Last night, at a dinner with the in-laws and their interstate friends, I was arguing that the action plans, and deciding beforehand if you're going to stay or leave (along with telling everyone your intentions) actually probably helped keep the number of deaths lower, because people had nominally decided beforehand what they would do, instead of evacuating at the last minute.
The thing, is that since Ash Wednesday 25 years ago, technology and planning both by the public and authorities has improved significantly. People now are aware that their beautiful bushland property is also dangerous in fire, know to maintain property, know to plan. Technology, especially websites, like the CFAs, or Sentinel mean that more people have greater opportunity to figure out where fires are, and what towns are on notice.
(I only know about this living in a family with a hard-core CFA member who was involved in Ash Wednesday, and being a botanist who has to study bushland-fire interactions. So, I wouldn't call myself an expert on this at all, this is just mostly a vaguely educated opinion.)
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Date: 2009-02-09 08:34 am (UTC)The thing, is that since Ash Wednesday 25 years ago, technology and planning both by the public and authorities has improved significantly. People now are aware that their beautiful bushland property is also dangerous in fire, know to maintain property, know to plan. Technology, especially websites, like the CFAs, or Sentinel mean that more people have greater opportunity to figure out where fires are, and what towns are on notice.
(I only know about this living in a family with a hard-core CFA member who was involved in Ash Wednesday, and being a botanist who has to study bushland-fire interactions. So, I wouldn't call myself an expert on this at all, this is just mostly a vaguely educated opinion.)