Max,

Thanks for a thoughtful piece emphasising the need to learn from history and get over current politics.

Here is a link to a piece by Jim Hoggett "The Uses and Value of National Parks: Does More Mean Worse?" focusing on NSW,was written just a few years ago, and also suggests the potential for multiple use... http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/617/the-uses-and-value-of-national-parks-does-more-mean-worse-

And could you give a breakdown regarding your figures for increase in area of Nationa Parks - are these National figures or for Victoria?

Ah the Australian Environment Foundation,, where one director is also on the board of the Lavoisier Group, another used to work for a farmers' lobby group and the ONLY web link provided to climate change information is to Bob Carter. Forgive me if I look elsewhere for a balanced analysis of bushfire management.

Just to think laterally, instead of making the community manage national parks in the interests of the handful of people who want to live right next door to them, it would make more sense to stop them building homes there in the first place. Just a thought.

With the Queen's Birthday Honours coming up in June, I'd urge Premier Brumby, on behalf of the government and the people of Victoria, to nominate the Country Fire Authority, as a body, for an Order of Australia award in recognition of the bravery of its members in fighting the Black Saturday firestorms.

Brian Haill
Frankston,Victoria

Who is going to pay for all this burning?
Not to mention the people who will pay due to increased air pollution. There was a reason Cook called this "the continent of smoke". Is that what we really want?
Not to mention OH&S will reduce the effectiveness and ability to do burnoffs. One dead firey or a burnoff that escapes and destroys property and its all over.

Also when pray tell during the last 12 years of drought would have been a good time of year for these massive burn offs? Winter is too cold, summer is out of the question which leaves spring and autumn, times of unpredictable and sometimes severe weather. Just what you dont want when your trying to control a deliberatly lit fire.

In response to Ken_L and mikk, perhaps it would be best instead of looking for reasons not to listen that you instead stop for ten seconds and look around. Now I don't know where you are and quite frankly I don't really care, Why? Because uncontrolled fire threaten everyone! It does not matter if you live on the edge of a national park or in the centre of the largest city once a fire grows large enough it will begin to influence the weather patterns of the local environment creating its own micro weather system. And once a raging fire has command over the weather all that can be done is to get out of its way, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, we can do to stop a fire like that. And how pray tell does a fire grow large enough to influence the weather, well it can only do that if it has enough fuel.

Proscribed burning is the only effective way to reduce the fuel loads in the deepest areas of national parks and public lands. The exact same areas where a fire can start and get a strong foothold before anyone even knows. As for money, i.e. who will pay for it, let me ask this who will pay for the aftermath of the Victorian fires? We will of course. Insurance companies will need to recoup their losses and how? By raising premiums! Government agencies have dipped into funds held by the treasury which will need to be replaced for the next disaster and how? There will be less spending on capital works, sorry no new hospital this week. So let me ask this, which is better millions today or billions tomorrow?

I know I have been sarcastic in this post, and I do appologise, but it is only because I cannot believe that anyone would want a little more money in their pocket or be blinded by a person’s history rather than wanting a little piece of mind that they and fellow Australians are safe.

Max, your good call, will fall on deaf ears as the greens and the labor party store great political and financial power in the unjust control of land use on private property owners and their ability to prepare and defend against bush fires and other pests.

These same greens and labor governments hypocritically neglect their responsibilities on government owned property now which prove to be at our greatest expense since 1942.

This just proves that labor and green politicians and their governments are not accountable for their decisions.

These bush fires are a deliberate political failure on the part of the greens and labor state and local councils policies all over Australia.

I would also remind the city dwellers that prescribed fuel reduction protects the water catchments of the cities. If you remove all vegetation from the catchment by wildfire, all you end up getting as an inflow into the dams is ash and mud with the next rainfall. With the huge problems of erosion within the catchment and the reduced runoff as the bush grows back, city people have a deep interest in the management of water catchments. Since the 2003 fires in the ACT hundreds of thousands of tonnes of soil has been washed into the water supply dams of Canberra in a process called headwall erosion which does not stop until the gully has reached bedrock (Read Barry Starr's reports to ACTWE). This has reduced the holding capcity of the dams and required the construction of a water purification plant to improve the quality of the water.
So rather than complain about the people who wish to live in the bush and make up the numbers in the brigades that go and put out the fires in these city water catchments, I suggest that you read the wealth of reports over the decades from the numerous commissions of inquiry, coronial inquiry's and Royal Commissions. They appear to be unanimous regarding fuel management. To disregard the findings of experts in these reports would be the same as ignoring the concerns of climate scientists.

Fine article, Max. That and the comments by Ken_L and mikk highlight a couple of issues and I'll deal with the commenters first.

These two are probably quite oblivious to the level of mindlessness they display. Ken_L is apparently unable to comprehend the facts and arguments. But that's OK, he doesn't need to bother because he doesn't like the messengers so he just KNOWS they are wrong.

Poor mikk has a problem with arithmetic: who is going to pay for the hazard reduction burning? And the alternative is....? D'oh. Yes, mikk, it's us. Now which is likely to be the cheaper? Pay for hazard reduction burning or pay for massive loss of life and private property and public infrastructure (schools, hospitals, bridges, fire stations, etc., etc.), THEN pay increased insurance premiums and taxes across the board?

The other issue that Max hinted at was via Gavin Jennings "we know better" speech of last December. Note the phrasing from Jennings: "Hectare-based targets are not considered to be the best way of measuring effectiveness of the planned burning program." Note the passive voice of the bureaucrat. Who, exactly, does not consider it the best way? Some faceless public service clerk, that's who.

And that is the problem. Bureaucracies throughout Australia, most notably the environmental bureaucracies, have been ideologically captured by the green left, old fashioned Trotskyite entryism style, where you get a few people in the door and they then hire new recruits in their own image. They are, as a consequence, incompetent to provide unbiassed, objective advice to their ministers. And ministers, who may share those prejudices anyway, are disinclined and ill-equipped to ask the right questions to expose the poor advice. The same failings can be seen in relation to the ETS, waste management, recycling and container deposit legislation. It's all fuzzy wool which hides the fact in each of these areas of policy there is an enormous cost and little benefit.

Ken_L,

1. The truth has not respect for "balance".

2. Better you read and try and understand the issues as outlined by Max, rather than hiding behind your own prejudice and ignorance based on hearsay and claimed associations.

Let's just say KenH that I find attempts by extremist interest groups to push their obsessive ideological and political barrows by exploiting human tragedy to be tasteless and offensive.

The message that we do not learn the lesson of fuel reduction burning seems to be a pattern after all major bush fires.

For example in October 2003, the House of Representatives select committee on Australian Bushfires found in its report “The Nation charred” that 3 elements determine the intensity of a fire: fuel, oxygen and heat. Of these the amount of available fuel is the only factor that can be controlled.

The committee recommended more prescribed burning to reduce fuel loads; yet one MP issued a dissenting report. Perhaps we could guess the colour of his party.

Such a denial continues with this current tragedy, on last night's Sunday Night Program on Channel 7, see http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/video#fop click on “Questioning the Victorian bushfire disaster” video.

When Fire Expert David Parkham a Fire Management Consultant – and CSIRO Scientist for 18 years, told of three factors contributing to the bushfires including fuel build up he received acknowledgement from many of the victims.

However the audience, nor the host, was not impressed when Gavan McFadzean, The Wilderness Society Victoria’s Campaigns Manager, tried to deny this expert's knowledge. His credibility was questioned and found wanting by the audience.

One victim was so angry by the smooth response from this spin doctor, that he felt compelled to leave the studio rather than listen to “c**p”. The victims concluded “he had no idea at all".

Let’s hope we listen to experts like David Parkham, and adopt Max Rheese’s recommendation to learn from the past.

Max,
I have grave misgiving towards your conclusions and the objectivity of your organization.
Any organization that puts preset limitation/conditions as “cost-benefit analysis” on its conclusions rather than complete independence and has the links it does smacks of “vested interests’” mouth piecing.

The superficiality of your analysis both on your site and in this piece is further emphasizes external influences/interests.

While I agree they have a right to put their opinion cloaking it in under the pretence of implied independence put it in category of other ‘foundations’ like the one that touts a well known brand of shampoo.

Ken_L,

You find "attempts by extremist interest groups to push their obsessive ideological and political barrows by exploiting human tragedy to be tasteless and offensive"? That'd be the green left pushing their claims that all this is caused by global warming, right?

Hell, who needs to pay any attention at all to the facts? We've had arguably the worst bushfires in recorded history and all you can do is try to score political points by telling us whom you don't like.

If you can't accept that fuel reduction can reduce the intensity of bushfires - and that is the main point being made about these fires and the previous fires which have all resulted in similar recommendations from inquiries and royal commissions - then you are an idiot, and I use the word advisedly with reference to the Stanford-Binet scale.

Ken_L
The right of people to life and property is not some kind of 'extremist interest group'.

The extremist interest groups are those who believe they stand for some kind of value over and above human values, who regard human beings as some kind of noxious pest to be controlled, who believe that any social problem can be solved if only we can bring enough force to bear, and whose ideology is the ever-failing superstition that more and more centralised government control of everything will bring us the ideal society in harmony with nature.

The defenders of the greens so called ecologically sustainable management practices "read green lazy and obsessive fuel loads" are trying to defend the indefensible.

Many people are saying we should give ourselves time to grieve, lay off the blame game, and leave it to the commission. But as far as I understand, ANGER is part of the grieving process. And given that similar findings and recommendations have been made time and time again, and seemingly largely ignored, perhaps this time its worth getting BLOODY ANGRY, and maybe soemthing will be heard. Of course, I don't endorse Miranda Devine's thoughts of greenies hanging from lampposts, any more than I want to see arsonists hang either, but I can empathise with the anger in both cases. Wherever management of these things is disastrous, you can be fairly sure Green policies aren't far away. And that they now try to distract from what's right in front of us with Global Warming horse crap is appalling. Why in the last week have we suddenly heard all sorts of new scieintific findings dropping out of the heavens. It's spin, timing, politics and playing on fear and misperception. As if it was a miniscule increase in global temperatures over a hundred years that caused this. Not conditions similar to 1939. Not a bloody heatwave, bloody high winds, arsonists, and bloody foolish greenie policies, mixed with delusional stay or go evacuation protocols. It's time activist bodies backed the hell off and left it to foresters with professional knowledge and experience.
KenL, Canberra is an entire city of people living nearby national parks.

And as the alleged Churchill arsonist is a Mother Earth worshipper, should we be talking about our first major case of eco-terrorism?

It seems that "fuel reduction burns" are the buzz-word du jour, but as is the case with many buzz-words, it often seems that people are just parrotting it without really thinking about what it means. Many people seem to have the idea that if you just go out and burn the stuff during the year, it won't be a problem come summer.

The truth, as always, is far more complex: Fuel reduction burns are not a panacea.

The local ecology has to be suitable, for a start. Repeated burning in the wrong sort of ecosystem could have the opposite effect to that intended, and actually make the landscape even more fire-prone than it already is, by drying out the soil and encouraging fire-dependent plants.

In areas where they are appropriate, they're still incredibly difficult. I recall the CFA area group where I was a member trying to carry out a much-needed burn in my home town. The site was a nature reserve, between houses and a large caravan park.

The burn was scheduled, and cancelled, several times, while waiting for the optimum weather conditions. Even when weather conditions were favourable, managing the fire was still a very tricky business.

With a sizeable contingent of tankers and crew on hand, there were still a few touch-and-go moments: We had quite a problem with spotting, even after the incident controller had carefully judged the wind conditions. Imagine the uproar (not to mention legal bills) from homeowners if the fire had escaped and burned a few fences, not to mention houses.

But Australia's is a landscape that essentially has to be managed. In many ways, as has been noted, the Australian landscape is a man-made artefact; partly shaped by human activity over the past 30000+ years.

But finally, with all due respect to the recent tragedy, Australians just have to learn that, as the advertising campaign said, "if you live in the sticks, remember they burn".

The bitter truth is that mega-bushfires hit south-eastern Australia in a fairly predictable, roughly 30-year cycle, and that's something we're just going to have to live with.

Clownfish, I understand your point, a burn everything policy is not only irrational but also ecologically dangerous. An environment must a suited to burn offs and must also be able to be burnt without causing danger to people or property.

However I must also inform you of some other bitter truths. One, In Western Australia (where I live so it is local knowledge) where back burning is a regular practice there has not been a major bush fire of the magnitude of SE Aust since before regular back burning. Two, It has only been since there has been a reduction in the total area of burn offs in WA that larger fires have been able to take hold. The old system effectively controlled a fires spread as fire prone areas where adjacent to areas of low fuel load. These areas would then be rotated so as not to have any one area excessively burnt or loaded. Finally, 'Mega-Bushfires' as it has been termed are far more destructive to the areas which are burnt than regular controlled burn offs. Large intense bush fires cause excessive heat in the soil which not only kills off the insect life required for a healthy ecosystem but also sterilizes the earth of all bacteria, vital for plant life, for quite a few inches below the surface.

Fuel load reduction is as you say not a magic pill, but it is effective and it is the sane thing to do. There will always be fires, and there will always be a loss of life due to them but the operative term here is 'how much are we prepared to lose'. Are we prepared to put you in an uncomfortable situation of controlling a burn off fire and living with the possibility of burning a few homes to keep 183 people alive? Or do we throw up our hands in pious horror and bury our heads in the sand until the next 'Mega-Bushfire'?

That is the only choice.

Arthur, I agree with everything you say.

My point was that many of the, especially populist media commentators, spouting off about fuel reduction burns don't realise the complexity of the issue. Especially those who blame those nebulous, evil bogeymen, "Greenies".

I was also trying to point out, from even my own experience, just how difficult it is to conduct a safe burn-off. Everyone is ready to kick the heads of various authorities for not doing burn-offs, but should we really be so surprised that they're a bit leery of doing them when conditions are so difficult, and they're as like as not to be sued by all and sundry?

Burying heads in the sand is a large part of the problem - and not just with regard to fuel reduction. The 30-year fire cycle is, unfortunately, just long enough for new generations of people to move into an area and develop a sense of complacency.

I still maintain that there are some places that are just very dangerous to build houses in, and people are going to have to reckon with that. If someone built a house on the edge of a cliff, the risk is obvious. Unfortunately, the risk is not as obvious to most people, when building a house on a thickly treed ridge, accessible only by a narrow driveway, and far from town water, power and communications.

Funny how all you commenters on my post only dealt with one of the arguments i raised. The cash! What about asthma sufferers and little old ladies with bronchitis? Dont you give a toss about their health? What about the safety aspects of burnoffs? (the reason they are so costly) Who pays when the inevitable happens and the fire escapes and destroys assets or people? Are you okay with houses burning down due to a fuel reduction burn? The more burnoffs that are done the more chance that this will come about as it has numerous times in the past.

Seems to me you are the unrealistic ones who think we can tame and subdue this wild continent even though we have been shown to be totally powerless time and time again.

I agree with Clownfish the only one so far to know what he is talking about. Get real people we cant afford, dont have the manpower and the risks are too great for all the burnoffs you people are calling for.

Leave it to the experts and stop using this tragedy as just another excuse to rail against the hated greenies and lefties. It is just obscene how many of the tory "extremist interest groups" have jumped on this disaster to further their the capmpaign of hatred and villification of anyone who actually cares for the environment or could possibly be considered "left".

‘Claimed associations’ Jennifer? Are you suggesting AEF director Tom Bostock is not a director of the Lavoisier Group? That AEF director Jennifer Marohasy (not you is it Jennifer?) does not work for the IPA, and never worked for those rent-seekers extraordinaire the Queensland Canegrowers? Do you suggest that said Jennifer did not write in 2006 that ‘we don’t need to worry about the Murray River’? That the AEF is not sponsored by multinational genetic engineers Monsanto, amongst others? I mean I got all that information from the AEF’s own web site, so it’s hardly contested.

I’m content to await the findings of the forthcoming Royal Commission about the causes of the fires, where the issue of hazard reduction burning will get intense scrutiny. But that’s not really what this post is about, is it?

No, this post is by way of a pre-emptive first strike; an attempt to blame the ‘green left’ (whoever they might be) for the fires and distract attention from the fact that these fires fit squarely within the predictions that have consistently been made by scientists who affirm the reality of anthropogenic global warming. The IPA and AEF are waging an increasingly desperate battle to discredit the mainstream majority opinion amongst scientists, so the last thing they want is for people to notice that more frequent extreme events like wildfires have been forecast to be one of the consequences of AGW. Thus they and their allies like Miranda Devine come out – without a shred of the evidence they profess to believe is at the heart of informed discussion - with this nonsense about government policies and practices being dominated by crazed greenies.

KenH and Wing Ah Ling I knew the climate change denialists were struggling to find coherent voices but if resort to mindless personal abuse is the best they can do, they are in more trouble than I thought. If you want to be taken at all seriously you would do well to respond to the points people actually make instead of abusing the green straw men inside your heads.

"political acquiescence to the pressure of city-based green lobby groups"

All the usual right wing soapboxers in there media are saying this, but nobody's yet provided any evidence.

FACT: The Wilderness society endorses controlled burning.

http://www.wilderness.org.au/files/6-point-plan-to-reduce-bushfire-risk.pdf

FACT: The Australian Greens Party have never opposed controlled burning, and in some states actively endorse it.

http://nsw.greens.org.au/policies/policy-summary-pages/bushfires

So I don't know who this shady, mysterious, all powerful lobby group is supposed to be. I suspect it's the product of an over active imagination, and one that's keen to score political points.

It's nice to see some reason finally begin to prevail in this thread. I thought I'd let the wingnut firestorm die down a bit before commenting.

The scapegoating of "greens" in the media in the immediate aftermath of the bushfire tragedy has been nothing short of shameful, but it's been hardly surprising that it's been largely orchestrated by the usual far-right anti-environmentalists.

I'm both a "green" and a member of the Greens, and I don't know anybody of similar persuasion who has opposed controlled burnoffs in appropriate areas to reduce fuel load. Indeed, I burn my own place regularly with the assistance of the local firies.

It'd be nice if some of those who've been hysterically baying for the blood of "greens" to produce some actual evidence that any of us was in the slightest bit responsible for the unprecedented firestorm. Perhaps it's a 'smokescreen' behind which the global warming denialist contingent can hide temporarily - at least until the next destructive conflagration largely attributable to climate change.

Ken_L,

You deny any role of the green left ideologues? Check these links:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25070342-661,00.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/15/2491979.htm

From the second link:

"A Victorian man who borrowed a bulldozer to help create a firebreak during the bushfires could be charged over the incident.

Victoria's Department of Sustainability and Environment owns the bulldozer which Buxton pub owner Eric Notley used to create firebreaks to save houses and other buildings in the tiny town."

That is on top of the prosecution of Mr Sheahan for removing trees which threatened the safety of his house, resulting in a fine and costs of $100,000.

These are not the results of a green left agenda? It doesn't have to be a conspiracy, just the application of an ideology.

And check the Wilderness Society's visiting genius, MacFadzean, (visiting from inner city Melbourne, where he lives safely in isolation from bushfires) in this week's Sunday Night on Channel 7: http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/video#fop

The lunacy of the green-dominated local councils has been well documented.

On top of that there have been various media statements by Bob Brown, Tim Flannery, Freya Matthews and a raft of ABC presenters all trying to blame the fires on CO2 emissions.

So, please, don't try to deny the role of the greens, or the pervasiveness of green ideology in the state and local bureaucracies. It's all on the record. And with the most obvious of results.

Oh, and mikk, you NOW think costs are not important, that it's all about "asthma sufferers and little old ladies with bronchitis...about the safety aspects of burnoffs"?

Asthma suffers are harmed by fuel reduction burns, but not, apparently, by massive bushfires? The relatively low risk of back burn escapes in cool, still weather offsets ACTUAL massive destruction, such as we have seen? Good grief.

And it might have been much worse. Fran Bailey, the federal MP whose electorate covers much of the area affected by the bushfires, has pointed out that "if Saturday's fires had broken out on a week day, thousands of children would have been in the schools and kindergartens that were destroyed."

So Ken_L thinks that membership of a group critical of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis somehow means a person can't speak about bushfires. AGW has very little if anything to do with this disaster. The attempt to link the two is disingenuous, and a disgraceful exploitation of the tragedy for political purposes. Clownfish points out the regular bushfire cycle in Australia, which is much more to the point. You could also look at recent weather patterns in the Indian Ocean for clues.

He implies that I am an "extremist", pushing "obsessive ideological and political barrows" apparently because I agree with Max and not with him. And at the same time he has the gall to talk about "mindless personal abuse." What self-righteous hypocrisy! God help our democracy if his attitude gets a foothold.

The reality is that three key factors contribute to fire - oxygen, heat and fuel. Control any one of them and you control the fire. Guess which one you can control?

The heavier the fuel load the more intense the fire. So while it is perfectly true that fire can cross a paddock that has been grazed to the ground, how much more intense and difficult to control it would be if the grass is unmanaged?

The same applies to the bush. A fuel load reaching 8 tonnes per hectare is considered to be dangerous by bushfire authorities. The load in in some of the destroyed areas had been allowed to reach 30-50 tonnes per hectare, exponentially increasing the fire intensity.

Those who deliberately allowed that to happen, against the advice of every enquiry into major bushfires, should be charged with criminal negligence.

For those who continue to assert that the green left has never opposed prescribed burning, Miranda Devine's column in today's Sydney Morning Herald sources statements by WWF, the WA Forests Alliance, NSW Greens, and the NSW Conservation Council proving that they do indeed oppose that sensible tactic: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/this-burning-issue-of-life-and-death-20090218-8bee.html

She also points out that "In NSW, already, the Department of Environment and Conservation has listed 'too frequent fire' as a 'key threatening process to biodiversity'". An example of bureaucratic capture by ideologues, if any more examples were needed after the numerous instances given in relation to the recent Victorian bushfires.

Terrific photo , Aerial , 1/2 Page , on the front page of the Bendigo Advertiser , caption , "THE FIRE THAT SAVED MALMSBURY" .

Apparantly DSE's state fire and training investigation co-ordinator Les Vearing had something to do with this back burn , now known as a Dai Gun San ? No matter what it's called the photo is explicit ! Mr Vearing said at least 50 houses were saved .

The pic was courtesy CFA .

The phone for the Addy is 54344470 , internet www.bendigoadvertiser.com.au

KenH, with regard to the bulldozer story, I'd be guessing that it's a total beat-up by the media concerned.

Note the key phrase: "Could be charged". Not "WILL be charged". In other words, yes, technically, the DSE could level charges. Nothing in that article indicates to me that they intend to. The DSE says the matter will be investigated - one suspects that the journos, fishing for a story, have brought the matter to the DSE.

As for the Sheahan story, I would suggest that if someone wants to live on a cleared block - buy a cleared block. Don't by a forested block in a green belt zone, and then expect to be allowed to clear it.

If you bought a block in a residential zone, and then put up a factory, you'd get pretty short shrift.

Likewise, people who build next to an airport, then complaint about noise ... well, duh.

At some stage, people are just going to have to accept that there are risks that come with living in certain environments.

Clownfish, you are being a bit simplistic. For example people have been living in the Blue Mountains, one of Australia's most bushfire-prone areas, almost since settlement. All of the "green zones" or equivalent in the Blue Mountains have been imposed after development, not before.

Are you suggesting that we now close down the Blue Mountains, where more than 80% of residences are within 150 metres of the 1,000,000+ hectares of National Park, but where we are no longer allowed to manage risks from trees in our own backyards? The same sort of thing has happened in many, many places across Australia.

What about rural farming communities - should they now drive to the big smoke for kid's school and their supplies so businesses and their owners won't have to locate near the bush?

Somehow I don't think that's going to happen. If, as you correctly point out, there is a risk in living in a bush environment, then people need to do risk management. Let's have a look at the options for householders and small businesses in rural areas:
1. Risk avoidance. This means living somewhere else. Covered above - it's not going to happen.
2. Risk transfer. Being insured helps the recovery process, but it doesn't prevent loss of life and personal effects that can never be replaced.
3. Risk reduction. Realistically the only option. Create an asset protection zone. Clear trees that are too close. Cut or graze grass. Most importantly, manage rather than abandon the bush and reduce bushfire hazards. All need to be done and more besides (e.g evacuation plans, tanks and pumps, etc.) Not rocket science. For goodness' sake, why aren't we allowed to just do it?

You want people to live on cleared blocks, but we are not allowed to clear them! Where is the logic behind deliberately exacerbating a major risk to life and property? Doing so is dangerously negligent in my book.

I would like to point out that by claiming the recent bushfires are due to "climate change" is to ignore reality and ensure these events continue to happen. Steps can be taken to reduce the severity of bushfires, even under severe fire weather. You cannot hope to eliminate wildfires but you can influence their impact. You only have to study WA's wildfire record from the Dwellingup disaster of 1960 through to the early 1990s. They will have a Victorian tragedy soon because they have basically discontinued the effective practice of prescibed burning over that 30-40 year period and their fuels levels are now very high and they have allowed a lot of assets to mix with these now volatile forest areas.

But I wanted to pick up on a few comments from posters as it is important to clarify some points people make to help them understand the situation. Whilst eucalypt trees and houses should never be allowed to mix, it is wrong to focus on removal of trees when in fact it is the removal of fuel that is important. The only way a fire can crown in a eucalypt forest is when there is the combination of weather (such as low humidity and/or strong winds) and high fuel levels. These fuels are what we term 'fine fuels' and are up to 6mm in diameter (leaves, twigs, small branches etc). Leave them to build up and you are asking for trouble - in fact you end up getting the fires 'nature' wants instead of the fire we want. Whenever we have assets near bush, the bush becomes a hazard that has to be managed - we cannot hide from this fact. And when we have large contiguous areas of forests backing onto these assets, having a small strategic fuel free zone adjoining the asset is useless when the bush can sustain a crown fire and spot many kilometres ahead of the fire front under a crown fire and send embers to do their nasty work on houses.

Ask any grain farmer who has to protect his house and sheds during harvest from a stubble blaze.

Us farmers though sympathetic, could feel the same about fools, knowing that if we left bush and timber near our precincts as we note in our own coastal ranges, we would deserve to be burnt out.

Sorry to have to say so,

Regards, BB, WA.

Sylvia Hallam is an 81 year old retired academic in WA who wrote one of the earliest books on the Aboriginal use of fire in SW WA. The book was Fire and Haerth, published in the mid-1970s. She recently wrote a letter to The West Australian newspaper which is well worth reading, especially if you're concerned about the use of fire in our natural lands:
Dear Sir,

Indeed Robert Dixon is right (letter to "The West Australian", 13/02/09), controlled burns have long been a necessary part of the humanised Australian landscape. Deposits in lakes and swamps, and the trunks of ancient blackboys, provide records of devastating major fires before humans entered the continent; and then of much less devastating, but more frequent, fires once the original Australians arrived, and began to protect their food sources and access routes by deliberate, systematic, socially regulated, burns, very expensive in manpower and labour.

In December 1792 a naturalist from a French voyage of exploration, stranded on our south coast, observed over several days a group of Aboriginal men lighting and relighting their fires. He approached a blaze "crowded with activity, but when I arrived the natives had gone." On his second day ashore he again watched "several natives who from morning to night were busy poking their fire". It was not a very hot fire, for they were "always standing to the windward and in the smoke". He explains that they set fire to an area "covered with bushes, and spread the flames until everything has been consumed", then "leave the fire to extinguish itself during the night and transport themselves to another place next day."

Around fifty years later, after the English had established a settlement at King George Sound, a group ashore from HMS Beagle, watched "a party of natives engaged in burning the bush, which they do in sections every year." The visitors marvelled at the dexterity with which the Aborigines managed the blaze "armed with large green boughs, with which, if it moves in a wrong direction, they beat it out".

continued in next post

Riche and Stokes provide snapshots of a laborious process of lighting, spreading, maintaining, relighting, restraining and guiding fires, burning small patches sequentially, resulting in a close mosaic of burns. Over some periods of the year Aboriginal groups were prepared to put all their available able-bodied manpower into the immense labour needed to maintain a habitable productive landscape.

Their effort, skill and application may be difficult to emulate in our society, where we have come to believe that technology can solve all things. Perhaps Lieutenant Bunbury was right when, in 1836, after describing open forests around the Vasse (Busselton) maintained by Aboriginal burning, he concluded that "we might ourselves burn the bush, but we could never do it with the same judgment and good effect as the Natives, who keep the fire within due bounds, only burning those parts they wish, when the scrub becomes too thick, or they have any other object to gain by it."

Aboriginal regimes of sequential controlled burning of limited patches by very low-intensity fires kept the country in good heart, and insured against the ravages of wild fire. Fire will always be part of the Australian landscape. Human beings can only co-exist with the inevitability of fire if they are prepared to devote major resources to ensuring that they live with controlled fire, not wild fire. The original Australians devoted relatively huge manpower and effort to maintaining viable landscapes. It will be even more difficult now, because of our denser population, more complex infrastructure, introduced weeds, exacerbation of fuel buildup by logging, and past neglect of adequate burning.

Yours sincerely,
Sylvia J Hallam

Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities); Retired Associate Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology; Honorary Fellow, School of Earth and Environment, UWA, Member of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies.

Thank you Bernie, that describes what we should be doing - mosaic burning is the only way to manage the risks in living in our environment. I live in the Blue Mountains, and watch the hazard reductions done here - not perfect, but they help. Mosaic burning allows biodiversity to continue, where the Black Saturday fires have now, and recovery will be almost impossible in our lifetimes. I understand the need for maintaining the forests, but allowing fire trails to overgrow so a tanker cannot use them is not helping either. The policy of never clearing the understory shows no understanding of the necessary risk management. Proper planning can ensure that the mosaic burns suit the types of forests involved, and not preparing for a 'fire season' leaves everyone in danger!