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This is a guest blog from Alex Kelly, Director of the Economic Media Centre and a filmmaker, based in Dja Dja Wurrung Country where she lives with her family in Castlemaine.

Last week my family as well as many neighbours and friends evacuated early in response to the catastrophic fire warning for Friday 9th January. I live in bushland in Djaara Country in Castlemaine, Central Victoria, Australia where we are impacted by the Ravenswood fire which, at the time of writing, has burned over 3,800 hectares of Djaara Country and is still burning.

Australia is a continent where fire is part of the ecology; many of our plants only germinate with the heat or smoke from fire and First Nations people have long tended to Country with fire. Settlers, especially those who grew up in regional areas like me, have memories of summer bushfire season – sometimes scary and destructive, yes, but not so many fires of such force all at once. I grew up on a farm and my dad was part of the local Country Fire Authority (CFA) so I am familiar with the emergency calls outs and smoky haze through summers. 

What we are seeing now is not normal. Accelerated by climate change, fires have increased in ferocity over my lifetime and are – terrifyinging – now capable of making their own weather systems, known as pyrocumulonimbus clouds.

On Friday over 200 fires were burning across the state of Victoria. More than 500 structures were destroyed and over 404,000 hectares have burned so far. The Ravenswood fire came close to my home before travelling east with a wind change. My neighbours in Harcourt were not so lucky, with over 47 homes and 85 businesses lost, countless animals and plants killed and immeasurable cultural heritage damaged. 

Without the volunteer response of the CFA it would be impossible to respond to the scale of disaster. First responders are increasingly locals and often volunteers, many of my friends and community were on the frontlines this weekend. 

The CFA is a remarkable network of 1,137 brigades with around 51,610 volunteers. Local Castlemaine CFA volunteer and campaigns manager for Friends of the Earth Australia, Cam Walker explains that climate change has turbo charged fire in Australia and now these fires are becoming more “intense, unpredictable and un-fightable.”

Partly driven by the challenges of the increased ferocity and longer fire seasons Australia’s fire danger rating system, the national coordination warning system, was updated in 2022.  Catastrophic fire danger is the highest rating and the warning does not mince words, “For your survival, leave bushfire risk areas. If a fire starts and takes hold, lives are likely to be lost.” 

Prior to a fire starting households are encouraged to have a fire plan in place, with state governments providing online tools like this one to guide their preparation. The plan includes thinking through what you will take including documents and medication, charging electronic devices in the likely event of power outages, what your trigger to leave is, which route you will take to leave and how you will stay updated on information. 

Deciding on a plan, which may include leaving before there are any signs of a fire, can often feel like an overreaction and people seek reassurance from each other about how to make the right decision. The culture around staying to defend against fires has dramatically shifted in the wake of increasingly out of control fires. January is the peak summer holiday season in Australia and many people are on the road and away from their homes. Leaving early isn’t just about reducing risk for yourself, it’s also about limiting congestion and not having more people in the danger zone for emergency services to account for. For us it was also about reducing uncertainty for our kids and not making a decision in a panic in front of them if conditions worsened (as they did). 

 

After the last devastating fire season in 2019, which resulted in the Black Saturday bushfires where tragically 173 lives were lost, my partner, a friend and I decided to bring together our neighbours. Before another emergency occurred we wanted to have met and connected in person. Sixty five people turned up to the first meeting and West End Resilience (WER) was born. That was February 2020 and the network became a firm piece of community infrastructure during the height of the Covid19 pandemic with ever deepening relationships, quarterly meetings and a well organised and active whatsapp.  

Those of us who initiated WER have now stepped back as we moved to another part of town, and the network continues to grow, testament to the power of community. In the face of these fires alongside many community orgs, businesses and local radio stations, WER has sprung into action and is a key hub for people sharing (and correcting) information, advice and support, relaying emergency services updates and a providing a sense of purpose and connection amidst the enormous strain of such an emergency. 

We know we need to be ready to face increasingly frequent climate fuelled disasters. We need the fossil fuel companies to pay for the resources we need, to respond to the mess they have created, as I have written here in an article, the Harcourt fires show need for disaster levy For decades, fossil fuel companies have dug up coal and gas knowing full well that the carbon emissions that they profit from were heating up the planet. They long suppressed the science on climate change, and are still doing everything they can to prevent the move away from fossil fuels, which is what real action on climate change involves. These fires are not natural – their ferocity is man-made.

But it’s hard to prepare for these unprecedented times, for world that feels like a state of permanent crisis, as one upheaval rolls in to the next (pandemic, genocide, climate). The only way we can process and prepare is together – we have to stay connected, support each other and organise.