Police and fire authorities have been advising people facing fires this season to make a choice: either stay and defend or evacuate early. And having made your decision, stick to it.
It is advice that some Canberrans say they would have liked before the January 18 fires.
In past seasons, police have been known to order evacuations and in some states legislation has been passed to give them the power to arrest people to ensure they evacuate. The common-law position has always been that police have no power to arrest people without reasonable suspicion that they have committed an offence and that they have no power to enforce an order to evacuate private property.
The new position comes in light of more detailed research on the behaviour of fires. It now puts the decision on the home-owner, but a better-informed and better-prepared home-owner. Still it is an awesome choice.
Indeed, I am writing this in a house in a village surrounded by National Park where people are alert to the possibility of making that very choice. We know that the second leg of the new police advice is certainly correct. If you decide to stay, do not change your mind. The vast majority of non-fire-fighter deaths come from people trying to evacuate too late.
It is quite likely that before too long some people will be burnt to death in a house they try to save. And there will be a lot of hand wringing and gnashing of teeth and blame throwing. The new advice will be questioned and many will call for compulsory evacuation, arguing that human life is more important than property.
But it is in the nature of decision-making that a decision that may be correct at the time can turn out to be wrong. This is because decision-making involves matching costs and consequences with probability.
All the studies on fires suggest that nearly all houses survive the initial front of the fire provided vegetation has been cleared and the roof and walls doused. Houses lost catch alight from embers after the fire has gone through. If only someone had been at hand with a hose the houses would be saved.
So it can make sense stay and defend.
But not all well-prepared houses survive the fire front. Maybe one in every couple of hundred would not survive no matter how well prepared. We don’t have enough data to be more precise. But we do know that the longer the options advice continues more people will opt to defend. And as more people opt to defend it will be more likely that someone will be caught in a house that does not survive, no matter how well prepared.
They will have made what they thought was a correct decision to defend based on costs, probability and consequences. They will have decided that a half-percent chance of death is worth risking to convert the probability of losing their home from, say, 50-50 to one in 200. Others might think an insured house with all the sentimental valuables removed safely is not worth a one in 200 chance of death by burning or smoke inhalation.
However, in the village where I am writing some residents have an extra reason to defend. They think that if their house burns, they may never get permission to rebuild a house of the same size in the bush. Fire regulations prohibit new building close to large trees yet conservation regulations require the retention of those same habitat trees.
In any event, the defend-option advice will result in death eventually, but it will be the death of people making an informed choice.
Similarly, the decisions of those in power should be based on costs, consequences and probability with as much information as possible.
Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has been criticised for not warning Canberrans of the fire danger before January 18 so they could have a chance to go to their homes and defend them. The fact that so few people did indicates that Canberrans were not well informed and they have grounds for criticising Stanhope for that.
But what if on January 17, the Chief Minister had decided to issue a warning and advice along the lines of those being given this season. Maybe more than a thousand people would have left their workplaces and cut short their holidays to defend their homes.
That prospect might concern a politician who would have been blamed for crying wolf if the fire had not come. Worse, though, might be the prospect of lots of well-informed people defending their homes.
The January 18 statistics might well have been, say, 50 houses burnt, but not four dead, rather between 10 or 20 dead. No-one would say, Well done, Jon, you saved 400 houses.
You can only defend if you have an independent water supply, petrol-driven pumps and full fire-fighting clothing.
Again, if you add up the cost of that and weigh it against the probability of fire and the consequences of it, in a place like Canberra you might leave it to the professionals. In the bush you might well gear up and defend. Sure, we would all like to have our home and be alive, but it is better to be homeless than dead.