The real lesson should be, I think, that there should have been more information available. My in-laws were with us in Sydney when it hit, and with all the access to the internet and everything else, we couldn’t get any real idea of what was happening until the next day. The CFA site was worse than useless; it only mentioned a few fires in the area, and it was quite clear that they were all nothing to worry about.

The information needed to make an informed decision, just was not available.

It was a tough call, to stay in the park or head north on a risky road. I spent a few hours in Marysville some weeks ago, photographing. Marysville is in a bowl, with Steavenson River at the bottom. The intensity of the fire around the creek and around the park seemed less than in much of the town. Fences untouched for example. Most of the time the safest place to be in these events is the lowest point: the fire might go straight over the top. Depends on many factors but a maximum distance of say 50m from the fire(which is the best that Gallipoli Park can offer) isn’t a lot. Apart from cars on the oval there wasn’t much radiant heat protection. So in hindsight the park was the best option. Better than the road. But on the day it would have been anyone’s guess.

As a rule of thumb you need to be 4 x flame height away from the fire to survive radiant heat. 40m flames were common on the day. Also depends on the wind. While I was there I wondered what I would have done. Given the severe spotting of the fires I’d probably have stayed in the park.

Great article overall. But I have to take issue with this bit:

The police in Marysville were braver. They ignored the fatal rules and led residents to safety as the firestorm hit.

The road out of Marysville is flanked by trees on both sides. Five minutes after the convoy went through one of them came down across the road. Five minutes earlier and it could have hit the convoy, and certainly would have forced it to turn around - a second tree down (which happened) and everyone would have been trapped - the potential death toll doesn’t bear thinking about.

With hindsight, and on balance, evacuating the town was probably a mistake. I don’t want to be too critical of the police. It was a split second decision made without the benefit of enough information. The alternative - sheltering at Gallipoli park - was unpleasant but it was probably safer.

So, John Hartigan, those vast, professional, sophisticated, in-depth resources at your command- what have they contributed to this debate?

Michael: Last point first- managerialism, bureaucracy. This is the reeking miasma which percolates through everything, but no one is rude enough to mention. The fatal fart. People would rather die than open the window. I’ll be writing an article shortly about my near-death experience in a dingy Melbourne hotel room- a “forum” with three Vic. govt bureaucrats. The 20 people who attended were all rendered catatonic after two hours. Doctors despaired. Not a single question got a straight answer. I’d boasted beforehand that I was gunna kick arse in there: I never even saw an arse, being reduced to a snivelling, bewildered amorphous mass by professional obfuscators.

I had sympathy for that rugby player found naked and disoriented in a hotel corridor, defecating…

The 4 corners program last night was a classic case study of the bureaucratic mentality: an eye-glazing subject, one would think: the WA ambulance service. Check out the transcript: people died, ambulances weren’t sent. Simple solution often put but never implemented. The two suits were not politicians, they were transparently sincere. Nothing they said made sense- they never answered a single question intelligibly and could not understand what all the fuss was about. Sound familiar?

Until we re-invent the exercise of authority, we’ll stay in deep shit. Tomorrow’s to-do list.

Next: preparation/fire-proofing. yes, it is insane, the summer dance of the naked domestic firefighters. I’ve tried to deal with that above. But “fire-proofing” is exactly the sort of assumption which got us into strife on Black Sat: severe fire, wind-driven, will overwhelm the bets defences. Lots of evidence from the RC about bare paddocks overrun, well-defended houses burned in a few minutes. Many of the dead were “well-prepared”. Many weren’t. the heat and speed of the fires is just beyond imagination, which is why education has to change right now. Radiant heat can kill at over 100m. Nothing can stop an ember blizzard. CFA firefighters (and DSE) are not allowed to fight raging fire fronts. They can’t anyway, in Black Sat. conditions. they’d die, which is why they are not allowed to. If they can’t, neither can residents. If you choose to stay, fine, but have a bolt-hole ready.

That’s what the CFA says: stay indoors til the “firefront passes”. OK in average fire, deadly in severe fire. Often there is no “fire front’. It comes from all sides. Generates its own winds. And is may last for hours, depending on what’s around you.

Keith: Canberra 2003. There were two reports into that fires- an inquiry then the coroner’s report. Much controversy. The fire was mismanaged for days. But I agree, stringing up individuals just deflects from analysis. If the pine plantations hadn’t been there, things would have been much less dramatic. I remember those plantations decades ago, and thought then what a crazy idea it was. Pinus Radiata is deadly, esp. in plantations close to towns. in my submission to the RC I bang on about this obsessively. Likewise bluegums. I’ve got them on three sides. Nowe the Vic govt is about to allow plantations to be put anywhere “as of right”. Even right-wing Green-hating timber towns have protested, to no avail. In sum, the problem is integrated land management: it doesn’t exist.

Brendon: Quite a few people assume that I’m in favour of compulsory evacuation- but I’m not- just haven’t made myself clear…

Compulsory evac. can lead to all sorts of complications, starting with the David Packhams of this world - he told the R.Commission that there’d be ‘fun” if anyone tried to make him leave. No govt. authority has the time or inclination to drag people out of their homes in an emergency. It’s unfair on the officials, for a start. If I was a cop, I’d leave the stubborn ones to their own devices.

As in the USA, there is a strong macho element in rural Oz. The “Don’t Mess With Texas” syndrome. It’s a well-recognised fact in fire sociology that men often want to fight the fire while women prefer discretion as the better part of valour. No matter how experienced or well-prepared you are, there’s always a chance you’ll die. If you’re not there, you won’t. As Justice Teague said, “My fire plan is not to be there.”

Then there’s the matter of the scale of the evac.: Brumby’s claim about “one to two million” having to be evacuated in a Black Sat. emergency is histrionic nonsense. Half the population of Melbourne? Pull the other one. As an aside, Brumby’s calculated and repeated snubbing of the Commission is bizarre, but presumably reflects an agenda. The fire “leadership” were “outstanding” on Black Sat. he said, plus several pre-emptions of the RC over policy. Thus far it appears as if Brumby is undermining the Commission because he supports the very mind-set within the fire agencies that made Black Sat. as bad as it was: anti-evac., pro-stay and defend etc.

Anyway, the sleight of hand used by Brumby, Esplin et al is to conjure up “evacuation” as a mass rush for the exit, one twisting mountain road. Therefore: horror. Reality: “evacuation” has several levels. Most people in most circumstances will go only a short distance to a neighbourhood shelter, or stay on site in a private bunker. It depends on good warnings. On a firestorm day many people will have left the day before. Failing that they could go to public safe areas, either nearby or regional, early on the morning of the firestorm day. A fail-safe system should be developed, i.e. if there are no warnings or they are too late to get well away, then people have to rely on local refuges. There should be a hierarchy of refuges, as for eg in Topanga Canyon in L.A.

But all of the above is predicated (as you imply Brendon) on a realistic understanding of severe fire. At the moment, the CFA gives unrealistic advice about severe fire, and worse advice on the ability of ordinary citizens to fight it at home. The annual idiocy of people running around like headless chooks, wearing thongs and shorts, pointing a tiny plastic hose into a strong wind , has to be tackled head-on. No point just assuming people are too stupid or too urban. If they had DVDs of incineration in wildfire instead of soporific scenes of a contented, grazing family picking up leaves while ticking off their to-do list (batteries, drink lotsa water, keep calm…), then the message will start to sink in.

There’s a long list of specifics which will be necessary- “preparation” has to be re-defined. The true role of the CFA explained (its not the fire brigade). Who fights the fire at home? What happens to children and dependants? You may be a Spartan defender, but…. Maybe private fire refuges should be compulsory in fire-prone areas (currently $3000-5000, small beer cf. the $20,000 extra cost caused by changes in building regs. Changes that will probably make little difference in a severe fire).

Most of this is just common sense. Before we can apply it though we have to demolish the tottering tower of linked assumptions which now pass for fire policy. The believers are fervent. They are still in power. They show no sign of changing- on the contrary, Brumby looks petulant. This gives heart to Rees, Esplin, Tolhurst et al, as they cling to their discredited ideas amid the wreckage.

Thank you for the courtesy of a reply. Just to clarify my criticism of your article, we need - more than anything else - forward-looking ideas to preserve the forests of SE Australia and return them to their natural state of fierce fires once every 300-400 years. Of course I am concerned about the loss of human lives (and livestock and native birds and animals) in February. I think you are pointing in the right direction: the human deaths were largely due to many factors (some of these listed by Michael James above), but rather than focussing on allocating blame on individuals, let’s look at the many, many factors that contributed to the severity of the fires (that’s one thing) and the loss of human life (that’s quite another). I don’t want to see any individual hung out to dry unless they are unequivocably culpable. Here in Canberra there were mistakes made in the 2003 fires; one of these was the stripping back - in the name of cost-cutting - of professional forest staff and replacing a team of professionals by a smaller number of cheaper bureaucratic administrators with fancy titles but little technical understanding. Had these budget cuts not been made in the years leading up to 2003 there would have been a different culture, different skills, a knowledge of the similar fire in the 1950s and different priorities - and, I suspect, a vastly different outcome. But we tried to pin the blame on a few individuals who made wrong decisions in the days leading up to (and on) 18 January 2003. This was most unfair as they all appear to have done their level best.

As for the disfunctional bureaucracy, is anyone stupid enough to think that it could ever be anything else. It is exactly the outcome when managerialism is applied. In today’s world it is inescapable. The inquiry is part of the same problem. The populace want to blame anyone but themselves, and I’ll bet they are busy rebuilding the same fire-prone houses that got burnt down. I agree that the last thing we need is some quasi-fascist legislation enforcing evacuations according to politicized bureaucracies whose prime objective is ensuring they do not cop the blame. But CSIRO certainly has a simple set of guidelines on the minimum requirements for a ember-resistant house. These should be provided to every susceptible householder so that in the future it will be their personal responsibility if they decide to do absolutely nothing (as most who died did). When did we become so dumb as a nation?

You’re right to say that if the firestorm had killed nobody there’d be no debate. We owe it to the dead to force a debate, because fire policies have been developed for 25 years without public scrutiny. It will happen again. This is our one chance to generate debate. How hard this is is starkly underlined by Brumby’s grotesque praise for the “leadership” of the fire agencies on Black Saturday: an “outstanding” performance, he said. With that attitude, fire science and fire policy may quickly fall off the radar again.

This time Campbell focuses on the human deaths and the possible reason for the deaths and loses sight of the fires, and the reasons for the fires. Had the fires been just as fierce, but had not caused a single human death, we would have had no Royal Commission and no articles like this. This article is important and informative, but it’s about government, bureaucracy and disaster management; it has little to say about bushfires, climate change, ecology or even “fire science”. I’m disappointed.