According to ABC Online news:
Up to 20 properties are feared destroyed or damaged by fires across Victoria, with a number of communities in the state’s west and east under threat.
At least three homes have burnt down near Anakie, west of Melbourne, after a lightning strike started a fire that destroyed more than 6,000 hectares of the Brisbane ranges.
Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) chief fire officer Andrew Greystone says the fire behaviour has prevented crews from assessing further damage.
“We believe that there have been houses and or property lost in the Brisbane ranges and in the Grampians,” he said.
The Grampians fire at Mt Lubra in the west has covered more than 100,000 hectares and threatened the towns of Moyston, Pomonal, Halls Gap and Stawell.
In Gippsland in the east, a deliberately-lit blaze now at 10,000 hectares, has left Moondarra under ember attack and continues to threaten Erica, Rawson and Tyres.
In the north-east, the towns of Yea, Kinglake and Glenburn should maintain ember patrols.
Crews are racing to have the fires contained before Thursday’s return to 40 degree Celsius temperatures.
I have just found and re-read my copy of a speech given by Athol Hodgson in December 2004 at the Eureka Forum in Ballarat. It includes some history and some advice:
The fire event in 1985 when lightning started 111 fires in a pattern similar to the fire event in 2003 is one valid benchmark for learning. The 1985 campaign lasted 14 days and confined the Alpine fires to 50000 ha without the help of rain. It involved 2,000 Departmental, 500 CFA, 449 Armed Services, 120 timber industry and 50 SEC personnel; 75 bulldozers, 400 fire tankers and 36 aircraft. In the aftermath, debriefs were held without rancor or political interference and there was no call for an Inquiry into the event.
In 1985 there was a large work-force of experienced firefighters working in the forests. It included people working on hydro-electricity projects; tree fellers, sniggers and log carters employed by the timber industry; graziers; forest workers building fire access tracks, maintaining roads and tracks, and picking seed for forest regeneration and forest officers supervising forest licensees, forest works and planning autumn prescribed burning for forest regeneration and fuel reduction. That work-force and the vehicles and equipment it used daily in the forests was immediately available on 14 January 1985. A work-force of similar size and experience in fighting fires in the Alpine forests was not immediately available for fire fighting in January 2003.
A top priority for Government to ensure good forest fire management is to put a bigger and permanent workforce into the parks and State forests do the things that must to be done to sustain healthy and diverse forest ecosystems. That workforce must have skills, transport, tools and machinery capable of managing multiple ignitions from lightning as was done in 1985. It is not absolutely necessary to reverse land use decisions to do this but it is necessary to change some current land management practices. The workforce must have a mission appropriate for the approved land use. In parks, the mission must include controlling feral animals, weeds, erosion, keeping access tracks in a condition where they are easily maintained, collecting seed and revegetating damaged sites, planning and conducting prescribed burns and controlling unplanned fires. In State forests where commercial use of vegetation is permitted the mission must include all the above and additional tasks appropriate to the commercial operation.
Another top priority is to restore prescribed burning programs in forests. Immediately after the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983 the Government injected $1 million extra into the programs effectively doubling the money available for field staff to do the work. Yet the programs crashed. In 1992 the Auditor General found that the Department of Conservation and Environment had failed to achieve its planned fuel-reduction targets in three consecutive seasons and that those areas the Department identified as warranting the highest level of protection to human life, property and public assets received the lowest level of protection. And in 2003 the Auditor General found that since 1994, fuel reduction burning has never met the Department’s planning and operational fuel-reduction targets. In allowing that to happen, the Department ignored the truism heralded by Judge Stretton in 1939, repeated by Sir Esler Hamilton Barber in 1977 and further reinforced by the Miller Report on the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, that fire prevention must be the paramount consideration of the forest manager. The Government and the Department must lift their game. They must do so, not only in places where the priority is to protect life and assets. Those places are a very small proportion of the forest estate and to concentrate on them to the exclusion of the rest of the forests will lead inevitably to more feral fires. Prescribed burning has been done successfully in the past on broad areas to create forest diversity and reduce the damaging effects of wildfires. The practice had little community and no political support from the mid-1980’s until 2003 and was the reason why fuel management programs crashed in that era. That support must be won and the practice reinstated in our forests in a safe way.
These two priorities will cost money in large amounts. Victorians must anticipate that contributions to forest fire management from forest industries by way of royalties or in kind will not in the future, be as great as in the mid-1980’s. And visitor fees and similar charges are ‘petty cash’ compared to the many millions of dollars needed to sustain local and largely permanent workforces in rural communities close to where they are needed most. But Victoria’s forests are an asset that requires to be valued by the community in the same way that any other asset is provided with a value that guides its management and protection. The intrinsic values of wilderness, water catchments, biodiversity, cultural sites and the like are valued by the community as much, and often more, as are tangibles like sawlogs and gravel. The community must insist that they be protected and be prepared to pay the cost. The challenge facing the community is to assemble information about forest fire that is based on science, tested by experience and then play it successfully in the political arena. Politicians of all political persuasions are sensitive to environmental issues involving water catchments, forests and fire. Governments will find money for causes supported by communities with political clout. The alternative is more feral fires.
You can read more about Athol Hodgson at Forest Fire Victoria Inc.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Lessons I learnt after the 1994 fires around Sydney;
* Keep a ute with a full water tank and pump on standby
* Do not leave the property (resist evacuation; were evacuated X 3 but kept sneeking back)
* Keep a watch out for embers and put them out before they catch alight
* Keep the generator handy and have plenty of fuel stored
* Dont always rely on the bush fire brigade to help you out.
Frequent mosaic burning – the only way to go…
Davey,
Is the controlled burning/frequent mosaic burning happening in WA? I gather there is lots in the Northern Territory.
While there was to be more controlled burning in NSW and Victoria post the 2003 bushfires… did it happend? Does anyone have any data?
Jennifer: Athol Hodgson seems to have a focus on forests and that is unfortunate since its grass fires that are the fastest moving fire fronts on this continent. Undoubtedly it will be argued that lightening strikes caused this lot of large fires in our southern regions but I want folk to look at something else; grass fires are the wick to the bush in most cases of arson.
Why do we need more data?
We are amongst the most incompetent managers this land ever had in regards to summer fuel management. Lets explain my conclusion this way; if the original inhabitants had the same failure rate in their firestick culture they would have all been burnt out ages ago.
We invite fire.
Few including our authorities understand the atmospherics in a large bushfire such as we had in various places over recent decades, around Melbourne through the 1960’s when we had help from an aggressive fire officer or when Hobart burnt right to the waterline. I was around in both places soon after each event and saw the mess first hand.
In recent submissions to inquiries I write about picking blackberries year by year in valleys where these fires run like the slopes around Mt Stromlo and Pierces Creek.
Old blackberries burn like petrol.
This year I am frustrated again trying to use the Sentinel. Another old haunt has gone up in smoke again on the Heemskirk Ranges by Zeehan. We burnt that place over and over but its arguably the wettest place in Australia. I cut tracks to the peak on Mt Agnew through blackened twigs in the 1970’s to get a better view of all the damage around lake Cumberland and the slopes on the way to Trial Harbour. Tin was discovered there in 1876 and a dam was built to form the lake.
Today its proposed to build a large wind farm along that coast. Wind is the reason those fires spread in such rugged and wet country. Regrowth scrub in the absence of rain forest cut down for mine timber and boiler fuel is the crop that fuels the wild furnace.
Able Tasman started it all when went exploring and looking for new mines in back in 1642 .
This is about lessons learned and lessons lost.
We wait on Phil Cheney and his update from the ACT 2003 fires. It’s all still tied up in our coroner’s court. Thanks for McLeod meantime. At least we go some one looking at the grass.
A paper by Vic Jurskis on the Forest Fire Victoria Inc.www page “Decline of eucalypt forests as a consequence of unnatural fire regimes” is a very interesting read. Several years ago I was surprised to see a reversal of thinking on USA forest fire management published after enlightened views following old Native American practice remerged.
I sometimes recall seeing a post ww2 black and white film made in the US on urgent forest fire suppression. It was distributed here with industrial safety programs for forest related workers. Crack fire fighters were parachuted onto a ridge during a series of pine forest fires.
These hapless men depended only on a “space” silvered blanket and a spade in the face of rapidly advancing fire fronts. Some died under their hastily laid additional earth protection. It was a lesson, about pine plantations in particular. Our workers have seen similar walls of fire on flat country (Millicent SA).
I received the following note this morning from a retired saw mill operator:
Re the fires the Erica/Moondarra one is 50 Ks west of us and if it flares up with the bad weather forecast for Thursday it could be on to us in 24 hours. Our local volunteer fire brigade has had the tanker at it for 2 days and I have been involved in organizing crews etc.Yes since 2003 there has been a forced political will to save face and backside. There is an enquiry into the Canberra section been going for 12 months or more and some politicians etc in Canberra may be in for a roasting and litigation because of their in-actions.
There are the terms “fuel reduction” and “prescribed burning” and the outcomes of there use is very different, the DSE use the later and they will not catch up, and these wildfires happening now at the wrong time of the season are too hot and promote more fuel loads.
Maurie.
Jen,
Very coarse mosaic burning is happening, partly due to CALM, and partly to large wildfires. However, the mosaic is far too coarse, so fires have room to get up a run, and wind changes can change a long flankfire into a very broad headfire, with well known results (Dead Man Zone – Phil Cheney’s work).
CALM has a rather surreptitious fine grained trial down south somewhere, I suspect based on my finding, from old grasstrees, that the jarrah forest was, before European settlement, burnt every 2-4 years. Such forest fires were commonplace until 1920, trickling on all summer. Nobody bothered to put them out.
After a few very nasty fires a few years ago, the government woke from its green dream, and funded more prescribed burning. However, there is a relentless campaign against prescribed burning by the Conservation Council of WA, which seems to have influence over both politics and the media, and hence public opinion. Their fire spokesperson quotes ‘scientists from King’s Park’ as saying that prescribed fire destroys ‘biodiversity’, however that may be defined. King’s Park is a pocket handkerchief, of no relevance to broad landscape fire. It is also a perfect example of how not to manage fire, by trying to exclude it, until half the park burns in a single vandal fire. This is called ‘integrated management’, which looks very impressive in a glossy Annual Report to Parliament. Pity it doesn’t actually work.
We seem to go constantly around the mulberry bush, without a Minister for the Envuironment who actually talks to those who know about fire, preferring the ecomythology of a few academics, who may never, actually, have seen a bushfire in progress.
I have to say that I’m stunned how philosophically buggered up we appear to be with fire management and fire ecology. You would think as Australians we would have worked this out 50 years ago.
I agree Phil. We talk loftily about third world nations, but our own bushfire policy is largely mumbo-jumbo, with a bit of show-biz from men in big hats with lots of medals. The Northern Territory is the only state getting it anywhere near right, because they respect Aboriginal knowledge.
We did work it out 50 years ago, Phil, and it worked. But the green movement knew better and they had the swing voters.
I don’t really care any more. It will have to get a lot worse before it really sinks in how stupid these people are. A lot of innocent people will be killed or ruined but keeping this stinking ship afloat only prolongs the suffering.
My advice to farmers is to protect your own community but let the “experts” and the dealers fight their own fires. Pitty about the National Parks though.
I’m encouraged to hear that CALM in WA may have some fine grained mosaic burning trials going on Davey. There is occasionally a glimmer of hope that knowledge may play a role in this game after all. I’ve always assumed that the large burn areas (coarse grained mosaic) typical of CALM’s burning off was about cost reduction. Less perimeter per square kilometre of burn and lighting up is cheaper using incendaries dropped from fixed wing aircraft.
Phil, I agree. However there is probably some sociological explanation for the way in which societies change their attitudes in cycles measured in human generations.
Fuel reduction burning may not become re-established along the eastern seaboard until the current generation of managers have retired, because they will continue to find ways to demonstrate that controlled burning doesn’t work, despite all the evidence that fire exclusion is a failed strategy.
I really don’t get it (fire exclusion). Just denial + nimbyism? I can understand the need to modify/assess burn frequency to allow for regeneration and seeding recovery of important vegetation, but it seems that more trials are needed, ie more support plus public education about a fire managed landscape.
It’s not about science.
Utter chaos is what I saw in 67 sitting in the ash high above Strickland Avenue with a paint brush and board under a crystal clear sky. What a contrast. It was surreal.
Over the range on the Huon side I had stumbled into a deep hot hole camouflaged by a layer of fine white flakes on a gentle floor where a forest had been.
We chose not to use a camera by the water on the far side of the bay. People were still looking for people and there was no authority any where.
Everywhere was silent and each town was totally exhausted. Phil Cheney said he was down there too.
During another incident as the police let me through their road block with a wagon load of garden tools from my home on the urban edge I saw sheer panic right across the Dandenong ranges. Those towns had run out of water.
Up in the steep slopes a group of hastily assembled volunteers walked past the bizarre hulk of a CFA unit from another region. A patrol had removed their bodies from the road to let the rest of us through. Regardless a big tree crashed over the track in a shower of sparks and divided our motley team. On the way back after our knapsacks had been used up in wetting our clothes we relieved our best on the rest of the smouldering stumps.
The Victorian government held another big inquiry into all their infrastructure development, as they did in Tasmania. I got some work from the implementation of new policies directly related to the outcomes. Major infrastructure including communications around our growth on the urban fringe is big business.
But we never learn to use all the lessons from the past.
A veteran job seeker from the great depression asked me this question; “while contracting around the bush, where did I sleep, under a gum tree or a barbed wire fence? An answer from my limited science or technology eluded me for years. In fact we may have to live the experience to know. But the wrong answer could be fatal.
My post is locked out of this stream again.
Perhaps it indicates a short fall in our modern machine thinking.
Testy
Email your post to Jen.
It does not like .. .. .. styl stuff – if you have more than 3 dots in a row it will complain. (that’s one issue know about !)
I found out from friends livin in Bega (SE NSW) that the state forrests there have 8 times the permissable fuel load and that it is only time for another disaster to happen down there.
u really really suck u suck so much this info sux really bad and doesnt help me at all man you suck 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁 🙁