Effective Management Of Recovery From The Victoria Bushfire

Overview of the Victoria Bushfire

Question:

Discuss About The Victoria Bushfire Management Of Recovery?

In our daily life, the world often faces great emergency situations which bear significant impact on individuals as well as the society at large. One of the major emergency situations which face a nation is the incident of a bushfire. Therefore, there is need to develop appropriate management guides to help in the recovery phase of the affected regions as well as the affected families. One of the major known bushfires is the Victoria bushfire that occurred on 2009 in the Australia (Choo&Nadarajah, 2014). It is commonly referred to as the Black Saturday fires in which historically these were the most devastating bush fires experienced in Australia. The tragic event was precedent a number of factors which are believed to have resulted in the fires. The Victoria state during this period this period was experiencing the worst weather conditions. The state was experiencing extreme heat conditions, high winds, and low humidity as well as a severe drought.

The main aim of the study is to evaluate and outline the strategies and principles that can be adopted to effectively guide and manage the recovery process for the affected individuals in the Victoria 2009 bush fire. The report gives an overview of the issue before, during, as well as after the bushfire occurrence. The report then advises on the proper guidelines that can be adopted to ensure a proper recovery management for fast and efficient recovery phase management.

Victoria community before the occurrence of the bushfire was a diverse community consisting of various types of wildlife. The community had six special nature impacted sections including Yarra Ranges National Park, Kinglake National Park, Cathedral Range, Lady Talbot Drive, Wilsons Prom, and Keppel Falls. The forest also acted as a water catchment point. The community had a big population of friendly people living together in harmony but later turned to be a community of mourning for the lost lives (Whittaker, Eriksen, & Haynes. 2016).

The Black Saturday bushfire in Victoria occurred on February 7th, 2009. It has since remained in the record as one of the most destructive and horrific natural disasters that have ever witnessed in Australia. As reported by the Australian Fire Authority report, 592 bush and grass fires, as well as 263 structure fires, were reported in the black Saturday (Bryant et al. 2014). On that same day, the major fires in terms of significant damage or loss were at Kilmore East, Churchill, Delburn, Narre Warren, Redesdale, Horsham, Bendigo, and Bunyip among others (Whittaker, Eriksen, & Haynes. 2016). In general, the fire destroyed and severely y damaged over 3400 homes in Victoria and burnt about 430,000 hectares of land. More tragically, 173 individuals lost their lives while many others were injured. As a result, those that survived had a drastic psychological experience due to the occurrence of the fire and the lives that were lost.

Impact of the Bushfire

The heat had increased to the extremes of 46 degrees Celsius which is believed to be the worst recorded temperatures in Australian history. Two months prior to the black Saturday the Victoria state was experiencing the worst drought ever characterized with little or no rainfall whatsoever. The relative speed of the wind then was 100km/hr. however, this was speed increased to 120km/hr. and such a mighty wind is believed to have caused the fires to merge in one huge fire that burned with great speed and velocity (Mannakkara& Wilkinson, 2014). As a result, the incident led to the loss of life where more than 173 people died and 120 people out of this incident were reported to have died or killed by a single firestorm. It is also reported that over 2000 houses, as well as over 3500 other structures, were also destroyed. Many towns were reported to have been completely destroyed while others suffered serious damages. It is with such concerns that a committee was formed to address the recovery phase of the incident.

After the black Saturday fire, many organizations such as the Salvation Army were on the site with the aim of providing meals and counseling the affected persons. There were also response teams that were coordinating material aid as well as offering immediate financial assistance to the individuals that were affected by the fire for purchasing the most urgent needs. With the high level of damages that were caused as a result of the fire, there was a need for financial grants and other basic human need materials (Hu &Kapucu, 2016). After the initial response by different groups and agencies, there was a need for an active and continuous counseling process with the aim of working with the affected communities though the difficult recovery process. The affected population required financial, emotional, and material needs as well as building events, specialist supports, and activities that would help them through the process.

The management of the fire recovery phase can be achieved if the following principles as identified by the Emergency Management Committee established are puts into consideration. The principles emphasize on a shared disclosure to ensure effective communication as well as making sound decisions that enable the communities to cope and adjust to recovery. The principles include;

Understanding the context;the recovery phase can be effective if only the context is understood by the management committee. This principle provides that only the disaster affected individuals, communities as well as the organizations involved are in a position to understand their own needs than agencies from any external experts or organizations. Therefore the agenices involved in recovery process should involve, interact and communicate with the community as well as the affected groups (Clode& Elgar, 2014).

Management of Recovery Phase

Easing community lead approach; this approach ensures that the community is involved in the recovery phase of disaster. The principle is guided by the ideology that communities are in better position to understand what works best for them and also the fact that future effectiveness in disaster management will be as a result of capacity building in the society. If a community lead approach is done then the community will be in a position to manage such occurrences in future (Reid &Beilin, 2014).

Recognizing complexity; the recovery process is always complex and involves an extensive variety of individuals, groups and organizations. Effective recovery phase will therefore call for understanding the complexity of the process by all stakeholders and ensuring that everything works for the interest of all the involved groups (Whittaker et al. 2016). By doing so, it will be easy to achieve the goals of disaster recovery.

Ensuring coordination of all activities;due to the complexity of the process of recovery, it is important that all activities are coordinated in line with the goals of disaster management. The efforts from different agencies and stakeholders including the disaster affected individuals and the community as well as the external experts should be coordinated and ensure that they collectively work for the greater good of all (Curnin et al. 2015).

Employing effective communication; like any other project, the success of disaster management and recovery phase is influenced by the communication process. Since the process involves many stakeholders who may be having different views and opinions as well as approaches to provide solutions to remedy the situation, it is important for consultations, discussions and collective decision making to be made through communication (Howes et al. 2015). It is therefore that effective communication strategies are employed and utilized by all the stakeholders in the management of bushfires.

It is important to note that risks can never be eliminated completely however effective strategies can be implemented to reduce the risk of occurrence as well as the impact of the bushfires. The strategies aim at achieving better bush fire risk management mechanism, having a safer community and property and strong local economies as well as having more resilient ecosystems (Mair et al. 2016). The most important strategy for effective management and recovery from bush fires is through the adoption of fuel management strategy. This strategy helps in the creation and development of fire management zones to reduce the residual risks of bushfires. The fire management zones help in defining the objectives for fuel management and include; the asset protection zone which provides localized protection to properties as well as infrastructure against potential radiant heat and ember attack in event of bush fires (Moritz et al. 2014). It also includes having a bushfire moderation zone where fuel is managed to reduce the spread and intensity of the bush fire. Lastly, there is landscape management zone where fuel is managed to reduce residual risk and improve ecosystems resilience.

Principles to Manage Recovery Phase

Another strategy employed in this case is the landscape fuel management strategy which aims at ensuring that residual risks to life and property are reduced and will not return to the pre-2010 levels due to its ability to re accumulate in forest burnt. The committee can still develop a fire operations planning strategy which in this case the plans are designed for each fire management districts and address factors such as public safety and access and cover fuel treatment on public land. It also ensures continuity of fuel management program (Mannakkara, 2014). Other strategies which can equally be employed in this case include; preventing of bush fires which can be achieved through prioritization of compliance activities, conducting community education and enforcing relevant laws. It can also be achieved by encouraging the community to share bush fire risk analysis information with the local governments for appropriate actions. The relevant agencies should always be prepared for bush fires in order to improve their response in event of fire occurrence and this should be done by having well-maintained roads and tracks for emergency purposes.

The recovery phase management of the Victoria bush fires can be said to relatively allow for the effectiveness of the whole process of recovery.  The first evaluation would be made on the ability of the recovery phase management initiative to focus on management and governance initiatives (Reid &Beilin, 2015). It has successfully outlined how the different stakeholders and agencies can work together to reduce the impact of bushfires. This allows for effectiveness in the recovery phase since a recovery process is not an individual initiative but a collective effort of all the stakeholders and the agencies involved. However, it has failed to focus on the technical aspects of the recovery efforts (Mannakkara& Wilkinson, 2014). The management should have looked at the technical aspects such as the length of the fences as well as the area of the bush under rehabilitation.

It is also important to look at how the management has used different strategies to provide direction to the recovery phase. The recovery phase management of the Victoria bushfire has deployed effective strategies which give specific directions to the ongoing management of the bushfire incident (MeloZurita et al. 2015). Such directions help us as well as the agencies involved to have a clear sense of what is the main goal of the recovery phase management as well as be able to access or measure the success of the whole initiative.

Strategies for Bushfire Risk Reduction

The use of guiding principles in guiding the recovery phase provides a benchmark for accessing the effectiveness of the process and therefore leads to the successful or effective implementation of the recovery phase. It is also important to note that the recovery phase incorporates the community in coming up with possible solutions to the problem and initiating measures which can be used to prevent future occurrence of bush fire(Paton et al. 2014). This initiative helps to bring the collective efforts of the agencies as well as the community and result to successful or effective bushfire recovery phase maintenance. Lastly, for any successful initiative, there must be laws and compliance regulations employed and this has been done effectively through incorporating the government of Australia which has helped in coming up with policies and in designing the strategies especially on the fuel maintenance zones.

Conclusion

Risk management plays a very important role in the success of a project or initiative. In this case, it acts as a measure of controlling and reducing the likelihood of occurrence of bushfires in Australian and especially to the affected Victoria state and its environments. The recovery phase management has therefore played a very vital role in restoring back the status of Victoria states and helps reconstruct the societal, individual and economic goals of the population (Blanchi et al. 2014). Most important is to note that these frameworks provided have not only provided solutions for the current situation but also provided a future platform for solving such emergencies before they bring great harm like it was the case of Victoria bush fire. However, there is a need to develop other measures which will help to solve the psychological issues still evident in today’s generation in which many families were affected by the impact of the bushfire (Bryant et al. 2014). Climate control measures should also be developed to minimize the effect of enhancing the environmental conditions which will enhance or increase the probability of such events happening.

References

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