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Mike Grant returns from North American Study Tour

Monday 29 October 2007, 3:27PM

By Southland District Council

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Mike Grant in Black Hawk Helicopter
Mike Grant in Black Hawk Helicopter Credit: Southland District Council

SOUTHLAND

Ensuring that land managers play an active role in fire management was one of thekey things Mike Grant learnt on his recent month long study tour to North America.

“All the agencies in both Canada and the United States said that it was vital to havefire management as a function of land management, but I see a risk under the currentNew Zealand review that fire management could be taken away from the land managers and they won’t have any say in what happens after that”, he said.

The Principal Rural Fire Officer Southern Rural Fire District said that this trip, fromthe start of September to early October, was all focused on fire management. It was Mike’s second trip to North America, following his fire fighting work in the north-western United States last August.

The study tour group included seven Australians and three New Zealanders. It started with eight days in Canada including time in Victoria, Kamloops and Jasper National Park in British Columbia.

The group went on to the main Canadian fireresearch operation at Edmonton in Alberta, which is where the system on which the New Zealand fire danger rating system was developed.

He then had three weeks in the US, starting in Missoula, Montana looking at multi-agency regional co-ordination and use of fire in the landscape.

This was followed bytravel to the US wildland fire national coordination centre in Boise, Idaho.

Over 500 staff from all US land management agencies work there and it is also one of the mainfire fighting equipment caches for the country.

The agencies in the US are having similar staffing problems to New Zealand, withmany staff leaving and not managing to recruit more staff to fill the gaps, he said.

From Boise he went to Redding in Northern California to see how they co-ordinated their fire fighting effort.

Then in Southern California, and Los Angeles Countyfocusing on wildland urban interface issues where people build in fire prone environments.

“One of the most interesting things in the United States was the level of co-ordinationthey have between the different fire fighting agencies and different regions and that’s something we do pretty well, but I think we can improve on in New Zealand.” 

The tour spent a day and a half with the Los Angeles County Fire Department (whichis currently battling major fires) and Mike had a flight in one of its three Black HawkHelicopters, part of a fleet of nine aircraft.

LA County has a budget of $US850 million for fire fighting in an area of only 142,000 ha, but with a population of 4 million versus the Southern Rural area of 3.5 million ha, but with a population of less than 100,000 residents.

Mike Grant said that another huge issue is the wildland urban interface where you have people building property in forestry areas in the US.

“I think that there has to be careful planning for development of this kind in New Zealand”, he said.

The Department of Internal Affairs is due to report back on its review of fire and rescue services in New Zealand by early December. Mike Grant’s study tour was funded by the Southern Rural Fire Authority