Wildfires
The Garden Route in flames: Chapter 1 A book by Dr Neels de Ronde
T
he following article is the first in a series of excerpts from a book written by Dr Neels de Ronde, The Garden Route in flames. Dr de Ronde lives in Sedgefield in the Southern Cape, South Africa and has done extensive research in the field of land management and wildfire prevention. Dr de Ronde gave permission to Fire and Rescue International to publish the book in the magazine in separate sections for the benefit of all forestry and wildfire managers, fire protection associations and land owners in order to gain insight and an understanding of the intricacies that form the basis of such extreme fires and how it can be prevented, highlighting effective fuel management and fire prevention measures. About Dr Neels de Ronde Dr de Ronde, well-known and respected wildfire specialist and consultant has a life-time career in forestry, veld and forest fire ecology, management and wildfire investigations and has been building up a wealth of local experience
Utilising the mobile application will send automated updates to key stakeholders via push notifications and allows responders to capture evidence such as photos, videos, voice notes, occurrence book entries as well as plot the incident area for instance a burnt area, with fire line divisions, automatically synchronised with all other participating persons on the incident, as well as disaster management via the situation report overview. The mobile application allows for offline mode capture for those without data or a connection, which can be uploaded at a later time. The Uniti system will ensure that there is better data collation and reporting for emergency services. Utilising the system, municipalities will be able to easily determine daily, weekly, monthly and yearly statistics as well as calculate the accumulated year on year statistics. It enables disaster management to have oversight of happenings during times of disaster in a centralised manner. Volume 5 | No 3
he wishes to share, particularly as he has found a lack of knowledge about the subject in the industry. Not only has he found that incorrect fire management actions have sometimes more than doubled fire damage but he has observed (and many times investigated) the loss of life of more than 50 fire fighters and other persons.
The CW DMC will be able to load all role players and advisory forum members on to the system and distribute early warnings and advisories via both email and text message. Following the conclusion of the Ward Based Risk Assessments the CWDMC has undertaken, all ward risk assessments will be loaded
on to the system to allow for a dynamic risk register. The Cape Winelands District Municipality will provide the system to the local municipalities for a period of two years as part of their assistance to local municipalities for disaster management capacity.
The Uniti system will ensure that there is better data collation and reporting for emergency services. FIRE AND RESCUE INTERNATIONAL | 23
