Department of Fire and Emergency Services (DFES) commissioner Darren Klemm has had more than 29 years of experience in fire and emergency services. Beginning his firefighting career in South Australia, Mr Klemm moved to Western Australia and joined the WA Fire Brigades board in 1993, serving with various metro stations. During his career he was confronted with the deadly Esperance and Yarloop/Waroona fires in 2015 and 2016 and was deployed to Victoria for the deadly Black Saturday bushfires. Appointed as DFES Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner in September 2017, Mr Klemm has played a key role in the structural and cultural reform of DFES from being a solely response-based organisation to having a mitigation and prevention focus as well. Mr Klemm spoke to Farm Weekly journalist Bree Swift about his experiences in an industry in which your decisions can literally mean life or death.
Question: What was the worst fire you've witnessed since joining the WA Fire Brigades board in 1993?
Answer: In 2007 there was a fire in Toodyay where a local school teacher lost her life and in 2009 there was another bushfire which affected 38 homes.
I lived up that way at the time and I think being a part of the community and seeing the impact of those fires on the local people and the aftermath was significant.
My kids went to the school the teacher taught at so it had an impact on my family as well.
Q: What is the worst State emergency you've been involved in?
A: The 2015/2016 bushfire season where we had the Esperance fire and the unfortunate loss of life of four people and then the Yarloop /Waroona fire in which two lives were lost - those two significant events in the same year made it quite challenging.
Any time we see the loss of life it has a lasting effect.
I also went to the Black Saturday fires in Victoria in 2009 as part of a deployment from WA and while it was a bit later on in the week after the initial impact on the Saturday, the scale of that fire was enormous and probably akin to what the east coast experienced last season.
We sent 500 career and volunteer firefighters to the east coast last season and that seems to be the new normal, as every year we are doing it more and more.
But there is some comfort in the fact that we are able to reach out to other States and territories for assistance when it's required as well and we've done that.
Q: There were 40 recommendations coming from the Ferguson report into the Yarloop-Waroona bushfires in January 2016, but the government walked away from perhaps the most significant recommendation - to set up an independent rural fire service. Do you think an independent rural fire service could be beneficial to our State?
A: The bush fire brigades are the responsibility of local government and that means that they are locally based and I think there is great strength in that.
There is certainly a great deal of weight given to local knowledge, as there should be, as it is absolutely critical.
That's one of the areas that we are trying to be much better at in DFES - sometimes 30 to 40 to 50 years of local knowledge exists in our rural and regional areas.
In response to the Ferguson report, we went with a Rural Fire Division that is a part of DFES and is based on shifting DFES from being solely a response organisation to a prevention and mitigation organisation as well.
That change in structure was a key outcome for DFES.
As an example, now we support local governments to do bushfire risk management plans and once those have been completed and endorsed they can access mitigation funding to deal with their high risk areas.
Q: The inquirer, Euan Ferguson, strongly recommended that expenditure be readjusted away from fire response and recovery and towards a greater investment in preventative measures. Do you think this has occurred through the Rural Fire Division?
A: We have more than 50 local governments that have either completed their bushfire risk management plan or are in the process of completing it.
So that means across the State we are starting to get a really good picture of where those significant issues are in terms of high fuel loads and the like on land that is not national park, because that is the responsibility of DBCA (Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions).
Over the past three years more than 1500 mitigation activities have been funded to the total of $11 million.
Royalties for Regions has played a part as well, so the funding is definitely there and we have a good planning process in place - now it's just about getting on and doing the mitigation activities.
Q: With only $34.6m of the $405m Emergency Services Levy (ESL) going towards bushfire mitigation in rural areas, do you think more firefighting resources are needed in rural and regional areas?
A: There's a sweet spot between the amount of funding available and being able to get all of the mitigation work done in each 12 month block and I think what we will see over time is an increase in the number of contractors out there that will do this sort of work, because we can't be relying on volunteers.
Of course it's not only about prescribed burning - there are other ways of doing mitigation, but we would argue that prescribed burning is one of the most effective methods.
I think we are in a good spot with funding and the most important part is that the ESL is now paying for mitigation on land throughout the State.
Q: With no strategic points for water bombers throughout the Wheatbelt, do you think a base within the region would be useful?
A: There are a number of bases we use - we can go to Bremer Bay where the local government has completed some work on the airport and it has refilling capability.
Really, we can base the bombers out of any of the rural and regional airports around the State but the key point is the flexibility of our aerial operations.
On any given day we face varied bushfire risks in different areas of WA, so we need to be flexible and agile enough to be able to move these aircrafts around, which we do.
Sometimes we do that on a half daily basis - we will have aircraft in one part of the State and the risk will lessen there and increase somewhere else so we will move the aircraft.
We have some 30 or 40 nominal air bases around the State - most of them in the southern half, that we can base water bombers out of if we needed to.
Q: How can the State and Federal governments provide further support to DFES so that the organisation can function as efficiently and effectively as possible?
A: There aren't a lot of defence assets based in WA and we would argue that we don't get the same access to ready assistance from defence that the east coast States do.
We would like the ability to pre-deploy certain assets into WA as we need them and invariably that tends to be more so in the event of a cyclone.
For example, when we need to move large heavy items from one location to another, we just don't have the aerial assets to do that, but defence does.
The loosening up of access to defence assets was really refreshing last bushfire season, however there are still improvements to be made in that area.
The disaster recovery funding arrangements, which provides support to local governments in their time of need, is also viewed as being a bit bureaucratic.
It is a Federal government initiative, supported by the State government and we would like to see that streamlined so that the funding support is more readily available to local governments to restore their critical assets.
The State government has really set the tone with the shift of DFES towards prevention and the establishment of the Rural Fire Division.
The focus on bushfire mitigation and supporting the community to undertake prescribed burning is really a key part of it.
We don't see a lot of negativity out there at the moment in relation to prescribed burning and I think that's due to a general acceptance of the challenges we face in managing bushfires in a State the size of WA.
The commitment from the State government to establish the Bushfire Centre of Excellence has also been really important.
The centre is being built and will be finished by the end of the year.
I don't believe there is another centre of its kind anywhere else in Australia.
We're really excited, not only about the benefits it will provide to this State, but also nationally and internationally.
Q: What do you think DFES can do to improve its relationship with the State's farmers?
A: There is a wealth of knowledge out there among farmers and you would be silly not to use it.
I talk about the importance of local knowledge and reflecting back on the 2015/2016 Esperance and Yarloop /Waroona fires - there was some criticism for DFES at the back end of that.
But in the most recent season we had significant fires in Esperance in Crown land where we were much better the second time round because of the inclusion of that local knowledge.
I think that goes to the heart of it, as it builds respect between local people and DFES, rather than regional and rural communities viewing us as an organisation that comes in, deals with a particular emergency and leaves again.
It is important for us to engage with that knowledge and make sure locals are included and part of the decision-making process when these events happen.
We're doing a lot to improve our engagement and consultation with local people - chief bushfire control officers, WAFarmers, the PGA (Pastoralists and Graziers Association of WA) - these sorts of people are on key committees that we've established on the back of the Ferguson report to make sure we are respecting and valuing what local people have to say.
Q: Do you think DFES can learn from indigenous Australian in how they have controlled and managed fires over tens of thousands of years?
A: I do.
We've recently appointed a traditional fire programs co-ordinator, Kayteyte man Wayne Davis, who will be part of the Bushfire Centre of Excellence and that has been widely lauded as a great step forward.
It's not the magic panacea for the response and management of bushfires across Australia, but it is a critical part of it and, arguably, a part that has been ignored for some time.
We look forward to what great knowledge he can bring to the response and prevention of bushfires in our State.
Q: What achievement are you most proud of since becoming DFES fire and emergency services commissioner?
A: We spent the past two and a half years improving our connection and valuing of volunteers across the State by taking a really people centred approach to what we do.
We felt that perhaps we had lost our way a little bit with that.
We are an organisation that is very much focussed on community safety, so that means we need to make sure we are connected with people and have them at the forefront of everything we do and that includes our volunteers.
I would like to think that people who are volunteering for DFES are now having better experiences and while we can always be better at it, I think we have definitely improved from three years ago.
Q: What changes would you like to implement within DFES to improve the way the organisation functions?
A: We would like to get rid of some red tape.
It's amazing what's occured since COVID - it's shown what you can achieve in a short period.
Becoming more agile, responsive and connected to the communities throughout WA is really important and is something we are always looking to improve on - to try and cut out those little hurdles that become part of the way we do things and free things up.
Q: What has been the biggest challenge you've faced in your role as Fire and Emergency Services Commissioner?
A: As the new commissioner, straight away I walked into the response to the Ferguson government review and the government machinery changes that were going on in the public sector.
The challenge of moving what has been a very response focussed organisation to one that has a key role in mitigation and prevention hasn't been easy.
The challenges around the changing climate are also going to make it interesting going forward.
Q: What did you want to be when you were younger?
A: I was a little bit rudderless when I first left school but enjoyed anything that was building orientated, so if I wasn't a firefighter I think I would have been a builder.
I joined the fire service at 24 and was quite fortunate that I fell into the role.
Q: Do you believe climate change has increased the frequency and severity of bushfires in Australia?
A: As someone that has been in the business for 30 years, from a bushfire point of view, we see fires doing things now they weren't doing 15-20 years ago.
Fires that used to take us three hours to extinguish now take us a day and fires that used to take a day now take two, so the intensity of the fires have increased.
Night time used to be a period when you could consolidate a bushfire, but now we're finding that we are also having significant fire intensity at night, which we didn't have before.
Last year WA experienced its hottest year on record and the second driest year on record, so if you have fuel there and it's drier than it was the year before, it's going to burn more readily.
Mitigation is the future.
Q: What is the best piece of advice you've been given?
I like people who are prepared to test themselves and have a go at things they've never done before without fear of failing and being criticised.
The best advice I have been given is that you should create that context for people so they feel comfortable about testing themselves and any shortcomings they may have.
Q: Who is your biggest inspiration?
A: You see people from all walks of life who are prepared to put their reputations and how people see them at risk - those people are very inspirational to me, as they can go places people haven't been before.
Q: What are your professional goals going forward?
A: I'd like to see DFES become a real enabler and supporter of a safer WA.
I don't want people to see DFES as an organisation that just comes in and takes over.
We need to be very community focussed, community located and always ready to help.
We invariably engage with people at a time that is often described as the worst moment of their lives.
So we need to be compassionate and empathetic to the needs of the community and respect and value local knowledge - that's important because it also builds respect in who we are too.
Q: What is your advice to the State's aspiring firefighters?
A: My advice is to understand what your motivators are for wanting to be a career firefighter or a volunteer firefighter.
I understand from a volunteering point of view, people don't volunteer for DFES, they volunteer for their local communities.
That really should be at the heart of why people sign up and get into the business - that service to the community.
