Learning to Learn from Bushfires | Dr Graham Dwyer

Learning to Learn from Bushfires | An interview with Dr Graham Dwyer, Course Director for Master of Social Impact, Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology

The Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship recently sat down with Dr Graham Dwyer, author of Making Sense of Natural Disasters: The Learning Vacuum of Bushfire Public Inquiries, to learn more about the ways in which emergency management organizations make sense and learn from natural disasters.

What have we learned from recent bushfire events?

Recent natural hazard events and review processes which have followed them have resulted in important learning and innovation which is helping our emergency services to plan and prepare for bushfires more effectively. Improvements include enhanced community bushfire education programs, advances in modelling and predicting fire behaviour, more advanced approaches to delivering bushfire warnings, an increased emphasis on more strategic planned burning to prepare for fire seasons, and greater integration across emergency management agencies. However, it is really important to note that each fire is unique and will invariably teach us new lessons in the future. Therefore we need to continue to learn how to learn from bushfires.

We know about the incredible work that our firefighters do during bushfire season to keep communities safe. What can communities do to ease the burden on our firefighters?

The good news is that many people in communities work in partnership with our emergency services. Learning to live with bushfire risk is everybody’s responsibility. Increasingly, people who live in bushfire prone areas recognize that their decision-making, particularly on days of high bushfire danger can enable them to stay safe.

The Australian Fire Danger Rating System is a product of many years of learning from bushfires and now offers communities ratings that clearly shows how dangerous a fire could be and comes with clear actions to take. It means that across Australia everybody can make sense of and understand the level of bushfire risk and take action to stay safe – the hope is that there will be less people taking a wait and see approach to what happens on high fire danger days.

We hear a lot about climate change and commentary suggesting that we are likely to see more significant bushfire events in the future. Is this true?

History has shown that significant and damaging bushfire events occur regularly in Australia. Inevitably, we will see another Ash Wednesday, Black Saturday and Black Summer. Scientists continue to suggest that current climate conditions increase the likelihood we will experience more major fire events, more regularly which means that these fire events can no longer be considered as once-in-a-generation events. While we cannot necessarily prevent all bushfires or predict when and where they will happen we can avoid being complacent and acknowledge that informed planning and decision-making by us all in partnership with our emergency services can go a long way towards staying safe during bushfire seasons.

You can purchase Making Sense of Natural Disasters: The Learning Vacuum of Bushfire Public Inquiries here

Read more about Enacting safety: Firefighter sensemaking of entrapment in an Australian bushfire context here