iscover
The former fire commissioner who predicted 2020’s Black Summer has warned midwinter blazes in North America threaten Australia’s ability to acquire firefighting aircraft.
Greg Mullins argued countries would be unwilling to lend Australia its aircraft if its own fire season lasted all year round, rather than being confined to the summer months.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
Australia currently relies on the US to provide it with larger air tankers during its apparent off-season, while aircraft are also traded the other way in reverse.
“What they’ve been talking about for years is a 12-month fire season in California, rather than four months that ends in November,” Mullins told The Sydney Morning Herald. “Fire season used to be quite distinct. The North American fire season would finish and ours would start.
“We’d be able to share things like large aircraft and if we had big fires, we could call them and get specialist firefighters, incident management personnel.”
Mullins was speaking as northeastern Los Angeles battles some of the worst wildfires in its history, which have killed five people and led to 100,000 residents facing evacuation orders.
It comes after Australia’s 2019–2020 ‘Black Summer’ bushfire destroyed more than 3,000 homes and burnt through 240,000 square kilometres of land – the equivalent of the landmass of the UK.
A subsequent Royal Commission advised the federal government to invest in a larger sovereign fleet of aircraft, but the previous Coalition government rejected that proposal.
“The fires just become worse and worse,” Mullins told the Australian Aviation Podcast in 2021. “And it’s very clear to us that the climate is changing and we’ve reached a tipping point with bushfires worldwide.
“We’ve seen this year Siberia burning, Greece, Italy, Spain, California, Canada, and that’s off the back of heat waves that killed hundreds. So they’ve got these massive fires and they are behaving differently.
“And what frightens me is that I went to California in October 2019 to the Kincade Fire in Sonoma County and the firefighters over there are saying exactly the same thing.
“We don’t know how to fight these fires. Our traditional tools such as hazard reduction burning, back burns and attacking fires at night don’t work anymore in the worst conditions.
“Fires will burn through hazard reduced areas unless it was burnt in the last 12 months. Back burns get away from us, and fires are burning overnight because the humidity stays down and the wind stays strong because of changes to weather patterns.”
Mullins discussed the issue in his book Firestorm: Battling Super-Charged Natural Disasters. He is a co-founder of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group, composed of 33 former fire and emergency service chiefs.
The organisation has previously attacked the government for not taking the findings of the bushfire royal commission seriously.
