signs in a row
Two is "No Stopping," and three:
"Dust storm's got a knife!"

Fourth is: "Burma Shave."
Such successful lobbyists!
It's federal law

Heading to Mesa
Through the concrete spider web
Here to see some friends

We love the Loathing
Geeky gamers gathering
Hear nerds hobnobbing!


The Baron is come!
Jester in the social scene
But King of the Road

Real names make no sense
But Xlyinia? Of course!
By that name, we're pals.

Merle and Skipperic
Friends, Gamers, Countrypeople
Lend us your Air-Mats

Yerrik's morningwear:
Shirt, Under Armour and boots
Gotta move the car!

Time for radio
Amplitude plays NIN
Listeners write in


Radio song plays:
"Deep in the heart of Texas!"
But we're in AZ!


Baron Mind tells tales
An adventurer is him!
Too clever, I say


Would you eat road kill?
Yerrik offends listeners
Mm mm, snake tartare!

X. In Which Erica Inexplicably Asks Me to Take Dictation, Then Doesn't Say Much of Anything to Write Down

[guest entry by Micah, once again]

"Fantastic!" said Erica, for no apparent reason. "Wow, Micah! Look at this! Stop doing the thing I told you to do and do this new thing!

"Fantastic," she said again, and she was right. The scenery was amazing. My dictation skills, exhibited here, were poor as promised; it's hard to write down all of the words being said when you're constantly adding narration. Dictation, incidentally, was the first thing, as referenced in the preceding paragraph, which Erica had told me to do.

"Foray into the desert!" 'This is the place where all the junkies go, to something something and come see our show!'" sings Erica, who is appearing very exclamatory due to my extreme use of exclamation points. This is because she hasn't said a single thing all day, only exclaimed. We drove into hill country of Texas at night, and aside from smelling when we were driving through oil fields, we had no real idea of what was around us. I expect Erica should be numb to the novelty in approximately a quintillion hours. Assuming a quintillion is an actual number and not some sort of a dance, anyway.

You may note a startling lack of input from Erica here, even for my admittedly sparse dictation style. This is because she's settled into singing snippets of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs and staring open-mouthed at the landscape. The latter is untranscribable, and you can look the former up on the Web yourself, if you care. It's possible that she's waiting for me to reach the end of my narration, in which case more fool her; I'm exceptionally verbose.

Erica's talking about assigning music to each of the days, which is all very interesting, but still does not tie into my assigned task of dictation. Therefore, I'll just write things that will annoy her later when she reads them. I find birds uninteresting. All trees look basically the same to me, and serve identical purposes. I enjoy being able to go to any major city and eat in the same restaurant.

Erica has chimed in: "I don't know what you're writing, and it's making me nervous." Let no one question her perspicacity!

Some food-related things I have learned from this trip: dried fruit has the amazing ability, even through a sealed plastic bag, to make everything near it sticky. Despite this small failing, it becomes tastier as the days progress. The same cannot be said – past a certain point – for collard greens. Carrots can be lost under great piles of stuff and emerge days later unscathed. I assume that they receive special training in patience and burial while growing up underground.

"Can you write this sign down? 'Prison Area: Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.'" A note worth interrupting my food litany for, to be sure. It's not much of a worry on this trip, anyway, as the back is full of stuff. Any hitchhikers we picked up would have to be very flat and not mind extreme discomfort. Of course, this also describes someone who's just squeezed through an escape tunnel from prison, so maybe it's a good warning after all.

"Las Cruces! Wow, we made some interesting time across this country. Not 'good,' necessarily – I think 'interesting' is the best way to look at it." It's true. Although we were making good time up until Sheffield last night, the time spent waiting for policemen to come bail us out was definitely more in the "interesting" category. I've never before had to decide if waking up a small-town sheriff with a K-9 vehicle in his front yard would be a good idea. We are happily unmauled and unshot, so it was at the least not an actively bad idea.

"This is the sort of country that makes you want to leap to your feet and applaud," Erica says, paraphrasing Douglas Adams. I agree, but mainly because the numerous small hills and mesas remind me of the fire ant mounds we saw all along the side of the road down the East Coast. I approve of ants on a Them scale on general principles.

"Holy hell. This is awesome. I'm not getting bored of this!" I told you so. Days of this, I have yet to face. In fairness, I've been telling the same joke for five days now, so it's not like I'm the only one suffering here. Besides which, she's absolutely right. The scenery is beautiful. It's sparse and earthen and fantastically different. Somewhere in the night, we lost the trees; everything here is short and ruggedly tenacious.

That said, we have just taken a detour off of the highway and come across someone's attempt at beautification: a dozen sickly pines strapped up in cages. "Trees? Yeah, right!" says Erica, and she is right. They don't belong here.

I wonder sometimes if my travelogues miss the point, as they tend to be only tangentially connected to where I've been, and far more concerned with the conversations and thoughts I've had along the way. There's a case to be made that those mono- and dialogues could not have occurred under any other circumstances, of course, but perhaps I should try existing outside of my own head once in a while. As I'm currently examining the idea that I overanalyze things instead of watching the scenery, now seems like a good time to start. I'll return later, possibly with more input from Erica.

[Author's note: apparently I won't return later, unless you count this addendum. Also, I still don't know what the heck Erica was planning to dictate to me. I think that means I won this dictation.]

-Micah

Music: This is the Place, Red Hot Chili Peppers (hey RHCPs, why not put your official videos on YouTube like everyone else does?)

IX. Micah's Limerick Knockdown

(by Micah, of course)

Take two cannibals eating a clown
Replace them with some other noun.
You'd think it'd choke
But instead you've a joke
That won't fail to bring the house down.

"Guardrail damage ahead," said the sign
But to my eyes, the guardrail looked fine.
It seemed a request,
So at its behest
I smashed that rail way out of line.

"Come eat our garden!" they said.
"Its plants will all keep you well fed!"
But the tree with the beans
Is not what it seems
And now I'm organically dead.

We drove to San Antonio
To go see the Alamo
It was rugged, no gilding
With a big gift shop building
Which I think I'll remember for sho'.

There once was a Texan gas station
Which we passed without utilization
Half a tank of gas later
There were no stations to cater
Which gave me humble pie mastication.

Music: Deep in the Heart of Texas (not the version I wanted, and also the video is ridiculously bad. Missing the lyrics "The sage in bloom/ is like perfume/ Reminds me of/ the one I love/ Deep in the heart of Texas.")