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28 February 2025
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Featured FRI Magazine article: Institutional arrangements and wildfires by Malcolm Procter
Much of the work of fire management takes place before a fire starts
A preapproved contingency plan also sets out procedures to be followed
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In rural areas over 90 percent of the damage is caused by less than 10 percent of the fires
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https://www.frimedia.org/uploads/1/2/2/7/122743954/fri_vol_3_no_3.pdf
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Institutional arrangements and wildfires written by Malcolm Procter (FRI Vol 3 no 3). We will be sharing more technical/research/tactical articles from Fire and Rescue International magazine on a weekly basis with our readers to assist in technology transfer. This will hopefully create an increased awareness, providing you with hands-on advice and guidance. All our magazines are available free of charge in PDF format on our website and online at ISSUU. We also provide all technical articles as a free download in our article archive on our website.
Institutional arrangements and wildfires
By Malcolm Procter
When wildfires roll across the landscape, many are lost in thoughts of total loss and devastation especially when coping with the loss of livestock and infrastructure, yet one important facet that is often overlooked is that institutional arrangements put in place before a fire starts are a critical element of any fire prevention programme and can reduce response times drastically.
Wildfire management is not only an emergency task, the preventive task could be even more important, being better to avoid risk of a fire ignition before it start or minimise its hazard, than later try to extinct it. Wildfire management is not a seasonal task but something that requires attention all year round. Recent fires in the eastern Free State has reinforced the fact that fire has the potential to be one of the most destructive forces on earth cannot be denied. Every year lives are lost, property destroyed and habitats altered by uncontrollable wildfires.
Although humans can do little or nothing to change the incidence or intensity of most wildfires, they have an important role to play in ensuring that wildfires are not converted into disasters by their own actions. Planning for wildfires is a complex task. Having a comprehensive contingency plan may be useful should the question of due diligence arise as a result of an emergency situation. It is also critical that insurance policies be obtained and kept up to date to ensure eligibility for relevant emergency financial assistance. Emergencies often strike without warning and can cause major damage and financial loss.
In the modern age of growing litigation and climatic change, resulting in hotter and drier summers; it is now more important than ever that land owners and managers acknowledge the need for and implement wildfire mitigation measures, to both minimise the potential for fires to start upon or cross into land under their control or ownership and in the event of such fires, to provide protection to infrastructure, buildings and surrounding properties.
The object of the National Veld and Forest Fire Act, which is administered by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), is to prevent and combat wildfires (including veld, forest or mountain fires) throughout the country. It has a strong disaster risk reduction (DRR) focus through its provisions dealing with the establishment of a fire danger rating system (Chapter 3) and the prevention of wildfires through the construction of firebreaks (Chapter 4). Key to the functioning of this piece of legislation is the establishment and registration of fire protection associations (FPAs), which are associations of landowners, empowered to deal with all aspects of wildfire prevention and fire fighting (§ 3, NVFFA).
The Act serves as a good example of legislative drafting that integrates and takes into account existing institutions in terms of other statutory instruments in that it also provides for the Minister to register and recognise as FPAs a variety of already-existing committees, agencies or associations (§ 4(3), NVFFA). Whilst many thought that the establishment of FPAs led to the issue of institutional arrangements in terms of KPI 1 of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) being done and dusted, the reality is far from the truth.
Every year lives continue to be lost, property destroyed and habitats altered by uncontrollable wildfires. According to Lagadec “…the ability to deal with a crisis situation is largely dependent on the structures that have been developed before chaos arrives. The event can, in some ways, be considered as an abrupt and brutal audit; at a moment’s notice, everything that was left unprepared becomes a complex problem and every weakness comes rushing to the forefront.” (Preventing Chaos in a Crisis, Lagadec, p 54)
Disaster management frameworks and disaster management plans are the strategic mechanisms through which disaster management planning is coordinated and integrated across all spheres of government. One question arises whether comprehensive disaster management plans are being prepared by organs of state within provincial spheres of government and, if so, whether these are delivering any tangible benefits at community level. Importantly for purposes of DRR and emergency response, in many instances the area which fire brigade services are required to oversee has either doubled or even tripled, without a concomitant increase in resources, this has severe implications for the capacity of the service to respond in a timely fashion to a fire hazard.
In any emergency FPAs and municipalities will have to work together to deal with people with varying levels of preparedness and capacity to manage the situation. It appears that most people do not understand what is involved in effective planning or are unwilling to undertake the activity. Developing new ways of working with the community during emergencies offers new opportunities to improve community safety. Landowners and municipalities are strongly advised to develop emergency preparedness plans before an emergency occurs. Not having a preapproved contingency plan in place can only be described as a recipe for disaster.
Whilst the best fire management plans, the best fire intensity logic and the best economics model can work well for ‘normal seasons,’ they cannot account for abnormal or ‘blow up’ seasons when fire activity exceeds the limits of the FPA. An unfortunate fact of life for rural fires is that over 90 percent of the damage is caused by less than 10 percent of the fires.
The onset of an emergency creates a need for time-sensitive actions to save lives and property, as well as for action to begin stabilising the situation so that the jurisdiction can regroup. Such response actions include notifying emergency management personnel of the crisis, warning and evacuating or sheltering the population if possible, keeping the population informed, rescuing individuals and providing medical treatment, maintaining the rule of law, assessing damage, addressing mitigation issues that arise from response activities and even requesting help from outside the jurisdiction .
Against this type of event, the available means for reaction are inadequate. There is a lack of basic resources, especially in terms of specialist advice and communications. No one knows how to coordinate the different emergency plans that must be implemented by very diverse organisations. In the worst case, the defence systems in place or the conscientious application of the usual emergency action plans can backfire. Time is a crucial dimension in a crisis—immediately becomes a disconcerting parameter, for several reasons: The duration, how long does the triggering event, the acute critical phase, or the after-effects last? People, mechanisms, and organisations are worn down by long duration. The menace of lasting effects and, even worse, delayed effects, hangs over the post-accident landscape.
When a disaster occurs, the local municipality immediately ‘transfers’ management of the situation to the district municipality or province ‘for the sake of simplicity’. 101. This reflects a misunderstanding of the allocation of responsibilities in terms of the DMA because § 54 indicates that irrespective of whether a local state of disaster has been declared, the council of a district municipality is primarily responsible for the coordination and management of local disasters that occur in its area (§ 54(1)(b), DMA). A district and local municipality, however, may agree that the council of the local municipality is primarily responsible for the coordination and management of local disasters that occur in its area (§ 54(2), DMA). Further confounding this issue is that while district municipalities are thus primarily responsible for disaster response in local municipalities, local municipalities still bear obligations as regards integrating DRR into their development planning.
A declaration of a disaster allows for the relevant political head to prescribe extraordinary measures for emergency response and relief, such as the release of available resources (stores, equipment, vehicles or facilities, emergency services personnel); evacuation to temporary shelters of all or part of the population from the disaster-stricken or threatened area as well as the provision, control or use of temporary emergency accommodation; the regulation of traffic to, from or within the disaster-stricken or threatened area and the control and occupancy of premises in such area.
A disaster is a local disaster if it affects a single metropolitan; district or local municipality and the municipality concerned (or if it is a district or local municipality, the district municipality acting alone or with the assistance of local municipalities that fall within its area) is able to deal with it effectively. Wildfires are rapid moving events and one major challenge is funding, provisions on funding are set out in two provisions in Chapter 6 of the DMA, providing basic principles for the funding of disasters by the national, provincial and local spheres of government, which are set out in greater detail in the findings below. These provisions must, however, be read together with §§ 16 and 25 of the PFMA and § 29 of the MFMA, which provides for the use of funds by national and provincial levels of government in emergency situations. Section 10A of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act of 2000 is also essential for purposes of addressing the burning issue of the disaster management ‘unfunded mandate’ at the level of municipalities.
In addition to preplanning, an effective way to manage priority-setting during multiple incidents, is to have established a coordinating group beforehand composed of senior managers from the agencies and organisations involved, including community groups. This group will meet during the emergency to set priorities and agree on critical areas of concern. However, it should also meet throughout the year to confer on all aspects of concerns, such as standards, objectives, priorities and procedures for coordination and mutual assistance during emergencies.
Much of the work of fire management takes place before a fire starts. Relying on emergency funding during fire crises will not develop the properly trained and equipped organisation needed to safely and effectively respond.
• Pre-loss financing helps get mitigation measures on to the policy agenda. Often disaster risk management projects are not undertaken in isolation, but rather combined with other considerations bringing about improvements in conditions.
• Pre disaster budgeting for disasters emphasises the practice of recognizing the cost of public policy for disaster relief and recovery before the event.
• Post disaster budgeting for losses after the event may be regarded as financial reporting rather than budgeting or more charitably as revision to the budget plan in light of new information received.
• Post disaster assistance at current law levels is largely beyond the control of policy makers. After a disaster assistance policy is enacted and a loss has occurred, its cost is largely sunk.
A preapproved contingency plan also sets out procedures to be followed. Having a preapproved contingency plan with a standard deviation for payments to be authorised will allow a designated person such as a disaster manager/fire protection officer to authorise funding to a preset level without having to work through bureaucracy; such documentation should also ensure that emergency responders are recorded on municipal databases. Having this in place will speed up response and allow for responders to act immediately, helicopters can get airborne and attempt to contain a fire before it gets out of control.
Cooperation and partnerships are important in all aspects of fire, not just in suppression. Mutual assistance agreements are the most common in local and international use but many comprehensive arrangements provide for all types of fire management exchanges and cooperation, including joint planning and implementation of projects, training, technology exchange and research. To achieve a cooperative response to fires, each role player must have an understanding of the systems, structure, resources, capabilities and statutory obligations of the other agencies. Such an approach is only possible if people are empowered with the appropriate skills and knowledge. A standard operating procedure SOP) is ‘an organisational directive that establishes a standard course of action’. In other words, SOPs are written guidelines that explain what is expected and required of fire service personnel in performing their jobs. A comprehensive set of SOPs defines in significant detail how the department intends to operate. SOPs may be prepared for any function that fire service organisations perform, including administration (hiring, equipment maintenance, building inspections, rehabilitation, etc) and emergency response operations (fire suppression, medical services, hazardous materials response, etc). The procedures can be organised and presented in many different ways, depending on the FPA’s needs and preferences.
An incident action plan (IAP) formally documents incident goals, operational period objectives and the response strategy defined during response planning. It contains general tactics to achieve goals and objectives within the overall strategy, while providing important information on event and response parameters. Equally important, the IAP facilitates dissemination of critical information about the status of response assets themselves. Because incident parameters evolve, action plans must be revised on a regular basis (at least once per operational period) to maintain consistent, up-to-date guidance across the system. An incident organiser is designed to aid incident commanders in organising the fire and ensuring that all necessary procedures and checks have been made.
From a risk prevention and management point of view it is to our advantage to have as many land owners as possible actively involved in and managing their respective FPAs and the plans they make as a collective to manage fires, coordination and integration of all parties is the key to an effective planning. The occurrence and impacts of disasters can only be reduced by implementing effective initiatives focused on preplanning for disaster risk reduction as well as disaster response and relief.
This week’s featured Fire and Rescue International magazine article is: Institutional arrangements and wildfires written by Malcolm Procter (FRI Vol 3 no 3). We will be sharing more technical/research/tactical articles from Fire and Rescue International magazine on a weekly basis with our readers to assist in technology transfer. This will hopefully create an increased awareness, providing you with hands-on advice and guidance. All our magazines are available free of charge in PDF format on our website and online at ISSUU. We also provide all technical articles as a free download in our article archive on our website.
Institutional arrangements and wildfires
By Malcolm Procter
When wildfires roll across the landscape, many are lost in thoughts of total loss and devastation especially when coping with the loss of livestock and infrastructure, yet one important facet that is often overlooked is that institutional arrangements put in place before a fire starts are a critical element of any fire prevention programme and can reduce response times drastically.
Wildfire management is not only an emergency task, the preventive task could be even more important, being better to avoid risk of a fire ignition before it start or minimise its hazard, than later try to extinct it. Wildfire management is not a seasonal task but something that requires attention all year round. Recent fires in the eastern Free State has reinforced the fact that fire has the potential to be one of the most destructive forces on earth cannot be denied. Every year lives are lost, property destroyed and habitats altered by uncontrollable wildfires.
Although humans can do little or nothing to change the incidence or intensity of most wildfires, they have an important role to play in ensuring that wildfires are not converted into disasters by their own actions. Planning for wildfires is a complex task. Having a comprehensive contingency plan may be useful should the question of due diligence arise as a result of an emergency situation. It is also critical that insurance policies be obtained and kept up to date to ensure eligibility for relevant emergency financial assistance. Emergencies often strike without warning and can cause major damage and financial loss.
In the modern age of growing litigation and climatic change, resulting in hotter and drier summers; it is now more important than ever that land owners and managers acknowledge the need for and implement wildfire mitigation measures, to both minimise the potential for fires to start upon or cross into land under their control or ownership and in the event of such fires, to provide protection to infrastructure, buildings and surrounding properties.
The object of the National Veld and Forest Fire Act, which is administered by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), is to prevent and combat wildfires (including veld, forest or mountain fires) throughout the country. It has a strong disaster risk reduction (DRR) focus through its provisions dealing with the establishment of a fire danger rating system (Chapter 3) and the prevention of wildfires through the construction of firebreaks (Chapter 4). Key to the functioning of this piece of legislation is the establishment and registration of fire protection associations (FPAs), which are associations of landowners, empowered to deal with all aspects of wildfire prevention and fire fighting (§ 3, NVFFA).
The Act serves as a good example of legislative drafting that integrates and takes into account existing institutions in terms of other statutory instruments in that it also provides for the Minister to register and recognise as FPAs a variety of already-existing committees, agencies or associations (§ 4(3), NVFFA). Whilst many thought that the establishment of FPAs led to the issue of institutional arrangements in terms of KPI 1 of the Disaster Management Act (DMA) being done and dusted, the reality is far from the truth.
Every year lives continue to be lost, property destroyed and habitats altered by uncontrollable wildfires. According to Lagadec “…the ability to deal with a crisis situation is largely dependent on the structures that have been developed before chaos arrives. The event can, in some ways, be considered as an abrupt and brutal audit; at a moment’s notice, everything that was left unprepared becomes a complex problem and every weakness comes rushing to the forefront.” (Preventing Chaos in a Crisis, Lagadec, p 54)
Disaster management frameworks and disaster management plans are the strategic mechanisms through which disaster management planning is coordinated and integrated across all spheres of government. One question arises whether comprehensive disaster management plans are being prepared by organs of state within provincial spheres of government and, if so, whether these are delivering any tangible benefits at community level. Importantly for purposes of DRR and emergency response, in many instances the area which fire brigade services are required to oversee has either doubled or even tripled, without a concomitant increase in resources, this has severe implications for the capacity of the service to respond in a timely fashion to a fire hazard.
In any emergency FPAs and municipalities will have to work together to deal with people with varying levels of preparedness and capacity to manage the situation. It appears that most people do not understand what is involved in effective planning or are unwilling to undertake the activity. Developing new ways of working with the community during emergencies offers new opportunities to improve community safety. Landowners and municipalities are strongly advised to develop emergency preparedness plans before an emergency occurs. Not having a preapproved contingency plan in place can only be described as a recipe for disaster.
Whilst the best fire management plans, the best fire intensity logic and the best economics model can work well for ‘normal seasons,’ they cannot account for abnormal or ‘blow up’ seasons when fire activity exceeds the limits of the FPA. An unfortunate fact of life for rural fires is that over 90 percent of the damage is caused by less than 10 percent of the fires.
The onset of an emergency creates a need for time-sensitive actions to save lives and property, as well as for action to begin stabilising the situation so that the jurisdiction can regroup. Such response actions include notifying emergency management personnel of the crisis, warning and evacuating or sheltering the population if possible, keeping the population informed, rescuing individuals and providing medical treatment, maintaining the rule of law, assessing damage, addressing mitigation issues that arise from response activities and even requesting help from outside the jurisdiction .
Against this type of event, the available means for reaction are inadequate. There is a lack of basic resources, especially in terms of specialist advice and communications. No one knows how to coordinate the different emergency plans that must be implemented by very diverse organisations. In the worst case, the defence systems in place or the conscientious application of the usual emergency action plans can backfire. Time is a crucial dimension in a crisis—immediately becomes a disconcerting parameter, for several reasons: The duration, how long does the triggering event, the acute critical phase, or the after-effects last? People, mechanisms, and organisations are worn down by long duration. The menace of lasting effects and, even worse, delayed effects, hangs over the post-accident landscape.
When a disaster occurs, the local municipality immediately ‘transfers’ management of the situation to the district municipality or province ‘for the sake of simplicity’. 101. This reflects a misunderstanding of the allocation of responsibilities in terms of the DMA because § 54 indicates that irrespective of whether a local state of disaster has been declared, the council of a district municipality is primarily responsible for the coordination and management of local disasters that occur in its area (§ 54(1)(b), DMA). A district and local municipality, however, may agree that the council of the local municipality is primarily responsible for the coordination and management of local disasters that occur in its area (§ 54(2), DMA). Further confounding this issue is that while district municipalities are thus primarily responsible for disaster response in local municipalities, local municipalities still bear obligations as regards integrating DRR into their development planning.
A declaration of a disaster allows for the relevant political head to prescribe extraordinary measures for emergency response and relief, such as the release of available resources (stores, equipment, vehicles or facilities, emergency services personnel); evacuation to temporary shelters of all or part of the population from the disaster-stricken or threatened area as well as the provision, control or use of temporary emergency accommodation; the regulation of traffic to, from or within the disaster-stricken or threatened area and the control and occupancy of premises in such area.
A disaster is a local disaster if it affects a single metropolitan; district or local municipality and the municipality concerned (or if it is a district or local municipality, the district municipality acting alone or with the assistance of local municipalities that fall within its area) is able to deal with it effectively. Wildfires are rapid moving events and one major challenge is funding, provisions on funding are set out in two provisions in Chapter 6 of the DMA, providing basic principles for the funding of disasters by the national, provincial and local spheres of government, which are set out in greater detail in the findings below. These provisions must, however, be read together with §§ 16 and 25 of the PFMA and § 29 of the MFMA, which provides for the use of funds by national and provincial levels of government in emergency situations. Section 10A of the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act of 2000 is also essential for purposes of addressing the burning issue of the disaster management ‘unfunded mandate’ at the level of municipalities.
In addition to preplanning, an effective way to manage priority-setting during multiple incidents, is to have established a coordinating group beforehand composed of senior managers from the agencies and organisations involved, including community groups. This group will meet during the emergency to set priorities and agree on critical areas of concern. However, it should also meet throughout the year to confer on all aspects of concerns, such as standards, objectives, priorities and procedures for coordination and mutual assistance during emergencies.
Much of the work of fire management takes place before a fire starts. Relying on emergency funding during fire crises will not develop the properly trained and equipped organisation needed to safely and effectively respond.
• Pre-loss financing helps get mitigation measures on to the policy agenda. Often disaster risk management projects are not undertaken in isolation, but rather combined with other considerations bringing about improvements in conditions.
• Pre disaster budgeting for disasters emphasises the practice of recognizing the cost of public policy for disaster relief and recovery before the event.
• Post disaster budgeting for losses after the event may be regarded as financial reporting rather than budgeting or more charitably as revision to the budget plan in light of new information received.
• Post disaster assistance at current law levels is largely beyond the control of policy makers. After a disaster assistance policy is enacted and a loss has occurred, its cost is largely sunk.
A preapproved contingency plan also sets out procedures to be followed. Having a preapproved contingency plan with a standard deviation for payments to be authorised will allow a designated person such as a disaster manager/fire protection officer to authorise funding to a preset level without having to work through bureaucracy; such documentation should also ensure that emergency responders are recorded on municipal databases. Having this in place will speed up response and allow for responders to act immediately, helicopters can get airborne and attempt to contain a fire before it gets out of control.
Cooperation and partnerships are important in all aspects of fire, not just in suppression. Mutual assistance agreements are the most common in local and international use but many comprehensive arrangements provide for all types of fire management exchanges and cooperation, including joint planning and implementation of projects, training, technology exchange and research. To achieve a cooperative response to fires, each role player must have an understanding of the systems, structure, resources, capabilities and statutory obligations of the other agencies. Such an approach is only possible if people are empowered with the appropriate skills and knowledge. A standard operating procedure SOP) is ‘an organisational directive that establishes a standard course of action’. In other words, SOPs are written guidelines that explain what is expected and required of fire service personnel in performing their jobs. A comprehensive set of SOPs defines in significant detail how the department intends to operate. SOPs may be prepared for any function that fire service organisations perform, including administration (hiring, equipment maintenance, building inspections, rehabilitation, etc) and emergency response operations (fire suppression, medical services, hazardous materials response, etc). The procedures can be organised and presented in many different ways, depending on the FPA’s needs and preferences.
An incident action plan (IAP) formally documents incident goals, operational period objectives and the response strategy defined during response planning. It contains general tactics to achieve goals and objectives within the overall strategy, while providing important information on event and response parameters. Equally important, the IAP facilitates dissemination of critical information about the status of response assets themselves. Because incident parameters evolve, action plans must be revised on a regular basis (at least once per operational period) to maintain consistent, up-to-date guidance across the system. An incident organiser is designed to aid incident commanders in organising the fire and ensuring that all necessary procedures and checks have been made.
From a risk prevention and management point of view it is to our advantage to have as many land owners as possible actively involved in and managing their respective FPAs and the plans they make as a collective to manage fires, coordination and integration of all parties is the key to an effective planning. The occurrence and impacts of disasters can only be reduced by implementing effective initiatives focused on preplanning for disaster risk reduction as well as disaster response and relief.