Insight: Feb 16

Tonight on SBS Insight looks at the questions home-owners face with impending bushfires.

Is it best to stay or go? How do you decide? How can we prepare and prevent? What are the financial damages, and the cost of new building regulations? Should we be allowed to build in high-risk areas?

Tim and Tammy Holmes sheltered under a jetty with their five grandchildren while a firestorm swept across their property in Tasmania, destroying their home and putting their lives in jeopardy. They thought they were prepared. They weren’t.

Their story is not uncommon.

This summer alone, four people have been killed in fire events, and almost 400 homes lost in Victoria, Western Australia, and South Australia.

Despite countless major bushfires over the past decade, there are many things we still don’t know.

Host Jenny Brockie delves into one of the most terrifying feats of nature; one that has scarred the Australian landscape for centuries.

Guests include:

Tim and Tammy Holmes
Tim and Tammy survived the 2013 Tassie firestorm by sheltering under their jetty, with their five grandkids. They have since returned to their Dunalley property, and despite having no hesitation in rebuilding, they have made a number of changes to their new home in order to make it more fireproof.

“It was almost like a tornado of just flame. Everything was on fire. The boat shed was burning, the trees were burning, trees were falling, birds were dropping out of the sky and splashing around about us.”

Victor Steffensen
Victor is an indigenous fire practitioner, who has been involved in traditional fire management for over twenty years. He visits communities from Tasmania to WA, and as far north as Cape York, to pass on what he in turn learned from the elders.

“We live in a country that needs fire and what happens is that we’ve stopped evolving with fire. When we put a fire in, we can tell you what the behaviour of the fire and what the fire will do before we light the fire.”

John Schauble
John is an active fire-fighter with the Country Fire Authority, with thirty years’ experience in Victorian bushfires. He is also the strategic advisor to Emergency Management Commissioner Craig Lapsley, who oversees bushfire management in Victoria.

“Very few people have a written [bushfire] plan or have thought much about it at all … It would be less than 10 per cent in most communities, even in high risk areas. People are overly optimistic about their capacity to stay and defend their homes.”

Justin Leonard
Justin is a fire scientist with the CSIRO, who has worked with Australian bushfires for 23 years. Having attended the aftermath of dozens of bushfires around the country, he says a lack of fire knowledge means people are too often caught out by fires.

“Most people who have died in house fires and bush fires have died in bathrooms and in areas where there’s one exit to the rest of the house, not an exit to the outside. So they’re sort of cordoning themselves into an entrapment scenario.”

Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS.