Academics predicted Black Saturday bushfires
Academics predicted Black Saturday bushfires
10 February 2010
published by www.brisbanetimes.com.au
Australia — A REPORT that predicted Black Saturday with eerie accuracy and warned that emergency information and advice could fail to get through was virtually ignored by the Victorian government, its authors say.
But the government said it used the report to refine communications strategy.
Researchers from La Trobe University’s school of public health will today publish details of a report they wrote for the Department of Human Services in 2005-06. They were commissioned to imagine a major bushfire and use community focus groups to assess how well official emergency information would help people avoid danger. They dreamed up Kinglake township under threat.
The authors say most of their advice was echoed in ”remarkably similar” recommendations in the 2009 Bushfires Royal Commission’s interim report.
”It is concerning that our information about a theoretical situation that was almost identical to that which actually occurred on Black Saturday has been available for four years, but most of our practical recommendations have not been used,” they wrote.
They had called for simpler, clear, up-to-date and precise information about what to do before and during an emergency and better detail on the location of fires.
Author Priscilla Robinson said: ”They need a broad range of very specific messages about what to do. It needs to be extra simple and extra clear.”
The academics published their work in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health.
Nillumbik Council volunteered to test the bushfire scenario, which the researchers tailored for the area.
They came up with a big bushfire that started to get out of control in strong northerly winds on the afternoon of February 12 in Kinglake.
”The townships of Kinglake and St Andrews are under immediate threat,” the researchers wrote. ”A heavy pall of smoke is blowing over the northern suburbs of Melbourne.”
Focus groups were asked to comment on official warning messages, based on those used in previous fires.
The 2006 report found: ”There was particular concern that [a typical official warning message] did not tell people whether to stay or leave, and whether or not to implement your fire plan at that point.
”People wanted to be able to situate events in relation to neighbouring towns as well as the current seat of the fire, and stressed the need for relevant, local information with details such as the cordoning off of roads, and where to go if evacuating.”
The researchers concluded some groups had little knowledge of what to do in an emergency, and ”few resources for finding out”.
”Participants said that the messages were not clear about actions to take even when the fire threat was considered high,” the report found.
They proposed steps to make communication simpler and more effective, including a year-round fire education program, a fail-proof phone help line, and a variety of media sources to make sure precise information got through in a crisis.
Dr Robinson said she had not published the study to lay blame over Black Saturday. ”I believe the department is very honest in trying to improve their communication strategies, they need to be credited for what they were attempting to do.”
But she said: ”The community said what it wants and the community deserves to be listened to.”
A government spokeswoman said the research had not been ignored. ”This research was commissioned by DHS in 2005 and was among a range of tools used to plan and refine public health messages in emergencies.”
