Evidence: too hot to handle?

Americans (chiefly those in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico) face hurricanes. New Zealanders and the Japanese worry about earthquakes. And in much of Australia, we worry about bushfires. Without wishing to make light of the tragic toll they can inflict, natural disasters are part of the world we inhabit. But as inevitable as they are, we still try everything we can to stop them — or at least to minimise the impacts they have on us.

As Philip Gibbons notes, while many can offer up their own ‘solutions’ to mitigate risks, few bother to check the evidence to see if they work. In the case of bushfires, Gibbons concludes that many of the options commonly touted don’t have much merit. For instance, the Black Saturday bushfires of three years ago would not have been substantially lessened by more ‘prescribed burning’ (ostensibly to eliminate potential fuel for fires, but often too far away from where they would make a real difference). By contrast, greater clearing of vegetation surrounding homes would have offered significant protection. But this strategy puts a large onus on individual homeowners to safeguard themselves — less appealing than expecting the government to do the job for you. Furthermore, people move in to the bush often because they want to be surrounded by nature. That aspiration is kind of spoiled when you clear out all the nature.

And that’s at the core of the problem: for all the beauty of the environment, there is plenty of danger too. Those who live in the bush can’t take the good without the bad.

Slaying the scapegoat

Former Victorian Police commissioner Christine Nixon is doing the media rounds at the moment as she tries to flog her memoirs. Unsurprisingly, just as she has returned to the spotlight, so too has much of the criticism levelled at her in the wake of the devastating ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires in 2009. Nixon was widely slammed for her decision to leave the bushfire command centre as the disaster was unfolding, to have dinner with her partner at a local pub. The ‘mushroom risotto’ fiasco has blotted her record — and totally unfairly, in my view.

As Lyn Bender writes, Nixon left the command centre for 75 minutes. Afterwards she returned, and continued through until well after midnight. She got four hours sleep before returning once again. This is not evidence of a careless attitude. More to the point, Nixon’s role was always minimal — her subordinates had far greater direct knowledge of events, and were accordingly better placed to respond. Even if Nixon had skipped (and sleep later on) entirely, the bushfire would still have been just as devastating — scores of people, sadly, would still have perished in the flames. It seems the outcry is driven by a desire to apportion blame for the tragedy that unfolded that weekend. None, to my knowledge, rests with Nixon.

Would you like your scapegoat fried or grilled?

The Age’s Karen Kissane offers a sensible opinion piece today, putting into perspective Christine Nixon’s decision to go out for dinner on ‘Black Saturday’. Specifically, Kissane muses on why Nixon has copped so much flack when others — including CFA chief Russell Rees and Emergency Services Minister Bob Cameron — appear to have been let off the hook.

The public flogging former Victoria Police Commissioner Christine Nixon has received since Easter is truly remarkable. She admitted to the Royal Commission investigating last year’s devastating bushfires that she went home at 6pm on ‘Black Saturday’. This has led to howls of protest and condemnation, with plenty — including state Opposition leader Ted Bailleu — calling on her to resign from her current role as head of the Victorian Bushfire Reconstruction and Recovery Authority. Her defence that “I had to eat” has not helped matters.

It seems probable that things could have been handled better. But the core problems that emerged from that tragedy were not the result of judgments made on the day. They reflected flaws in long-standing policies that weren’t likely to be changed on a whim. Put bluntly, the outcomes would have been no different had Nixon stuck around. First, the most obvious point: she was not actively involved in fighting the fires. Second, she had not left the fire control centre completely without leadership. She left her subordinates to coordinate matters, and remained in contact by phone. Yes, her decision to go out for dinner was not brilliant public relations — but there is zero evidence that it crippled efforts to control the situation.

The sort of populist scapegoating that can be observed in the media today is not going to provide any lessons for the future. It is an unwarranted distraction from the main issue: why did 173 people die? The reality remains that hot, dry conditions and a combustible environment are a recipe for deadly fires. And so long as people choose to live in bushfire-prone areas, the unpalatable truth is that lives will always be at risk, no matter what the emergency services do.