Lake Berryessa Cams

Australia 2009 – Black Saturday Aftermath:

Modifying
the “Stay and Defend” or “Leave Early” policy to account
for the most severe wildfires includes ‘Leaving early is
still the safest option’.   Australians have
long been proud of their fierce self-reliance, which is
illustrated by the country’s wildfire policy. Prior to
2009, residents in remote rural areas were urged to
evacuate their property if fire threatened, but those who
felt they could adequately defend their property were
permitted, even encouraged, to do so.

This
official policy, called “Stay and Defend or Leave Early,”
or SDLE, came under intense scrutiny following the worst
wildfires in Australian history, which occurred in the
southern state of Victoria on February 7, 2009 — “Black
Saturday.” Those fires killed 173 people, 113 of them in
or near buildings, and called into question the wisdom of
the stay-and-defend model. A royal commission was called
to examine the circumstances surrounding those fires, and
in July 2010 the commission issued a five-volume report of
its findings.

The report
did not recommend the total elimination of SDLE, but
asserted that the policy should not apply in severe fire
conditions. “The stay or go policy failed to allow for the
variations in fire severity that can result from differing
topography, fuel loads, and weather conditions,” the
report stated. “Leaving early is still the safest option.
Staying to defend a well-prepared defendable home is also
a sound choice in less severe fires, but there needs to be
greater emphasis on important qualifications.”

Other report
recommendations include:

• Strengthening fire warnings and improving their
  timeliness and dissemination;
• Providing
  more practical and realistic options such as community
  refuges and wildfire shelter, with more assisted
  evacuation for vulnerable people;
• Providing
  improved public education about fire behavior and house
  defendability;
• Improving
  the deployment and use of roadblocks;
• Ensuring
  that fire agencies have thorough processes for
  identifying and approving particularly dangerous
  activities such as back-burns;