1. Fuel load is one of a number of factors determining fire size and intensity. In conditions of Low to Very High fire danger it is of primary importance. In conditions of Extreme to Catastrophic fire danger (as on Black Saturday) it is of secondary importance.

2. Fuel reduction burning is one of a number of factors determining fuel load, others including vegetation clearing, land use, and weather and climate conditions, with the latter becoming very significant in extreme conditions.

3. The quantity, type and location of fuel reduction burning carried out is determined by a number of factors. Questions of the quantity, type and location of fuel reduction burning that should be carried out are the subject of legitimate scientific and community debate. Given that we are talking about long-term changes in the characteristics of over 200 vegetation ecosYstem types in Victoria alone, the answers (if there are definitive answers) to many of these questions lie many years into the future.

That said, I think it is worth quoting in full what Kevin Tolhurst wrote on the subject of fuels:

Fuels across the areas burnt varied from grassland to softwood and hardwood plantations, dry forest, mountain forests, rainforests and subalpine woodlands.

Due to the drought conditions, many of the normally moist forests were dry and carried fire easily. In the Mountain Ash forests in Melbourne’s water catchments, fires were backing down hills in relatively uniform flame fronts with a height of about one metre. Normally these forests would be too moist to burn.

Fine fuels, defined as those fuels burning in the flaming zone of the fire, varied from about 1.5 t/ha in eaten-out grass paddocks, to about 45 t/ha in mountain forests, averaging about 25 t/ha across most of the burnt area. It is these fuels that carry the fire front and largely determine the flame height of the fire. Green vegetation will normally only burn if it has sufficient dry fuel around it. In the case of grass this proportion of live to dead fuel is called the degree of curing. As a result of the heatwave in late January, there had already been a degree of desiccation in the green vegetation and an increase in the degree of curing in grasslands. This added to the total amount of fuel available to burn. A similar situation occurred in 1982/3 before the Ash Wednesday fires, but via a different process. Unusually severe frosts and heavy snowfalls before the summer in 1982 resulted in a significantly greater amount of normally green vegetation being desiccated before the fires. In both cases this additional dry fuel resulted in more energy being available to drive the fire instead of being used to dry the
fuel and heat it to the kindling temperature.

Woody fuels such as twigs, branches, fallen trees and dead standing trees also caught fire and added considerably to the amount of heat coming off the burnt area. The heat generated from these woody fuels can add considerably to the heat in the main convection column and hence help drive the fire. These woody fuels may vary from about 50 t/ha in dry foothill forests and woodlands to over 200 t/ha in the wet mountain forests. Video footage of the fires burning at Mt Poley, Marysville and Kinglake all show this wood fuel burning freely and with very long burn out times, in excess of five hours in the case of Mt Poley (see timelines in Appendix of this report).

In other words, whilst prior fuel reduction burning or the lack thereof is one factor in determining the amount of fuel available, in the conditions of Black Saturday climate and weather were also crucial in converting plant matter to fuel which would not have been part of the fuel load in less extreme conditions.

The physics and chemistry etc of fire and fuel loads and the specific features of forest ecology/fire ecology need to be more widely understood.

One commenter has repeated the canard that controlled burns (not back burns, which are an entirely different thing) were conducted all about Marysville. Yes, but only little ones, and the most recent of those were measured in mere hectares. (from memory, only 20% of the area designated for burning actually felt the torch). In any case, they could have paved a one- kilometre patch around all of Marysvile and it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference. the town was destoyed by a sustained ember attack over the course of three hours. There was no fire front, as such, but a series of eruptions all over the townas as candle bark touched down and set things off. Exploding gas bottles compounded this, probably being responsible for at least half the homes lost. The fires then followed a classic dresden pattern, in that they generated a vast convection column which further enhanced the fire.

And where did the embers come from? Try the forest country along the road to Narbethong, which hadn’t been burned and was probably carrying fuel in the range of 45 tonnes per hectare. Ash forests generate vast quantities of bark — it’s part of their life cycle, in that you only get a new generation of ash after the last has been destroyed by fire. The bark makes sure the fire does a thorough job of bringing on the next generation, most particularly by clearing the top storey so light can reach the now-nutrient laden forest floor. the southerly change carried that volume of embers up and over Mt. Strickland, which acted as as a ski jump, and let it rain down everywhere. Remember, the fires were spotting up to 25 kms. Look at Daryl Hull’s testimony, particularly his memory of looking up at the embers landing on the surface of the lake in which he had taken refuge. the rain was so heavy he had to duck dive because the top of his head kept being burnt. That’s a hell of a concentration if it is scoring multiple hits on a target area no larger than, say, 20 cm X 20 cm (if he has a big head!!!!!).

The ash on the Spur were less than 70 years old, most planted by Italian POWs to replace those destroyed on Black friday. Given that they live for 300-400 years, a little burning at this stage wouldn’t have done any harm. It would have given them a chance to get past adolescence, at any rate.

Thirty per cent of melbourne’s catchment area was burned out — and that is a huge worry. New ash stands will generate huge runoffs over the next two years, as there will be no trees there to snaffle the water before it reaches the dams. It will be laden with contaminants, however. But when they start growing in earnest, each regnan trying to outgrow and shade its neighboour, they will hoover dam-loads of water. Studies by the old MMBW indicate it will be 70 years before water flow gets back to what it was in january. If you wanted to be super-practical, you’d cut down the ash over the next century and replace them with an oak forest, which wouldn’t burn half so readily and will shed leaves only in winter. But we couldn’t do that, not when the green-voting residents of Fitzroy and brunswick derive so much satisfaction from their emotional attachment to native trees, although definitely not their proximity to them. A green of my acquaintance some time ago regaled me with his lemon-scented gums, which he planted in place of pines and poplars he had torn out. I was a guest at his table at the time, so good manners stopped me pointing out that lemon-scenteds are no more native to his patch of heidelberg than the foreign “exotics” he uprooted for no good reason whatsoever. Listen to a green talk about trees and you soon realise the trees are smarter. I believe he found the extolling of his own virtue a sweeter moment than dessert.

One commenter made the absurd claim that some sort of arboricide had been going on, that 60% of trees had been cleared. I’d suggest that poster read Alfred Howitt’s address to the Royal Society of Victoria, delivered in 1890, “the Eucalypts of Gippsland”. Howitt observes that the passing from the land of Gippsland aborigines had led to a vast increase in trees, because the tribes’ regular burning had come to an end. Shoots and saplings that would normally have been consumed by a cool burn were growing to maturity, in his observation, and choking the bush, where once he could ride his horse as if in a deer park. Of course, greens reject this, saying that since no pioneer directly records observing a blackfella with a box of redheads, it must all be a myth propagated by loggers and developers. One of the casualties were Gippsland’s redgums, by Howitt’s reckoning, now an endangered species due to caterpillar infestation. The redgums have been replaced, however, with more of the ubiquitous dry sclerophyll. We don’t have less trees. We have more of them, it’s just that they are scrubby rubbish (and not in good health, either).

Go up and have a look at the mountains beyond Licola, which were burned out with heavy fuel loads a few years back. Many hills have washed into the macilster and the glen maggie dam, into which it empties, is now 20% silted up. the crap washed into the Gippsland lakes hasn’t done anything to improve their health, either. In other spots, nothing grows (near Fiddlers Green, for example), because the soil has been cooked to death, its chemistry and bacteria destroyed.

Fire is a serious thing, and it would be even 172 people had not lost their lives. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, if all you can manage is pithy parroting of the talking points from Green Left Weekly, then for God’s sake shut up. There will be more fires next year — the Bunyip blaze skipped vast acreages of country that must be 40t/ha at least, and it’s just aching to burn.

Ground fuels do matter, particularly in the bush-urban interface. The Nillumbik of 80 years ago looked nothing like the Nillumbik of feb. 6. It was pig farms, orchards and pasture (check the old land-use surveys if you don’t believe me) The trees imposed on the landscape are a construct (to use language that sprout-sucking wankers readily comprehend), a green fantasy, no more real than Michael Jackson’s late nose. The council encouraged residents to grow bursan!!!!! aka petrol bush, even paying a bounty for planting it around your home. Such idiocy, and 140 people in the greater Kinglake area paid for it with their lives. They then compounded this by allowing road verges to become multi-storeyed death traps. One reason so many bodies were found in bathrooms, I suspect, is because people knew the roads were impassable.

As I said, the nitwit brigade should shut up. When we have our next holocaust, angry people might just want someone to lynch. it would be a good idea not to remind irate grown-ups of your collective culpability.

People who experienced some danger on that day tend to have a high regard for the efforts of the CFA volunteers. People who have lived in the bush or in fire-prone areas, who have learnt from Joan Webster’s book or from CFA, DSE information; people who took the very serious warnings from the Premier seriously……

There is still a hand-painted sign on the flower bed roundabout at the north end of Churchill township: CFA We Love You Big Time. The town was spared only by the wind direction. Many houses, farms damaged or destroyed nearby. Several lives lost. Very sad to see incompetent reporting muddy the waters.

On the research front, it is very sad and ironic that Jenny Barnett of the VNPA was working on bushfire mitigation research when she died in the February fires. I hope some of her work survives and can be carried on by others.

One would think that a news report, in contrast to propaganda, would highlight the majority stance of the 56 out of 60, with possibly a tail-end reference to the minority view. But, no. The Age led the article with the opinion of the tiny minority, giving to it twice the space allotted to the 56.
This blatantly biased reporting not only lowers the standard of journalism to the depths but, by giving influential prominence to a small negative view of proven life-saving measures, puts future lives in jeopardy.