Are you a fire behaviour analyst tasked with preparing a case study of a cropland fire? Research from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC has developed a guide to provide fire behaviour analysts with the basic set of methods, tools and information necessary to create a meaningful summary of the behaviour and spread of fires in croplands.
A guide to reconstructing cropland fires – data collection, collation and analysis for case study construction was written by Dr Andrew Sullivan, Dr Miguel Cruz and Dr Matt Plucinski from CSIRO for the CRC Tactical Research project, A guide to develop bushfire case studies – a case study of cropland fires.
This project was a collaboration between the CRC, CSIRO, Country Fire Authority, Country Fire Service, Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning Victoria and New South Wales Rural Fire Service. It examined how fires behave in crops and stubble to develop the procedural guide for developing consistent bushfire investigation case studies for fire behaviour analysts across Australia.
The information and examples in A guide to reconstructing cropland fires are specific to fires burning in croplands; however, the methods and tools can be applied to fires burning in any vegetation type after considering the differences in the applicable factors and conditions.
This guide provides background information on the importance of undertaking case studies of fires for developing a case study library from which a range of lessons can be learned—those related to the incident itself, but also lessons that can be gained with perspective afterwards. The guide covers:
- a discussion of fire behaviour in cropland fuels and the factors that affect fire perimeter shape and growth
- a discussion of the effects of suppression efforts, their effectiveness and likely impact on fire shape and spread
- an explanation of the condition and state of fuels and landscape features across which a cropland fire burns
- detailed information on how and why weather drives fires to spread the way they do
- an assessment of the reliability of data collected for the purpose of compiling a case study
- suggestions for documenting fire events, building the chronology and development of the incident and writing succinct case studies
- checklists of essential information to be collected during and immediately after the fire
- suggested observations to be collected from first attack personnel
- prompter questions for firefighter debriefs and eyewitness interviews.