Firestorms are created by fires crowning – burning from treetop to treetop. It’s the gases released by the burning gumleaves which are the problem.

So the kind of controlled burning referred to has some effect in purely ground based fires (I question how much; I walked through blackened areas a few weeks after the 2003 fires. There was plenty of fuel left on the ground; because the fires had dried everything out, it was probably just as flammable as the previous thick moist undergrowth had been).

It only has environmental benefits if it mimics the natural cycle, which is easy to recreate from the habits of the trees themselves – snow gums do not regenerate, suggesting fires are extremely rare; mountain ash do not regenerate, and take over a decade to set viable seed, suggesting fires are once in twenty year events at least; lowland eucalypts bounce back instantly, suggesting a frequent fire regime.

Similarly, there are risks associated with living in one of the most bushfire prone areas of the world (I’m not saying the bush, which implies non metropolitan – I shudder to think about a fire hitting Eltham, for example). We can minimise these risks but we can’t remove them entirely.

Arguing that all trees should be removed from roadsides is as ridiculous as arguing that all cars should be speed limited to 40 k (which I guarantee would save more lives).

People shouldn’t be on roads on days of extreme fire danger, full stop. If they live in areas with limited access, they should get out beforehand.

(Have lived through three bushfires now, 2003, 2006, 2009. My grandfather was the only survivor of a community hit by the 1927 fires).

I do like that concept, the lite version anyway. I did enjoy the one “clean up Australia” day that I have been engaged in. We are way too hooked into our “freedoms” which turn out to be anti freedoms, in many ways.

It is an interesting thought that freedom should lead to isolation.

Disingenuous rubbish. Try arguing in good faith, please.

No, Wilful, I wouldn’t remove hamans from the landscape, but I’d encourage Australians to really rethink the treechange / commuter lifestyle.

People employed on farms, in national parks and country occupations – yes.

De facto dormitory suburbs fostered by inflated urban residential prices and temporarily cheap fuel, overlaid by a romanticism about living in bushland without the concomitant skillz – maybe that needs a rethink.

Automatic enrollment might sound a bit draconian (like compulsory military service – uggh!), but it is a self-interest and self-preservation issue. There is a precedent for suggesting this concept.

I was partly thinking of the “velforening” (loosely translated “community wellbeing”) in Norway, where you are automatically enrolled in a group of households in your area and expected to join in.

Sounds dreadful at first thought, but it provides for Neighbourhood Watch and much more: evening patrols for child protection after dark, monitoring and modulating the activities of exhuberant inebriated teenagers, community amenities like basketball rings and sandpits (including erecting the ubiquitous Norwegian flagpole), bulk rubbish bins for street cleanups, get-togethers for national day, annual summer bonfire and bbq for the street, etc.

It turned out to be fun and an interesting insight into another way of thinking. I would never have got to know the neighbours (other than those on either side) by any other way, especially being from another country and new to the area. I think their children benefitted more from this approach, and felt more secure, compared with the modern Aussie isolationist style. In a crisis, if the parents were out, the kids knew their neighbours and did not have to ask complete strangers for help.

It is a bit of a long bow, but I thought it was an interesting concept. Perhaps we had more of this approach in earlier pioneering times in Australia, but have lost it with the growth of large cities?