The coronavirus pandemic could mean firefighters won’t be able to travel interstate to offer assistance next fire season.
The bushfires royal commission has been forced to reckon with the impacts that the pandemic may have during the 2020-21 bushfire season and potentially beyond.
“This may well impact the assistance able to be provided by international and interstate deployments of personnel and assets,” senior counsel member Dominique Hogan-Doran SC said on Wednesday via The Guardian.
The commission reflected on the extreme bushfire experience during 2019-20, which saw states and territories receive interstate assistance in addition to a near 1000 international personnel, from New Zealand, Canada and the US.
The former NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons acknowledged the recent bushfire devastation was unprecedented in terms of weather, fire behaviour and the dire damage, destruction and tragedy.
“We saw an area burnt across NSW like we haven’t seen before, particularly across the forested areas,” Fitzsimmons told the natural disasters royal commission on Wednesday.
“We saw a protracted nature of the fire season without any meaningful interruption from weather.”
The 2019-20 fires far-exceeded the worst-case predictions, noting that the forecast for the 2019-20 season had been nearly identical to 2018-19.
“Obviously the indications were for above normal, but no one had the capacity to forecast and predict the extent and the scale to which weather and fire behaviour played out with a stretching of fire literally from the Queensland border all the way through to the Victorian border along the Great Dividing Range.”
He continued, “Throughout the season we saw an unprecedented toll for NSW when it came to damage, destruction, despair and tragedy,”.
A 15-page document has outlined the RFS preparations for dealing with the bushfire season amid the coronavirus pandemic. The document outlines how to respond to a confirmed case of the virus, whilst emphasising that those who pose a high risk of contracting the virus should consider withdrawing from volunteering.
“Fire incident management activities create an ideal environment for the transmission of infectious diseases: potential high-density living and working conditions, lack of access to and use of soap and sanitizers, and a transient workforce,” the document notes.
