Should we worry about Australia’s aerial firefighting assets?

So what will that mean for Australia, and how worried should we be? To learn more, I sat down with Josephine Stirling, the deputy director of the National Aerial Firefighting Centre (NAFC). NAFC is the national body responsible for procuring, placing and coordinating aircraft and crew for aerial firefighting across Australia on behalf of states and territory emergency services. Aviation is a “really important tool in the greater toolbox of fire response,” Stirling tells me. “It might not put fires out, but it helps to control the spread and, importantly, gathers information for the firefighters on the ground about how the fire is behaving to help shape their response.” 

“So far in 2021 and 2022, our resources have been focused in Western Australia, where we are seeing higher-than-usual fire activity,” she explains. “So our domestic firefighting resources are being kept quite busy. On the other side of the country, the east coast has instead been battling a rainy summer and flooding. We have seen some grass fires in both NSW and Victoria.” However, Stirling says that NAFC hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a “late run” for further fire activity across the east. “That’s based on whether or not we get some hot, dry weather later this summer that dries off all the new growth that has come in after all this rain, which could fuel fires. And that’s, of course, a consideration going into 2023 and beyond.”

In the long term, NAFC has to prepare for what a changing climate means for us back home in terms of resourcing. “Fire trends are certainly heading in a direction toward potential longer seasons in both hemispheres as a result of climate change,” she says. “We’ve already seen that play out to an extent during 2019 and 2020 with Black Summer here in Australia and similarly in California that same year. Since then, we’ve seen milder conditions, particularly on our eastern coast, which has instead battled with floods. So our work is extremely important to ensure we’re prepared for all eventualities.”

Darker days

Two years of rainy summers at the hands of La Nina have not been enough to wash away the memory of the horrendous Black Summer bushfires that ravaged communities in all corners of Australia. It saw the decimation of over 25 million hectares of land across the nation, destroyed 3,500 homes, and directly or indirectly claimed the lives of over 450 people. However, Black Summer was far from a ‘one off’ crisis. 

For years, scientists and fire chiefs have warned that the impact of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change is set to see global fire seasons grow harsher and extend into traditionally milder months. Stuart Ellis, chief executive of the Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council, said in 2018 that authorities in Australia and the US were already phasing out the term “fire season” and, instead, adopting an understanding that “fire impacts us all year round.”

He said that while there’s no question that the pooling of firefighting resources has worked well for many years, Australia could soon face a problem if resources that were slated to aid us are required to remain on US soil due to longer seasons. Later, in 2020, NSW RFS Inspector Ben Shepherd said, “Traditionally, we’ve been able to share resources between the US and Australia, including helicopters and planes.” However, he noted that with Californian fires trending into the cooler months, those resources could be “held in the States” to cover their domestic need. “It’s an issue for us”.

The impact of pooling resources amid a heating climate and intensifying fire seasons globally was a concern raised amid the 2020 Royal Commission into National Natural Disasters Arrangements – colloquially known as the Bushfires Royal Commission – which was launched soon after the bushfire crisis. The Royal Commission’s final report notes the importance of resource sharing and states that “lengthening and overlapping natural disaster seasons are testing these arrangements”. It continues: “Similarly, overlapping seasons have been recently observed between the northern and southern hemisphere”, which “limits Australia’s ability to rely on international resource sharing to meet domestic requirements.” The final report also noted “some instances” during the Black Summer bushfire season where “requests for aerial firefighting assistance were not fulfilled because there were no aircraft available”.

Indeed, the sheer magnitude of Black Summer involved an “unprecedented” number of aircraft for aerial firefighting, which posed “significant” logistical challenges for Australia’s aerial firefighting resources and NAFC. According to NAFC’s annual report, the country experienced “limited availability of aircraft and crews” at certain times during critical missions. “The very high number of hours flown per day, in some cases over extended periods, resulted in some aircraft very quickly reaching maintenance limits that have not been encountered during a bushfire season,” it reads. “Similarly, pilots reached statutory flight and duty time limitations that would not have applied typically.”

Due to these issues, NAFC says that the 2019-20 bushfire season also required an “unprecedented level of resource sharing” in Australia, both among states and with overseas partners. Over 500 firefighters, pilots, and other specialists were flown into Australia from North America in 2019 and 2020. Meanwhile, 66 aircraft were brought in from overseas to assist Australia’s bushfire response. Of these, 10 were fixed-wing Large Air Tankers, which can carry and drop up to 15,000 litres of water or fire retardant, tasked to join Australia’s own single Large Air Tanker, owned by the NSW RFS. Having contracted 147 aircraft ahead of the 2019-20 season, an additional 21 aircraft were procured on short notice amid the crisis to increase capacity, bringing the total fleet used during this year to 168 – the largest since NAFC’s inception in 2003. Meanwhile, as Australia continued to battle through the end of its longest and harshest bushfire crisis of a generation, California began its own worst wildfire season on record.

Despite this, Stirling says the concept of ‘pooled’ firefighting resources between the US and Australia shouldn’t be a major cause for concern, even amid lengthening fire seasons. “The idea of us pooling resources can often be misunderstood in the media and by the public,” she says. “There is a strong and supportive relationship between places like the US and Canada and Australia when fighting fires. Australia is known globally for its bushfire response. So our fire chiefs will often communicate with their counterparts overseas, and we have been known to send hundreds of firefighters overseas to help fight fires during times of crisis. However, we don’t really ‘pool’ resources when it comes to aircraft.

“What we do at NAFC is quite methodical,” Stirling says. “We organise tender processes and award contracts to companies with aircraft and personnel, like pilots or engineers. Sometimes those companies also hold complimentary contracts with other countries, like the US, Canada, or Greece.” Stirling says that contracts extend for five years at a time with pre-arranged dates for delivery and disposal. “So it’s up to that company, should they choose to offer the same aircraft up to two or more countries over the contract period, how they are going to manage the movement of that aircraft, complete the maintenance, and get it delivered to another client on time.”

Because of this, the risk that Australia would be left without enough aerial resources during a fire season is minimal, Stirling says. “NAFC’s role is to lease resources on behalf of our members, which are the states and territories, and then facilitate the sharing of those resources between the members. So we look at what aircraft we need, either fixed-wing or rotor, their size, how many we need, and where they will be located. We are governed by a group of fire chiefs and commissioners, so we have the best minds for pulling together the information we need to make our tender decisions.

“On top of that, we base all our contract decisions on our latest seasonal outlook reports, based on the latest scientific research and compiled in collaboration with state fire services, the Bureau of Meteorology, and national environmental services. We also have levers we can pull in a crisis to locate additional resources as we did in 2019-20.” An additional 21 aircraft were obtained on short notice by NAFC to meet unexpected demand, and the organisation has since increased its total number of contracted firefighting aircraft to 161, not including assets owned by individual states and territories. “Most importantly though, is that a vast majority of our fleet is owned and operated in Australia. Of the 168 aircraft used over Black Summer, a majority of those were already based in Australia. The only major aircraft that we bring in from overseas are Large Air Tankers (LAT) because, at the time, Australia only had one of those.” She refers to a modified 737 ‘fireliner’ named ‘Marie Bashir’, owned by the New South Wales RFS.

The Royal Commission has recommended that Australia invest further in sovereign capabilities so that not only are we less reliant on tendering the use of overseas-based aircraft but also to allow Australia to offer additional support to our friends overseas. “We know Western Australia has already begun investing in its own LAT fleet,” Stirling says. “Importantly, NSW was able to lend its 737 to the United States in 2021 to assist firebombing efforts across the US. So that just shows what we’re able to do with these assets once we have them.”