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.

Advancing to normalcy

Many countries around the world are starting to lift the COVID-19 emergency measures and to slowly return back to normalcy. The reason, more than anything, seems to be to slow the effects of the anticipated recession as state funds are dwindling and money printing presses are running warm. The dos and don’ts of managing this health crisis, I leave to others to discuss. Instead, I want to think through travelling and transport choices in the COVID and post-COVID world. Clearly, many communities are put under enormous economic pressure, especially those that are dependent on tourism, and unemployment numbers are climbing. However, I argue that we should not be so quick to rush back to previous travelling behaviours and in this blog post I want to think through ways to advance to a new normalcy, rather than moving back to what was before.

Firstly, how will the pandemic affect the way we move in the city? The question of public transport is caught up in the issue of contamination as the system is currently built around a high density of bodies in shared spaces. During the last two months, a few times I have had to utilise public transport for essential travel, and the change in travelling behaviour is striking. The empty trams have an eerie feel to them with only a handful of passengers in the otherwise so packed spaces. Naturally, this is due to less people moving around in the city but during the last two months more people have also been selecting cycling over public transport. As we transition out of in-house lockdowns and people once again have a reason to move around the city, will people continue to avoid public transport in favour of cycling, or will there be an increase in the use of cars? Resorting to the private spaces of the individual vehicle is not an option for everyone and it is certainly not a sustainable one. Instead I suggest that other options should be explored. In Melbourne, following the examples of major cities around Europe, there is a proposal for footpaths and bike lanes to be expanded in order to provide alternatives to public transport and to allow for more distancing between people. This will be at the expense of on-street parking. These are great examples of the ways transitioning out of isolation can be combined with more sustainable patterns of life.

At the same time, the European Union is urging European countries to reopen the boarders. “This is not going to be a normal summer… but when we all do our part we don’t have to face a summer stuck at home or completely lost for tourism industry,” Margrethe Vestager, the EU Commission Executive Vice-President announced at a press conference last Wednesday. Although I strongly sympathise with the tourist industry and European countries dependent on wealthy tourists from abroad, let us consider alternative to air travel with less adverse effects on the environment.

Luxuries become habits and habits becomes taken for granted. Before the pandemic, travelling to faraway destinations was no longer a luxury but rather the bare minimum requirement for many. For the last two months, here in Melbourne, we haven’t been allowed to travel anywhere really. As someone who works from home, my life has consisted of a five-kilometre radius around my house, which is about as far as I get on my runs. To travel anywhere right now seems like a luxury to me. I long for the Victorian countryside outside of Melbourne, the beaches and the valleys. I long to meet up with my friends in the city, to see my colleagues at work and to travel to visit my friends in different suburbs. Let us not resort to old habits of treating international flights as the norm. Let us instead treat it as something special, a luxury or the last resort.

Tourism can be undertaken in various ways and local attractions have a lot to offer. Nonetheless, the allures of the different, the far-away and the unknown remain. So, perhaps it is time to properly invest in more sustainable modes of travel. Holidays by train is the new black in Europe, but it is expensive and as many other ‘green’ alternatives therefore not available to or desirable for everyone. I am not sure whether the cost of train travel is representative of the cost of building and managing the infrastructure or, which I suspect, the discrepancy in flight and train prices is the result of allowing the ‘market’ to rule. Nonetheless, before we rush back into normalcy and previous travel behaviours, let us think about what travelling is necessary, what is sustainable and whether this is a good time to readjust some of those itinerant expectations.

Fire and fever: a new spatial awareness

My first post on this site treated the toxic Melbourne air as a result of the large bushfires burning around the country. In that post I considered how the toxicity of the air changed the way air looked and smelled, making us suddenly aware of its presence. The threat of bad air heightened our awareness of our senses, allowing us to pick up on any irregularities in the air. I would argue that it changed the way that we interacted with the space around us, including the normally unnoticed gaseous aspects of that space. Although today, the continued fires around Australia are all but vanished from our minds, a similar awareness of the space around us is evident during the current coronavirus pandemic. The disease has sensitised us to the air and spaces around us and their potential harmfulness. The virus, just like the toxic air, makes us attentive to space in new and unexpectant ways.

To demonstrate, think of your most recent visit to the supermarket. Weren’t you suddenly acutely aware of every part of your body (and even clothes) that were in direct contact with the spaces and objects around you? It was almost as if you were left with a burning invisible mark on your hand after having picked up the shopping basket. As you walked around the shop were you not intensely conscious of the way other people were moving in relation to you? Someone was standing too close to the brand of soymilk you wanted to grab so you hesitate for an extra movement, waiting for them to move on. As you turned around a corner, looking for the non-existent liquid hand soap did you not almost bump into someone moving towards you and suddenly, without thinking, you found yourself holding your breath? Some of us have taken to protective measures such as disposable gloves and face masks, attempting to create a protective barrier between ourselves and the outside world. Others, we are almost too fearful to go outside at all. As you escaped the supermarket you took your first deep breath in a while and made your way home, still feeling the germs burning the skin of your hands. The current health crisis has heightened our sense of touch to a point where we can feel the burning of unclean skin, it has sensitised us to our place in relation to the space and the people around us and it has made us intensely aware of the sounds and signs of flu symptoms.

These are new experiences for most of us and they can be understood as a different awareness of space. The invisible virus threatening us cannot be seen by the naked eye, yet it is perceived by every part of our body. The fact that we do not know if it is there makes us constantly assume that it is. Sure, we might slip up for a moment, moving our unclean hands to our faces, but we soon remember, kicking ourselves for our mistake. Of course, we were always aware that venturing into public space and the proximity of other people meant exposing ourselves to the risk of different forms of infections. However, never before have we been so keenly aware of the risk. Similar to the way the toxic air during the bushfire season made us aware of its existence, we are becoming cognisant of the fact that the virus might be present in the air that we move through or the places that we touch. Once this virus no longer is considered everywhere around us, most of us will return to moving through space in a manner similar to before. Nonetheless, just as with the air during the bushfires I think that, in a way, the virus pandemic will come to slightly change our relationship to space for quite some time.

For more considerations on the sounds of the pandemic and what it does to us, have a listen to the podcast ‘Listening to the city in a global pandemic’.

After pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has transformed human behaviours around the world with some positive effects on the environment. In Australia, everyone whose work allows it is now working from home which means that less people are commuting to and from work each day. There is very little international travel and much less national travel taking place as state borders are closing and we are encouraged not to undertaking any unnecessary travelling. In addition, some industries have temporarily reduced their activities. I am, for example, now working from my home and I only leave my house to buy groceries, go for a run, a walk or to sit down at the creek close to my house. I have had to cancel my planned international trips to conferences and to see my family back in Sweden. These changes in mine and in millions of people’s lives have led to a slashing of air pollution globally as observed by the European Space Agency via satellite images. Although from a personal perspective the pandemic and the isolation are both tragedies, from a purely environmental perspective, these are all important behavioural changes and vital pollution reduction that we have been waiting for.

This is a time when we all worry about the future, wondering whether after the pandemic, life will return to something resembling normality. The Chinese city Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in December last year is now slowly lessening their strict mass quarantine rules. This, I think, is providing us all with some sanguinity. I hope that soon we can go back to living without the anxiety of death and disease being all around us. I also hope that we once again will seek closeness and social inclusion rather than fearing the person beside us and practicing social distancing. But will we also go back to travelling as much as we did before? I certainly hope not.

As someone who has been working from home for two weeks now, I do not believe it to be a good solution for everyone, or at least not every day. Nonetheless, perhaps those who can should work from home two days a week or find alternatives to the car. Moreover, there are a lot of national and international meetings that quite successfully can be undertaken via conference calls which has the potential to lessen the degree of business trips. If you drive to the grocery store, perhaps try to make less trips in a week and consider what consumption practices are absolutely necessary. In rough times it is natural to wish for something positive to arise as a result, for all the suffering to have led to something good. I would hope that this experience in all its tragedy could open up our minds towards alternative ways of life. I also hope that it has shown us how able we are to act and adapt in order to save lives. In what is hopefully not more than a few months, as we once again rebuild our societies after this frightening disruption, let us think about what world we want to live in and what we want Earth to look like in 20, 50 and 200 years. And then let us consider the best possible way forward and work together to get there.