Webinars discuss the Otways bushfires to come

THE first two parts of a webinar series have taken a historical look at fires in the Otways and some of the causes behind them.
The free “What’s the future of living in bushfire-prone regions?” sessions were held via Zoom on Thursday last week and Monday this week, with the third and final webinar to be held today (Thursday, September 17).
The series is organised by Friends of Lorne and the Aireys Inlet District Association.
Last Thursday’s session discussed the past, present and future of unplanned fires, with Australian National University’s David Lindenmayer talking about long-term insights into the impacts of and responses to wildfires in Victoria, and Spatial Vision founding partner Steven Farrell exploring trends, futures and extreme events.
Mr Lindemayer noted Victoria had lost 77 per cent of its old growth forest in the past 25 years, and forests were especially vulnerable to fire when they were young.
“The condition of the forest before a fire has a big impact on how it recovers after the fire,” he said.
Mr Farrell said the future of living in bushfire-prone reasons was change, particularly decreasing rainfall and increasing temperatures, “and we’ve been experiencing the change already”.
“I think we need to look at what we already have been seeing, reflecting on it, and building it into what we plan going forward.
“We need to take advantage of the breaks we’ll get, because we’ll have tough times where we’ll be running very hard to deal with change.”
Monday’s webinar on the drivers of unplanned fires featured Janet Stanley and Kevin Tolhurst, both from the University of Melbourne.
Ms Stanley, talking about the human factors of fire, noted human behaviour greatly affected the occurrences of bushfire in many ways.
She said 85 per cent of wildfires were ignited by direct or indirect human activity, but climate change led to very dangerous conditions once they were lit.
Mr Tolhurst gave a wildfire history of the Otways, which have had 1,131 unplanned fires burning a total of 89,273 hectares in the 48 years between 1972 and 2020.
He warned that the previous fire experience was only useful to a point.
“We cannot just expect the past to repeat itself, as ‘we have not lived long enough’ (a quote from the Royal Commission into the Black Friday fires of 1939) and our climate and environment is changing.”
Each webinar also had a panel discussion and time for questions from the viewing audience.
Today’s (Thursday, September 17) webinar will be at 3pm, and will be focus on planning for unplanned fires. It will feature Barbara Norman from the University of Canberra talking about planning and community resilience, and the CSIRO’s Justin Leonard talking about managing the urban interface.
To register, head to eventbrite.com.au and search “What’s the future of living in bushfire-prone regions?”.