Reporter: Michael Usher
Producer: Nick Greenaway
The time bomb is ticking. Another bushfire season is almost upon us and yet again our forests are tinderboxes full of fuel - just waiting for a spark.
You'd think we'd learn. Black Friday, Ash Wednesday and then last February, the firestorm of Black Saturday in Victoria. It's a roll call of devastation stretching back decades.
But despite umpteen inquiries and recommendations, governments have ignored the compelling evidence that winter burn-offs will prevent these catastrophes.
Only Western Australia has heeded the warnings. And they reckon they can teach the rest of us how to tackle Australia's oldest enemy. By fighting fire with fire.
Full transcript:
STORY -
MICHAEL USHER: It looks like arson, but this is protection. On the ground and from the air, in Western Australia they're starting fires now, so they don't have to fight them later. Here, they've learnt a valuable lesson, long forgotten in the eastern States, fire can either be a helpful servant or terrifying master.
RICK SNEEUWJAGT: My attitude is fire is part of our environment and we can actually learn to use it in a way that not only provides a high level of protection but allows our environment to thrive.
MICHAEL USHER: Use fire to fight fire.
RICK SNEEUWJAGT: Use fire to fight fire, absolutely.
MICHAEL USHER: Rick Sneeuwjagt runs WA's hazard reduction program. Since 1961, when wildfires devastated the town of Dwellingup, the State Government has embraced a policy of pre-emptive burn-off. Today they burn about 8% of their bush every year - more than four times as much as any other State.
RICK SNEEUWJAGT: I can't see us ever wanting to go back to an era where we allowed the fuel to dictate the lives of our people. We must keep on top of the fuel and prescribed burning is the best way to do that.
MICHAEL USHER: A bushfire needs three things - heat, oxygen and fuel. Now, the one ingredient we can control is fuel and that's exactly what they do here in Western Australia. Each year they burn about 200,000 hectares of their bushland. They don't wipe it out, but what they do is get rid of all the rubbish on the ground, the leaves, the sticks, the bark - the very stuff this bushfire feeds off and that's what you're watching them do right now. And they're convinced here in WA that because they do this they avoid the big fire tragedies experienced in the eastern States. For 60 years the debate over hazard reduction has raged as hotly as the fires themselves.
MICHAEL USHER: David, walking through here, what do you think now?
DAVID PACKHAM: Well, this fire that was here was nothing like a prescribed burn. It was a holocaust. And a holocaust results when you have huge fuels on a very hot, windy, dry day.
MICHAEL USHER: Scientists like David Packham watch in anger and frustration as time after time Australia suffers massive devastation.
DAVID PACKHAM: We've been warning about this for decades - years and years - that this was going to happen. And it will happen again.
MICHAEL USHER: In 1939, it was Black Friday. Ash Wednesday in 1983. Canberra in 2003. And the most recent - most deadly - Black Saturday in February this year. Extreme temperatures and enormous fuel loads resulted in the worst fires in Australia's history. Victoria lost over 2,000 houses and 173 lives.
RICK SNEEUWJAGT: The intensity of a very severe fire is being compared with atom bombs let off every 10 minutes or so. It's a massive amount of energy that gets accumulated in our forests and under the right conditions that energy just explodes.
MICHAEL USHER: Strathewen, an hour's drive from Melbourne, was hit by such an explosion. Dini Shepherd's life was torn apart by the firestorm.
DINI SHEPHERD: To lose your husband, your son and your brother, it's...you just... if you think about it then I will go to pieces. I have to cling to the...to the good memories that I've got of them and...I don't know... War survivors they go through it and they come out of it. I've got to do it - have to.
MICHAEL USHER: Dini, you're a bloody strong woman.
DINI SHEPHERD: We have our moments... we have our moments when we're not.
MICHAEL USHER: 30 years ago, Dini and her husband, Joe, came to Strathewen and built a mud brick home where they raised their sons, Danny and Luke. Like many families around here, it was their love of the bush that would place them at peril.
DINI SHEPHERD: We made that house. We built every brick, you know? As we excavated for the site, the mud that was excavated we made the bricks with it. We came up here every weekend, made those bricks, built that house.
MICHAEL USHER: Joe was a volunteer firefighter with the CFA, and on that Black Saturday Dini's brother Hank called to ask for help with spot fires starting on his property. Joe didn't hesitate. His oldest son Danny went with him.
DINI SHEPHERD: That's what you do - you go and give them a help. And we knew that with that sort of fire every person, manning a hose or a knapsack or whatever, was going to be needed. You had no idea of the chaos that was going to happen, absolutely none, 'cause it just hit Strathewen and was an absolute firestorm.
MICHAEL USHER: The Shepherds got caught by a wind change. They were less than a kilometre from home when Joe's van was trapped by a fallen tree.
DINI SHEPHERD: I just know that he was trying desperately to get back to me. I know what's...that's what my husband would have done.
MICHAEL USHER: And to have your son...
DINI SHEPHERD: Yeah, yeah. That was just... Yeah. He'd only been married in November.
DINI SHEPHERD: Danny died in the back of the van. Joe survived for two weeks in hospital but never regained consciousness - the only Victorian firefighter to die in the Black Saturday fires. His great mate, fire chief David McGahy, delivered the eulogy.
DAVID McGAHY DELIVERING EULOGY: Joe gave his life for his family, his friends and his community.
DAVID McGAHY: It's probably as hard a thing that I've had to do is to do part of the eulogy at his funeral.
MICHAEL USHER: Men like David McGahy and fellow fire chief Michael Chapman are the ones who face the consequences of fuel build-up in our bush. I first met them just days after Black Saturday.
DAVID McGAHY: The people up here have suffered to such a degree and there's been such unbelievable acts of bravery and this fella here he committed some of the most brave acts I've ever encountered.
MICHAEL CHAPMAN: I don't think so.
DAVID McGAHY: Yeah, yeah, I'm not asking your opinion. He did, OK? And people stayed on the lines when they didn't know whether their family were alive or dead.
MICHAEL CHAPMAN: And their houses burnt down.
MICHAEL USHER: Nine months after the fires, Strathewen is still dead space, a cleared valley full of harsh lessons.
DAVID McGAHY: I mean, that night showed how ineffective the fire brigade is. We can't do anything about a fire like that, absolutely nothing.
MICHAEL USHER: How long had it been since the last hazard reduction burn around here?
DAVID McGAHY: Oh, there hasn't been one. '39 it came through here, I believe.
MICHAEL USHER: How hard was it to get hazard reduction burns before Black Saturday?
DAVID McGAHY: Oh, impossible. You couldn't. You couldn't. Look, in fairness to the authorities they tried. It's very difficult to get the timeframe to do them and at that stage it was a political hot potato, as I say, especially on this south side of the range where you impacted upon Melbourne.
MICHAEL USHER: And they don't want the smoke in Melbourne.
DAVID McGAHY: They don't want the smoke on their washing.
MICHAEL USHER: Did this need to be as bad as it was?
DAVID PACKHAM: Oh, it would definitely not be as bad as it was. When you reduce your fuel loads you don't stop the fires, but a fuel reduction program will reduce the intensity of the fires probably 100 times.
MICHAEL USHER: Could there still be another Black Saturday, David?
DAVID PACKHAM: Oh yes. Oh yes.
MICHAEL USHER: Already fuel loads have been blamed for the first major fire emergency of the season, in Queensland a fortnight ago. And further south Australia's biggest city, Sydney, doesn't have to look very far to find potential disaster on its doorstep, in the famous Blue Mountains.
DAVID PACKHAM: What I see is an absolutely frightening, terrible mass of bushfire fuel and I actually feel quite nervous and upset about it because it just looks so dangerous.
MICHAEL USHER: You're that worried about it?
DAVID PACKHAM: Oh, yes, I think this is absolutely terrible. I really haven't seen anything as bad as this anywhere else in the world. Well, this is explosive. This is rocket fuel. This is just terrible stuff.
MICHAEL USHER: But it's everywhere! There's been no hazard reduction burning in this area of the Blue Mountains for 50 years. And the conditions here - just a stone's throw from major towns - are almost identical to the fuel loads in Victoria prior to Black Saturday. Does this remind you of those areas of Victoria that burned on Black Saturday?
DAVID PACKHAM: Very similar to the areas in and around Kinglake and the shire of Nillumbik, which encompassed most of the deaths in Victoria.
MICHAEL USHER: There are plenty, though, who say fuel reduction isn't the answer. PHIL INGAMELLS: I think it's a bit of a myth that hazard reduction burning will do anything on days like Black Saturday where the weather conditions were just so, so extreme.
MICHAEL USHER: Phil Ingamells, head of the Victorian National Parks Association, warns that a knee-jerk reaction ramping up fuel reduction programs could do more harm than good.
MICHAEL USHER: Are you saying we could lose species because of this? PHIL INGAMELLS: I think if we increase the frequency of burning in many areas we will definitely lose species.
MICHAEL USHER: But if you increase burning to levels being advocated, does it work? PHIL INGAMELLS: It will work in some cases, but it certainly won't stop the wildfire like we had on Black Saturday. And that is very clear and I think that we give people a false sense of security in a sense. But reducing fuel obviously reduces a fire. I mean, if you concreted the bush that would solve it too but you wouldn't have the bush.
MICHAEL USHER: And surprisingly it's a sentiment shared by Dini Shepherd, a woman who lost so much at the hands of nature. But all these these logs, the timber, the leaves, the twigs, that's all fuel for those bushfires, isn't it?
DINI SHEPHERD: Yeah, It's also habitat. It's habitat for little tiny skinks and habitat for spiders and the insects that the birds will eat. It's all a part of what the Australian bush is.
MICHAEL USHER: And that's where Dini has taken her greatest comfort - in the bush. She's guardian angel to an orphaned wombat called Kim. But she's been just the right thing for you, huh?
DINI SHEPHERD: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. And the fact that she can help somebody or something else that's been bushfire-affected is very special.
MICHAEL USHER: Therapy in a wombat.
DINI SHEPHERD: Yes, yes, definitely. Definitely therapy in a wombat.
MICHAEL USHER: As the victims of Black Saturday rebuild their lives, there's another fire season upon us. And with the fuel load situation unresolved the predictions are for wildfires across south-eastern Australia. This means volunteers, like David McGahy, will once again confront an old enemy.
DAVID McGAHY: We'll all have our moment of truth when we first get our first sniff of smoke.
MICHAEL USHER: How do you think you'll be then?
DAVID McGAHY: I'll find out then. I think I'll be alright but, I mean, yeah, you don't know.
MICHAEL USHER: This summer and this bushfire season, men like Joe are going to put on their uniform again and race out the door.
DINI SHEPHERD: Yep, yep.
MICHAEL USHER: How will you be feeling at that time?
DINI SHEPHERD: Scared stiff. Scared stiff.
