How to get through this summer’s bushfires: Lessons from California

As we approach the Australian summer, we are also getting closer to another potentially devastating bushfire season. The upcoming fire season will be unlike any before as it takes place during a global pandemic. Australia has a lot to learn from the problems facing California, as they battle serious bushfires while still heavily accosted by the Coronavirus. Hundreds of fires are raging across California. The fires have destroyed more than a thousand homes and non-residential buildings and at least seven people have lost their lives. California, with a similarly flammable landscape to Australia, helps us foresee what is to come. It demonstrates how the threat of fires is intensified by the pandemic and vice versa. As the Australian summer approaches, in a country still recovering the losses from last summer’s fires, there is a lot to learn from the situation currently facing California.

In California, incarcerated labourers with an hourly rate of $2 USD and promises of reduced sentences, are an important firefighting resource. However, this year many convicts are unavailable following various severe Coronavirus outbreaks in prisons. Other, non-incarcerated firefighters are exposed to the added risk of contracting the virus as they work and often live in close proximity of each other. This in turn could lead them to unintentionally bringing the virus back home to close family and friends. Moreover, the exposure to the smoke from bushfires put firefighter at risk of worsening the COVID-symptoms and its consequences. These are concerns to be taken seriously in relation to the Australian firefighting response. During last summer’s fires, the Australia government was heavily critiqued for their lack of financial compensation for the large volume of volunteer firefighters making up Australia’s bushfire response. In the coming weeks, the Australian Fire and Emergency Services need to reflect on its bushfire response to minimising the adverse impact of the virus.

Also, the virus brings with it some added difficulties surrounding evacuation. Over a hundred thousand people have had to evacuate around California, leaving their homes to escape the deadly fires. It is crucial that Australia review their evacuation procedures. How will people be evacuated and where will they be given emergency shelter to prevent the virus to spread? This, I argue, requires particular attention in view of the recent hotel quarantine failure in Victoria, which caused the state’s deadly ‘second wave’ of infections. The Australian government should carefully consider the most appropriate evacuation procedures and how to support people that lose their homes temporarily or more long-term.

Finally, prisoners are vulnerable in a pandemic, due to the large number of people forced together in small spaces. Due to their restricted movements, they are also vulnerable to disasters such as bushfires. In California, incarcerated people were suffering as the fires approached. Although the areas around the prison had been evacuated, the prisoners were left in-place. They lack the authority to evacuate and were left breading the toxic smoke. For a prison system challenged by a pandemic that feeds off the proximity of bodies in confined spaces, bushfires represent an added threat. The Australian Corrections still have some time to prepare and should consider when and how a necessary evacuation should take place in order to avoid unnecessary harm to people in their care.

Although parts of Australia are currently in the midst of their bushfire season, the most flammable landscapes still have theirs to come. Judging from the early start to last year’s fire season, larger bushfires could be expected within the month and this year will be unlike any before. Among the added concerns are the exposure to toxic smoke from the fires, the risk of firefighters getting infected by the virus, mass evacuation and prisons. Thus far, we have been asked to stay home in order to remain safe from the pandemic. Leaving home is to expose ourselves and those we love to the virus. Severe fires will threaten some people’s access to that safe haven. Consequently, the Australian government needs to think through the implications of such loss and how to best get through the summer.

The State of Emergency/Disaster as the new emergency: Climate change and the new role of the democratic state

Yesterday, just over three weeks into Melbourne’s second lockdown, Daniel Andrews, the Premier of Victoria announced stage four restrictions for metropolitan Melbourne and a State of Disaster in Victoria. The stage three restrictions already required people to stay home except for work, health reasons, essential shopping and exercise. With the new restrictions in place, active as of 6pm last night, a curfew is imposed between 8pm and 5am when the only reasons to leave your home are for work and medical care. Among other restrictions, exercise must now take place within 5km of your home, at a maximum of one hour per day and only one person per household can go shopping each day. Since midnight Wednesday the 22^nd of July, face masks are mandatory and those caught without one risk a fine of $200. Victorians caught failing to comply with the social distancing restrictions, including the new rules, will be fined $1600.

These restrictions have a severe and limiting impact on Victorian residents’ lives. We are experiences heavily restricted movements (locally and internationally), the closing of businesses, the suspension of sporting and cultural events and institutions, surveillance of people and forced hotel quarantine for returning Australians at a cost of at least 3,000 to be paid by the traveller. Most of us accept the restrictions since we understand the severity of the novel Coronavirus, because others seem to accept them, but also because we submit to the settler colonial state of Australia. That is, most of us tend to follow the laws and if the laws make us stay home, we do.

Nonetheless, we are many who feel conflicted about whether the measures are appropriate or whether they are causing more harm than good. The stay-at-home measures affect people disproportionately depending on whether you are isolated in a studio apartment without a balcony or a 500 square meter mansion with a rose garden. Moreover, we are seeing that these measures are applied differently on different populations and tend to disproportionately disadvantaged lower socioeconomic groups. This is demonstrated by the 3,000 residents in nine public housing towers in North Melbourne and Flemington, two relatively central neighbourhoods in Melbourne, who on the 4^th of July were put under ‘hard lockdown’ for up to 14 days (the full time applied to one of the towers) after high numbers of infections were detected in the buildings. The high density in the public housing towers, the shared facilities such as laundry rooms and lifts, airflow, plumbing and the high numbers of infections were used to justify the harsh measures. Residents in the public housing towers under ‘hard lockdown’ or ‘detention directions’ were not permitted to leave their homes. These strict measures were not applied to anyone else in Victoria and in private apartment towers, not far from the public housing ones, people were living according to the general restrictions in Melbourne.

The hard lockdown represents excessive and punitive measures directed towards already over-policed communities, while outbreaks in more affluent areas are met with a dissimilar response. This is a punishment of the socially and economically disadvantaged public housing residents already neglected by the system.

So, what is the regulation that allows the government to put in place such restrictions? These laws are justified by a state of emergency initially declared in Victoria on the 16^th of March 2020 and which is currently extended until the 16^th of August 2020. State of emergency or state of exception is a concept coined by Carl Schmitt writing in Germany during the Nazi rule. The concept refers to the sovereign’s right to act outside the normal legal constrains when circumstances are out of the ordinary. Both legally and discursively the state of emergency justifies extreme actions and allows the sovereign additional powers to act. The state of emergency or the state of exception allow the temporary suspension of many human rights treaties. Consequently, it has been noted that restrictive measures to COVID-19 around the world come to infringe on human rights such as the freedom of association, the freedom of movement and the right to liberty. These are methods which could be misused for political purposes that would severely detract from democratic rule.

However, the state of exception is not so exceptional anymore, instead it is becoming the new normal. The fear is that restrictions will remain following the end of the COVID emergency, similar to the way the 9/11 terrorist attacks led to the extended powers of the US Presidents to perform torture and surveillance. Giorgio Agamben, one of modern day’s most influential writers on the state of exception, has severely criticised the Italian government’s response to the virus, claiming that the restrictive and repressive measures lack sufficient justified. This, he writes, reinforces the tendency to normalise the state of exception, ‘as a normal governing paradigm’, justifying a militarisation of society. Worryingly, yesterday the Victorian Premier declared at the press conference that he is prepared to make amendments to the 6-month restriction to the state of emergency, showing clear signs of a normalisation of these laws.

The state of emergency is not only applied in relation to health crises but can be called on by governments to respond to dangerous and extraordinary circumstances such as threats to national security and natural disasters. Yesterday, the Victorian Government also declared a state of disaster which according to the Premier Daniel Andrews ‘will give our police additional powers to make sure people are complying with public health directions’.

A state of disaster was declared earlier in the year in large parts of Victoria as a response to the bushfires, allowing the government to, among other things, force the evacuation of people. I have previously written on the important connections between climate change and increasingly severe bushfire seasons. It is generally agreed that climate change such as dryer and hotter temperatures leads to increasingly severe bushfires (for example). Similarly, experts are highlighting the connections between the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Three out of four infectious diseases found in people originate from either wild animals or livestock and therefore our health is deeply entangled with the health of the ecosystem. Moreover, climate change is making large parts of the human population more vulnerable to disease and other health threats. For example, the exposure to the smoke from last summer’s fires is intensifying our vulnerability to respiratory illnesses.

With the increasingly severe consequences of climate change and our degrading ecosystem, demonstrated in bushfires and the pandemic, the motives for the state of emergency/disaster measures will increase with the risk of detracting from democracy in ways already demonstrated, such as through the encroachment on human rights agreements. Moreover, as demonstrated in Melbourne by the treatment of public housing tenants, there is no guarantee that measures will apply equally to all. Or rather, it is unlikely that they will, since everyone enters a state of exception with access to dissimilar resources and capitals. It might make sense to have state of disaster measures in place for the crisis, but when the crisis becomes the new normal, it is worth considering the new role of the democratic state. We have to be careful, moving forward, that responses to emergencies are balanced against human rights and democratic values.

Remember the bushfires? The Royal Commission sees bushfires and climate back on the agenda

As COVID-19 has disrupted our everyday lives, last summer’s fires have all but escaped our immediate consciousness. Along with the clearing of the smoke, the fact that just last summer (November 2019 – February 2020) large parts of Australia were under duress from fires has gradually lifted from our minds. The bushfires largely disappeared from the political and news agendas as a result of tackling the current health crisis. From being everywhere on national (and international) news, it became rare to see the bushfires mentioned. The fires were the perfect, terrible example of what a world changed by human impact on the climate looks like. Therefore, the fact that the fires so quickly became overshadowed by the virus was a loss for everyone seeking government action to reduce further impact on the climate. Although we can speculate whether the long-term effects of COVID-19 will be better or worse for the environment, for environmental activism fuelled by the fires, the timing was tragic.

The immediate and undeniable threat of hot, scorching fires make them the perfect symbol of climate change. Similar to COVID-19, fires have clearly conceivable consequences if no actions are taken. Bushfires are immediate, terrifying and pose direct threats to humans, wildlife and properties. Therefore, bushfires require government action, both during fire events such as by fighting the fires and coordinating evacuation but also through the repeated inquiries that tend to follow serious fire event. These inquiries are often aimed at improving preparedness and responses to bushfires, such as the 2009 Royal Commission into the Black Saturday fires. Climate change on the other hand, is the opposite. We are now experiencing the effects of large amounts of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide being released into the Earth’s atmosphere over the last two centuries. Although the consequences of global warming are delayed, the effects of the changing climate are increasingly experienced around the world. Examples of the effects are rising sea levels, more hot days, extreme weather events as well as acidifying and warming oceans (See WWF for more details on the effects of global warming in Australia). As the summers are becoming warmer and dryer, fire regimes are changing, fire seasons are becoming longer and extreme fire events more frequent.

Although the last couple of months have made the fires fade from the public consciousness, the last two weeks saw the start of the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements (Block one of hearings were carried out between the 25th of May and the 4th of June), into last summer’s fires. This has served to put bushfires back on the agenda. Royal Commissions are ad-hoc official public inquiries into a particular issue. However, their efficiency has been questioned. Many of the recommendations that stem from these inquiries are slow to be taken up or are never implemented at all. Moreover, the Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission in 2009 cost a minimum of A$40 million over a period of 18 months. Naturally, this money could have been spent differently to manage fires and prevent harm.

So, the question to be asked is: is there any value to this inquiry? TheRoyal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, although potentially toothless, has put bushfires back on the agenda. However, will this inquiry contribute with anything new and valuable? A report by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC in 2017 into 51 major bushfire inquires between 1939 and 2013 in Australia found that several themes tend to reoccur. The 1728 recommendations of these inquiries were grouped into six categories: shared responsibility, preparedness, response, recovery, fire agency organisation, and, research and technology. However, climate change was not one of these.

On the contrary, the terms of reference of the current public inquiry acknowledge the role of the changing global climate and what this means for Australia’s capacity to prevent and response to bushfires. The first days of the inquiry’s public hearings have also centred around the effects the changing climate is having on the frequency and severity of bushfires. Among others, Karl Braganza, the head of climate monitoring at the Bureau of Meteorology, described how increasing temperatures, especially more frequent heatwaves and decreased rainfall is contributing to the fire conditions witnessed last summer. It was also made clear that severe fire seasons, similar to last summer’s, will be repeated in the decades to come.

The Royal Commission’s emphasis on climate change is a step in the right direction and hopefully these tendencies will be palpable in the Commission’s recommendations and beyond. Given that the Australian government largely has denied the impacts of climate change and even more so avoided taking action against it, I hope the Royal Commission can contribute to a formal acknowledgement of climate change, the effects of which are discernible in the occurrence of longer fire seasons and more extreme fire events. In addition, with the initiation of the inquiry, bushfires are back on the agenda and this is a tendency that environmental activists, academics and practitioners can and should take advantage of to further our cause.