Key recommendations from Black Summer Royal Commission
As summer approaches and El Nino drives warmer, drier weather there's now an elevated fire risk for much of Australia a situation not seen since the black summer fires. Following the devastation wrought by those fires, a Royal Commission handed down 80 recommendations.
Transcript
00:00 We see now nationally consistent fire danger rating systems and nationally consistent warning
00:07 systems which was a key recommendation, two key recommendations of the report which are
00:11 now done.
00:13 One thing that we thought we'd take a look at is air quality related recommendations
00:16 because a lot of people have already experienced problems with that.
00:19 It killed hundreds of people during Black Summer.
00:22 And so there were two key recommendations on that.
00:24 One was for real-time air quality monitoring and for forecasting.
00:28 And we spoke to the CSIRO group there that's actually working on those recommendations
00:32 and they're pretty much complete.
00:34 They're not signed off formally yet but we now have daily forecasts for three days ahead
00:42 for a nine kilometre resolution so we can get a sense of where smoke is going to come
00:46 over the next three days.
00:48 And they're now working on a system that will give hourly forecasts which is quite remarkable
00:53 and something that will be a great help.
00:56 There's also really good progress on what are called downscaled climate models.
00:59 So these are things that will tell you how climate change and extreme weather is likely
01:03 to change in your local area.
01:05 Now that's going to be a couple of years away but the investment's made and it's coming
01:09 and there's good progress on that.
01:11 So I spoke to a few experts, one for instance Greg Mullins who we often see talking about
01:15 these things.
01:16 He's former Chief of NSW Fire and Rescue and now an advocate for stronger action on climate
01:20 change.
01:21 He points out that there's more than tenfold the amount of spending on cleaning up after
01:25 disasters than there is on preparing for disasters.
01:29 And so he says look that needs to be flipped on its head.
01:31 We need to spend billions more on preparing for disasters and it won't surprise you that
01:35 he and climate scientists that we spoke to have pointed out that we need to reduce our
01:40 greenhouse gas emissions much more rapidly if we want to stop even more extreme fire
01:47 weather and other disasters becoming even more common.
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