Profile: Ken Thompson, NSW Fire Brigade dep commissioner on climate change
NSW Fire brigade deputy commissioner Ken Thompson says climate change is now a major factor in his organisation’s operational planning
What are your primary responsibilities in the NSW Fire Brigade?
As deputy commissioner, capability and support, my job is to make sure frontline firefighters directly involved in providing our services to the community have the highest level of support possible. This includes IT, vehicles, communications, training, and the building and maintenance of the 400 fire stations and other properties we operate across NSW.
I’m also responsible for making sure that fire and life safety building codes are incorporated into new building developments and that they are maintained. These are an important component of reducing the danger risk to firefighters and the community. I also oversee the development of our public education programs, which are largely delivered by frontline firefighters across the state as part of our community risk reduction strategy. Furthermore, I oversee the development and implementation of our corporate and operational risk management strategies, our business continuity planning, and our environmental sustainability initiatives.
What elements of your role do you find the most challenging?
Currently, it’s keeping abreast of the latest developments in the area of climate change from organisations such as the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change and others such as Australia’s own CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, and the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre. We use the results of their research to inform our own climate change risk management strategies.
I don’t think many organisations truly appreciate the significance of climate change. They are yet to factor it into their strategic planning and risk management programs; nor have they factored it into their business continuity plans. This is a big challenge for any organisation and it must be given a high priority on any corporate risk register – both in terms of threats and opportunities.
Within the fire and emergency services industry we not only have to consider our own CO2 footprint and the measures we need to take to reduce it as good corporate citizens, but we also need to factor it into our operational capabilities to address the projected increases in frequency and severity of natural hazard events such as bushfires, severe storms, droughts, heat waves and flooding. We also need to consider projected water shortages and the higher community expectations that are emerging about the responsible use of this increasingly scarce resource.
These are significant challenges that are now being addressed in many parts of my organisation. They also present cultural challenges: we’re asking people in our organisation to make fundamental changes to the way they go about doing their work, as well as in their private lives since the need for long-term behavioural change on this issue doesn’t start and finish in the workplace.
Do you need to conduct risk assessments and continuity planning in your role, or does the fire service in general need to do this?
The NSW Fire Brigade has always been a risk management organisation with a strong emphasis on business continuity planning as well. The nature of our business requires that we have a strong safety culture: managing the risks associated with our working environment is a very big part of our organisational culture.
Unlike most workplaces, ours is extremely diverse because we might never see a particular workplace before we attend an emergency there. However, once we arrive we take control of the site, at which time we become legally responsible not only for the safety of our own staff, but for the safety of staff from all the other organisations that attend such as police, ambulance, and utilities as well as the site’s occupants themselves. This places an extremely high level of OH&S responsibility on all of us.
This means we must develop our risk management plans well ahead of an event. Firefighters spend a lot of time identifying and inspecting the risks in their local communities and developing what we call Pre-Incident Plans (PIPs) to help guide their decision-making when an incident does take place.
Also, because our working environment is very dynamic during an emergency, we’ve developed a risk assessment system called Dynamic Risk Assessment. This allows firefighters to update their risk assessments while an emergency is unfolding to help guide their decision-making throughout that emergency. These also help guide the development of future PIPs in the Post-Incident Analysis (PIA) phase, which takes place after the emergency has been concluded.
How much does climate change feature in your planning?
We are required under our own legislation to conduct all our activities in an environmentally sustainable manner. Furthermore, we are developing strategies to support the NSW Government’s environmental policies. For example, environmental protection is one of the five goals in our Corporate and Annual Operating Plans and we’ve developed specific strategies to address the impacts of climate change on our organisation and the community.
How has climate change had an impact on your role specifically and the NSW Fire Service's role in general?
Along with our Commissioner and the rest of the corporate executive team, I’ve taken a very strong leadership role within my organisation and the fire and emergency services industry nationally on this issue. Because of my position within our organisation and my passion for environmental issues, I was invited by the Australian Conservation Foundation in September 2007 to be trained by former US Vice-President and Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore on the presentation he used in An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, I’ve delivered the presentation to about 1000 people in my own organisation as well as senior executives in other public and private sector organisations.
I now act in an advisory role to the State Emergency Management Committee (SEMC) through a Climate Change Working Group. This group is assisting the SEMC to factor climate change projections into the state’s disaster plans to make sure they reflect the likely demands of the consequences of climate change on the state’s emergency services and the many government agencies that support them during disasters.
The NSW Fire Brigade also participates in Earth Hour, and encourages frontline firefighters to participate in Clean Up Australia Day. We are also a signatory to the 3 CBD’s Program, which commits businesses in the Sydney CBD, North Sydney, and Parramatta to reduce their CO2 emissions by improving energy efficiencies in their buildings and thereby reducing their CO2 emissions.
Have you had to change staffing levels or the equipment you purchase; the type of experience you are looking for in new recruits or the training you must provide, for instance?
Some of our initiatives include making sure all our new fire engines are fitted with the latest Euro IV engines that meet the more stringent European emissions standards (we have about 1000 fire engines in our fleet); installing rainwater tanks in all new and refurbished fire stations; installing low-flow showerheads in all new and existing fire stations; water recycling systems at new fire stations and at our workshop complex at Greenacre in Sydney; trialling solar power at a number of fire stations; researching new firefighting systems that use much less water than traditional systems; and off-setting emissions from those vehicles for which we can’t use a greener alternative because of operational needs.
We’ve also introduced new training programs to make sure firefighters have the skills and knowledge they need to work in conditions with a different risk profile. For example, over the past 15 years we’ve become much more involved in severe weather events. This means firefighters often work under very different conditions to those they’re used to working in. It’s also meant the development of new IT systems to collect the different types of information that are needed during these events and to be able to communicate this information quickly to our own staff, as well as between the NSW Fire Brigade and other emergency service.
We’re also using research by the Bushfire Co-operative Research Centre into the projected impacts of climate change on the frequency and severity of bushfires across NSW. Their research is being factored into our planning and policies, equipment purchases, and our training. In collaboration with the Australasian Fire Authorities Council, the NSW Fire Brigade is actively involved in developing a funding bid for a new national Co-operative Research Centre called Fire: Environment & Society in which research into the effects of climate change on fires will be a large component between 2009 and 2016.
How do you see climate change affecting your role and that of the fire brigade in future?
I believe climate change is the biggest strategic issue facing fire and emergency services at the state, national, and international levels at this time and that it will be for many years to come as we not only mitigate our own impact on the climate but also adapt to the unintended consequences of unwittingly altering the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 300 years.
Ken Thompson is deputy commissioner, capability and support in the NSW Fire Brigade
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