Hi Jennifer,
This year’s bushfire season in Tasmania has been accompanied by the shrill political voice of the Australian Green’s Senator Christine Milne. On Thursday she attacked the state’s professional forest service in a game of one upmanship with Tasmania’s Eric Abetz, Minister for Forestry and Conservation.
“The truth is most bushfires in Tasmania are deliberately lit or escape from forestry operations or regeneration burns,” Milne claimed.
The claim drew this response from Forestry Tasmania the next day:
“Senator Milne knows from publicly published fire statistics that more than 80 per cent of forest-related fire-fighting is from arson, lightning and other causes, not escape planned burns.”
Managing Director of Forestry Tasmania had this to say on Milne’s self promotion:
“She is cruelly wrong to accuse forestry of being a major cause of wildfires and the release of greenhouse gases. This week, when hundreds of forestry workers, their fire tankers, dozers, low loaders, helicopters and aircraft are fighting forest fires all started by arson or in Victoria by lightning strikes, she is so wrong.”
In Tasmania, due to an innovative inter-agency agreement between the Tasmanian Fires Service, Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania we can apply maximum resources whether the bushfire is on private or public land, in State forest or a reserved area.
For the latest on Tasmanian Fires check out Tasmanian Fire Service at: http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/Show?pageId=colFireRestriction
And for a photo or two, the Mercury at: http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,20902092-3462,00.html.
Regards,
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The word “shrill” has become so popular with posters I suspect it is in a memo on background briefing for bloggers but it cuts no ice with me. There are bigger fish to fry as we slide on into battling this drought.
Readers may be interested that three fires mentioned in the link, widely scattered down the West Coast , Grassy, Arthur River, and Zeehan are in real scrub country, all areas badly damaged now by very frequent and quite recent bushfires. Its poor forestry at the best of times, and I bet Cinders a Co here ot there have no answers for their restoration long term.
The word “shrill” has become so popular with posters I suspect it is in a memo on background briefing for bloggers but it cuts no ice with me. There are bigger fish to fry as we slide on into battling this drought.
Readers may be interested that three fires mentioned in the link, widely scattered down the West Coast , Grassy, Arthur River, and Zeehan are in real scrub country, all areas badly damaged now by very frequent and quite recent bushfires. Its poor forestry at the best of times, and I bet Cinders a Co here or there have no answers for their restoration long term.
Can anyone advise if there is a single firefighting unit, anywhere in Australia, that is made up of green volunteers?
There are thousands staffed by farmers and forest workers but what about all these eco-tourism operators that were supposed to fill the jobs gap after the forests are closed for timber production?
Not a single one most likely. One hand clapping?
Surely the Greens Party, that is so adept at organising election activities and white-anting the policy processes, could manage to string together at least one team of volunteers?
I reckon i’ve known some green firefighters, but it might depend on how you label a green and whether they have to stand out in a crowd.
No Motty that would be an unfamiliar constuctive gesture on their behalf.
Can anyone advise if there is a single firefighting unit, anywhere in Australia, that is made up of green volunteers?
Does legislation require all fire brigade units must be comprised of people with a homogenous background and political view? Examples please of the liberal party firefighting brigades, labour party brigades etc, neoclassical economists firefighting unit, SE Queensland successionists firefighting unit?
There are thousands staffed by farmers and forest workers but what about all these eco-tourism operators that were supposed to fill the jobs gap after the forests are closed for timber production?
Please demonstrate that all farmers and forest workers who are members of a firefighting unit are anti-green politically? Where is your data? also where is your data for the claim that no eco-tourism operators are members of brigades -seems unlikely to me, as most of them would be interested in making a quid and therefore would be interested in protecting the resources they use for that purpose?
Ian,
You are spot-on about greenie firefighters. Why aren’t the WWF, Greenpeace and others fielding their own firefighting teams? It would be an incredible public relations coup to demonstrate how valiant and committed they are to saving forests.
They prefer, apparently, to demonstrate on streets.
Well Schiller, I have to defend Greenpeace on this.
I believe actually many would like to fight the fires among Greenpeace members,( however, in the case of firefighting they can’t go barefoot as many do in street protests)!!
There was a bigger oil spill recently in the Baltic Sea and GP Nordic volunteered to help out with cleaning the beaches, so guess they are not opposed to firefighting as well if somebody pointed out this to them.
I believe as well , if lot of volunteers joined the firefighting, without zero experience, it could cause chaos…
Ann, “would like to fight the fires” is not the same as doing it. It’s deadly dangerous. And when deadly dangerous fires result from advocating what brings on the deadly danger, well, perhaps a sense of embarrassment prevents the WWF and others from showing up in force to fight fires.
WWF want photo-ops and light work, in exchange for money. And you know the WWF brings in *lots* of money.
But you can’t buy the environment. You do responsible forest management, or fight fires. Or if you’re some urbanite, just send some money to some interest group and receive a tube of “Conscience Salve” in the mail.
Feel guilty? For only one easy payment of $25, you too will feel instant relief from our Conscience Salve!
Sorry Ann, I’m not buying.
A forest ecologist once told me that Tasmania’s eucalypt forests owe their existence entirely to past fires and are continuously growing more and more fuel for the next fire. Such fires are vital for the renewal of all living things in these forests. All Australians should be made aware of this fundamental natural inevitability.
This inevitable fire can be an uncontrolled bushfire or some form of controlled burn. Unlogged ‘dry’ forest stands can be burnt with a low-intensity litter layer fire that goes out at night if the Soil Dryness Index (SDI) is between 25 and 50 on easy N & W aspects.
‘Wet’ forest types favour S & E slopes, accumulate their fuels at a slower rate and may be difficult to control burn. Mixed ‘wet’ and ‘dry’ may require burning of the ‘dry’ patches when the rest are still damp.
We now have the habitat of the Wielangta beetle, swift parrot and wedge tail eagle in the South East of the State being threatened by bushfire see http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,20905638-3462,00.html
Yet those members of the Greens and the Wilderness Society who protested outside the federal Court are difficult to find out there in the forest to ‘save’ these threatened species.
In the North East the South Sister is under threat, this forest was promised to be saved by the Wilderness society, and the Greens, you can even by a poster in Victoria at vic.greens.org.au/get-involved/merchandise/poster1 Yet where are the activists now?
On the Victoria front there are timber workers from the Port Phillip Region that headed off in convoy this morning with their dozers and heavy equipment to help fight the fires raging out of control in the North East and Gippsland Area.
Cinders,
Once again you beg the question of the importance of humans intervening to “keep nature natural.” Our intervention, on some measures, is by definition “unnatural.”
Some people think humans just occurred naturally on this planet, with various results. Others think that humans are supernatural, making their impacts on the environment “artificial” and somehow intrusive on what would otherwise be the “natural” state of affairs.
So, do we have to go into the wilderness and exert ourselves to help Nature be “natural?”
Schiller reminds us its so hard for many (some here) to be natural in just living their life
Schiller delves deeply into evolutionary theory asking wether humans are part of nature.
The bush fire that has covered South Sister is a case in point, humans protested and used the planning and legal system to delay timber harvesting that was likely to provide appropriate fire prevention measure.
They did it to say a whole raft of plants and animals http://www.southsister.org/articles1/environment.htm and to stop other humans from going about their jobs. Was this interfering with nature and the natural world.
Now that the fire has swept over south sister, is it nature’s revenge on the folly of humans that could argue for years, tie up massive resources, and generally divide a community in the hope of forcing one set of human values on another set of humans.
“You are spot-on about greenie firefighters. Why aren’t the WWF, Greenpeace and others fielding their own firefighting teams? It would be an incredible public relations coup to demonstrate how valiant and committed they are to saving forests.”
There are plenty of Greens that are also volunteer fire fighters. There is no more reason for the Greens to for a dedicated fire fighting unit, than there is for Harvey Normans start building televisions. Get a grip.
I don’t know about other states, but certainly in Queensland a common cause of bushfires is an escaped controlled burn run by local government.
Yes Sam, but the cause of the high intensity, long spotting distance, and uncontrollable nature of current fires is too much fuel available. That is due to crackpot ideas, by some (I hope not all) greenies, that fire should be excluded for long periods to ‘protect biodiversity’. Blanket long fire exclusion over large areas (such as a National Park) actually destroys soil, plants and animals when the inevitable hellfire rips through. This is painfully obvious to some of us, who have attended, observed, and fought many fires. We are beginning to get a little bit angry at political deaf ears, whitewashes, and media eco-porkies about the principal cause of fierce fires being Global Warming. In WA we had a very fierce fire (Mt Cooke) on a day when the temperature was, if I remember correctly, only 25C. It cracked granite boulders, and killed thousands of ‘old growth’ trees. The cause was lightning, and the cause of the high intensity was, beyond any room for argument, heavy fuel, due to inappropriate fire exclusion for twenty years, based on bad ‘ecology’. That fire could only be controlled when it reached a buffer that had been burnt a few years before. Controlled burning does not prevent fires, but it makes them controllable. Simple, ain’t it?
Two comments on the various inputs above:
1. Yes, prescribed burns do escape now and again, usually on the day of the burn or soon after. Burning is not an exact science, and humans make mistakes. However, since burns are generally conducted under mild conditions, or in the case of regeneration burns generally when there is a “moisture differential” which means the logging slash will burn but the adjoining bush is still moist, escaped burns do little damage and are mostly of nuisance value and statistical interest. It would be better if no burns escaped, but this is not a realistic objective. Greater emphasis on fire behaviour research and improved training of fire crews are realistic objectives, but little is being done these days in these fields.
2. The less burning that is done, the greater the risk of escapes, since the burns are always being conducted against areas of heavy fuel. After a generation of relatively easy and safe burning in WA forests, this new reality has really struck home over here. With the greatly reduced annual burning program introduced over the last 10 years, bush workers now increasingly find themselves burning up against 15 or 20-year old fuels, and consequently more burns are getting away. This is also a much more hazardous operation for the crews.
When it comes to the greens and bushfires, I have a prediction to make. The serious bushfires being experienced all over Australia this summer will be attributed by the greens to global warming. This is a very neat trick, because in one fell swoop the greens can (i) blame rich people in America and Australia and (ii) absolve the State governments of their failure to deal responsibly with bushfire preparedness and damage mitigation, in particular the failure to get up to date with fuel reduction burning in native forests.
A rise in average global temperature of 2 degrees over the next 100 years will have an insignificant effect on bushfire behaviour – especially in comparison to the consequences of allowing massive fuel accumulations which are then periodically overlaid by drought. Even if the increases in temperature are resulting in worse droughts, the opportunity to fix this in the short term is very slight. On the contrary we could get our bushfire management systems up to scratch in 5 years, given the political guts and lack of opposition from certain gurus. This would seem to me to be responsible precautionary risk management.
Roger Underwood
Underwood’s statement “I have a prediction to make. The serious bushfires being experienced all over Australia this summer will be attributed by the greens to global warming” is another convenient escape back into blog rhetoric
Then “This is a very neat trick, because in one fell swoop the greens can (i) blame rich people in America and Australia and (ii) absolve the State governments of their failure to deal responsibly with bushfire preparedness and damage mitigation, in particular the failure to get up to date with fuel reduction burning in native forests” undoes any bridging work I might attempt to do in-between the threads and elsewhere.
Rodger says 1). “Yes, prescribed burns do escape now and again” and the frequency has been noticed by some of the more astute in the general public. This requires even more hard sell as we go on in ignorance of how it could be done on a good day out in the bush.
Also in 2). “The less burning that is done, the greater the risk of escapes” brings up this heavy fuel theory and more rhetoric in favor of somebody hitting the bush hard. I for one won’t have a bar of this prescription for long term burn or bust sustainability. Aborigines never logged the bush to save it either nor did they burn every dead log and tree on their way through. Ask me sometime about fine fuels they routinely flushed out with their fire sticks. Blackened ground between the trees and denser forests should be enough year by year anywhere people today are willing enough to get on with it without major supervision from either side in this argument.
IMHO getting debate back to this approach for most national parks and reserves is difficult enough without winding up genuinely interested parties
Davey Gam Esq is having a go at AGW theory and everything else except the foresters too.
Stop it now then take a look at Sentinel regarding a fresh outbreak at Tumut about twenty something km west of Canberra and see the twenty something fires now running through pine plantations. If your “fuel load” theory is even half right then Canberrians who can easily recall authorities both sides of the boarder with blinkers on should have eliminated those pine crops at some time during the autumn.
Davey: this country is so danm dry now the ground is going to burn if it gets away. As I pointed out one or twice the grasslands will go up again in a flash. If any one doubts me; ask a local radio station about public concern as they announce update statements from our clever fire watchers.
Let’s get one thing straight first. There is a whole lot of blustering going on to try to somehow suggest that temperature and dryness doesn’t influence the severity of a fire. This is patently false.
All things being equal, if global warming is making temperatures rise and causing increased dryness in some areas at some times of the year, then it is increasing the severity of the bush fires.
I thank some contributors for their motherhood statements about the relationship of fuel to fire intensity. My father in law is a chief fire prevention officer in a large area of Victoria (not the burning one!) and my house is in an extreme bushfire risk part of the Queensland bush. I’m quite aware of the theory, thanks.
Yes, controlled burns are necessary in intervals that depend on the vegetation type. What I fear is tendency is to artificially decrease that period, linking it to human safety instead of what is best for the bush. That when habitats start to suffer. Forests are going to be under enough pressure from climate change without humans decreasing the burn interval to compensate for warming.
Gavin there is one fire at Tumut not 20 and the fires that impacted Canberra started some 10 days before in national park from lightning strikes. Should we also remove all the native vegetation that allowed the fire to build and burn into the pine and ultimately Canberra?
A very topical discussion thread, this one. My guess is that it will not be the last one dealing with bushfires this season.
Cinders is very correct when he points out that Christine Milne is once again demonising the forestry profession for her own political gain.
I do know that our TCA members are actively involved in fighting the fires in each state and territory as and when they occur. Currently they are working on the Gippland fires in Victoria, the Tasmanian fires, they were involved in fire suppression activities in the Plliga a week ago and are involved in the supression activites of the current blaze in Tumut. They are either members of the RFS, CFA or equivalent, employed by the forestry services of their state or are contractors using their heavy machinery to assist in supression activities. One thing that they all have i common is a love of the bush and an understanding of the its relationship with fire, built up over many years of practical experience working and living in the bush.
As a forester I have never ever seen the Greens, NCC, NPA, ACF, WWF, Green peace, of any other NIMBY activist group actively support its members to participate in fire fighting activities.
The local greens and their state based counterparts who lobied successfully to establish the national park inteh Pilliga DID NOT assist in the fire fighting activites, to the best of my knwledge they ARE NOT members of the local RFS, and like the National Parks and Wildlife Service just watched from the sidelines instead of actively assiting in the supression activities.
Yes I know there are many members of green organisations who are active members of the RFS, CFA etc, and it is wonderful that they do participate in their community, however by and large it has been my experience that green activists do not.
One of the problemms with many ecological models is the lack of quality date (yes data quality is a bug bear of mine). What is evident is that many of these models whilst mathematically sound are flawed due to the many asumptions that they must make to run successfully. More than a bit like economic models and lacking and sort of resemblance to reality. However many of these models are now informing our land managers and politicians on the what, where and how to’s of fire management activities. Our politicans have been duped into discarding the wealth of experience that resides in the RFS, CFA, and forestry agencies. When conditions are such as they are this fire season we witness the dire outcomes.
“As a forester I have never ever seen the Greens, NCC, NPA, ACF, WWF, Green peace, of any other NIMBY activist group actively support its members to participate in fire fighting activities.”
As a forester, I’m sure you know very little about what goes on in those organisations. To take an analogy, I’ve never seen Arnotts Biscuits Co. encourage “actively support its members to participate in fire fighting activities”, but there again I don’t work there. I do work for some green organisations, notably The Wilderness Society and the Queensland Greens, and I can tell you they are filled with all sorts of community-minded people, teachers, nurses, educators, and, yes, some are volunteer fire fighters.
abc asks “Should we also remove all the native vegetation…? Good question but it depends most on what we want to protect. The National Park areas hit hardest in 2003 were flush wit dense wattle regrowth last time I looked. Like the pine forests in drought through 2001- 03 this almost instant natural recovery in the bush is hardly sustainable given the frequency of dry lightening storms in the high country.
In relation to the ACT I say it’s just the crops that are still the greatest danger. Between Canberra and Tumut quite a bit of old grazing land has dried completely out again. In 2003 it was also infested with huge quantities of weeds that had likewise accumulated right through all the ACT pine plantations. The swiftest fire fronts were in rural areas east of the Brindabella Ranges and across the Murrumbidgee River.
abc says “there is one fire at Tumut not 20” hey abc; I counted 36 “hot spots” in that sector tonight and that is an overall increase.
For Sam’s benefit IMHO today’s situation near Tumut was worsened by winds.
When Peter says this about firefighters “One thing that they all have in common is a love of the bush and an understanding of it’s relationship with fire, built up over many years of practical experience working and living in the bush” we need to remember how exclusive that job has become under mountains of red tape. I see elitism on both sides of the fence and its stopping the broader community from participating in any of the action.
Exclusiveness starts in degrees.
I noticed that the greens were actively protesting about logging in Victoria’s water catchments during the recent Victorian state elections, but nothing about critical fire protection for those same catchments. “Poppy! where have all the animals gone? Well son! in 2003 and 2006 Victoria had a big barbeque, thats what happened”.
Sam,
Please note I did qualify my statement regarding green participation in bushfire activities.
“Yes I know there are many members of green organisations who are active members of the RFS, CFA etc, and it is wonderful that they do participate in their community, however by and large it has been my experience that green activists do not.”
In regards to temporal and spatial characteristics of bushfire/fuel reduction burning what is clear is that the concern for flora and fauna has driven bushfire management activities over the last 20 years, especially so over the last 10 years. Unfortunately the modelling that underpins this type of research is not blessed with a vast quantities of quality data, as a result the insights that we have gained in fire fire ecology are incomplete and subject to the underpnning assumptions that the models rely on to run.
Yes there are many things that have been learnt in regards to fire intensity, frequency and duration and its impacts upon flora and fauna however there is much to learn. Especially in regards to the eclogical impacts of wildfire. Our greatest problem is that the data is lacking at the landscape or catchment level for both pre and post wildfire. Yes there is a body of small scale work but just how scaleable it is is debatable.
Unfortunatley fire ecology research has become so politicised and is used by green activists to prevent much fire management activity (including fuel reduction burning)that when fires do inevitably occur they are of a greater intensity than otherwise may have occurred with alternative management practices in place.
Whilst computer models do provide valuable insights into fire ecology, they need to be considered with the knowledge gained from years of fire management experience. Including the ecological impacts of wildfire. My observation is that uncontrolled wildfire has a far greater temporal and spatial impact on flora and fauna than local fuel reduction burns. Not to mention the impact on water supply. The Melbourne Board of Works has a robust data set dating back to the 1939 fires that conclusivey demonstrates the impact of wildfires on catchment inflows.
I suspect that over the next ten years we will see a return to large scale fuel reduction burning as a means of wild fire suppression in response to water supply issues. The political wheel is slowly turning and a low intensity bushfire is prefereable to a high intensity wildfire for many reasons not just hydrological and ecological.
Gavin,
I was not having a go at AGW itself – just its crooked use in bushfire debate. See ‘Straight & Crooked Thinking’ by Robert H. Thouless (1930).
P.S. I am just re-reading ‘A Nation Charred: Inquiry into the Recent Australian Bushfires’ – House of Reps Select Committee. Dr. Thouless would have had a field day with some of the evidence presented there.
What a load of bollocks, Sam. Arnotts Biscuits have never held themselves out to be the only legitimate custodian of the nation’s forests. The ACF, WWF, Wilderness Society, Greenfarce and, how could we ever forget, the Rainforest Protection Society, have all held themselves out as both the fount of all knowledge, and the embodiment of care, for all forests.
Arnotts Biscuits have never corrupted the policy processes in the way that Mr Angel and Ms Keto have done. No-one in the Queensland Department of Primary Industries has ever been required to pass all draft ministerial briefings past Arnotts Biscuits for vetting prior to presentation to the Minister. They were, however, required to pass such briefings to Aila Keto for vetting to ensure the Minister was “properly informed”
So I ask the same questions.
Where is the Wentworth Group’s fire truck?
What, exactly, has Aila Keto ever protected?
But truth to tell, no-one who has ever been in a serious fire would want these clowns anywhere near a serious situation in a pink fit.
Especially as one or two of them with the highest profiles could easily be mistaken for water bladders.
With regard to fuel levels and Aboriginal burning, I offer the following quote from Ludwig Leichardt, in NSW in 1842.
“During my excursions in the bush my interest in bushfires has often been aroused … Others ascribe them entirely to the blacks … who light fires all over the place to cook their food but leave them unextinguished. During the hot summer the grass dries out and becomes highly inflammable, and the leaves of the myrtaceous shrubs, which are full of essential oils, also get dry. The consequence is that bushfires quickly spread over enormous areas, though without becoming a danger to human beings …”
In view of recent bushfire behaviour in south-eastern Australia, can anyone explain how enormous bushfires, in 1842, could be no threat to human beings (black or white)? Wait, could it be due to light fuels, in turn due to frequent (2-4) year burning? Surely not, it must be Global Warming. And what about bio-#!**?$-diversity?
I have another 23 similar quotes, mostly from south-western Australia. Some ’eminent fire ecologists’ dismiss such information as ‘anecdotal’ or ‘mythology’. I must be getting too close to the jugular – models, grand theories, and academic halos are under threat.
I’m happy to say not everyone is turned sour by life’s experiences including fire fighting down the highway..
ABC radio broadcast interviews early today by rural reporter Serena Locke. Guess what, most of the volunteers were women. Herself (with the day job) said over breakfast women should be in charge of everything including the economy.
http://www.abc.net.au/canberra/stories/s1809693.htm
Davey G & fellow bushfire bloggers: can I draw you attention to statements from mayor Robert Legge and other eyewitness accounts of the fire that hit Scamander on the East Coast of Tasmania yesterday. IMHO they were describing an atmospheric inferno like the one that fell on Canberra in 2003.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1809261.htm
Cinders should note I’m not concerned about the old timber controversy for the moment. I know the area is between National Parks and reserves. My former rural neighbour had old folks at living at Scamander, he and family were often staying there through our school holidays.
Today’s Canberra Times published an AAP photo on page 2 of a child watching a lone chopper refilling water tanks at Mt Beauty. I am most interested in any others opinion on this situation. A truly classic shot but is the whole sky burning in the background???
I would have to agree with what you say Peter LEzaich but I think it goes a little deeper than that.
You suggest the Greenies have politicised fire ecology research. I agree. However, what is more disturbing is that it seems to me, employees within government flora and fauna dept’s have prepared and interpreted field data reports to support the Greenies and their political ambitions. Joan Kirner introduced the anomalous Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act here in Victoria, to enable ‘management’ plans which enable the Greenies and co. to attack those they oppose. Add further ‘tools’ like the precautionary principle and what we are dealing with is a slowly constructed jigsaw, of ‘ecologically’ based restrictions and modifications to land status and (human) activities within, that are hidden as to their true intent and set up to go unopposed.
It would seem the overwhelming threat and effect of feral wildfires, both historically and presently have been deliberately played down or indeed brushed under the carpet. Instead they have played on making other ecological ‘threats’ worse than what they really are. Examples are the removal of hollow logs by firewood collectors; increased sediment from 4wd’s; increased sediment from certain small scale mining ventures; threats to ‘endangered’ species from localized disturbances; increased sediment from fuel reduction burns; the removal of roadside vegetation and on and on.
Meanwhile, ignoring the greatest threat of the modern feral wildfire and others like predation of native species by feral dogs, cats and foxes .
They, going back to at least the 1970’s, created fictitious and biased State of the Environment reports. I believe a number of species listed as endangered are not. They have done this through methods of mischievously misinterpreting the lack of historical ‘hard copy’ information, while ignoring local experience in areas concerned. In fact, there is ample evidence to show, they went out of their way to avoid local expertise. Only those who would tow the ‘new age’ conservation line were considered worthy of expert status.
The endangered species listing is a powerful tool in the hands of Greenies and they have gone to great and co-ordinated lengths to produce mountains of reports (published and unpublished) to make it all look kosher. The listing of the species allows management plans to be directed at those they oppose.
However, it is a double edged sword, as it also hobbles the much needed activity of fuel reduction burning and gives greenies and the ignorant, fuel to oppose them (FRB’s).
This political game extends further than just the F & F dept’s and now extends into taxpayer funded ‘community’ programs. Essentially, many communities are massaged into feel good environmental programs, communities that often can have people within who are essentially part of the Green network. Although, when discussing the Green network to this extent, perhaps it makes more sense to replace the word Green with Socialist.
Peter, as a matter of interest, when do you think the level of fuel on the ground and the need to remove it, overrule the need to fully understand the ecological parameters of a forest? When it is obvious that fuel levels are so great, that a high intensity, catastrophic wildfire is assured, when the next drought or dry period comes, are ecological concerns replaced with common sense and the urgent need to reduce this fuel regardless of current ecological knowledge?
Cheers.
Stewie,
Much “current ecological knowledge” is far from reliable. There is a need for a careful review of it, by keener minds, to throw out the dross, whether published in peer reviewed journals or not. I have seen grossly misleading information presented at a Parliamentary Inquiry. It all goes into the report, to be quoted as “fact”. As somebody famous said “There is nothing more frightening than ignorance in action.”
Gavin: “Atmospheric infernos” do occur, but only when there is enough fuel on the ground to feed a strong convection column. Strong winds and flame twisters at extreme fires are due to the fire itself, not AGW. Have a look at the smoke. If it’s black, with copper tints, there is too much fuel burning, so volatilizing the nitrogen out of the system. The biota (aka biodiversity) need nitrogen.
Sam: I am not saying that temperature and humidity are not important in fire behaviour, but in heavy fuel feral fires can occur even in mild conditions. If that’s what you want, so be it. I prefer to pay attention to what the Aborigines did for thousands of years, and so survived. If we listen to academic ‘fire experts’ much longer we will not survive.
Davey: Mate, I knew several contract stockmen who worked both side of Bass Strait. Every year they grazed and burnt a big paddock and that’s where they drove their charges in every summer flare up.
I knew a hard old fire fighter, who sent his team a hundred yards or in front of the head fire they had to backburn on the run. As they walked away towards the oncoming front he dropped a match or two right behind them.
I vaguely recall none looked around in the scrub but I think they trusted him when they had to step back and back each from their own fires. However all these people wore hobnail boots. Those at the rear like me with half a bucket full of water had to watch their backsides and long pants in case or after they blundered backwards into a hot tree.
Davy: The big clue is they dropped a match on the ground we stood in every time before moving out to the main burn. Can’t recall who or where, I was so young then. However a district captain suppressing an evening flare up dropped a match on my feet years later. I have wondered a lot since how anyone did it in bare feet.
The fires just keep getting worse in Tasmania, with the shock of Scamander faced with 100km/hwinds pushing the fire down the hill from St Mary’s and damaging about 18 houses.
Over 11,000 ha of vegetation burnt including State forest at South Sister
Today it’s heading back to St Marys with ember showers imminent.
The situation is made more uncertain by a lack of good communication.
Up the road north of St Helens, at Pioneer FT and TFS crews are attending a fire in State forest. The fire is heading away from Pioneer towards Blue Tier. (Yet another green icon)
Down in the South East about 7000ha of forest near Wielangta has been burnt by a fire not yet controlled (still no sign of Brown and his legal team)
More updates check http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/Show?pageId=colBushfireSummaries
and
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1809833.htm
The fires just keep getting worse in Tasmania, with the shock of Scamander faced with 100km/hwinds pushing the fire down the hill from St Mary’s and damaging about 18 houses.
Over 11,000 ha of vegetation burnt including State forest at South Sister
Today it’s heading back to St Marys with ember showers imminent.
The situation is made more uncertain by a lack of good communication.
Up the road north of St Helens, at Pioneer FT and TFS crews are attending a fire in State forest. The fire is heading away from Pioneer towards Blue Tier. (Yet another green icon)
Down in the South East about 7000ha of forest near Wielangta has been burnt by a fire not yet controlled (still no sign of Brown and his legal team)
More updates check http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/Show?pageId=colBushfireSummaries
and
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1809833.htm
Stewie asked “Peter, as a matter of interest, when do you think the level of fuel on the ground and the need to remove it, overrule the need to fully understand the ecological parameters of a forest? When it is obvious that fuel levels are so great, that a high intensity, catastrophic wildfire is assured, when the next drought or dry period comes, are ecological concerns replaced with common sense and the urgent need to reduce this fuel regardless of current ecological knowledge?”
In regards to the first part of the question, We do not live in a world with absolute knowledge so every day we make our judgements on all manner of things, including fire management. My preference is to reduce fuel loads prior to the point that a fire will be unconrollable under “normal” conditions.
My comments stem from my observation that under “normal” conditions a bushfire is managable and can be contained locally. Under extreme conditions (e.g.prolonged drought and blow up weather) areas with fuel loads that are managed are more likely to be able to be contained locally. By that I mean by local people (RFS, CFA, forestry agencies and/or conservation agencies)without major spread. When fuel loads are great fires may be managed at cooler times of the year (no guarantees though)but not a snow flakes chance in hell will they me controllable given conditions such as are currently prevailing nationally, with the same results.
Therefore it is too late to reduce fuel loads when drought occurs as fire will become less controllable and have a greater intensity as fuels dry out and as fuel loads increase ( greater shedding of fine fuels (leaves and twigs etc) within our eucalypt forests and longer decomposition times due to reduced availability of moisture).
In all this we must ask the locl people who generally understand what is happenning in their forests far better than a desk bound bureaucrat or coomputer model. So use computer models to provide insights into ecological impacts but seek guidance from imformed locals in implementation of fuel management strateegies.
I think that it is necessary to ensure a temporal, spatial and intensity mosaic across the landscape as a means of ensuring an ecological mix. That way with our less than perfect knowledge we ensure an ecological matrix. I think that this provides for “better” ecological outcomes than high intensity wildfires that consume an entire landscape.
I recognise that a number of ecologists have a different viewpoint in regards to fuel reduction burning than I do but having witnessed enough uncontrolled high intensity wildfire and its aftermath I can only conclude that their models are do not give enough consideration to the ecological impact of wildfire on both flora and fauna.
Peter,
I agree that local knowledge is essential. Submissions by bush people and farmers to bushfire inquiries always ring true to me. Some others do not, but sound like a twisting of the facts to suit a particular dogma. Yet bush people’s views seem, repeatedly, to be ignored, in favour of the latest ‘peer reviewed’ academic model. Methinks bush people need to find some compelling way of having their views heard, and acted upon. There may be several ways of doing this, including denial of skills and labour at sensitive times and places. Anybody got any ideas?
Peter says “not a snow flakes chance in hell will they be controllable given conditions such as are currently prevailing nationally” but later adds
“it is necessary to ensure a temporal, spatial and intensity mosaic across the landscape as a means of ensuring an ecological mix” as if we could, based on our experience.
Peter: I don’t believe we can yet for several reasons
1) By harvesting and burning ancient forests regularly we have drastically altered the landscape
2) We don’t understand drought or what creates the extreme bushfire conditions that do the most damage
3) No one individual or body controls all the bush
Davey said “Gavin: “Atmospheric infernos” do occur, but only when there is enough fuel on the ground to feed a strong convection column. Strong winds and flame twisters at extreme fires are due to the fire itself, not AGW”
Lets look at Scamander based on some media reports. It’s my guess those fire fronts overran the settlements with such fury because of the prevailing winds on the day. Wind driven fires consume light material first. Fuel conversion rates can then create an inferno which has a brief life as superheated gas.
The ground speed of the bushfire becomes another critical factor in the furnace maintenance. In Tasmania such a fire probably runs swiftest on blackberries and other rubbish once free of the heavily wooded forest.
Gavin,
Conflagration fires may occur frequently enough to encourage the media but historically they they do not recur frequently enough in the same locations (though the Vic fires may be burning in some of the same area again that burnt in 2003, I have yet to see comparson mapping).
The former Morisset forestry district on the NSW Central Coast provides a sound example of temporal, spatial and intensity mixes across the landscape. Heavily disected sandstone country with extended ridge lines and a mixture of public and private forests. In 1997 I mapped the fire history of the northern Watagans as a part of the planning for a fuel reduction burn over multiple tenure.
The forest had a varied fire history and many people indicated that it had been burnt over and over. I extracted the fire record dating back over the previous 30 years and by assigning simple intensities based on season and weather history I was able to broadly determine fire intensities.
What was interesting is that whilst an area may be burnt regularly not every bit of forest is burnt nor is every bit burnt with the same intensity. This was the case for our planned burn as well.
Interestingly the flora and fauna records for the frequently burnt areas were very rich, as they were for the less frequently burn or not burnt areas. The differences were in species composition. So for that catchment we had a verifiable and recorded burning and harvesting history that was responsible for the ecological mix that occurred there.
The fuel reduction burn did not go ahead as one of the neighbours withdrew his permission based on “ecological” grounds, and a heavy dose of green politics. Unfortunately a lightening storm did ignite the forest at the height of summer and “off she took”. The result was a forest burnt by high intensity fire over its entirety with crowning and fresh dozer tracks etc. As opposed to a forest that would have had a cooler burn that trickled around and reduce the fuel load without causing undue damage to the trees and wildlife. So yes I do believe that we can maintain an ecological mixture across landscapes.
I’m sorry but I have to disagree with you in that we do understand drought, maybe not why it does not rain but certainly what its impacts will be both on communties and flora an fauna. My experience tells me that whilst we may have a minor impact on landscapes as a whole, through forest harvesting and fuel reduction burning, it is the major conflagration fires that have the greatest impact due to their intensity, witness the Blue Mountains fires in either 2001 or 1997 there are entire valleys still barely regenerating. Or our own ACT bushfires in 2003 and their aftermath in the Brindabellas.
Bushfire weather is well understood and extreme bushfire conditions are these days forecast regularly. Witness the number of total fire bans and general media warnings that a few years ago were for the select reading of the land management agencies.
I agree that we may not always be able to predict the onset of such conditions at the level of accuracy desired, that is a result of the availabe data rather than an understanding of what it is that creates extreme conditions. Every major wildfire in this country has occurred during periods of prolonged drought coupled with hot dry winds.
Speaking of wind the fire generated winds are often not taken into account when developing fire management strategies. Witness the fire generated winds in 2003 and the winds that can be generated during high intensity regeneration burns in Tasmania and Western Australia.
You are absolutely correct in stating that no one individual or body cotrols the bush, but some have greater influence over decision making than others. The bush fire management committees are very active in controlling what can or can’t be done much to the detriment of sound management.
Davey, Intense fires such as those occurring in Scamander do not require much vegetation to carry a fire. The bare paddocks in and around Canberra were very effective at carrying the inferno into the suburbs in 2003.
“I’m sorry but I have to disagree with you in that we do understand drought” Peter; just look at the rural stories from all over anytime on the ABC.
“Bushfire weather is well understood and extreme bushfire conditions are these days forecast regularly” Agreed Peter, but why the stuff up in 2003 and every other time our houses and backsides catch alight? I reckon we aren’t so clever after several hundred years of trying to beat this country into submission.
Peter; your former Morisset forestry district on the NSW Central Coast and Watagans can be seen in the same context as other fire prone areas like the Adelaide hills, Mt Dandenong, Blue Mts. Hobart etc but only loosely.
It’s my firm view we have not yet learned the art of preventing or attacking big bushfires in any of them and drought now is almost a constant threat. Recoveries that may have been wont happen. One issue is the sheer mass of vegetation in large wood lost. Scrub and other spindly re growth go straight up in a flash today. Hobart is good example. We can’t even control the fringe. Historic mining towns and logging towns everywhere are another case of the same general incompetence.
Peter: Above all mistakes we can make we don’t understand the wind. No fire goes anywhere much with out it. A bushfire trickling round though forests in mountainous country here and there down south in 1967 caught a lot of seaside dwellers napping. My brother was having a late bath in down town Hobart when his tub filled with ash. Later they got me over to have a good look around. Nothing moved anywhere.
Bushfires are like my industrial furnaces, they need draft control and I have asked one or two fire researchers to consider that issue in their work too. Also vortex enhancement of fuel conversion can suddenly change a situation. I bet the aborigines used the breeze to their advantage all the time.
Peter and Gavin,
You are both correct in that fires can travel very fast through light fuels, due to a weak convection column in relation to horizontal wind. The flames are long and flat. A wheat stubble fire should convince anyone.
However, basic physics says that the more fuel is available, the more intense the fire will be, the stronger the convection column, and the more flammable gas. In heavy karri fuel (1960s) I have seen fire balls as big as a two storey house detach themselves from the fire front and roll along merrily through adjoining recently burnt heath. The burning gas from the karri crowns carried the fire over the lighter fuel area. I have never seen that with a fire starting in wheat stubble, no matter how fast moving.
Fire storms, where fires generate their own strong winds, were first noted, I believe, at Hamburg in World War 2. They were stoked by heavy fuel in the form of buildings and incendiary bombs.
Until some common sense returns to our eco-bureaucracy, in the form of regular, mild, patchy prescribed burning, we will see a lot more Hamburg-style fire storms in heavy fuel, with long distance spotting, thick black smoke, complete incineration of biota, loss of habitat diversity, mass movement of silt and ash, and loss of homes and possibly human lives. Not to mention the mounting cost.
Probably I am preaching to the converted in the case of Peter and Gavin. But the barrage of media half-truth needs to be vigorously countered, for all our sakes. I have not heard one mention of dangerous fuel loads, or the need for prescribed burning, in recent fire reports on the ABC and SBS.
Interesting article in today’s Australian quoting two Australians that have vast experience in dealing with bushfires:
Empty forests blamed for crisis
The Australian (Wednesday, 13 December 2006)
Save the trees campaigners have been so successful they have been accused by two former fire chiefs of contributing to the Victorian bushfire crisis by stripping the forests of workers.
Athol Hodgson – chief fire officer with the Victorian Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands from 1984 to 1986 – warned that the state was at risk from feral fires due to flawed policies and blinkered politics.
Mr Hodgson said that in 1985 there were 111 lightning strikes in mountainous country that were “remarkably equivalent” to the current bushfire crisis. But in 1985 there was a different outcome.
“They flared into about 50,000ha in the alpine area and we stopped them at that acreage without the aid of rain,” he said.
“We did it because at that time there was a very significant number of people who worked in the forests and parks earning their daily bread. The difference now is that when fires start, that workforce is not there.”
Mr Hodgson said about 3000 people worked in the forests in the early 1980s, in forestry, the electricity commission and saw-milling. It was a condition of the saw-milling licences that if a fire broke out, the workers had an obligation to fight it.
“They stomped on fires very quickly and very, very effectively, and that has all changed.”
Mr Hodgson said firefighters now had to be brought in from outside, causing a catastrophic delay. “Instead of having four or five fires running out of control, on this occasion they had about 50, and it became too big a job.”
Rod Incoll, chief fire officer for the department responsible for Victorian forests and national parks from 1990 to 1996, says funds have been stripped from fire management, skilled foresters have virtually disappeared, and the culture that knew how to manage fire has totally changed.
Mr Incoll said the mountainous country, where many of the fires are now burning, “has become a wasteland. Nobody is managing it. No money is being spent on it, nothing is being done in it”.
And he warned there would be worse to come.
“I think we’re going to cop it in the first three months of next year,” Mr Incoll said. “There’s not much we can do about it.”
“I have not heard one mention of dangerous fuel loads, or the need for prescribed burning, in recent fire reports on the ABC and SBS”
Davey: when your industry drops the concept of “dangerous fuel loads” and any other TCA jargon for lack of community response to our timber needs we probably won’t get much argument about ideal native forest management.
Also; once we can all see the major fire fronts as a fast moving gaseous mass rather than a stiff shower of embers there will be a better understanding of fuel dynamics at very high temperatures and much more attention to flashy fuels in the forest and everywhere else in the landscape including our city margins.
Conversion rates in any fuel type are certainly a function of wind and fire speed. Ground speed of the wind driven fire in light fuel is equally if not more important than wood mass on the floor.
The quantity of combustion in a fast traveling fire is too often overlooked and so is the incomplete combustion of such a gas mass from the accelerated mixing. Hence IMHO we have the frequent production of our ”fireball”l phenomena ahead of a fast moving inferno.
Never forget the spinning vortex of unburnt fuel in a liquid or gas fire either. The first instance of positive pressure (about 2cm WG) will cause an atmospheric explosion.
Athol Hodgson is one of the few talking sense about bushfire. But does he have the ear of politicians? They seem more prone to listen to Professor X, with 100 academic papers in the ‘refereed literature’.
One professor who talks sense is Steve Pyne. He talks about the ‘socialisation’ of fire by early humans, through deliberate early, pre-emptive burning. We have let it go feral again.
Refs: Pyne, S.J. (2001) Fire: A Brief History. The British Museum Press.
Pyne, S.J. (2006) The Still-Burning Bush. Scribe Short Books, Melbourne.
Gavin,
I am sure you are right.
Victoria has the forests, and the forest fires, that the voters who elected Bracks deserve.
And many of the burned out homeowners have the houses they deserve. I have lost count of the amount of footage we are being shown of burned out houses that still have standing (leafless) trees and shrubs within the yard area.
In most cases there was more than sufficient time as the fire approached for these trees to be felled so their fuel would be on the ground and a trunk height further away from the house. Most of them are not so large that they need specialist tree felling skills. Often just ten hits with an axe would get them down.
The blame for this must rest sqarely with local government for failing to provide exemptions to tree preservation orders etc in the face of approaching wildfire.
And I have also lost count of the number of times I have seen firefighters pouring water onto fires on the approach side of a road (as if to protect the pavement) instead of maximising the effectiveness of the natural barrier by making small back burns from the roadside to widen that barrier.
Even 3 metres of extra burned buffer before the main fire arrives can make all the difference. But this is probably wasted. I think it is time the forest and landowning community withdrew their contribution and stopped propping up a corrupt ideology.
At the moment, the less you actually contribute to forest protection, the more say you have in forest management. They can only get away with it because good men and women are there to deal with the mess. It has to stop.
While on the issue of fire I’ve been thinking and come up with the following speculation………
When it comes to fire management and ecological misrepresentations, I believe a number of issues merge, ‘behind the scenes’. The extent of ecological misinformation within environmental politics, glosses over intertwined issues.
One is issues with Aboriginal Rights and Native Title aspirations.
The Greens, as many would be quite aware, have many other issues they support, with human rights and in particular Aboriginal rights, being one of them. As I see it, part of the grand plan is to convert land to National Park status which makes it easier to ‘hand it back’ to the Aborigines.
To achieve this, the land first had to be ‘pristine’ and ‘fragile’ that leads to the campaign of it needing to be ‘protected’, allowing annexing of it from wider society, ala National Parks for future generations.
Meanwhile, the Aboriginals had to be seen as ‘stewards of the bush’ and ‘at one’ with the land, the best managers of it.
Was the true ‘potential’ extent and impact of Aboriginal burning ignored, so as to not upset in anyway the ‘at one with their environment’ perception, that was to be driven via simple format in media campaigns. If it wasn’t ignored, quite possibly many people (voters) in modern societies would ‘potentially’ see the Aborigines use of fire as, ‘burning the place to the ground’. Gross vandalism. This would be a simplistic view but nonetheless potentially politically damaging.
The law being clinical as it is, dealing with such perceptions, backed by ecological data, that shows a people have ‘potentially’ set entire ecosystems on a long term path of ecological ‘disaster’, having at times caused extinctions to species (possibly deliberately in some instances), would have to deal with it according to its legal charter. Entwined in there would be environmental laws of conservation and biodiversity protection, etc. and the notion of ‘personal and collective responsibility’. Not to mention OHS and ‘risk management’ issues.
What would the legal perceptions be, remembering that as per James Hardy, tobacco companies, AGW issues and war crimes, the law these days, doesn’t baulk at considering retrospective cases? Under legal interpretations, could perceptions of ‘stewards of the bush’ been changed to ‘destroyers of the bush’.
Considering the ‘law is an ass’ at times it may have actually turned against them. Would class actions by the ‘international community’ via U.N. environmental courts be then possible?
Another ‘intertwined’ issue is feral animal control.
With the farming and feral animal predation of stock issue, this is a further thorn in the side of the ‘pristine’ environment perception. Big time. The images of calves and sheep lying in paddocks with their throats ripped out is bad PR for a ‘pristine’ environment argument. “What about the native animals?”, people will ask.
Are the Greens trying to keep the predation of native species out of the publics eye, by keeping it ‘out of sight out of mind’? If it were just native species being predated upon this could be somewhat ignored, as the general public would be largely unaware of it happening. Media campaigns, could further ameliorate public concerns through consultancy reports suggesting that it is not as bad as some may suggest.
Groups are also trying to reintroduce the introduced dingo species.
The solution, eliminate the bad PR with dog fences.
However, the farmers due to cost and a desire to tackle the issue via other means (shooting [which involves guns, another pet political issue of the Greens], poisoning and trapping [a pet issue of the animal rights activists]) resist the dog fence solution.
Farmers are not allowed to clear firebreaks where public land abuts their properties. So I wonder, have elements within environmental management, again we look towards flora and fauna ‘managers’ as one group, dictated vegetation clearing plans that in effect have bought highly volatile vegetation up to the farm fence, making it inevitable that many fences will burn down.
After the event, as per the 2003 fires, the farmers are then offered financial assistance to rebuild their fences but only if dog fences are built.
A round about way of ‘solving’ a problem?
As an aside, a case involving a sheep farmer in the North East of Victoria (Stockdale vs. the State, 1998?) revealed that authorities had declared a ‘reference area’ adjoining this blokes sheep farm. The rest adjoining him was National Park. Reference areas are highly restrictive areas of land, more so than National Parks, as access and human intervention of any sort is prohibited. This meant no wild dog control at all took place in the land adjacent to this farmers sheep property, despite the high incidence of wild dogs in this area. The dogs bread up big time, undisturbed, coming out onto this farmers property taking many of his stock. It would seem obvious this was going to happen.
We’ll pretend it’s just another one of those oversights but…..
Is it possible that this declaration of a ‘reference area’ was a deliberate act, to deem this farmers sheep enterprise financially unviable? If this farm had shutdown it would have more than likely been absorbed into the adjoining National Park. It is a perfect eco-tourism property.
He settled out of court I believe, with no legal precedents set as to ‘duty of care’ issues. It would be interesting to look closer at this case though, as legal argument supporting management responsibilities concerning activity crossing from one property to another and who has the ‘duty of care’, actually drew upon precedents, going back as far as the early 1800’s, set by the issue of fire crossing from one property to another, as the issue of feral species crossover had little legal precedence behind it. I hear the airing of these precedents, were one of the main reasons the department settled out of court. The incidents of fire crossing from one property to another included those ignited by lightning.
Like wildfire, for years the effect of predation by feral animals on native species has been little mentioned, with little quantifiable studies undertaken. This, like wildfire is a very interesting oversight, considering the overwhelming ecological threat these two issues represent, especially when ecological based management first took off in the 1980’s. It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me and there is a heap of local experience in most regional/rural areas to educate their city brothers and sisters on such issues.
Oh but that’s right, the regional/rural experience was ignored. That is, completely ignored. How convenient and deliberate that now seems.
Has there been a socialist agenda running of such blind political ambition, that in effect it has directly/indirectly exasperated the plight of fire managers, the lives of flora and fauna and Aboriginal communities? Often with catastrophic consequences. There seems plenty of ‘circumstantial’ evidence and suggestions that this is the case. The lack of knowledge and racism are often no more than convenient diversions, easily spun via door stop media releases.
Meanwhile, more of the same, burn forests burn, die animals die.
Give’m all an axe motty? Most of us don’t have the mussel to wield an axe in the right spot ten times. That is the direct result of having our natural gas retrofitted nation wide.
I’ve still got this block splitter that’s been to the Sunday markets humteen times. Must be the bandaged handle, not the no smoke regulations…
Gavin. You seem to be confused over the ignition of solid fuels and its contribution to fire spread. Here’s is one, of many incidence I saw during 3 days, non-stop, when ‘fighting’ the Ash Wednesday fires. This fire had no access restrictions. It was an all in affair and you could often find yourself in scenarios that with the benefit of hindsight, were worse than extremely dangerous. Up close and personal you might say.
Our house was located on a small gully. Behind us the ‘plateau’ of Belgrave Heights, covered in roughly acre blocks with a house on each. Our house was on the edge of the flat ground, with little ground vegetation around it except for a few garden beds with European type plants in it. The house was on an acre with about 5 large stringbarks on it, only one of these being close to the front of the house. On one side, the neighbour had a two story, old wooden house, the other an equally old fibre cement home. The latter was surrounded by trees with a huge wooden verandah down two sides.
Looking from the front of my house, down towards the gully was 50ft of front yard, a dirt road, 40 ft. of the opposite houses front yard, cleared building site where house being constructed, 70 ft of his backyard and gully bottom. I could throw a rock from my front porch to the gully bottom. The slope was such that I could ride my motorbike up it, on the back wheel, one hand on the handlebars (yes, I’m a show-off).
The Belgrave Heights fire started not to far from our house so I watched the progression from an almost state of (concerned) wonderment that there was a fire in our neighbourhood to it quickly becoming a crazy monster.
For the first couple of hours we had started beating the flames in open bush, about 300 metres from the house and from doing this became a little familiar with its behaviour and where it was heading. Manueca/tea tree patches were particularly spectacular and it was only a road (Grandview) intersecting the end of ours (Huon), a t-intersection, that inhibited it from crossing over into the properties opposite and next door to us. Fire higher up the hill had taken off and disappeared further up Grandview Rd, rolling over a brick veneer home about 5 properties away, killing one of the occupants. A fair bit of of manueca (about 10 acres, thick in patches but still quite a bit of open ground) and trees up the road where houses hadn’t been built yet.
I knew, along with other residents we had to at least keep the fire on the other side of Grandview and with great effort we did. Later, around 4 o’clock main fire front then disappears and an eerie calm comes over the area. No wind with only remnant patches of fire running around the bush.
Then the wind shifted and came back as a roaring train, along with the fire. The smaller fires left behind erupted into life but this time it was really nasty and very dangerous. Embers were flying everywhere and the tea tree ‘torches’ threw horizontal flames of incredible length in every direction. All we could do is try and beat down the flames. Run in, beat, retreat, run in, beat, retreat, run in, beat, retreat. It didn’t really do anything but eh, had to try something.
With no ‘team leader’ as such or effective fire fighting team to call the shots, once the ferociousness of this bloody thing became obvious and that it wasn’t going to be stopped, residents forgot about trying to beat it out in the open bush areas and began retreating to properties and extinguish embers falling nearby.
My father took one of the side of the house and my uncle brother and cousin were out the back. I decided to take the front of the house, as I knew the fire had now jumped Grandview road and was heading along the gully down below the property on the opposite side of the road. As it got closer I had a pretty good visual on it, as it came up the gully, as a lot of that property opposite was cleared and only 8 telephone pole uprights were there, the beginnings of a mud brick home. It was moving fast but not crowning. Crowning had began further up Grandview rd. though.
The property across the road I mentioned, where the mudbrick was being built. These people, greenies actually, had cleared their block around 12 months prior to this event. The spot where the house was going, was not directly in a line below our house but offset to the left a little However, where they stacked the stringy’s they cleared from their block, was directly below our place. 80 ft trees cut into 30 ft lengths, probably 15 of them all thrown into a pile. The leaves had dried up and were long gone leaving essentially a pile of logs remaining. My father in 82 had actually asked him (too politely obviously) if he could get rid of them. He said who would but didn’t. Approx. 100ft below in a direct line with our front door.
As the fire approached this pile from the gully, approx. 40 ft below and behind it, it was scary, fast and spreading but ‘bite your fingernails and piss your pants’ controllable. It was not crowning, generally 5-8ft flame height or higher when it hit bushes, of which you learnt to back off from.
I was watching that fire as it hit that pile of logs and can only say it was like they were soaked in kero. With a whoosh the pile exploded in flame instantly, fire flew up the hill, up tree trunks and into the tree tops above it, bouncing from tree to tree. I think a huge part of it went over our heads and disappeared behind the house. Embers, already bad enough were everywhere. The heat from it was so great that embers were now landing on the window sills and igniting the wood. I was momentarily blinded, the back of my shirt nearly caught fire, my shoes were getting sticky on the bottom as they began to melt, while my uncle and brother at the back of the house thought they were going to die. A number of people jumped on a fire truck at the other end of our block to evacuate but the truck initially got stuck or wouldn’t start and they only just escaped..
This incident I have no doubt was heavily contributed to by that pile of logs going up.
Until that pile of solid fuel ignited we had a chance. After that it became hopeless very quickly. We evacuated soon after that.
The neighbours houses on both sides survived and each was only 50-70ft away from ours. The telephone pole uprights erected for the mudbrick across the road burnt like giant candles. No flame on the side of the poles, just on the top. A surreal site with all the surrounding bush blackened.
Stewie: I have a fair idea of how any stuff burns particularly when the draft is set up to create a furnace. Monitoring furnaces around Melbourne was one of my jobs. I also watched a CFA man set your hills alight quite a few times including total fire ban days. One bad day I joined a mob at Boronia and handed out all my garden tools and gloves before being trucked up the gully in nightfire light. I saw real panic at the road blocks.
There was a CFA unit up there wiped out during that afternoon. A big tree came down round my ears as I stared at the hulk wondering about how they got caught in the updraft. “Lookout” some one called when they saw a shower of sparks down my way in the dark. We regrouped, relieved on some smoldering buts and left. It was all over except for the inquiries. There were many other stories.
What have we learned Stewie?
How did your lot blow up again later on? Gullies and ridges full of new houses!
Folks, real Australian bush was never like that and you can’t always blame the greenies in charge of the mob.
Gavin, I was pointing to the fire being an intense ground fire and then due to the concentrated pile of heavy fuel it blew up.
The fact they were Greenies who left that pile of wood was neither here nor their at that time. They were the voting type Greenie not actually an active protesting type. They actually apologised, in my presense, to my father after the event. We smiled and said don’t worry about it.
Our house, while on a gully was quite defendable otherwise. The gully was not as much of a problem as your imagination may make it out to be. I understand living on the side of some gullies would be quite a problem. The tree I mentioned close to the house, my father wanted to trim coming up to the event but the local Sherbrooke Council had in months previous to this begun a campaign on the sins of removing any native vegetation. They resisted such common sense. And you would be aware that the Greens were quite prevalent in the Sherbrooke Council at that time. Native Vegetation laws through the back door. Lets not forget Joan (Green) Kirner, was opposition conservation minister.
Furthermore, the water mains running past newly established housing lots along our road was 50mm in size, way undersize. A fire truck hooked on up the road, to hose down a house on fire and everybody lost all their water pressure. Water just dribbled out the hose. It was a waste of time even trying to fill bucket. And our area was under residential zoning!
Following the fires this was very promptly ripped up and replaced with appropriate size piping.
Areas of remnant bush in the area, like the Baluk Willam reserve, have returned to their pre Ash Wednesday condition, full of manueca 12 ft. high, dogwood, intermingled with 3rd generation wattles. The Baluk Willam reserve in Ash Wednesday carried impressive firestorms down into the paddocks that surround it. After the fire nothing but blackened trunks, completely crowned over the entire reserve with fine ash 6 inches deep all over the ground.
Not withstanding many homes are defendable in the Dandenongs, many are with out doubt precariously situated in the event of severe wildfires. I think many should be stripped of surrounding vegetation or pulled down myself. I wouldn’t live there. I suspect many are out there counting on the insurance payout.
Also, grasslands at the foot of the Dandenongs, in the suburban Rowville area, now have many housing estates built on them, full of wooden fences and gardens full of native shrub species. I reckon they might be in line for a Dresden situation one day.
‘How did your lot blow up again later on?’
What the hell do you mean by this, ‘you lot’? We moved out of the area to avoid the trauma of it happening again and I think ‘you lot’ should read those within government departments, esp. local council and planning departments, should be asked that question, rather than people who have no idea due to no fault of their own. Many, especially in the early 1980’s did not realize the monster fires they could be dealing with and the authorities had failed in their responsibility to explain it to them. This is despite, as I now know, there were actually people going back to the 1960’s trying to warn authorities of the inevitability of it happening.
Why were these people ignored? Why did the authorities then allow residential zones to be allocated in high risk areas?
The answer to that first question is potentially Green politics, the second, money.
The Greens are more interested in Native Vegetation legislation and winning votes than responsible discussion around native vegetation and human habitat.
If you cannot see that Gavin, you are in denial and nothing more than a skeptic.
Gavin said: “It’s my firm view we have not yet learned the art of preventing or attacking big bushfires in any of them and drought now is almost a constant threat.”
There is an enormous body of work that has been done by the CSIRO over the last decades on bushfire management, fire intensities, fir e physics etc. We really have developed a sound body of knowledge in regard to fire behaviour, ignition and supression, though we still have much to learn.
The singlemost effective way to extinguish large fires is to not allow them to become large in the first place. The adequacy, timing and speed of the initial response is critical, especially in blow up conditions. I am convinced that events such as the 2003 fires become what they are due to human causes such as keeping an eye on the budget rather than the bush, or concern for other factors such as potential ecological damage resulting from machinery or fire retardant foams as two examples. The main game so to speak must be to extinguish small fires before they become large fires.
The practical experience of bush workers coupled with modern technical expertise should be enough to achieve such an aim. However it is the politics that influenes response and adequqcy of the response that is having the greatest impact on our forests.
Transfer of forests from one tenure to another(forestry to parks)has resulted in a dramatic shift in the numbers of people working in the forest and a loss of knowledge of both fire fighting skills and the lay of the land ( roads, topography, prevailing winds etc). I believe that this loss will become more critical as time passes .
Senior management in most government agencies are required to be financially responsible and are under great scrutiny from treasury, expenditure to extinguish small fires greater than other agencies of districts within agencies is looked upon poorly, primarily because city bound bureaucrats do not understand fire management and its associated costs (lots of overtime, equipment etc) nor do they provide adequate funding in agency budgets for that purpose.
9 out of 10 tmes land management agencies are lucky and the fires are put out easlily and with little cost comparatively. Its the ones that get away that prove to be expensive both ecologically and financially. A change of mindset is required amongst senior bureaucrats to encure that adequate resources are available for fire suppresion activities.
Davey Gem Esq,
Methinks bush people need to find some compelling way of having their views heard, and acted upon……………. Anybody got any ideas?
I would think nothing short of a class action or broad charter Royal Commission is going to work.
The Wildfire Taskforce Inc. (WTF), East Gippsland (formely known as the Bushfire Taskforce Inc.), along with The Stretton Group, The Alpine Access and Conservation Group and many others, have tried for years to bring this issue to light. Amongst these groups is formidable and profound experience and yet, they are essentially, I think, ignored.
Perhaps if these current fires come down into the plains of Gippsland or into the Thomson water catchment and cause enough environmental destruction, people will wake up and listen to experience, rather than the eco claptrap that has overrun the decision makers in ‘our’ government departments. Maybe then ecological management can be put back on track. What a high price to pay though!
It also seems to me there’s a conspiracy of sorts going on behind the scenes, with the mainstream media having been drawn into it, hook, line and sinker. This makes it very hard to get your voice ultimately heard.
Maybe people affected by bushfires need to start forming regional alliances. Forests and their ecosystems may vary from place to place but the effect of these catastrophic feral wildfires is somewhat the same. Environmentally unsustainable destruction.
Maybe people within relevant departments can have mass walkouts, strikes. I suspect many though would be worried about losing their jobs and is why most don’t even talk publicly about their concerns. Could you imagine what some of the employees within environmental management circles, who are jacked off with what they see, could tell us?
Jennifer quotes in her post,
“The truth is most bushfires in Tasmania are deliberately lit or escape from forestry operations or regeneration burns,” Milne claimed.
Fred Ward, co-founder of the Wildfire Taskforce, was given this same reply to a series of letters he wrote back in 1992 when, backed by his knowledge of the mountains and his experiences in the 1939 wildfire, tried to warn the government of multiple lightning strike initiated wildfires, that would one day cause a repeat of the 1939 wildfire, due to the excessive regrowth . What a cruel thing to witness experience negated by spin.
As Fred often said “the Red Steer is at the gate.”
Fred if you’re up there watching, I think the gate has opened.
From debates in Western Australia I get the strong impression that our academic fire ecologists, green politicians, suburban environmentalists, and career eco-bureaucrats have never seen the Red Steer, and so believe it is a mythical beast. Seeing a fire on TV, or reading a report, is a lot different from being there, hearing the roar, feeling the ground shake, and feeling its searing breath. Then again, maybe they think the Red Steer is an essential part of ‘biodiversity’, or the ‘precautionary principle’.
“We really have developed a sound body of knowledge in regard to fire behaviour, ignition and suppression..”
Peter: its not me you have to convince, its the general public including a lot of new conservationists in the media etc. and academics.
Gavin,
There was a TV documentary on the Great Fire of London (1666). It suggested that the fire started by a dust explosion in a bakery. Is that what you are talking about in bushfires? Do not such explosions only happen in enclosed spaces – wheat silos f’rinstance?
Davey: I had the dubious experience of seeing several huge paper mill fires in Melbourne. Fires ran up the stacks of paper inside. Vast quantities of stored bulk tissue were consumed in the end but only as the rolls were unwound by flames like bark on a gum tree. Heat was so intense no firemen could get near the fire in the warehouses till the steelwork collapsed and tore the roof apart .
Spiraling organic dust at atmospheric pressure is what we once fed the furnace. Brown coal pressed into briquettes for the SECV was a revolution in dust control for transport purposes but any industrial conveyor system had to be kept clean regardless. However dust from solids is only part of the picture in all furnace work involving forced draft systems and control.
Explosion doors are fitted to major firebrick chambers regardless of fuel mix to keep the lid on if the whole thing goes positive. Oil rig fires frequently show a pulsating combustion cloud as the gas reaction expands and contracts. Fuel oil like briquettes has to be thoroughly stirred up to burn properly in the atmosphere. Believe me, flakes of cellulose tissue floating in the breeze inside or out got people running.
The best way to combat large fires is to get well ahead of them and burn downhill into pre-prepared containment lines. This ensures that the new burn will not burn as intensely as the main fire and it means that the main fire will have nothing left to burn when it hits the ridge top.
The combination of wind and heat will ensure that the major part of the heat will go over the top of the remaining fuel.
This, of course, is not much use to all you flatlanders but in the hilly country, aspect is a powerful ally. In the days when bush fire brigades had no tankers, no-one, ever, bothered trying to fight a fire from the uphill side, unless it was with more fire.
Cinders, Peter &TCA in general; IMHO in this thread like many others on Jen’s blog we have this constant blame game that reflects badly on the timber industry in particular. At a time when all forest resources are being ravaged by drought and fire you don’t need enemies in any sector of the community. For instance we may be witnessing the end of our 20/20 vision as many softwood and other recent reserves disappear round the margins of native forest everywhere.
Christine Milne quite rightly says most bushfires are lit by somebody somewhere if we consider all hazard reduction and back burns over the last thirty years say as deliberate ignitions even thought we were chasing odd wildfires. Undoubtedly they all add to the total area consumed in difficult times. We hear plenty about wild fires jumping control lines but lets face it, nobody is officially observing escapes or sheer folly anywhere to my knowledge. Another thing, I reckon CSIRO bushfire research today is only a token effort considering what your lot spends on navel gazing or trampling the green philosophy under your feet.
In another thread I suggested we think about harvesting catchments based on my concept of initiating a new umbrella group of experts for achieving a fresh range of outcomes including water quality. Simply: water quality around modern logging methods in the recent past has been almost a disaster for various interested parties.
Bridging the gap to include some new reserves and national parks in wood salvage operations long term seems impossible with current timber industry and wilderness protection groups battling the way they are. Only a fresh approach with a brand new and very independent umpire can resolve the bitterness. I thought we had it with the Feds and RFA’s however nobody really liked that lot at any stage of the game.
Gavin, its a bit late for the blame game when political parties such as the Australian Democrats over a decade ago could have provided this independent leadership of keeping the bastards honest, eg being the honest broker in this debate. Instead the democrats as you would know Gavin, tried to out green the greens and have ended up being all but swamped by the greens.
When you make outrageous statements like “water quality around modern logging methods in the recent past has been almost a disaster for various interested parties” when all the evidence that I have read and studied says the opposite, means that you have given up the high moral ground and instead you continue the constant blame game that reflects badly on you!
I challenge you to provide credible evidence of a significant loss of water quality in Tasmania due to timber harvesting since the signing of the Regional Forest Agreement.
Ian reminds me of a long line of fires the NSW authorities had crews light late in the morning along Two Sticks Road west of the ACT in a vain attempt to stop their big fire in the Brindabella National Park (Wednesday 15th Jan 2003). During the afternoon the back burn extended right along Baldy Range. By 11 pm Saturday morning it was about halfway to Canberra. When the winds got behind it around noon all hell broke loose and the ACT lost some 500 homes.
We should note another fire ball report on ABC. Apparently one hit a house in Tasmania.
In 1967 I wondered what happened to a few houses in Strickland Avenue up behind the Cascades in Hobart. A string of brick verniers looked to be blasted apart but strangely weatherboard houses in-between remained intact. Taking photos of the ruins seemed out of place so I painted what I could in an afternoon.
Stewie asks about my knowledge of log piles in the fire path. All I can say it depends on how thick the wood is but I can recall my fire protection sales supervisor describing his experience in the 67 fires. Max was in a fuel depot when it hit and spent fully half his reserve of cat lives dodging empty 44 gal drums as they popped off in the heat by their hundreds. Empty fuel tanks (metal skin degas vapours) in any heat are most likely to explode.
Some more about old wooden houses. During our time living in a historic mining town I watched two burn down in my street on different nights. The both lasted only minutes as a torch. A young mother next door was airing nappies in her rented cottage when a spark from her wood fire set them off. Outside was her landlord’s caravan, he was at the pub round the corner with his mates in the fire team. She grabbed the kids and warned the fire chief herself and he immediately dashed across in his 4×4 to the locked fire shed. Unfortunately his keys to everything in town remained in his overalls back at his caravan.
In great panic they dragged it away from the second bonfire that month. We found a slightly singed white fluffy rabbit hiding under the old cast iron bath in the morning as they removed the crumpled roofing iron.
Stewie: there are a number of factors in any blaze including ignition point, volatility of fuel and draft. In hard times I knew several boiler men at a slaughter house who burnt lots of ox heads to save on their brown coal. But they could only get away with that practice in the city at night because of the carbon black they created and they needed a bit more draft. My job briefly in that situation was to make sure their dirty smoke did not backfire into the furnace.
Peter: It’s been my concern for decades that bushfire researchers have not used the wealth of knowledge associated with industrial models for a whole range of scenarios in the wild fire events. Jennifer should also be aware that most scientific research is still catching up to the practice in a spectrum of our rural industries. There has certainly been a lot of huffing and puffing going on here.
Gavin,
Christine Milne has never let the truth get in the way of her politics. I am surprised that you quote her so readily.
The majority of bushfires are not caused by arson or deliberate fires such as fuel reduction burn or regeneration brns or tops burns or whatever other name a forest operations burn might have. The majority of bushfires are caused by lightening strikes. Its one of the reasons that many of the fires that are now occuring are in remote country. All the research that I have seen (albeit mostly as summaries) indicate that arsonists do not travel far and certainly not into remote country to light their fires.
Recent advances in technology have produced tools such as the lightning strike indicators which enable land managers to track storms and weather fronts and determine if and where such strikes occur.
Sorry Gavin, but this is not about blame, it is about providing an alternative viewpoint that provides some critique of what some may see as the status quo.
As for the timber industry they are big enough to look after themselves. It is the communities that rely of the industry that I am concerned about. Massive land transfers from forestry agencies to natinal park agencies across Australia have yet to produce any quantifiable evidence that the pain that local timber communities have been put through has been justified in terms of improved conservation outcomes. I am convinced that the science, if it is ever conducted, will show that there has been no net gain in conservation outcomes.
Indeed for all of the rhetoric about “old growth” the Christine Milne’s of the world appear incapable of understanding or acknowledging that the forests now managed for conservation are slowly but surely aging and are set to increase the amount of old growth forest acros Australia by some orders of magnitude (unless of course a wildfire resets the ecological process and a new seral stage is delivered).
Also I am interested in your viewpoint on the conservation benefits or disbenefits of Forestry, where forestry is defined as the growing of trees.
Cinders: I wrote ‘water quality around modern logging methods in the recent past has been almost a disaster for various interested parties’ while thinking about the post war period and the changes I have seen like heavy mechanization in forestry. In my youth the Alder Bros up the road still used a bullock team in the bush while logging for Blackwell’s mill in town.
You may not be aware but I travelled a lot through various operational areas since then, 60’s 70’80’s however I have only a couple of very recent photos of some “messy” opps during the RFA period on file re your concern.
Cinders: again you reckon I’m responsible for whatever it is the greens are doing to you.
What I’m suggesting here about logging in catchments applies to Victoria in particular now timber coming out of native forests is very restricted under their state agreements.
I could have been guessing the election but the TCA must consider the makeup of the new upper house in advance of further campaigns.
Recognition of past practice is only the first step in making a fresh claim on water reserves for the timber industry ie squeaky clean all the way with Mr Bracks
Gavin, I am not reckoning that you are responsible for the greens, what I have done is to ask you to come up with real evidence to support your claims. you have failed to answer my challenge.
Apart from the PR messages spun by the greens on logging in Catchment, why not look at some of the evidence presented at this site by the chap from the Institute of Foresters. I would be very suprised if there was a water quality issue backed by real evidence in Victoria. (I think the wilderness society spin is quantity all those young trees causing nasty water restrictions as they grow.)
The point of this post initally was to support all those threatened by the current state of bushfires and to discuss some of the issues related to the management of the Nation’s fire prone forests. It is of interest that many newspapers are now folling where Jen’s blog has been leading.
Cinders: I find the blog’s passion for evidence curious to say the least given I have worked directly with a lot of rural folk who like me form good judgment in all kinds of situations on the run.. Our young reporters and the TCA won’t find much about my old links and sources by simply googling on the www but it’s fair to say the catchment issue started for me a long time ago. It’s also fair to say the stuff I can refer to from personal experience, is not in many books.
After working with ex cops and ex cons I can say it’s the inside info that counts most not the evidence on some public data base. Researchers later on hardly get a clue. In various periods I also had good relationships with unions, contractors, mill managers, farmers, reporters, authors and conservationists.
Cinders: It was a dear lady close to me from the theatre in Melbourne who did a good job on convincing the late Don Chipp while he was a Liberal to get involved with Tasmanian wilderness issues in the first place. Greens came into it much later.
While you are at it in catching up with campaigning, google for info on Dick Johnson, John Brownlie, Bill Molyneux, Les Sowthwell, Peter Simms and a host of other independent bushwalkers interested in the Australian landscape. I know two of them were practicing engineers. Some of them were at the core of the Victorian Government’s new relationship with the high country and forestry for everyone.
I had a brief but close working relationship mid 70’s with two lads, one from Somerset the other from Queenstown whom I reckon both went on in water quality management. Frequently four of us cleaned up after lightening strikes. Lightening like water and trees has been one of my big interests over many years. Note too, Mother Nature has but only just, spared me from instant destruction several times.
Blog watchers may well heed this private comment, dry lightening burns in remote country are probably on the increase. Throughout my career I have had virtually constant contact with a host of technical staff in a range of industries across this country. At times I touched base with maintenance teams spread throughout telecommunications and power engineering on a daily basis. Radio towers and transmission lines were always as much a target as the bush. Once upon a time; fire (any type in any place) after ground strikes was not as common as it seems today.
It’s my guess the TCA are loosing their battle with global warming somewhere today.
Gavin
Interesting to read that you back up your arguments by your own experiences and see no need to do any more than just that. Well I’m more than happy to follow this rule of debate you stand by.
I have worked in Tassie’s forests for the past 38 years ands my personal experiences tells me you are wrong in what you say about forestry effecting water catchments.
There will be absolutely zero change in the current forest management policies for as long as the farming and forestry communities continue to provide the blank cheques, in time and resources, to minimise whatever harm the greens and government create through their negligence.
Lets get two things clear.
1 The less one has to do with actual forest protection and management the more influence one has over forest policy.
2 The more one has to do with actual forest protection and management the less influence one has over forest policy.
So if those who are involved in forest management are serious about achieving a fundamental change to forest management policy then they must stop everything they are doing, for as long as it takes to weld on those changes.
At the moment all we do is provide disaster insurance for incompetent morons. And the only way to expose a moron is to put him in complete control so there is is zero room for doubting the pedigree of his decisions.
It is not patriotic to prop up corrupt regimes. The sooner they collapse under their own baggage the better it will be for both the environment and the community.
The weirdo society (Wilderness to other) campaign to ‘Save Tassie’s Forests’. Save them from what? Save them to burn?
The Weirdo’s have a pamphlet that states “burning native forests is not renewable”. Yet on the ABC, 13-12-06, Bob Brown stated that “Native forests recover from fire and will establish habitats again”.
Good on you Bob. Finally, you agree that native forests recover when disturbed. Now, if only you will admit what you know, and that is native forests recover from clearfall forestry.
The green political machines have actively infiltrated local governments to establish green blocks that place tree preservation orders, stop clearing and stop fuel reduction burns. These groups have been very successful. So successful that many of the forests they campaign to ‘save’ are now blackened scars across the landscape.
If these groups were real environmentalist, they would support forestry and the thousands of highly skilled firefighters employed by private and public forest managers.
When these forestry people are placing their lives at risk to save many green residents, it would be nice if they received a word of thanks. However, the silence of these groups is deafening.
Maybe the green movement should adopt the 1960’s hippy chant of ‘burn baby burn’.
On another matter, lets stop calling these people environmentalists. They are self cantered, prejudiced, eco-terrorists. The real environmentalists are out fighting fires and protecting forests.
Gavin your comment has reminded me of an incident concerning evidence that forms good judgement, when you say,
‘I find the blog’s passion for evidence curious to say the least given I have worked directly with a lot of rural folk who like me form good judgment’
A few years ago there was a fire that burnt a significant proportion of Macleods Morrass, just outside of Bairnsdale. The area, again, had not been burnt in a long time.
They said at the time on the news that a cigarette butt had started the fire. Not suspected but had started it.
At this time, it just so happened, the Quit campaign were running strong anti-smoking PR campaigns on the national media.
When the smoke had died down I rang the local fire manager at the Bairnsdale branch of DSE to confirm that it was indeed a cigarette butt. The answer I got was that they thought it was a cigarette butt because it began from the side of a road. No evidence of the butt was actually found. On suggesting it may have been arson, I was told the judgement had been made that it was not likely an arsonist as somebody in a house, 200 metres up the road would have probably seen them. This was the only house in that immediate area. Hmmm.
Studies have shown that it is very difficult for a discarded cigarette butt to start a bushfire. Possible, yes but a low probability.
My skeptical little brain can’t help butt wonder if there is a convenient cross over in campaigns here.
Curiously, this fire manager had only recently been employed at the Bairnsdale branch. He came from Melbourne where his job was a fire insurance investigator or similar. He had very little experience with managing wildfires as those ‘predicted’ to occur in the greater Bairnsdale region and its neighbouring mountains.
You continually refer back to AGW. Get a grip man. Concentrate on fuel loads. We need to reduce it to 10 tons per hectare over millions of acres and not accept any longer the 90+ tons per hectare that often exists. Remember, it’s not rocket science.
You say you have been around. You know a lot of people it seems and experienced a lot in life. You seem to know ‘everybody’. That makes me curious as to how you could not be skeptical of the global warming debate, especially as you must have seen so many ex-cons in your time and the enormous ‘authority’ it would give to the Green cause. And the medias role in all this ………
My wife worked at the ABC for many years, in the resource department that collated and gathered ‘background’ information for journalists. Clearly, many journalists aren’t what they seem but rather run on political agendas.
That we all know for a fact. Do you agree Gavin? About the only thing that changes, so as to capture the audiences attention, is the stories get bigger and biiiigger and biiiiiigger and BIIIIIIGGER.
GAvin,
You said “Simply: water quality around modern logging methods in the recent past has been almost a disaster for various interested parties.”
It is well understood that actively growing forests use and transpire more water than old forests or cropping or pasture. There is no dispute around this fact.
However to imply that forestry is responsible for declining water quality in our catchments is mischievious and diverting attention from the impacts that the current fires are having on our catchments.
The catchment around Bendora dam in the ACT is a classic example of massive erosion and soil movement following intense uncontrolled fire. Literally thousands of tonnes of soil and ash were transferred from the surrounding hills into the dam in the months after the 2003 fires.
Likewise the 1997 and 2001 fires in the Blue Mountains denuded complete valleys in the upper catchments that feed into Warragamba dam. The erosion had to be seen to be believed, I certainly did not think that such mass movement of top soil could occur until I saw it.
More importantly the impact on our catchments in terms of water quantity will be felt for over 50 years as the regenerating forests utilise the available water.
Is it little wonder that many of our dams are at such critical lows when significant portions of their catchments have burnt in the recent past and are now harbouring water hungry regenerating forests. Yes we are in the midst of a prolonged drought, as we have been before, but I would contend that the diversion of water to regenerating forests is what is tipping our dam capacity into a critical area.
Peter; nothing affects our catchments more than drought however I will stick by my original argument that all water quality is affected by our forestry practice. It seems TJ is in a better position than me to convince governments nationally the TCA can manage water quality based on our past record.
Peter; You said “forestry” is the growing of trees. I assumed we could apply that concept across all agencies, also public and private forests, hardwoods and softwoods etc hey we aren’t doing so well this season after drought & fires in net asset development given our 20/20 vision at the national level. Here I was thinking the TCA may cotton on and rub shoulders with water management too in the great debate over climate change.
A bit of a study in the in the Victorian catchments has excluded catchment forestry forever if we don’t ask a few more questions like moist updrafts affecting cloud formation in rugged country, mature trees protecting seedlings versus crops after clear fall and slash burn, runoff dams from log jams, contouring and so on.
TJ its not me you have to convince or the greens necessarily, it’s the water boys in Victoria. If I am wrong about past practice I’m the first with a thirst in your forest.
The trouble with all this talk about reducing fuel load in forest is that the people who know when to do it and how are not allowed to.
The best time to reduce fuel load is immediately after the first good rains when the soil is damp and the vegetation has dried out so it will carry a fire but not get too hot. Many farmers have done this to various parts of a property in successive years so there is a patchwork of light fuel loads. At the same time they made sure there were adequate fire breaks across and around the paddocks so any fire had boundaries where measures could be taken to control it.
The problem is that nowadays a person is prevented from doing what they know to be right by bureaucrats who don’t, and have to fill in forms and get permits so that by the time all the paper is organized it is too hot/dry etc to have a safe burn.
I live a few kilometers out of Bairnsdale and as the fire sits now we are in line for this fire to sweep through this area, probably next Thursday. The temperatures have dropped appreciably at the moment. 23 deg, cool nights.
The lawn around the house is patchy brown with a tinge of green still in some of it. A patch near the house 100ft by 50 ft is almost all browned off, while my quarter acre paddock, between me and my neighbour is about 70% brown and 30% green. A lot of couch grass in it towards the house. I,ve mowed the paddock down as close to the ground as possible while around the house I’ve mowed it with a catcher, ‘roughed’ it up with a rake and mowed it again, trying to get as much of the detritus out as possible.
I have three cattle out the back paddock and need somewhere to put them.
So I rang the council yesterday to see if I could black out the top paddock or at least the area near the house of completely dead lawn, which lays in the direction the fire will more than likely come.
Taking all factors into account and the current conditions, this burn off would be extremely easy and safe to achieve at the moment and would help me to no end, to save my house and provide somewhere safe for the cattle to go.
Now I wasn’t expecting a yes from the council really, as I new they would be paranoid as hell about such activity and of course, there is always some numb nuts out there who would do the wrong thing but I feel it’s just another situation of ‘collective’ thinking denying common sense. I know a number of people made inquiries to the council yesterday with similar requests but were denied.
I can’t make up my mind, is this sound management or irresponsibility by the council?
It was refreshing to see Heather Ewart interview eminent fire historian Professor Stephen Pyne, of Arizona, about the current bushfire situation (7.30 Report, Friday 15th December). As I have said before, Steve Pyne is one professor who knows what he is talking about on wildfire. Before his academic career, he actually fought fires – putting the wet stuff on the red stuff, as we say. I know a number of ‘fire experts’ who are politically influential in Australia. They put their faith in ‘models’, and have published many academic papers. They favour attempts at long fire exclusion from flammable vegetation, bombarded every year by lightning. They dislike the historical approach, which shows a very long record of pre-emptive controlled burning by humans, to avoid later, fiercer, lightning fires. Perhaps bushfire history is too astringent a cross-check on their ‘modelling’ approach. How embarrassing.
The classic irony is that the greens and governments are still flogging this line about forestry reducing water quality while they prepare their constituents for the day when they will drink their own sewerage. The gods really do have a sense of humour, don’t they.
The worst water quality impact in my creek is the runoff from the unpaved council road that is managed in a way that would be in serious breach of every forestry code of practice in the country. And the council concerned? None other than Byron Shire which has had a green majority for almost two decades.
Buh, langwielig