Former Fire Chiefs' Group Warns That Australia Unprepared For Accelerating Fires & Climate Disasters

More than 20 former fire and emergency chiefs from multiple states and territories say Australia is unprepared for worsening natural disasters from climate change and governments are putting lives at risk. In a statement issued before a federal election date is announced, 23 former emergency services leaders and senior personnel have called on both major parties to recognise the need for “national firefighting assets”, including large aircraft, to deal with the scale of the threat.

The signatories include: Greg Mullins, the second-longest serving fire and rescue commissioner in New South Wales and now a councillor with the Climate Council; Neil Bibby, a former chief executive of Victoria’s Country Fire Authority; Phil Koperberg, a former NSW rural fire service commissioner and former Labor MP and NSW environment minister.

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“I started firefighting in 1971 and the bushfire seasons were extremely predictable,” Mullins said. “They’d start in Queensland and move south progressively. You knew when there was a bad season coming because there was an El Nino and drought. In the 90s, I stopped being able to predict it.”

Australia’s emergency resources were still equipped for “what was happening in the 1970s to the 1990s”. “The first thing is we need whoever is in government nationally to take climate change seriously, rather than making jokes about it in parliament with lumps of coal,” he said. “It’s just frustrating to hear the lip service being given to ‘Oh yes, we now believe in climate change and need to do something’ when every effort to do something about it is rubbished.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/09/former-fire-chiefs-warn-australia-unprepared-for-escalating-climate-threat