The gendering of fire

As mentioned in Chapter 4, the Operations Officer and his unit oversee and coordinate the ground crew. His role is the tasking and application of resources to resolve the incident. Here, this operations officer is talking about an incident that started with a lightning strike. Based on weather reports, he knew that there were going to be what he called some ‘tough days’. A tough day is when incident management personnel are faced with one obstacle after another, typically influenced by bad ‘fire weather’ which was the case in this instance. In this case, the weather was

unfavourable because of the gusty winds, the increasing temperature and, most likely, low humidity levels. With this in mind, firefighters were

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conducting a back burn3 to contain the fire by stopping it from

approaching and crossing the road. In this instance, the Operations Officer believes the incident was managed well.

... we really wanted to stop the fire coming from the north and crossing a road because having been there in the past when it gets across that side of the road, the southern side, you’re in for the long haul because there’s no place to pull it [the fire] up and it goes fairly strong, it’s a cow of a place to try to deal with it. So that was the priority to stop it [the fire] there and [to] also protect (name of place) itself. So we were dealing with the whole of the fire, but I think it must have been the Sunday forecast was really, really atrocious – mid 30s with extremely strong winds coming out of the north, low humidity... the north-eastern perimeter of the fire with a lot of back burning, and late in the afternoon [the] wind was supposed to turn and I think it got out to about 37°C blowing a gale, and she [the fire] was doing runs everywhere, quite impressive. Then the wind shifted... I went up in the air [in a helicopter] and had a look and she [the fire] ripped down... there’s a big belt of vegetation, mixed eucalypt, tea-tree and that kind of stuff. When she [the fire] hit it just exploded and so we didn’t have many people there so I got the other helicopter up to start hitting it with the buckets... it was all hands on deck for a while. She [the fire] jumped the road and then went totally to a spot we ignored, because concentrating with the weather conditions and everything. Anyway, we really scrambled and we pulled it off. It could have gone either way but it was something that I felt, I felt really good that we were able to respond to that situation [Parks_02].

The Operations Officer’s story above revealed the fire was difficult to contain because the location that was engulfed by fire was ‘a cow of a place’. The terrain in which the fire was located is steep and dense, which

3

Back burning is a way of reducing the amount of fuel during a bushfire by lighting small fires in front of a main fire so that the small fires burn backward towards the main fire, therefore there will

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makes it difficult to access. Although the Operations Officer was aware of the location and anticipated what might prevail, the changing wind

direction added more complexity to the situation.

It is interesting to note the language the Operations Officer used when describing the fire. The fire in this instance (and many others) is, in fact, gendered as ‘she’. Gendering in fighting bushfires has been long standing in Australia with firefighting being perceived as a masculine activity. This is due, in part, to the way in which society perceives innate differences (e.g., risk taking behaviours) between men and women and the traditional gender roles in the division of labour (Tyler, Fairbrother, Chaplin, Mees Philips & Toh 2010). The language used, and the narrative in the above quote, however, reveals something about the relationship between the firefighter and the fire. He was very impressed by the way ‘she’ moved

‘doing runs everywhere’. This, it can be argued, is somewhat akin to a tantalising woman which had gained his constant attention with a seemingly infinite capacity to consume his energies. Even though the Operations Officer is engaged in ‘her’ activity, he never understood everything there was to know about her. ‘She’ ‘went totally to a spot we ignored’. It can be argued ‘she’ is dangerous and will turn on her rival at any moment.

The Operations Officer was not alone in this battle. ‘It was all hands on deck for a while’. According to Brown (1998), individuals do not work in isolation, as has already been argued, incident management work

outcomes are, more often than not, achieved through interdependent efforts. Although there were tough days in managing this incident, there is evidencethat there were shared feelings of being energised, which assisted

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in gaining control. As the participant said, ‘we really scrambled andwe pulled it off’.

It is argued, in this instance, that the emotional energy was contagious within the group (Barsade 2002) and that high emotional energy assisted with the constructive results (Mann, Varey & Button 2000; Isen & Reeve 2005). The incident was over and he ‘felt really good that we were able to respond to that situation’. He felt good about his work and, with it, about himself and others. It could be contended that he knew that others

appreciated his expertise and was aware of his ability. He had gained the identity of a competent operations officer. As Brown (1998) contends, social relationships are an important component in the sense of self because it is through culture and interaction with others that one’s self perception is constructed (Forgas & Williams 2002). In mastering the challenges that incident management personnel face, personnel also experience satisfaction and a sense of achievement. This will be discussed in the following section.

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Figure 5.2 Steep and dense terrain (Source: TFS)