An insight into the Alexandra Incident Control Centre

THE Longwood fire started on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 7, with strong and gusty winds on the following days spreading the fire widely across the region.

It burnt 142,000 hectares and had a perimeter of 330 kilometres.

Dave Bowdern, Incident Controller with Forest Fire Management (FFMVic), said, “When the Longwood fire started on Wednesday, we at Alexandra Incident Control Centre (ICC) were to take on any fires within the region apart from the Walwa fire that was already underway.”

“On the Wednesday, other fires started, one of which was the Longwood Fire, which the Alexandra ICC took control of within a couple of hours after it ignited.”

While traditionally, FFM tends to focus more on forest fires, whereas farmland is more CFA, this was a different scenario. Dave explained, “The incident control centre is tenure-blind, in this particular case, for as much as it may have been filled with probably half CFA, half FFM. In times like that, i.e. with the levels of preparedness that we put in place, the ICC are just in charge of a geographical area and any fires within that area because we have an incident control team sort of ready to go. It tends to be tenure blind as it was on that day.”

The fire escalated quickly from its ignition point, and Dave added, “It was also in really difficult terrain and difficult topography. We have fought fires roughly in that area if I hark back to the Creightons Creek fire and the like.

There were untraditional weather conditions with respect to the wind and also the way the fire was behaving for the days prior to the Friday when it really took off. The untraditional winds were from the south-east.

“We were also finding that clearly any of the fuel in this particular case, like the grass and also the bush to some degree, was fully available.

So that meant that any slight influence, whether it be from the weather or the topography, the shape of the land, the fire was just hungry and took the course of action that it did, just based on the winds and also the winds funnelling through the tricky topography up there in those parts of the hills. It was quite…