Jesse Rowan
Survivor of the Canberra Firestorm, 2003 and Clyde Mountain Bushfire, New Year’s Eve 2019
January 2003... The gathering of friends at my son’s fifth birthday party ignored the smoke haze that had choked Canberra for days from the bushfires burning in the mountains to the west of the ACT.
The party was interrupted by warnings of the 2003 Canberra Firestorm about to impact the city. As neighbours fled in panic I desperately tried to pack valuables and prepare our Weston creek home. I followed ABC radio instructions one-armed, trying to breastfeed my tired baby at the same time until my partner returned from work.
As the fire front passed over us, I sat in terror on the toilet in the darkness, breastfeeding the baby with the 5-year-old clinging to my leg in the darkness that descended from about 3:30 pm. The phrase ‘to shit yourself with fear’ took on reality for me, as I heard the explosions of ducted gas heaters in homes nearby and the roaring jet-engine wind of the fire. I will never forget the fear and powerlessness I felt as I imagined being burnt with my babies - like being in a war zone, helpless against this huge threat from the sky.
We survived, and so did our home, thanks to my partner staying to put out spot fires from embers while I obeyed door-knocking police ordering us to ‘Evacuate now!’ I drove my children along eerily deserted streets flaming along both sides, traffic lights dead, smoke obscuring everything metres ahead, until suddenly coming out of the smoke and darkness into a surreal experience at Woden Plaza where the sun shone and customers shopped as normal, unaware of the danger.
Despite not losing our home as friends nearby did, the memories and emotional effects of fear stayed with me. Being so hyped up I didn’t sleep much for a week afterwards. I no longer take it for granted to feel safe in Summer. Or Spring.
Years later we moved to Malua Bay, seeking green nature... I joined as a volunteer in the Malua Bay Rural Fire Brigade and learned more about the ever-present threat of bushfire in our coastal area surrounded by bush. Climate change science showed that bushfires would become more frequent and much worse. Each fire season was a time of dread and preparation. After three separate events on hazard reductions when burning trees falling almost wiped me out, I decided my kids needed their mother alive, and lost my nerve for volunteering on fire grounds, except to prepare to defend our own home, which we felt was possible.
New Year’s Eve 2019 brought the Clyde Mountain bushfire to our back fence.
The reality of evacuating thousands of people when fires were burning all along the East coast was daunting; local ‘safer places’ were not safe, and roads were blocked in most directions with various fires moving quickly according to wind changes. There was no safe place to send our children, so after consultation, our family took the risk of staying together to defend our well-prepared home. It was sickeningly scary waiting as the fire approached the forested ridge above our home, knowing power and all communications were cut and we were on our own.
My family and a couple of neighbours defended our homes successfully for several days, waking through the nights to check on stubbornly burning trees in the forest nearby. We shared our fire hoses, tank and petrol fire pump where they would reach. After getting word out for help via a police roadblock, a helicopter and local brigade helped douse the bush still burning out of our reach nearby in time for the next extreme weather.
In the days just after the fire front hit there was no power or communications at home, and most people had evacuated. I drove around carefully to try to find out where smoke was coming from, to check if we were safe from another bushfire, and to see if other people were OK, while the family kept checking on the forest still burning behind our home.
I tried to find signal for my mobile phone to let extended family know we were safe, and to read the news. This varied, mostly weak. It was hot sitting in the car using the mobile, but smoke was bad outside. I had to run the engine and air conditioning, so this limited communications time as without power there was no fuel - petrol pumps didn’t work. We were desperate for news, for information. I looked for some sign that after this scale of disaster the government would surely commit to alleviate climate overheating, but we felt abandoned.
Finding ice for our esky as the fridge food melted became a priority. The Evacuation Centre at Hanging Rock couldn’t help with that. Word of mouth eventually led me to the Woolworths garage for ice. It felt like Armageddon had happened; everything was disorganised and unknown.
Bushfire survivors now live with the distress of knowing that people died, seeing our communities decimated, our environment devastated, animals burnt alive and lives ruined. The economic, social and health (both mental and physical) consequences of the devastation, exacerbated by the Covid 19 pandemic, continue to impact our communities. The scarred environment is a constant reminder of the bushfires, and that it will happen again, sooner than we may think, and get worse. Every trace of smoke or emergency alarm sends us to check its cause.
We are also further stressed and angered by the inaction of the federal government in dealing with Australia’s fossil fuel contribution to climate heating - the cause of our fire seasons getting longer, hotter and unprecedented, with increasing numbers of severe and catastrophic days.
Governments at all levels have a responsibility to keep communities safe. The only way to do this is to act on the source of the problem: burning fossil fuels. Governments have a moral imperative to stop funding fossil fuel companies and move to clean renewable energy forms as soon as possible.
The costs of recovery will get worse as bushfires become worse and more frequent, leaving less time for forests and communities to recover. The toxic impact of breathing bushfire smoke will affect an increasing number of people in cities and regional areas. I don’t feel it’s mere coincidence that with all the ongoing stress and months of smoke inhalation I was diagnosed with breast cancer 6 months after the bushfire, then contracted a rare form of pneumonia which doctors could not explain, which has lasted a year and sent me to hospital 4 times; and is still unresolved.
Even now, two years after the bushfires, people are doing it tough. Many are still living in temporary accommodation, and some have not been able to face the effort of rebuilding. I know of one family with five teenagers who had to camp on their farm for a year after the fires, through the heat of Summer and cold of Winter with no toilet or shower, waiting for their home to be rebuilt. Friends who have moved into a new house after losing everything still struggle emotionally.
Young people have a right to be angry at the continued ignorance and poor decision-making of our elected representatives. I am impressed by the wisdom, eloquence and tenacity of Greta Thunberg and many of the School Strikers For Climate Change who are standing up to speak out for their right to a viable future, and I march with them.
My own anger burned as I mulled over the following questions for months of sleepless nights after the bushfires…
· How can Australia’s leaders continue to ignore and obfuscate the escalating threat of climate change?
· How can Australia’s leaders continue to ignore the warnings of the majority of world scientists and other world leaders calling for co-operation in reducing emissions?
· How can important decisions that affect every constituent’s health and safety be made based on anything other than peer-reviewed and tested scientific research?
· How can governments continue to fund coal and gas, knowing that our children’s future and humanity’s survival is at stake? Where is the accountability of our leadership?
· Why waste public funds on a coal-and-gas-led ‘recovery’ which will become stranded assets when it is cheaper and safer to embrace renewable energy forms?
· How can bushfire-devastated communities keep supporting each other to recover while governments put economics over people as the priority?
All photos by Jesse Rowan
Extracts from submission to “Bushfire Royal Commission”
Jesse Rowan, April 2020
The Grief Ritual
I cried alone in the car as I discovered the extent of damage in our area. Last year, the Oxford Dictionary word of the Year was 'Climate Emergency'. 'Climate Grief' may well be the word of the year in 2020.
In the burnt forest near Bunderra Circuit there are now no animals and no dawn chorus, where once it was the songs of thousands. (You can hear my recordings of birds in this forest from 2016 HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WthkqfcsbE) There are a few birds who have gradually returned, but it is very quiet, and there is little shelter for animals to hide as the understory is burnt clear. A layer of dead light brown leaves has fallen from the tree tops in a thick carpet.
After and during the bushfires, I found myself angry at the government for its lack of real response to the bushfires. My anger became infused with grief as I witnessed the destruction of our beautiful forests and the death of our wildlife - from kangaroos and wallabies burnt, to a report from a friend of the ground around her burnt home ‘being littered with blue wrens that had fallen out of the sky dead’, to seeing echidnas that survived looking for food in blackened charred landscapes.
National Climate Assembly
100 people from the Eurobodalla paid for a bus trip to Canberra to attend the National Climate Rally on the 4th of February 2020.
It was therapeutic for those of us who have been in the fire zone to feel that we are taking some action instead of feeling powerless in the path of the bushfires and also in the face of the government's refusal to accept and ameliorate climate change.
Many had never been 'activists' before, but our fear and horror and worry are causing us to stand up and get louder. It was heartening to meet so many thoughtful, caring and well-read people standing together for the good of our world and our communities.
Nick Hopkins and Jack Egan both lost their houses in our area. They and others collected burnt debris to bring to Canberra on 11 February 2020 to display in wheelbarrows outside Parliament House. Those of us who joined this Trail of Destruction pushed these wheelbarrows from Parliament House to the steps of the Minerals Council of Australia. The idea was for bushfire survivors to shine a light on the coal lobby’s “trail of destruction” and call for an end to the influence of the Minerals Council of Australia and the coal lobby over politicians and our democracy.
We delivered an invoice to the coal lobby group’s office for $1.3 billion - the most recent estimate of bushfire damages from insurers.
Mental Health Consequences
These fires have severely impacted the Eurobodalla. 79 per cent of the land and 500 homes were burnt here, including some of my friends’ homes. Our area had some of the best tourist destinations and beautiful areas of natural paradise; now much of this is destroyed. Animals have perished almost into extinction and habitats may not be viable for those left. People are traumatised regardless of whether they lost homes or not. The recovery will be long and difficult, and very expensive. Much of the cost will be borne by individual families and the community, as many are under-insured or uninsured, and there are many hidden costs not even considered, such as time off to prepare for evacuations or staying to defend, loss of holiday time, mental health impacts of constant stress and fear, costs of evacuation, costs associated with looting, water bills for defending homes, and mobile phone bills when other communications were down.
2019 was the hottest, driest year on record for Australia according to the Bureau of Meteorology, with high temperature records broken across NSW. This fire season was unprecedented, with raging megafires worse than any other fires previously experienced. There is no doubt in my mind that we are in a climate crisis, as I read the consensus of the world’s best scientists. If this is what it feels like at 1.5 degrees warmer, I am dreading the predicted further rises if the government continues to do nothing to stop selling and burning fossil fuels.
This season’s megafires are a symptom of many years of Australian governments' inaction on fossil fuel-induced climate change. Since the bushfires, I have found myself so frustrated and infuriated at the refusal of governments at all levels to act to mitigate the effects of climate heating. I have channelled this anger into attending many climate action events. In the not too distant future that is heading towards us, our emissions are speeding us to more disaster, and I can no longer pretend to ignore this. Many other quiet Australians are feeling this way too.
The emotional consequences of many people feeling ignored by governments and living daily with a sense of powerless to stop this hotter future will end up being an expensive and traumatic burden for our communities and our economy to carry. I am so afraid that no amount of lives lost, homes and communities and forests destroyed will convince this government to act morally and responsibly to move from using fossil fuels to clean energy solutions. It makes us feel so alone in the devastation, abandoned to the ravages of the next fire season by a government who refuses to listen and act on experts’ advice.
If this commission into bushfires does not make a recommendation for governments to act to reduce emissions to net zero as soon as possible, I and many others will feel there is no hope for our future.
Bushfires have affected 80% of Australians this season
In January 2020 the Australian National University contracted a survey of more than 3,000 Australian adults about their experiences and attitudes related to the bushfires and climate change. Nearly three-quarters (72.3%) of respondents said global warming was a very serious or fairly serious threat, a substantial increase from the 56% who said so in 2008. Nearly 80% of Australians feel affected in some way, indirectly or directly, by the bushfires this season. Many are feeling anxiety over bushfires and climate change, and confidence in this government has declined.
Climate heating causes worsening bushfires
Experts across the world agree that climate heating is the direct cause of hotter average global temperatures and increasing intensity and duration of the fire season. A 2007 report for the Climate Institute of Australia predicted increases in annual average fire danger of up to 30% by 2050, and a potential trebling in the number of days per year where the uppermost values of the index are exceeded. By continuing to burn fossil fuels which forces the average global temperature to continue to rise, bushfires will worsen and our world will become unliveable and economically unsustainable. Water and food shortages will cause wars and pandemics will get worse. Governments must stop burning fossil fuels: there are scientifically verified direct links to our safety being compromised by this. This reality is hitting us now, the impacts are being felt already. Australia is the canary in the coalmine, literally and figuratively. Our continent is already showing an increase of average temperature of 1.5 degrees this Summer.
Cost of NOT Acting on Climate Change
Ross Garnaut’s Climate Change Review of 2008 examined the scientific evidence around the impacts of climate change on Australia and its economy, and correctly predicted that without adequate action the nation would face more frequent and intense fire seasons by 2020. He has recently updated his 2008 findings, and is positive that the Australian economy would benefit from ameliorating the effects of climate change:
"Australia is richly endowed with resources that allow it to prosper from a global movement to zero net emissions. If we take early and strong action in ways that build upon our natural advantages, we will not suffer a decline in living standards in the near future in conventional economic terms as we move towards zero emissions. Now, much more than was anticipated a decade ago, we can be confident that we will be richer materially sooner rather than later, as well as very much richer in human and natural heritage, should we embrace a zero-emissions future." (SMH Nov 3 2019)
Leading economist Nicholas Stern concluded in his ‘Review on the Economics of Climate Change’ for the UK government that the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting on climate change.
The total cost of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires was estimated at $4.4 billion. The final cost of the current Australian bushfires may be well into billions of dollars, while some analysts say it could cost the economy $20 billion in lost output.
There are many hidden costs which will never be counted. And no price can bring back the lives that were lost, animals which are now extinct or almost, and irreplaceable habitat destroyed. Many traumatised people, places and towns will never recover fully.
Federal Government Response to Fires
The government ignored the warnings of our world’s scientific consensus about the climate emergency and refused to meet with concerned fire experts about the effects of climate change on this long-predicted fire season to be adequately prepared for it. The attempted cover-up of Morrison’s Hawaii holiday was not confidence-inspiring leadership at this critical time. The safety response has been slow and seems to be more about the government trying to look good than helping people. The army was not mobilised quickly enough. Spending taxpayers’ funds on a video that promotes and brings in donations to the Liberal party at the height of our disaster beggars belief.
This government has failed to keep us all safe. Climate change is the biggest threat to our nation’s safety – worse than Covid-19, worse than a war or invasion by terrorists, worse than economic depression. The outbreak of Coronavirus is also probably an effect of climate change, which many scientists have predicted would happen. As our climate heats up, conditions can be created for diseases to spread more. Our natural body response which raises our temperature to burn off pathogens becomes ineffective if viruses are already immune to heating up. Climate change is impacting our safety and this government is NOT acting to keep us safe.
This government is continuing to sell coal to China, forgetting that Australia is in fact the canary in the coal mine: the coal that China burns affects our own atmosphere – we have only one planet.
In catastrophic events, we are required to evacuate – but to where? Will there be a safe place for us all? Will roads be blocked with traffic or fires? And our homes will not be able to be saved if we cannot stay and defend them. With bushfires and other weather catastrophes becoming worse and more frequent as the climate becomes even warmer, the recovery costs will also escalate. There may be too little time for people and habitats to recover before the next bushfires hit.
Media and Information
Media outlets have a responsibility to report impartial facts. The ABC is essential to every Australian, as Murdoch’s press has been a source of lies and distortions of the truth to support fossil fuel companies. There need to be tighter controls of ownership of multiple media outlets, and penalties for misreporting news. An example is that arsonists in this fire season were reported by the Murdoch press as a major cause of bushfires when actually it was found to have been only 1 percent of bushfires that were started by arsonists. The rest were attributed to drought, climate change and lightning strikes, or accidental sources such as the landing lights of a helicopter which started the Orroral Valley fire near Canberra.
The Murdoch press has also been a cause of misinformation which has confused the public and hampered good decision-making. Hazard reductions are only a small part of preparation for the future, and in these unprecedented fires will make little difference. Arson caused only 1 % of this season’s fires.
Climate heating has been the main contributor to this fire season’s devastation.
Restoring funding to our independent broadcaster, the ABC, is fundamental in keeping the Australian people informed and safe. Regulations on control of the media need to be reassessed and adapted for the community’s best interests, not the corporations’ profits or political purposes.
How have bushfires changed my life?
With the fire season becoming longer almost every year, the time I feel anxious about impending bushfires is increased. The fire season now occurs from September to March or April, leaving only four months of the year when I can relax and feel safe. I am afraid that this anxiety is contributing to health issues and perhaps even a shorter life span for me. I will need to work consciously and with professional help to reduce stress. It may mean moving house to a cooler climate or a somewhere less risky, or spending significantly on fire protective measures such as sprinkler systems, and working on my inner self to learn to let go of anxiety, if that is indeed possible. With the extent and severity of the bushfires this year I don’t know if anywhere is actually safe anymore - it’s only a matter of time and the chance of wind direction in severe weather before anywhere could be impacted.
Living for a prolonged period waiting for fires to impact keeps cortisol levels high, which can impact long term health. It’s hard to concentrate on work, and those in business are less productive under stress. We spent many hours preparing our property, packing things to be saved at another location, and practising our fire pump and hoses, then unpacking everything again. I didn’t feel safe enough to unpack for several weeks after the fires were out.
Trying to help friends and community members who have lost their homes reminds me of the possibility that I could be in this situation next fire season, or the one after. It takes a huge effort to maintain hope for our lives and our world with this in mind.
Living daily with burnt forests and severely reduced birdsong and native animal sightings, I am reminded of the devastation of our wildlife and feel internally devastated by that too.
The devastation of this year’s bushfires compounds my absolute anger and feelings of powerlessness as I watch our governments ignore the expert advice of 99% of the world’s scientists, medical professionals and fire experts and blatantly spend billions of public funding to subsidise fossil fuel companies, thus funding our own destruction. My family, including two teenagers and a twenty-two-year-old feel abandoned by the fact that this federal government has refused to listen to warnings about this fire season by experts, and has continued to obfuscate and avoid acting on the root cause of the worsening of our fire season – climate heating due to burning of fossil fuels.
Having experienced the direct results of worsening bushfires due to fossil fuel-induced global climate heating, I have realised the immediate urgent predicament facing our world, and I will spend a large percentage of my spare time on activism. This will take up time I could use for volunteering in my community, but I see this as a higher priority to help our whole world, in particular to hope that our children and their generation might have a viable future.
We have had a succession of governments who have called for and then ignored investigations and royal commissions conducted by experts into bushfires and climate heating. I will lobby governments to heed expert advice and plan for the future instead of their own political ends for the short term of staying in office.
My attitude to consumerism is changing. The fear of losing everything, of having to decide what to save every year and pack that up (effectively not having it in my life as it is stuck in boxes or in a possibly safer storage place for the fire season, now 8 months of each year) and then unpack it all at the end is painful and time consuming. I will try to simplify my global footprint, sell possessions I no longer need, and focus on buying experiences rather than objects which I feel powerless to protect, especially if we are forced to evacuate frequently or for a long time
Recommendations
Declare a Climate Emergency to lead the way for ALL levels of government to unlock all the required policy changes and funds for a rapid climate emergency mobilisation to net zero emissions as soon as humanly possible. Attending to the root cause of the worsening bushfire scenario is paramount, as this will help stop or slow the worsening due to rising global temperatures. Fossil fuels are a direct cause of global heating, which causes more droughts, less rainfall, extended fire seasons and more hotter and catastrophic weather conditions exacerbating bushfires.
Conclusion
The climate crisis is the single most important contributing factor to the worsening bushfire situation. It is no longer in the distant future; it is already affecting adversely the safety, health, psychological and economic well-being of Australian citizens and our environment and animals. Climate change presents a far greater threat to our safety than pandemics, terrorists, or war, or even economic depression. It affects our quality of life as well as our survival.
Economists and other experts have indicated that prevention is cheaper than cure, and that the removal of fossil fuel subsidies and the introduction of a carbon price would be good for the overall economy, good for the budget and good for the climate.
In the words of Richard Flanagan:
‘If Mr. Morrison’s government genuinely believed the science, it would immediately put a price on carbon, declare a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects and transfer the fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables industries. It would go to the next round of global climate talks … allied with other nations on the front line of this crisis and argue for quicker and deeper cuts to carbon emissions around the world. Anything less is to collaborate in the destruction of a country.’
For this government to refuse to declare and act on the climate emergency now is to ignore the pain of those who have lost their lives, loved ones, homes, businesses, cherished possessions. It also ignores the agony and deaths of over one billion animals that died in the fires. It is an insult to the communities that will carry this economic and traumatic burden for years to come, and to those who face the ravages of ongoing fire, drought and flood disasters which will increase in the future in frequency and intensity due to a warming climate because of burning fossil fuels.
How can we be expected to have resilience when the government is funding our destruction by selling and subsidising fossil fuels? Our resilience depends on having hope for our future.
The trauma and devastation from the bushfires seem to have paled into insignificance in the face of coronavirus at the moment, but long after coronavirus runs its course, the pain will be felt by those who are left to face the future with hot summers getting even hotter and fiercer.
Governments must act to reducing our fossil fuel emissions to Net Zero by 2030 or we will find ourselves in ever-escalating fires to the point of no recovery. We must not let this remain the New Normal, or let it get worse! For our children’s viable future, please act on the climate emergency!
Yours sincerely,
Jesse Rowan . . . Malua Bay NSW 17 April 2020
