CHEAP, simple to use and extremely effective fire management tools that are owned and operated by almost every householder who is exposed to the risk of wildfire are the humble axe and the chainsaw. But the various native vegetation “protection” laws around Australia have effectively outlawed their use, even in the most extreme emergencies.
Indeed I have lost count of the number of published images of the Victorian fires that provide clear and damning evidence of our legislator’s role in the manslaughter of so many innocent Australians. Almost every image of a burned out home also exhibits the unmistakable signature of ill-informed social engineers who have abused their legislative powers to compel, what is now clearly proven to be, one of the most destructive social changes ever forced upon a minority community.
The facts clearly establish the case that the Victorian and other state governments around the country have made a direct contribution to the character, scale and intensity of the wildfires, and the death and destruction they have caused. They made critical choices as to the form and content of seemingly unrelated legislation which has banned the use of some of our most readily available and effective fire risk management tools.
And they have not just implemented that legislation in a manner that has prevented efforts to improve fire management and lower the associated risks. These people have established a policy architecture that has actively discouraged, on pain of penalty, rural people from preventing the state sponsored deterioration of fire management conditions and all the increase in risks associated with it.
In the days when large fires were fought and defeated by men and women without machinery, pumps, water bombers or GPS, the axe was an essential tool for reducing the height of the fire face at key defensive positions. My own father, the late T.R. Mott, spent most of the 50 years of volunteer firefighting, that earned him an Australia Medal, carrying the day with axe and hoe.
The proper exercise of legislative power has always demanded the full consideration of all relevant matters, especially matters of entirely foreseeable risk or detriment. But our vegetation management laws all ignore the fact that any tree, let alone a number of them, within 100 metres of a house, in extreme fire weather, is a very dangerous thing. Any tree is most dangerous when all its leaves and branches remain on top of the trunk where they raise the height of the fire front, greatly extend its zone of radiation and assist in projecting embers far and wide.
Yet, almost every image of a burned out house has a backdrop of young trees, also charred, right next to the smouldering heap. Most of the trees are a long way short of “pristine old growth”, as the greens would have us believe. They are rarely more than 20cm in trunk diameter with most of them only 6 to 10cm thick, less than 10 metres high, and easily dispatched with an axe, let alone a chainsaw. They are usually close together which means they have been in fierce competition for soil moisture and with much drier leaves than would be the case with more widely spaced stems. This renders these trees even more dangerously combustible than normal.
The simple, dare I say it, inconvenient truth is that any tree poses the least risk of all when it is not there at all. But unbeknown to the greens and the legislators, there are numerous options between these two extremes, of no trees and too many trees, that the metrocentric policy processes have completely ignored.
Any tree will present a smaller portion of its maximum fire risk when it is not in fierce competition for soil moisture with closely spaced neighbours. A broader root area means a larger volume of available moisture, and this means that moisture is available for a longer portion of the interval between rainfall events. And that means that the leaves retain their moisture for a longer portion of that interval, thereby making the tree less combustible for a greater part of the year. It also reduces the amount of leaf fall in dry times. And in most of the photos of burned out houses, the amenity of the site would not have been reduced in any way if half of those trees had been removed long ago. But in fact, all of them should have been removed, some of them long ago and others just before the fire came.
It is trite but true that any tree presents only a fraction of its maximum fire risk when it is on the ground, or when all or part of the trunk remains standing but all the branches and leaves are on the ground. The height of the fire face is substantially reduced, the exposed surface area is reduced, the zone of radiation is seriously diminished and the height and distance of ember projection is reduced. More importantly, the fuel in the branches and leaves can then be moved to a safer place, preferably down wind, or concentrated in one place where the resulting fire can be contained. Indeed, if action is taken early enough then this fuel can be eliminated with a bonfire, buried, or completely removed from the site long before the fire season.
Yet, as far as the vegetation management legislation is concerned, the moment any single native tree, even a sapling that has only grown this past year, is cut, topped, lopped or otherwise damaged, it is classified as “broadscale clearing” which, apart from a few exceptions, can only take place with the consent of the relevant authority. Eskimos have numerous words for snow but here in Australia our legislation has only one word for tree management, “clearing”. And this consent to clear, of course, has absolute “Buckley’s Chance” of being obtained in the short interval between a wind change and an ember storm. And even if a determination was given in time, in most cases the proposed action would be rejected.
Governments have gone out of their way to completely eliminate this highly contributive fire management option from the community’s collective wit. So even when it is absolutely certain that every tree in the path of a megafire has less than half an hour of life remaining, the legislation persists in defining any person who cuts down or lops just one of those trees as a criminal.
Even when the trees have grown in a paddock or roadside verge long after a house was built in good faith, in a safe, open paddock, the legislation has actively prevented the homeowner from removing that regrowth to maintain the conditions of fire safety that were present when the house was built. And we then get assorted “experts” who assume that all trees were always there and that it is the home owner who has been at fault for building in a silly place.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that even diseased trees will resprout with vigorous coppice growth after they have been either burned to the ground or cut down, the legislation persists with this incredibly ignorant urban green delusion that the whole tree, roots and all, has been destroyed, never to regenerate or be replaced. But this is clearly not the case. In fact most lignotuberous eucalypt species have specifically evolved to do this naturally.
The vegetation policy milieu also has an overwhelming fetish, if not monomania, for connecting gaps in forested vegetation in some ignorant belief that it somehow enhances habitat value. Despite uncontested historical evidence that most of our forests were widely spaced grassy woodlands for 50 millennia prior to European settlement, the legislation has imposed the closed canopy as the key attribute that must be “preserved” and encouraged under all forest management regimes.
Despite clear evidence that the majority of forest dwelling species are dependent on the grassland-tree interface, the legislation imposes arboreal dominance. Birds dependent on grass seeds or grass eating insects for survival are allowed to starve as closer and closer canopy cover provides a dubious visual reward to our remote “eyes in the sky” while understorey diversity crashes.
Despite clear evidence that species like Koalas will cross pastured gaps more than a kilometre wide, and forest dwelling birds that have no problem with a 10 or 20km gap, a home owner who maintains a 50 metre gap between forested clusters for fire management purposes is regarded with a certain suspicion as to his ecological bona fides. And anyone who would like to create such a gap, that would present absolutely zero barrier to the movement of dependent species, is closely monitored after his application is rejected and prosecuted if he does so without seeking a consent that would never be provided anyway.
It is about this point in the narrative that all those who are most culpable will seek to divert attention from what they dismiss as “the blame game”. The most culpable will maximise the coverage of themselves as sympathisers and mourners to produce maximum perceptual distance between themselves and their guilt. Others will whip up some serious public fury at arsonists. But make no mistake, the responsible legislators and their green masters had a choice as to what sort of regulatory approach they would take. And they must accept full responsibility for the entirely foreseeable consequences of the poor choices they have made.
Put briefly, any vegetation management legislation option was required to interface with the planning legislation. The primary architecture of this legislation is based on the concept of “development” and the powers only extend to controlling of development. There is no power to compel changes to, or require consent for, existing lawful uses. This term “development” means new uses of land or premises or “material changes” to existing uses.
As far as the cutting of trees is concerned, this could constitute a new use of land, as with clearing of untouched forest for cultivating crops. Or it could constitute a normal and necessary part of an existing lawful use, such as the removal of a few trees to supply replacement fence posts from a woodlot that had been set aside for that very purpose. In the latter case the tree cutting could not be classed as development because the action did not amount to a “material change” in the nature of the use.
If the farm was sold to a housing developer, and the entire woodlot was removed to make more room for houses, then this would amount to both a new use of the land and a material change in the use of the woodlot. The planning legislation already picked up and required consent for this change and with it came the power to impose conditions on the new use, such as retaining the woodlot, or a reasonable portion of it if it covered a large part of the property.
But if the farmer had cut down and sold all the trees in the woodlot but had earlier completely renounced any option of selling some or all of the wood, even in a financial emergency, or major contingency like medical expenses or Uni fees etc, then this might constitute a material change in use. But in most cases landowners wisely do not limit their options in this way.
In fact, such were the climatic and economic vagaries of past times that just about every piece of forested land on private property was set aside for just such a circumstance. Woodlots were never left purely for habitat purposes as numerous departmental spivs would encourage people to do today. Yes, the farmers enjoyed the improved amenity and habitat value of their forested portions but, in the absence of a welfare system, the woodlot was also the reserve of last resort, to be exercised when re-stocking after drought or just before the bailiffs came a-calling.
And when the mostly urban based legislators tried, briefly, to get their distracted brains around the problem of defining material change to such a broad range of lawful uses they simply gave up. Just and equitable legislation that was consistent with established principles of the overriding planning framework was all too hard. They took the cop-out instead, the easy way out, and opted for a blunt instrument wielded by the myopic, or the downright malicious. They declared that the cutting or even pruning of any single tree to be “development” and deluded themselves that by providing certain stated exemptions they would avoid most of the adverse consequences for most of the time.
The problem is that bushfires don’t occur “most of the time” but preparation for them is best done during that “most of the time”. And trees produce seeds during that “most of the time” and the wind blows those seeds onto adjoining land most of the time. And birds eat seeds most of the time and deposit those seeds all over the place most of the time so that young trees grow where they are not intended, most of the time. The complete failure to recognise this fact meant that the legislation was slowly imposing a material change of use, by way of additional tree cover, on just about every piece of land that was not ploughed or mown on a regular basis.
And as with all regulatory regimes based on compulsion rather than incentives, the framework has acquired a completely debilitating, counterproductive, and clearly destructive focus on the detection of breaches and the prevention of loopholes. So even when the use of the humble chainsaw will make no material change and actually improve the survival prospects of both the tree itself and its owner, the legislation continues to criminalise reasonable men and women seeking nothing more sinister than their own survival and the protection of their core assets in a circumstance of extreme emergency. And they have done such a thorough job of it that none of the people that were victim to the fire appeared to have given the slightest consideration to the tree lopping or dropping option.
At a time when more than 500,000 hectares has been burned to ash, with almost every one of the resident wildlife incinerated with it, the regulators are apparently concerned that someone, somewhere, might take advantage of a bushfire management loophole to get rid of a tree that he just doesn’t like. And to top it all off, Premier Brumby still has the gall to make reference to those “pristine” native forests.
If Brumby is serious about putting all the cards on the table in the review of this disaster then he and his advisors need to get right back to core principles based on real and relevant material change in vegetation management and apply proportionate responses, justly and equitably. And by their deeds (and their omissions) shall we know them.
*************
Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.
Images of the Victorian Fires:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016§ionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016§ionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/slideshow_ajax.aspx?sectionid=9016§ionname=slideshowajax&subsectionid=150966&subsectionname=bigfires
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
A local warned council – Fire Prevention on Private Property
Discussion Paper on:
Fire Prevention on Private Property
Within the Shire Of Yarra Ranges
by Rick Houlihan
July 2008
The following is an extract from Rick Houlihan’s paper presented to the Shire of Yarra Ranges Council on Tuesday 8th of July 2008.
“Conclusion .
Due to the precedent which has been set by the actions of the Compliance Department, the Shire will need to either amend Clause 53 or run the real risk that Fire Prevention Works in the Rural and Bushland Areas of the Shire may not occur this season, apart from the mowing of non native grass, the removal of fallenbranches and twigs, and cleaning gutters.
Some residents may apply for a permit, they may even get it in time to carry out the works prior to the Fire Season, but only if the Planning Department improves its current record of the time taken between lodgement and decision on a Planning Permit. Most will just wait for a Schedule 15 notice, which will place a large extra workload on the Shires Emergency Management Department.
This in turn will require additional contractors to enable the works to be carried out within the time restraints stipulated by the Shires Fire Prevention Officers. In the meantime this will place additional pressures on the CFA who up until now have been working closely with the Shire in encouraging residents to act early and reduce the real risk of Bushfire which exists in the Shire of Yarra Ranges.
This matter must be resolved as both the Shire and its Councillors run the risk of serious litigation if a serious bushfire were to occur and lives were lost as a result of poor Fire Preparation within the Shire of Yarra Ranges, which remains one of the most fire prone areas of the world.”
Please follow this link to view paper: http://www.uych.vic.edu.au/?q=node/24
Please read this very interesting paper and forward your comments.
For once I have to agree with many of the considerations in Ian’s item on the Victorian bushfire situation leading to his conclusion –
“If Brumby is serious about putting all the cards on the table in the review of this disaster then he and his advisors need to get right back to core principles based on real and relevant material change in vegetation management and apply proportionate responses, justly and equitably”
But with these exceptions; “greens” and “spivs” did not cause all these events. Extreme drought and individual carelessness with their ignitions in bad times are the primary culprits.
———————————–
In past weeks I have been photographing the ground from various altitudes, above my region in NSW including the ACT, Vic, Tas also bits of NZ and conclude; many parts of SE Aus are so dry big fires are likely anywhere right now.
In fact all debris from current clearing, slashing etc programs could be a problem in itself. Pine plantations in particular tend to surround our other rural enterprises. Then there are crops of less valuable weeds scattered throughout most regions.
While flying through, I could read the opinions of Tolhurst and Esplin as featured bushfire experts in our daily press, however it was enough to just contemplate the haze on every route from the many distant fires persisting day after day.
If the 2003 ACT fires are any guide, it will take Victorian communities and their authorities many years to recover.
Thanks Jim. Given that Rick Houlihan had presented this paper to the council in July 2008 (7 months warning) then there is already a prima facie case of negligence on the part of the Council, and the State Government, in respect of any damage or harm to property or life from bushfires. The detriment is entirely foreseeable and the steps that were called for are entirely reasonable and practicable. The failure to act in a timely manner cannot be defended under claims of reasonable response times because the required actions involve the restoration of a pre-existing state, not the devising of a new response.
I do not have a copy of the Victorian Criminal Code, yet, but if it is anything like the Qld and other codes then the responsible council officer, usually the CEO, is open to criminal charges in respect of a clear failure of duty of care in respect of a “dangerous thing”. The dangerous thing being native vegetation for which he/she has assumed full control over. It would also be the case that the indemnity from prosecution normally enjoyed by public officials does not extend to acts (and omissions) done unlawfully or with negligence.
As far as the prevention measures go, there are a few items that also need to be clarified.
The first is that the notion of a two metre fire break is rendered entirely nonsense once the trees involved reach a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 10 to 13cm. This is because eucalypts normally have a crown to stem ratio of between 15 to 1 and 20 to 1, which means that two trees on either side of a nominal 2 metre fire break on the ground will be touching each other in the canopy. Such trees are unlikely to be any taller than 10 to 13 metres (ie, with standard 1% taper) and this means that even very mild fires, with low windspeed, will reach the crown.
It follows that a 4 metre fire break on the ground will also be rendered entirely useless if the trees on either side of it are anywhere near 20cm DBH because, again, their branches will be touching in the crown. And so it goes on, with an 8 metre fire break on the ground being completely negated by trees anywhere near 40cm DBH on either side. And of course, todays 40cm DBH tree can grow to 80cm in the half life of a council planning, or departmental, moron.
There is hardly a single council or native vegetation custodial authority in Australia that has managed to acquire and retain the simple fact that trees actually grow. So the fact that trees, when presented with a gap on one side, will go out of their way to extend their branches to occupy that gap, is also totally beyond their comprehension. Hence, they persist with mind-numbingly stupid prescriptions involving ground based widths of fire breaks that only operate as such in zero wind, low temperatures, high leaf moisture content and high humidity.
Of equally breathtaking stupidity is the assumption that the boundary line of any and every property is the ideal place to locate a containment line. This is very rarely the case. Property boundaries (there is usually 4 of them) can run up a slope, across a slope, at the bottom of a slope, along any diagonal and, very rarely, along a ridge line. In the real world the most effective containment lines are those located just below a ridge line on the side away from an approaching fire. But as fires can approach from any side then a cleared ridge top provides maximum scope for back burning.
Yet we have just about every council in the country exercising this absurdly anal retentive preference for matching fire breaks with cadastral overlays in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with effective fire management. If they were a dog I would put them down to end their own and everyone else’s suffering.
So in my view the suggestion by Rick Houlihan to amend Clause 53 is a step in the right direction but given the scale of the manslaughter that has taken place then we owe it to the victims to review the whole interface of the native vegetation laws with the planning architecture to ensure that the controls only apply to “material” changes in vegetation cover.
This sort of outrage, where a landowner with 40,000 trees can be prosecuted for removing 280 of them to protect his house and family, is the kind of rampant green injustice that diminishes every other Australian. And by ignoring these injustices the urban community will be rightfully seen to be condoning them. And if they continue to do so then all the outpouring of grief, and all the splendid acts of charity, will be exposed as nothing more than the cynical posturing of those with blood on their hands.
Yep. Lawyers field day coming up, and good on them. Here’s a mob ready to go.
http://www.slatergordon.com.au/
Of course it’s always interesting to get some alternative POVs from someone who might actually know something.
http://www.triplehelix.com.au/documents/ThoughtsontheVictorianBushfires_000.pdf
Seems extreme events overrun everything.
Please, Luke, give us a blow by blow account of your last encounter with a wall of flame and tell us what you learnt.
“Honest guv, I only had me stubbies and fongs and when me ‘ouse burnt down I figured it was time get the chainsaw out…….bugger that lot in fire control central.”
I spent a couple of days in the fire area blacking out (Wandong & Reedy Creek). Lots of observation that one could make, but I think the most obvious one is that if a house was surrounded by well grazed (or cut) grass then it had a chance of survival. This is just plain common sense, but apparently that is a scarce commodity amongst the Council and State Planning authorities. That said, plenty of houses that had only grass around them burnt, but the weather that day was such that virtually no building could be considered fire proof.
I read the pdf that Luke attached to and would agree with the comments re cool burns in the off season. A part of the Snowy Mts. that I go to frequently was burnt in the 2003 fires and then burnt again in the following October – lightning strike. On a day like Black Sat. I think that fuel reduction burning would make little difference.
What I think would make a big difference is having a sufficient clear area around buildings – a distance of 1.5 times the tree height I read somewhere. A person that I know of that was burnt out at Kinglake has since had 100 trees removed without permit and I doubt that the local authorities will do anything about it now.
Halcyon
WJP – Was in the Piliga actually – I learnt fires are bloody unpredictable, scary and dangerous. And when you’ve gotta go – you move !
But the current fires are really just an excuse to get sink the boot into the greenies in general for the greater agenda of doing whatever you like.
Nobody in their right mind is going to mind reasonable reduction burns. Or frankly clearing around buildings. Have even seen National Parks doing reduction burns in northern NSW. But if you get severe fire weather and enough fuel – heaven help you.
And yep living in the bush with eucalypts close by is dangerous. Don’t do it. Alas it’s the reason tree changers love these areas. But every 20 years they’re going to erupt.
But see 1851 – where were sparks and wildfires and greenies then.
Have another Tooheys mate and throw another greenie on the BBQ.
For the record, some background on Andrew Campbell can be seen at http://www.triplehelix.com.au/about.html
Note that he is a past croney of the unlamented Rick Farley and, along with Philip Toyne of the ACF, played no small part in the outrageous demonisation of Australian farmers and the promotion of the now thoroughly discredited salinity scare that disappeared with the first drought, just as such outbreaks have done for millenia. As a promoter of Landcare, Campbell has a huge emotional investment in the canopy connection fetish, as described in my post above.
Mr Campbell may have retained some vestige of credibility, right up to the point where he said;
“Under these conditions, fuel reduction, access tracks etc are utterly irrelevant. These fires burnt through areas that had been burnt by wildfire in 2004, and coupes that had been clear-felled within recent years, with no obvious drop in speed or fire intensity.”
It is a quote that indicates that his own “ecological literacy”, as he puts it, leaves much to be desired. Campbell appears incapable of distinguishing between thick regrowth five years after a stand replacing hot fire like 2004 and understorey restoration a similar interval after a controlled cool burn that barely singed the canopy.
If he had retained even a rudimentary grasp of forest ecology and fire behaviour he would understand that the explosion of regrowth after a hot fire, with its low, dense canopy of fiercely competing stems, is one of the most combustible elements of a forest mosaic. To use the fire behaviour in stand replacing regrowth as evidence of some sort of failure of cool burn hazard reduction regimes would, in the absence of mitigating evidence, lead many competent forest managers to conclude that he is neither a forester’s, nor a fire fighter’s armpit.
Campbell’s grasp of catchment water yields is just as tenuous, and directly at variance with the research of the CRC for catchment hydrology. The link between total leaf area index and catchment water yield is uncontested science. Reduce the leaf area (by thinning) and the catchment water yield will increase. Allow stand replacing regrowth after a hot fire to remain in fierce competition with each other, as has been done in Victoria and other states, and catchment water yields will decline significantly. The use of cool fire hazard reduction has never been seen as more than a peripheral solution to that problem. Rather, regular, catchment wide thinning, to keep stem spacing consistent with the steadily increasing size of the retained trees, has always been the key strategy.
More damning is Campbells ignorance of the circumstances in which people have died while conducting hazard reduction burns. These deaths had nothing to do with the fact that a hazard reduction burn took place and EVERYTHING to do with the competence, training and supervision of the people and the organisation that attempted them.
The one that most comes to mind was the Kuringai Chase National Park fiasco where none of the participants had any experience in fire fighting and had maps that indicated that an escape route was open, when it was not. The clowns did not start with some small late evening burns on the ridgetops which could then have the main fires burned into them. No.
They started right down in the moist gulley and waited until conditions were dry enough down there for the fire to get going first thing in the morning. By which time the vegetation further up hill was well and truly tinder dry. They then tried to outrun the fire back up the hill to where their vehicles had been left. They did not have the nous, when faced with such a silly circumstance to begin with, to light another fire before them and follow behind it, in safety, in the resulting ash field. No, I understand that they made it to the top and drove off down the blocked escape route where conditions were even worse. And they died a bimbo’s death.
All it ever proved was the fact that both National Parks management, and National Parks staff, are generally far too stupid to be trusted with such an important land management function. Meanwhile, Campbell has chosen to get no closer to the actual situation than to observe that cold fires can get away and wrongly imply that the threat to life and property in winter would be similar to that of a wildfire in midsummer.
The reality, amongst competent, private sector forest managers, is completely different.
Glenn Shailer is an octagenarian who regularly cold burns part of his 220 hectare forest just 15 minutes from the Brisbane GPO, as he has done for more than 60 years. With the help of just one other, he starts at the time most suited to the conditions on his ridgetops, which are all disected by roads. He starts with small burns towards the roads and walks the fires along the ridges, and well into the night if conditions allow. As the season dries out he starts further down the slopes, again consistent with the conditions, to produce an ever widening mosaic of freshly burned areas and lush green pick. And by the time he is ready to do the main body of the burn, all the wildlife have migrated to the green pick where food is abundant and they are well protected from the main fire. To my knowledge he has never had a serious escape, despite the fact that he is sandwiched between the severely degraded Venman Reserve and the almost equally degraded Daisy Hill State Forest/Park.
It may come as a surprise to Campbell and his little coven of voodoo forest custodians but good fire managers do not knock off at 5.00pm. And if the right conditions for a burn are on a Saturday, or clash with yet another “sustainability workshop”, then the burn takes precedence.
And Luke should note that Campbell makes no reference to any of the matters raised in my post. It is all just more public tenure, daytripping stuff, with zero personal exposure to investment risk and zero consequences for their mistakes. They have squandered their right to manage any forest resource.
“This sort of outrage, where a landowner with 40,000 trees can be prosecuted for removing 280 of them to protect his house and family, is the kind of rampant green injustice that diminishes every other Australian. And by ignoring these injustices the urban community will be rightfully seen to be condoning them. And if they continue to do so then all the outpouring of grief, and all the splendid acts of charity, will be exposed as nothing more than the cynical posturing of those with blood on their hands.”
Oh pleeaase Ian Mott. Spare us the mock concern for what these unfortunate people went through. This is the perfect excuse for you and your red-neck mates to blame the greenies, the metrocites, the spivs, the gays, the drug users, the bimbos and everyone else you hate and have bored us to tears ranting about over the years. What are YOU doing about it all Ian Mott? Whinging, whinning and posturing here. Good on ya mate.
I don’t think any reasonable person would argue with you sensible reduction burns, burn mosaics or such like. Surely the ecological principles are fairly simple?
However the issue with the recent fires is that are there weather conditions that are so severe and fires on such a wide front – that just being anywhere in the fire zone is hazardous.
How many of those perished would have been tree changers drawn to a love of the bush in better seasons – only to find the environment they loved bite them. Perhaps not the types that Motty and WJP have round for dinner.
Is not living in forest estates of eucalypts episodically dangerous? You might get away with it for 20-30 years till the combination of circumstances comes up.
Would superior management prevent all wildfires. e.g. 1851?
Another cop-out, Luke. Being anywhere near a fire zone may well be hazardous in extreme fire events but it need not be an automatic death sentence as the greens and the NRM goons have conspired to achieve. The whole point of the discussion is the fact that some of the best harm minimisation tools have been outlawed for no commensurate gain. And the guilty parties are going out of their way to deflect attention from their major part in mass murder.
They have already outdone the Bali Bombers but when will the penalty fit the crime? In a landscape dominated by large tracts of contiguous neglected public tenure forest, and unconstrained regrowth on private land, any suggestion that private citizens, living on private land where they have no discretion over tree cover, might be the architects of their own demise comes very close to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. It is obscene.
And I note thaty Chris has zero to say of any substance. Just a spleen vent. On ya bike, bogan.
This has been my argument constantly. And its very clear that the environmentalists basically murdered those people in Victoria by stealing their land. Or rather taking away the autonomy that allows a man to control the land he owns.
People say that using words like murder is not appropriate. But we see that the environmentalist crowd is wholly unrepentant. And do not wish to return autonomy to the property-owner even with the retrospective knowledge of the tragedy. So there is nothing else to call it but murder.
The history of DDT bureaucratisation, and the attempts of this movement to push us into cetralized energy rationing, tells us that these people are serious killers. And they will kill again.
Luke,
the simple fact remains, no matter what the weather conditions, even in the worst scenario,
The less fuel there is the less savage the fire will be.
I think that was Ian’s broad point.
Who to blame?
I have clients in the hills near Kinglake, who’s houses are so overgrown with timber, that they have no hope of survival, if staying, and still they themselves are saying, even after this, that they will not cut down a single tree. She just shrugged when I suggested some clearing, saying “if it comes it comes”, at least she chooses to to live the way she wants.
But what about the people who would love to clear but can’t, not allowed?
I think most of this comes from the ratepayers with the former attitude.
“The first is that the notion of a two metre fire break is rendered entirely nonsense once the trees involved reach a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 10 to 13cm. This is because eucalypts normally have a crown to stem ratio of between 15 to 1 and 20 to 1, which means that two trees on either side of a nominal 2 metre fire break on the ground will be touching each other in the canopy. Such trees are unlikely to be any taller than 10 to 13 metres (ie, with standard 1% taper) and this means that even very mild fires, with low windspeed, will reach the crown.”
But Ian we have to get away from this idea that the council even has the right to engage in the debate over these technical issues. They can always get Lambert like characters to bog the discussion down. If the council wants to control some land they have to buy it themselves or they ought to just drop dead. Once you concede control of the land to the killers they will kill again. We don’t need to argue with these guys about fire-breaks. Its really about persecution of property-owners occasioning death.
A lot of successful well-organized and wealthy people might not fully understand this. But if you force someone to have to go to the council, get down on one knee, fill in forms, and ask for permission to control their own land the damage is done. The procrastination will set in, the local humble wood-chopping industry will be stunted.
Environmentalists are past-masters at death by discouragement. Death by delay. You can never allow these criminals to assume they have any perogative at all over private land use. Their duty was to stop the fire spilling from public to private lands. They failed. They ought to all be sacked right away and some of them jailed just to show we are serious.
“However the issue with the recent fires is that are there weather conditions that are so severe and fires on such a wide front – that just being anywhere in the fire zone is hazardous.”
No the issue was scum murdering people by usurping control of their land and failing to control the public land. Thats what the issue is. And if we doubted it when the killing was happening then the response of the leftist scum afterwards ought to have wiped any doubts away.
“What are YOU doing about it all Ian Mott? Whinging, whinning and posturing here. Good on ya mate.”
I thought he was making a substantial summary and submission on solutions to a big and increasing community problem!
What are you doing?
Ian, it’s to be hoped that the royal commissioner, having a house in the fire area, is prepared for some tough decisions and not just a “healing exercise”.
But if it turns out to be all the fault of AGW, a good GCM program might be all that’s needed.
I agree, Graeme. The regulators have clearly demonstrated that they are totally unfit to regulate anything. The have abrogated their duty of care to the tree owning minority and acted with a calous disregard for the consequences of their actions. I was not mentioning the stupidity of the 4 metre fire breaks on the mid-slope boundary out of a desire to enter into any sort of negotiation. Far from it. It is merely presented as evidence of their manifest incapacity to govern.
They had a duty to exercise power within our well established principles of the proper exercise of power and they have failed on just about every single count. They gave primacy to irrelevant considerations while ignoring other more relevant matters. They exercised power in an unreasonable manner, and often at the behest of other parties. They exercised power in ways that the authority was never intended to be exercised and they applied measures that were not cost effective and were totally disproportionate to the nature of the problem. They have lied to, demonised, and dispossessed the owners of trees by applying regulations that were, in essence, a “taking” of property with neither just cause nor just compensation.
They have offended just about every principle that good men and women have died for over the past millenium. And they are unfit to even walk the streets on ANZAC day.
I agree, spangled one, this really will be a critical test of the urban majority’s capacity to ensure we have the most basic of human expectations, life itself. If they cannot even deliver that then any concept of “social contract” is shredded. It will be clear to all of us that they are willing to take us down roads that no-one, in their right mind, should ever want to go.
Oh for heavens sake – invoking the Anzacs – a call to true patriots – you don’t have a monopoly on everything! Social contract my arse. Would they be the same Aussies you think should be smacked in the mouth at Goolwa. The urban majority aren’t impressed !
If you want a go – drop the Bird – he needs a sleep.
We in the U.S. have learned some lessons of fire management the hard way. In the early days of the timber industry, the loggers didn’t even bother to pile and burn the slash. After it dried out, there were HUGE fires that killed a lot of people.
Then the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, and the U.S. Forest Service had a policy of putting out ALL fires. This had some unintended consequences as well. A case in point is the wildfire situation in Southern California, where there’s a lot of chest-high chaparral on steep slopes. If all of the wildfires–even the lightning strikes on ridgetops–are suppressed, then the stuff gets thicker. The net result: fewer but larger fires, and more destruction in the long run.
Another example in California is the Giant Sequoia groves on the Western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. These groves are true old-growth forest that’s dependent on occasional fires. Overly aggressive fire suppression has contributed to their decline. Here’s a link to a wikipedia article about the ecology of Giant Sequoias.
http://tinyurl.com/bx79y6
Since the 1970s, there’s been some rethinking about the legitimate role that fire can play in the management of public lands.
The Merkin experience with investigatory commissions is that their final reports tend to highlight the small problems, and to sweep the bigger problems under the rug. I respect the patient, wait-and-see attitude shown by many Aussies with respect to the royal commission looking into the bush-fires. However I’m not sanguine about the commissioners’ capacities for getting to the root causes of the tragedy.
You’re singing for your supper Luke.
Did you ever pull up that Pilliga fire! Have you ever fought fire with fire, by your little old lonesome , armed only with 1/2 a box of matches and a long handled shovel because that’s what’s in the back of the car, you’re trapped and there ain’t no help except your ever faithful Jack Russell.
Come to think of it I never did see that Phalanx of D11’s confronting the Victorian fires a la The Blue Mountains fires, where the standing joke was that after a 100 years of talking of cutting a better road over the Mountains in two days, under threat of fire, they got close to half way there.
So up yours pal. You don’t have run every time. Hard decisions can be made. 10,000 trees can be sacrificed to save 100,000 or a million. Sheez
The urban majority are catching on real quick. They have seen Blight-o-nomics (the same as Carr-o-momics and Brumby-o-nomics and now KRuddbot-o-nomics) and in action.
“Quick, throw heaps of taxpayers loot at it, but whatever you do don’t solve the underlying problems, so’s we can save the punters over and over. Be seen to do something, anything ”
Tell us, did Bligh chuck her guts when she found she was a billion and a half short.
Yea sure WJP – remember the Pilliga fires. I’m sure a Boy from Baradine like you would have put them out single handedly. I can imagine a yahoo redneck like you cruising around in the ute. You’re a legend in your mind mate. Did the Jack Russell help you dig your foxhole – LOL.
A “Phalanx of D11s” – holy duck! A few score of D11s will just be sitting around. Have another Tooheys mate. You’re getting older each day.
As for Bligh-o-nomics – what a bunch or irrelevance to the issue. Do you really think I care who wins?
Hi to Ian and all Contributers,
I have been watching this debate since it commenced and deliberately refrained from posting as the subject is presently very emotional and complex. I have also been researching the Victorian fires for a poem I intend to write, as I have been in USA for the last 8 weeks.
Until retirement 6 years ago I have belonged to a Rural Bush Fire Brigade all my adult life. During that time I have attended over 30 out of control fires and over 100 control burns of crop stubble, grassland and scrub country.
During all of that time I have never seen a control burn or a back burning operation get out of control. Every “out of control fire” was ultimately brought under control and extinguished, using techniques developed over 120 years of living in and caring for the Australian Bush.
FIRE BREAKS: Are never designed or expected to stop an out of control fire!
Fire breaks are installed and maintained to allow firefighters to back burn in the face of an approaching fire when conditions are considered safe. Creeks, roads, and narrow bare strips man by hand with mattock and shovel are all used for this purpose.
Wild fire can NEVER be stopped by tankers, aircraft or other mechanical means.
It can only be stopped by starving it of fuel. That is by back burning.
Wild fire can only ever be stopped by fire.
So what has happened that we are having more serious fires that continue burning for weeks?
Back room deals have been done with the NSW and Victorian Labour Governments, well before recent State elections, by the Greens in return for preferences, that has seen control of Bush Fire Services centralised and decissions made by possibly well meaning but totally misguided people who have no practical knowledge of the bush or fire fighting.
Fire fighters cannot make decissions at the fire unless it is approved by headquarters, often 100s of miles away.
Most wild fires that can be accessed can be controlled on the first night after their detection.
However the rules (misguided) now are that they are to be allowed burn.
The fire that destroyed 400 Canberra homes could have been extinguished the evening it started. That the local Brigade were given orders to let it burn is an injustice that should never have been allowed to pass.
Although the State Governments have done a wonderful job of providing our firefighters with the best possible equipment, it is totally wasted because these experienced people can no longer fight fires.
They can only protect property.
These misguided policies have in recent years seen the destruction of much of the highland forest in south eastern Australia, that has been protected for 120 years.
Much of this area will take 80 plus years to recover or may never do so unless there is a chage of attitude. Following an unimpeaded hot fire, most of the old trees die. It is the following uncontrolled fire that totally destroys the environment, because of the huge, unnatural fuel load.
There is much more to this story and hopefully the Royal Commission will get some sence back into what is a vital issue for Australia.
Pikey.
If the royal commission doesn’t come down on the internataional menace that is the environmentalist movement, in the strongest possible terms, then it will be a whitewash.
In all innocense Luke asks “I don’t think any reasonable person would argue with you sensible reduction burns, burn mosaics or such like. Surely the ecological principles are fairly simple?”
The reality is that once various interest groups (“stakeholders”) are consulted with and approvals are sought and then granted the number of cool burn days per year dwindles down to zero.
The silent majority have to rise up and smash the coalition of death between the Greens and the ALP. The Greens minority power has been amplified by this coalition to inflict death and destruction to private citizens and their property.
The ALPs immoral lust for power have motivated them to do corrupt deals with the Greens, making it illegal in many areas to cut a tree down further than 3 metres from a house. The Greens have also had environmentalists and Heritage Council Chairpersons parachuted in as Commissioners on the Land and Environment Court of NSW. This lunacy where the life of vegetation and the retention of derelict buildings taking precedence over human lives, has manifested itself in some wacky Judgements handed down by that kangaroo court.
Green councils have not learnt anything from this recent disaster;
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/firey_debate/
This is clearly an example of green ideology putting the interests of humans last; it is indefensible and should be subject to legal redress; unfortunately most people are too decent and reluctant to prosecute so the misanthropy of the greens continues unabated.
Did I miss something?
It seems no one is upset that the forests and wildlife were setup for catastrophic destruction by incompetent forest management. Not maintaining firebreaks and tree free meadows ends up destroying the environment. The very thing that the “greens” are trying to protect was destroyed by their policies. If trees live for an average 100 years then 1% should be removed every year. That is much preferred to removing 100% of the trees in a fire year.
No mention of the Aussies arsonists who lazily flick their cigarettes out the window or deliberately light a blaze by the side of the road in order to watch their fellow “Anzacs” lose everything. But let’s hang and stone the environmentalists because that’s what this amusing blog is all about. Fat old farts sitting on their fat old arses pronouncing their googled expertise to the blogosphere and looking for that evergreen scapegoat so they can relive their glory days of war. They wonder why those darstardly greenies want to protect the bush-maybe because the same old rednecks buggered it up initially. But don’t stop ranting and complaining. Laughter is a good tonic and it’s guaranteed from Marohasy’s blog. Up yours indeed.
Thanks for coming Mr Tupa; still, your lazy and reprehensible ad hom does allude to one of the more pernicious elements of the AGW Orwellian narrative; which is that humans bugger up nature and disrupt what would be a perpetual Eden if if wasn’t for the greedy ‘hairless rats’; self-loathing is often manifest in misanthropy by the narcissistic and the vapid; the AGW bandwagon has both of these qualities in spades and is to willing to blame others for their own miserable short-comings; there is no perfect or ideal natural state; that humanity in its slow but steady rise away from the tyrrany of nature should be blamed for destroying this mythical paradise is an indication of both the self-delusion and the vindictiveness of the green mentality; so keep cackling Tupa, the giggling of the effete and decadent greens is a fitting backdrop to the madness they are inflicting on the world.
Good on you cohenite
I do so love the misanthropy of the greens.
If one took the population density of Singapore and applied that to the population of the world, all of humanity would fit into NSW and Victoria, and still only take up 0.07% of the land area.
Of course there is a lot more that is used to support this mass of humanity, but the above does put it into better perspective.
That should stir the troggies up.
Yeah J.Tupa if I’ve got a fat arse you got a fat head, because you said it all re. the fag flickers and arsonists. For all you or I know there’s one up the back right now. So double up yours, and tell your mate Luke I’m in awe of his insights, but unfortunately he grabbed the wrong chicken and that its entrail readings are way off the mark.
Following up I reckon we might have a dead thread but here I go again. What facts do we have after a flurry of ideas ? What was the ground speed of major fronts and who survived the furnace to tell their story?
This contribution by Pikey “The fire that destroyed 400 Canberra homes could have been extinguished the evening it started. That the local Brigade were given orders to let it burn is an injustice that should never have been allowed to pass” had me wondering how long this thread would serve as a window into the general S E Aus bushfire situation and in particular, the more recent events in Victoria. Believe me; the 18th Jan 03 was a big lesson for everybody in Canberra on the day.
A successful axe or mattock attack on the bush up in the ranges prior to an overnight back burn round a lightening strike is problematical to say the least. A lot depends on the odds; how we work up hill in the dark when creating a 2 m wide ring track through rocks and big trees. Blunt axes and mattocks aren’t capable of much even with a rub stone in the back pocket. Wheeling a chain saw through the same rubbish over steep ground is not so easy either despite what some land owners said should have happened after the event.
While well away from the current disaster, I had plenty of time to contemplate the above and other fires relative to the latest Victorian fire season. Back in Tasmania I looked over the drought affected areas there and reckoned but for some extremely good luck there could be another 1967 blow up. North and south regions were as dry as I can recall,. Note too fires recently jumped the Midlands Hwy.
Bush blocks everywhere become their owner’s responsibility however we can’t down the native forests in an instant or quickly burn off the rubbish. In one regrowth gully beyond Huonville I estimated there was about a hectare of blackberries over ferns in clearings shared by at least three adjoining private properties. A tinder box on a windy day.
Up north, our neighbour has solved the rubbish problem on his farm holdings, there in not a tree standing even in the gullies. However as in many parts of NZ, beyond the hedges there is also no native wildlife left on the land. That’s good farming. Sorry about the pines? No !
For any inquiry, I may write something about profiling an arsonist after watching the work of several semi professional operators season after season. With the homing sense of the sixth generation exploiting the bush we can get so close to the action but it’s hard to name a work acquaintance, neighbour, relative etc when they may be using the fire and emergency frequencies too. By my own tally about 300 fires each, in separate states, before being nabbed in the act.
From experience observing these bushfires supposed “to clean up the environment” and other unfortunate fire related matters I suggest it could be the noisy ones in our midst that tends to be part of the problem.
With the advent of total fire bans being pushed by the media in Victoria I saw a major increase in fires up in the hills surrounding Melbourne during the ban. Another point I could make in this regard is, too many backburns on a bad day make one big fire front.
I have been down at farm for two days and note that neither Luke nor any of the other apologista were willing to defend Andrew Campbell’s use of 5 year old, hot fire, stand replacing regrowth as supposed proof that cold hazard reduction burns don’t work.
Come on Luke, Gavin, Chris, this is a statement by what passes for a senior executive “heavy hitter” in government NRM circles. He was a past CEO of Land & Water Australia, for crying out loud, who made it very clear that he regarded himself as an expert in both forest and fire management. So tell us, guys, was he completely talking through his ass or what?
Is it appropriate to use fire behaviour in young post apocalypse regrowth as an indicator of the value of cold hazard reduction burns in intact forest?
Or do you just lack the gooleys to criticise one of the eco-aristocracy when they open their mouth and show us their ignorance?
And what about the absolute ripper on catchment yields?
This is the calibre of people who got us into this mess.
By the way, Gavin, if you had the faintest idea about fighting fires without water you would not be giving us such a stupid ramble about mattocks and rock outcrops. For a start, mattocks dig holes while hoes scraped litter to expose bare soil. And you would also know that large rocks don’t burn and, consequently, can actually form part of an effective fire break.
Your exposure to fire fighting has obviously been purely voyeristic. Give us a break.
Pass me another beer Ian, make it a Crownie, y’know, don’t touch that redneck stuff………Man I just gotta get the ute out and chuck a few doughies. The reputation ‘s at stake.
When did I mention a hoe Ian?
Readers should know though; in my youth I was taught by a wiry old relative how to weed a whole paddock on his farm with a flat hoe in a day. Naturally I keep such an implement handy today for destroying any vestiges of lawn and garden if a neighbourhood fire should erupt anytime.
Readers beware too; fighting ground fires with out some water results in scorched clothes and tool handles. In the days of canvas beaters, a bucket full of water was handy.
BTW, my folks on the land often used their dozers to cut off bush fires, both on the property and in adjacent crown land. This idea of a bucket and shovel brigade at critical times can only be a back up to slashers, graders, dozers etc. Trees freshly fallen have to be covered with dirt!
In an organised SES HQ, the first task must be locating all the necessary heavy equipment and competent operators before the need arises.
In major bushfire disasters generally, I can say authorities moved too slowly in deploying private resources to the effort in saving towns and infrastructure.
The major problem for everybody has been guessing the speed of the fire on a particular day. Think 15 km/hr on average for a hot afternoon!
In relation to Campbell and others I don’t know who else on the keyboard these days re the question of controlled burns etc. I say the work must start at home before moving out into the bush. Practical experience is everything too when it comes to estimations. Dry grass, weeds, litter are the wick to everything we value. Think light fuels, strong winds and furnace like combustion.
High temperatures are the menace.
So here we see the usual Mottsian denialist/industry apologist tactic – take a position and misrepresent it – then argue it’s wrong. Classic modus operandi.
Campbell is just stating the obvious – if you have extreme fire weather – off the scale. It can overrun defences and he gives recent examples.
Having clear areas around houses and having a sensible maintenance fire regime are all worthwhile objectives. But with high temperatures, an ember storm, high winds and random arsonists – well you can still be in big trouble.
I wonder where those greenies were to blame in 1851 and 1939?
Thats just it, Gavin, you didn’t mention hoes but rambled on about mattocks instead.
And again, you don’t get it on fallen trees. Yes, the ideal would be to cover the fallen leaves with dirt but given a choice between falling the ten closest trees to a house or covering the leaves of the first tree with dirt, then I’ll take the ten trees out any day.
What, no defence of Campbell, Luke? You did describe him as, “someone who might actually know something”, didn’t you?
Or do you also lack the capacity to distinguish between a hot burn or a cold burn, a back burn or a hazard reduction burn, a day burn or a night burn, a multiple mosaic burn or a single burn out? Is it more of that good old departmental “one word fits all” mindset that describes the lopping of branches from a two year old sapling as “broadscale clearing”.
Keep it simple guys, no more than three variables, it needs to make sense to a Labor Minister.
Now WJP – come off it – you know you wouldn’t be doing doughnuts or broadies in a venerable EH ute.
You need one of those crummydore V8s with a big rack of Cibies across the roll bar. Throw away the duelling banjos 8-track tape and put on the Megadeth CD
See wrong entrails again Luke. It’s a Ford and yodelling. Yeehahh!!!
Oh really, Luke. So how many people in cars lost their lives when fire passed over a road from pasture to pasture? None to my knowledge. But there were plenty who got fried when there were trees on both sides of the road.
This application of public sector forest management experience to private land is downright criminal. Sure, on a day like 7/02/09 a fire in a contiguous forest estate would be very hard to manage. But private property has not, and has rarely been, contiguous forest. And unlike public tenure forest land, people live on private land, they have substantial investments at stake and, thankfully, they provide the gaps that have always limited the spread of public sector fires.
They do not have the option of sitting back like EPA staff and watching as a fire bowls through, comforted by the knowledge that their own home, their own livelihood and their own retirement savings are at risk.
And the single most important fact revealed by the fires is that gaps in canopy, fragmented forest stands, mown grass and closely grazed pasture did, and do, make a difference. And no amount of officially sanctioned green spin, bordering on conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, will alter that fact.
So lets just spell this out for Ministerial Advisors and other green neanderthals;
1 Fires in a forest are hard to stop, except with another fire.
2 Fires in forest may not stop when they reach pasture or vital assets but in the absence of trees, the damage and risk can be substantially reduced.
3 The removal of trees to protect vital assets need not be permanent, cut tree regrow, they have evolved that way.
Just a follow-up on the Canberra fire in responce to Gavin.
This fire started from lightening strikes in the early evening of 8th January 2003. Two of these strikes were in the Brindabella Mountains only a short drive from the homestead of the local Bush Fire Brigade Captain.
The other two were in the Namadgi National Park.
Once the Brigade received notice of the fires the local unit attended and reported to headquarters in Sydney, who ordered that NO ACTION be taken.
At this point the local firemen reported that the fires could have been easily controlled.
The following evening the 9thJan. a team from the CSIRO attended both fires and took extensive colour footage of the fires which were still minor and could have been easily extinguished. (say the local firemen.)
The fires are left unattended, thanks to the decisions of the enviro idiots that are now in control of the NSW Fire Authority.
On the afternoon of the 14th. Jan. 2003 with rising temperatures, the two fires combine and start their progress towards Canberra.
Some containment lines are established, but no back burning is allowed under this misguided new management. No warnings are made to anybody.
Hot NW winds on the 17th January set the fire totally free and one of the first buildings destroyed is the home of the Bush Fire Captain who has been ordered to take No ACTION against what is called a “natural fire” by the clowns at headquarters.
The rest is history!
4 people killed.
260 people injured
2,500 evacuated.
530 homes destroyed
Damage Bill in excess of $300M.
While I weep for those who lost so much, sadly the greatest loss happened well before the fires started.
It was when REASON, TRUTH, EXPERIENCE AND WISDOM were turned to ashes in a firestorm of fundamentalist environmentalism.
Sadly I believe that when we have all the facts from the recent Vic. fires, similar misguided actions will likey play an important part.
Pikey.
Ian; given we live in a landscape that is a vast expanse of yellow under a smoky sky, you shouldn’t be surprised that I was a quite while just dealing with bone dry leaf litter up to 6” deep in places between my contributions here. Most of it won’t compose as it’s too brittle to mulch under one of the mowers that we have on stand by. Before going on holidays our previous effort with mowing raised a suburban sized dust storm over several days.
Not so far away, we have a large green recycle depot that is open every day. Now lets have it; how you would deal with your ten big trees during this extended dry?
Re: keep it simple guys”; there was a chance at one of the various seminars post 2003 bushfire when I caught the ear of a senior bureaucrat for a moment so I advised this officer to sell the risk in regard to our particular vulnerability out on the western flank We had this peculiar wedge of reserves reaching way into town (Canberra).
I noticed while driving south via the river crossing to catch up with my family on Christmas Eve 2001; how these adjustment areas and plantations burnt furiously. Numerous ignitions had me worried. Already in retirement then, I didn’t bother contacting authorities with my concerns till after the next event, the big one in 2003.
Today I drove west to the recycle dump via a new dust bowl. It’s partly covered with new housing, dozens of contractors, a fair number of trucks and landscaping machines. I could be smug in thinking it puts our old suburbs behind the fringe but it all depends on the fresh urban design and individual house design for an increasingly bushfire prone area.
The subject of semi rural urbane design should take precedence in Victoria’s recovery too. With regard to global warming and climate change, hap hazard town planning in the past has weakened our defences all over.
Pikey; imo the situation in 2003 was a fumble on both sides.
In early January we had a picnic on Booroomba Rocks. On the way back home via Val’s shop and the river road on the far side of the Murrumbidgee, there was rank grass, dead thistles and blackberries over the fence posts everywhere. Private and public holdings eventually burnt all the same.
A lot of early effort on the ACT side was devoted to saving those precious pine plantations that went right up to Piccadilly Circus. That was the legacy from their 2001 experience.
On the final Friday before the big frontal run, our fire fighters were still up there mopping up after the long back burn on Two Sticks road failed. IMO it was lit too late in the day to be all done by nightfall. Combined fires on Thursday was something else to be witnessed but the NSW boss tried to tell us townies watching TV it was all OK. The ACT chief objected in the same interview but it was way too late.
Some like me fell for it “hook line and sinker” right to 10 AM Saturday. We went to lunch. Even the SES remained on standby. Driving home after the alarm was raised about 2 PM at Old Parliament House, I saw sheer panic in traffic at every intersection. It reminded me of an earlier occasion in the 1960’s when the Dandenong Ranges were on fire everywhere.
Widespread arson and high winds had combined fire fronts there too. Brigades ran out of water, so volunteers had to use hand tools when mopping up under mountain ash forests. I copped a heavy shower of embers when a limb of one came down over the fire access track as we walked past a burnt out fire truck It was only a cloth hat that saved the hair standing on the back of my neck above my Yakka collar.
Marshalling speeds are another interest Ian. As a voyeur / volunteer I looked beyond hand or machine tools and got into communication systems for a time.
Good points, Ron. I visited David Coonan’s farm just 3 days after the 2003 fires and he pointed out that the fire used a tree covered riparian corridor as if it were a motorway. The ACT government went out of its way to supposedly “protect” the vegetation in this corridor but all they succeeded in doing was to create a long incendiary dagger pointed at Canberra’s heart.
He pointed out that some of the stems in the corridor actually survived in places where the farmers had not excluded stock from grazing as the landcare goons had been promoting. But in areas where stock had been fenced out of the riparian zone every stem was just a column of ash that disintegrated when touched or with the first rainfall.
The lesson? So called green protection measures are an oxymoron.
The fire went straight over the top of his house but they were not burned out because they had a complete mushroom of sprinklers over all their vital assets. The only problem they had was from some of their sprinkler heads that were plastic and melted. The brass ones did the job without fail.
Interestingly, there is a lookout on a hilltop less than a km away and they subsequently learned that certain bureaucrats, that they dealt with on a regular basis in policy comittees etc, had been casually watching from this vantage point as they fought for their very lives below. Try telling him or any of his neighbours to, “trust us, we’re from the government, and we’re here to help”.
“CHEAP, simple to use and extremely effective fire management tools”
It is not that cheap;
Farmer fined $400,000 for clearing land
So is Lloyd J. one of the green goons that were parachuted into the NSW L & E court?
And how many thousand hectares of native forest does Hudson still have left? And what proportion of the vegetation was regrowth? I hope his neighbours wander into that paddock from time to time to make sure that it never supports a single wetland species again.
I also hope the local bush fire brigade volunteers respond very slowly to any lightning strike that might take place there.
We need a “no net gain” policy in respect of state sponsored property theft, where they may win the court cases but never enjoy the ecological proceeds of tyranny.
And wouldn’t it be great if some of the vegetation were to grow back faster than the rest to spell out, in big letters easily seen from passing airliners and every satellite scan, the words, “Government Theft”.
Letters about 120m high should do the trick. And if the letters are comprised of native species then the message will certainly outlive the judge.
It is hard to say with Lloyd or the other Judges, but you might have trouble getting an impartial hearing if you came up against Commissioner Taylor or acting Commissioners Adams, Fakes, Goldney. Edmunds or Sullivan.
have a look at their biography’s here
Sullivan, deputy chair of the Heritage Council of NSW. A career academic who has spent her life promoting heritage conservation. Adams and Goldney are ecologists.
What has happened to ‘the separation of powers’ and an independent judiciary. It is impossible for these people to weigh the scales of justice in an impartial manner. With the deluded baggage these people carry, they should not be allowed out on the street, let alone presiding in a court of law.
The Greens power, amplified by its de facto coalition with the ALP has convolutely corrupted the institutions that are meant to safeguard our society. The silent majority need to stand up and curtail the greens excessive power before it is too late and they ruin our society.
Realistically, the only way the rural and regional community will ever extract itself from the clutches of this malicious and corrupt regime is to seperate metropolitan and regional communities with new state boundaries within the commonwealth. Once the judiciary has been seriously compromised, as is clearly the case in NSW, Qld and Vic, then any aspiration or attempt to reform the existing system is not just futile, it is a negligent betrayal of our own children.
And forget this mindless crap about enlarged local governments in a system where the existing state elites will magically vote to abolish their own power. Only new states can enact laws that reflect the values of their own community. And only new states can ensure that their own judiciary reflects the values of their own community.
Take a look at http://www.regionalstates.com/
Ian,
Some of the links on that page do not come up. I could get the word docs that it.
Would they be a unitary state, like the NT with the ultimate sovereign power existing with the commonwealth? Or maybe with the state that gave approval for their formation. Something akin to how the states run local government. Can they become sovereign states in their own right?
Well there we have it. The environmentalists cause the killing and then they go into standard leftist holocaust-denial mode. If any of you buggers had shown the slightest sign of repentance I wouldn’t have thought that criminal prosecution was necessary.
Good question TG. Both the commonwealth constitution and each state one has provision for the formation of new states from part or parts of existing states. So there could, for example, be a new state drawn from both sides of the Murray River so the people who live in that community would govern themselves and be responsible for both the economic and ecological outcomes. At the moment the people in that region have little say in their own future while metropolitan day trippers in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide indulge their own whims without wearing anuy of the consequences.
There could also be a number of smaller states for various regions but the essential element must be to end this destructive, and now murderous, metropolitan dominance of regional communities. Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane can’t even deal with their own problems but their performance on behalf of regional communities is diabolical.
New and equal states within the commonwealth is not a radical idea. Our founders expected it to have already happened by this time. Indeed, federation can only work effectively when it does happen.
And interestingly, more than two thirds of Australian voters either want to abolish states altogether or form new regional states. But the abolishionists do not understand that with the formation of new regional states, the existing one ceases to exist in that form anyway, thereby producing both new regional states and new city states that will continue to govern themselves as they do now, but with borders that match their community of interest.
If it is OK for 330,000 Canberrans and 200,000 Territorians then why is it not just as OK for 700,000 in North Queensland, 700,000 in South/Central Queensland, 900,000 in Northern NSW, 700,000 in Southern NSW, 500,000 in the Hunter Valley and similar numbers in non-metropolitan Victoria?
The fact that they do not have a single dominant city does not negate their legitimate right to govern themselves. Many states in the US and Canada have quite small capitals and a dispersed populace that would never dream of being run by New York or Chicago.
The existing system has failed, primarily because regional communities do not get to choose how their own GST revenue will be spent. The high costs of delivering government in metro CBD’s is unavoidable for residents of that metro but it is an entirely avoidable waste for residents of a new regional capital. And these savings, and the improved circular flow of regional funds, completely outweigh any duplication costs.
Metrotyranny stinks.
Chris, Oh pleeeaaase, tell us what errors of fact you found in the article. Venting your spleen and throwing insults without showing us any reason why the article was mistaken, that’s just anger and sour grapes.
Thanks Ron, and spot on Graeme. Criminal prosecution is absolutely necessary. And if prosecutions are not forthcomming then it will mark the point from which a misguided green ideaology crossed the line to become a murderous ideology.
And that will be the moment that we will all need to go down to our local cenotaph and look at the names of all those young men who died to protect rights and principles that all of us older folk, who have lived full lives and seen our children and grand children on their way, now seem prepared to give away without even the cost of a bloody nose.
We know that the people who caused this mass slaughter are not fit to govern. But if we let them get away with it then it is we that are not fit to be governed.
Well written Ian.
This should be a rallying call for all like minded people to not just agree with one another, but to get out there and DO SOMETHING!
Any idears?
Pikey.
The first step is for the victims of the fires to forward the evidence they already have in hand to the DPP. The royal commission does not diminish the DPP’s obligation to investigate issues of criminal negligence to determine if there is a case to answer. This has been made known to people close to the victims and it is now up to them to take the next step.
It would also seem appropriate that the Mayors, Councillors and CEO of the relevant local councils who have implemented vegetation measures without regard for the implications in an entirely foreseeable bushfire outcome should step down from office immediately until these issues of criminal negligence are resolved. It is the convention in such cases.
Leaving them in place is, as I said above, the equivalent of giving Ratco Miladic a job as a Bosnian rape councillor. They are a major part of the problem and have no place in the solution. If they will not stand down then Brumby must disolve these councils and appoint an administrator.
From there it is then up to the relevant authorities to fully restore public trust in all institutions concerned. They must discharge their obligations properly and without fear or favour and bring anyone found to have breached their duty of care to justice.
If these core community expectations are not met then it appears unavoidable that like minded people from all over the country should gather at an appropriate place and time to make a declaration along the lines of Nelson Mandella’s famous statement to the effect that reasonable responses reliant on the rule of law have failed, and that accordingly, unlawful measures in pursuit of a greater justice are appropriate.
This would place the State and Federal authorities in the invidious position of having to list fire victims and their supporters under the anti-terrorism laws. They would also be compelled to prosecute victims and supporters for sedition and send them to prison, for a full term if there is no indication of recanting that position for easy parole. And they would have to do so under the full scrutiny of the media.
It is an option that will not be chosen by many but it is the only option that will define the authorities in the naked glare of the truth. Compared to the price paid by the victims, and the price other people have paid to first win, and then protect, our rights and liberties over the years, a few years as a guest of her Majesty is the least one can do at the end of a long and fruitful life.
It is the most morally, tactically and economically contributive option. Two years jail for $20 million worth of on-going public scrutiny looks like some pretty effective value adding to me.
And one might even come out of it as an accomplished Clarinet or Bagpipe player.
An effectively functioning society is founded upon educated individuals who would then act to restrain the excesses of government or the reckless actions of a mass of people.
The silent majority need to stand up and act to restrain the vocal minorities that have hijacked the political agenda to the point where they are now in control.
The ‘revenue lobby’ (comprising the ATO, the Treasury and their allies in politics, academia, the media and the welfare industry) are financing these minorities to the point where the silent majority has lost control of Australia’s political system and its revenues. A political cull with mass sackings of the public sector are needed urgently.