Unsurprisingly, the Victorian fires are news around the world, but it’s mostly rehashes of domestic media put together by correspondents in Sydney. But the Los Angeles Times had a link to an earlier piece of theirs which neatly summarises a topic that will be much discussed over the next weeks and months: the “stay or go” approach, in which Victorians in fire-prone areas either evacuate early or stay and actively defend their homes from fire.
U.S. authorities are quick to order mass evacuations during wildfires; they prefer to get civilians out of the way so professionals can douse the flames. Australian officials are more likely to hand homeowners shovels and put them to work.
People here live by the principle of “stay or go” during fire season. Residents who can’t or won’t battle an advancing fire are advised to get out early. Those who stay are expected to defend their homes. It’s a policy driven by pragmatism: There simply aren’t enough firefighters or firetrucks to protect far-flung rural homesteads.
I should add that there will be plenty of time to reflect on the lessons learned from these fires, and I’m not suggesting that “stay or go” will be, or should be, abandoned wholesale. Historically, lives lost in bushfires since Ash Wednesday have been far fewer in number, despite some truly gargantuan fires in the intervening period. And the exact circumstances of each fire death have obviously yet to be determined. I’ve had it suggested to me that more thought as to the psychology of people’s reaction to imminent threat should form part of that consideration.
As to the suggestion on the previous thread of underground bunkers, there are historical precedents for this kind of thing from the Black Friday fires of 1939 (hat tip Boynton). One group in a large dugout survived; another family in a smaller bunker died of suffocation and having the earth dugout collapse. Mind you, I doubt that an earth dugout from 1939 is the best we could do today, and Joshua Gans makes a good point about technological innovation for fire protection.
The topic of arson has been raised repeatedly, with Kevin Rudd describing those who have deliberately lit some of these fires as committing mass murder. It remains to be seen whether, even if some of the arsonists are caught, whether such charges can be made to stick. Regardless, “throwing the book” at arsonists is hardly the issue – I’m quite sure that if sufficient evidence is gathered to establish responsibility, the charges available to prosecutors will have quite sufficient maximum penalties to very severely punish those responsible even if murder charges aren’t feasible. But deterrence is only one tool in the ultimate goal – reducing the number of deliberately-lit fires in the future.
As Paul Norton pointed out, there is already all manner of blame-the-greenies rhetoric about the alleged lack of fuel reduction burning, and the alleged responsibility of environmentalists for it. As he also noted, it’s not that simple; for one thing, frequent burning favours some types of vegetation that are actually more flammable than others; in high-rainfall subalpine areas such as near Marysville, for instance, if the forest is undisturbed for sufficient time, it will eventually turn to temperate rainforest, which won’t burn nearly as readily as eucalypt. Tim Flannery has, in his book The Future Eaters, suggested deliberate replanting of such rainforest species in some locations.
Oh, and one final thing. The efforts of the emergency services – who, in the case of the CFA, are mostly unpaid volunteers – are extraordinary. But there will undoubtedly be lessons learned for those bodies as well. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if issues in inter-service coordination (including simple communication between different and mutually incompatible radio systems), for instance, became clear in the inevitable inquiries that will follow this tragedy. A speedy response to an embryonic fire can often extinguish it before it becomes a serious problem.
UPDATE: An ABC News report by a journalist who’s visited Kinglake (and was forced to spend last night there due to road closures). A key snippet: “”Lots of debris, trees, corrugated iron roofing, power lines dangling across and then the many, many, burned out car wrecks – close to, I’d say, 20 on the main road alone. [There are] obvious accidents, head-on collisions, and five cars concertinaed with a motorbike had gone into a ditch.”
After a January without any rain at all the forests surrounding Melbourne were primed by a record burst of extreme hot days at the start of February. Then, one week later, arrived our hottest ever day. People were struggling with the conditions before the first fire even started.
There are lessons to be learned about the changing nature of our climate. These lessons must modify past fire management practices.
“quite sufficient maximum penalties to very severely punish those responsible even if murder charges aren’t feasible.” Yeah it’s arson causing death, and it attracts pretty high sentences. The problem is, furious as we all may be (and are!), they tend to be either kids or screwballs.
This is an interesting take and I expect this debate, and parallel ones regarding the nature of our emergency services as modestly resourced and largely volunteer, will pick up energy once the immediate task we all agree on has been finished.
Robert on saturday you commented that Brumby was “laying it on a bit thick’ in regard to the extreme conditions as forecast. I never followed the link and it has since been taken off the page linked. What was it that you felt was too much?
How do you know what is early or too late?
My limited understanding of these types of events are that they move at up to 100km/h and much faster than you can drive in reduced visibility.
I have a distant relative who was a CFA Commander during Ash Wednesday. He never psychologically recovered from the event.
Turns out Brumby and the authorities were dead on about the potential dangers inherent in the conditions. Makes it all the more shocking that despite all the warnings, preparations etc – the disaster still unfolded as badly as it has.
“Yeah it’s arson causing death, and it attracts pretty high sentences. The problem is, furious as we all may be (and are!), they tend to be either kids or screwballs.”
And my suspicion is that the extreme public show of rage and indignation by politicians is a dream come true for that level of mentality. And most likely to encourage copy cat behaviour.
Yep, he was right and I was wrong.
What I didn’t appreciate was just how strong the wind was going to be.
Still, we’ve had nearly as bad days on other occasions without bushfires taking this kind of toll. The difference, I suspect, is where these particular fires occurred; in the semi-rural areas immediately north of Melbourne where people live literally in the forest.
Interesting thought, joe2.
Which also brings up the topic of what public figures should say before an extreme weather event like Saturday.
I don’t want to sound like I’m covering up for a spectacularly bad call, when Brumby got it spot-on and I was completely wrong (in the unlikely event you read this and the even unlikelier event you care, John Brumby, I re-emphasize I stuck my foot in it criticizing your judgement), but it’s worth at least thinking about whether that kind of thing actually encourages arsonists.
The other difference was the extreme heat and record period of drought. The record setting high temperature in Melbourne in the January of Black Friday 1939 was 45.7. This Saturday the temperature reached 46.4 (115.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
Also I wonder if the unintended consequence of people being told for many years that they had to be prepared for fire meant that people believed that they were now actually prepared.
“The difference, I suspect, is where these particular fires occurred; in the semi-rural areas immediately north of Melbourne where people live literally in the forest.”
True, to a large extent, but it is worth remembering that around 4o houses and more than one death have occurred in walking distance of central Bendigo.
And Robert you were not the only one who was sceptical of what seemed like overblown speculation. Brumby was privy to expert information.
Anecdotal stuff probably doesn’t help too much when we’re never too sure of it’s origin but in ’54 as a young timber cutter at Delburn and Darlimurla felling stag timber with peg and raker cross cut saw and axe with my Grandfather, a “bush boss’ for many years at mill sites across Victoria I was told many tales of fires and the decision whether to go or stay. Sadly a lot of those stories were of people who stayed and thought that the timbermill dugouts or sprinkler systems, even the water tanks would be sufficient to protect them. Too often not so. My Grandfather believed you got out of the bush. When he left Tanjil Bren in ’39 several men died in the sprinklers main tank. To him it was the equivalent of a billy on a roaring camp-fire. Up until ’39 the fires lit for clearing land were a constant threat on ‘fire’ days. Going to burn-offs to reduce fires will ensure that on a day like saturday fire remnants will be potential fire bombs.
Following on from Armagny at 2 and joe2 at 6, I’d be quite interested to know what, if any, effect a big fire event has on the overall rate of bushfire arson and how long does such an effect last?
For instance, does the rate go down as kids who might be mucking about in dangerous ignorance but with no particular malice have the potential consequences of their actions brought home to them, or as people become more vigilant and willing to dob in accquaintances with fire raising tendencies?
Or does the rate go up as the disturbed are excited by events and, as postulated by joe2, we see a rise in copycat behaviour?
As for the durability of any effects, is it short term (ie the next one or two seasons) or generational (eg, folk who remember Ash Wednesday being less or more likely to light fires, but folk having grown up since being unaffected)?
In the past the ‘stay or go’ approach has (I believe) worked well. But on Saturday the fire was just too fast. It was upon people in Kinglake before they realised they were in trouble, and no amount of preparation could have saved them from what had become a firestorm. There is a great article in The Australian today by Gary Hughes. His house was in open country, he’d done all the fuel reduction things, he was well prepared, but he only just escaped by incredible good luck. If he had done a few things differently him and his family would be dead.
No doubt there will be enquiries to sort out what if anything could have been done better, but my suspicion is that many of the people who died will be either those who were overwhelmed by the speed of the fire and who didn’t have a chance to put their ‘stay or go’ plan into action, or people who were well equipped to fight most fires, stayed, but no matter how well equipped, didn’t stand a chance against this fire.
Update on stay or go policy:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/stay-or-go-policy-to-be-reviewed-brumby-20090209-81ek.html?page=2
I think the truth with the causation issue is that you need to pretty much plan on the assumption that it will happen, either arson or other causes- lightning etc.
Coming from the NT with its yearly controlled burns, I wonder if that has any lessons for us?
“The tongues of flame are in our front paddock, racing up the hill towards us across grass stubble I thought safe because it had been slashed.”
(From Gary Hughes’ article.)
When the wind is right and the ground perfectly dry, fire can race across ground where the grass is grazed down, as I once learnt to my (not tragic) cost.
I just had a rep visit my factory who echoed my views on this sort of tradgedy. And that is that is way past time when we should be adding cellars to our houses. Cellars with a concrete ceiling and walls. There are multiple aspects to these disasters. One is the loss of ones dwelling, another is the loss of all of ones posessions, and the last is the loss of ones life. The one element that can prevent two of these losses, and possibly the first is a cellar. Events such as the Victorian fires will become routine with time. As a person who lives in the Blue Mountains where the entire city is a thin ribbon of dwellings stretched out over 50 klms I am more aware than most that the right kind of fire with the right kind of wind could wipe out 50% of these dwellings in a single day.
I am not at all moved by images of Kevin Rudd hugging victims when I know full well that government will not do a single thing to prevent future losses. Clear in my mind is the ABC public forum where a key representative of Australia’s largest project home builder said absolutely clearly that the building industy needs guidence from government otherwise they must keep building the same weather and fire vulnerable houses that people, who do not have the foresight to ask for alternatives, demand them to build.
The Australian government is a total failure in this regard. And I cannot see the situation improving. The sympathy press is far too valuable for our politicians to do anything about this travesty of intelligence.
The number of deaths in cars looks unusually high. My guess is that these were people who stayed to defend their homes as usual, but that the firestorms were far worse than anticipated. If you recognise that fighting a fire is suicidal, you’ll flee, even if you are well aware that fleeing is also suicidal. I would imagine a lot of the victims knew they were out of luck before they hit the road.
The question is: were the firestorms far worse than expected? Do we have any stats on the fire behaviour yet?
NotAmused: interesting piece. One comment though – there is no “open country” at St. Andrews, or near it, at least not in the sense that I’d use the term.
It’s a collection of eucalypt-covered rolling hills with a relatively narrow creek valley, and the creek itself is surrounded by fairly extensive patches of eucalypt if I recall correctly.
Armgany @ 2: “The problem is, furious as we all may be (and are!), they tend to be either kids or screwballs.”
So? If they are this much of a threat to society and environment, we should take them out of circulation for a very long time, as well as providing any eductaion or therapy that would help. Same as we would do for any other young or insane mass murderers.
joe2 @ 6 “And my suspicion is that the extreme public show of rage and indignation by politicians is a dream come true for that level of mentality. And most likely to encourage copy cat behaviour.”
Maybe, if getting that sort of attention is part of what they are into. But the cycle stops once they’re caught. So catch the buggers.
Yes the NT has many lessons for the south, especially in terms of fire management. What we have seen, in part (and I stress in part) is a result not of 20 or 30 years of poor fire management but of 150 years pluys. Put simply the forests we have now in southern Australia are not like the ones that were here 150 years ago. Yes many of the species are the same but their composition is completely different. To blame the greenies it way to rich, we need to blame our fear of fire which is obviously deeply embedded in ouy phsyche, and which grows (understandably) after events like those from the weekend. This fear means that we dont embrace fire as a part of the bush like we probably should, and as a result our ways of managing it are not based on how to get to a long term bush composition that reduces the likelihood of the weekend happeing again (it cannot be eliminated of course).
The reality is that it would take 150 years of what i will call “good” burning to get to a forst composition with far fewer trees and much more grass (like what was the case when the whitefellas arrived). However the knowledge to do this is probably largely gone (if not completely) , so we are actually now stuck between a rock and a hard place where things like this will keep happening as we dont know how, nor do we have the political fortitute, to invest in increased fire in the bush with the long term aim of making things safer.
Apologies for the poor construction and spelling in the last post- maybe i’d better eat something!
Here is what the Australian Conservation Foundation has to say about hazard reduction burning:
Chookie,
All the interviews with firefighters and those who stayed and survived talk of the noise and the speed of the fire. ATM we only the anecdotes:
“There had been a hot north wind all day, and at 5pm the power went out and then the wind stopped,” he said. “Everything went eerily quiet for about 10 minutes. Then the wind swung around and you could hear this extraordinary noise. It sounded like the rumbling stampede of cattle but in fact it was the fire coming up the valley.”
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25026480-2702,00.html
It’s horrifying to realise that that 5pm Saturday ‘cool change’ I was so impatiently hanging out for is the very same wind change that did for Kinglake.
Bilb said:
This should really be up to the insurance companies. Time and time again we hear of people rebuilding the same sorts of vulnerable houses in potential disaster areas. If the resulting house was uninsurable or cost $10,000 pa to insure – and that there was an implicit understanding that they would NOT be bailed out by the state – then people would soon change their habits.
I have to wonder if the ‘stay or go’ message is really getting through, especially as I heard it all weekend – go early if you decide to go.
Late yesterday I heard an interview of an ABC journalist on ABC’s live coverage from Melbourne(I hate journalists interviewing journalists) who said she was preparing for the fire (with her two small children) by staying as long as she could and then going when they had to. The interviewing journalist, who had been reading ‘go early’ messages for his whole shift, didn’t even bother to remind her.
I really don’t think, though, that the people of Kinglake and Marysville ever had the opportunity to implement their strategies, the fire was too quick and too fierce. I guess that has to be factored into the risk in living in these fire prone areas. Sometimes the situation will be so extreme that no amount of preparation will be enough.
The Flash point of Eucalyptus oil is 49.4C- some fgractions have alower flash point. This defined as the lowest temperature at which it will support combustion. Clearly if you ignite a bunch of leaves containing largish quantities of Eucalyptus oil – it will burn -providing the burn temperature stays above 49.4C.
If the ambient temperature is close to 49.4 C the energy required to get the reaction started is tiny. If you want to see a good illustration of the situation put a wok with about a tablespoon of oil on the stove bring it up to the flash point (usually demonstrated by a sort of smokey haze over the pan. Then light amatch and stand well back.
Thus you get the explosive fire fronts that took every-one by surprise even after the ambient temperature had dropped a little. (The branches and leaves were still sitting there really hot – like bombe ready to go off). If you look closely at a eucalyptus forest on a really hot day you can see a faint blue haze over the leaves, this is the lighter fractions of the oil coming off as a sort of explosive gas.
If the average global temperature continues to rise the entire southern latitudes (low humidity) will burn every summer. I think we will have to wait until the whole planet is burning, the seas are to the top of the mall in Brisbane and the wall street criminals will have to use power boats to get to work before we do any-thing at all.
Huggy
Think back, Chookie. These jet blast fire storms are a fairly recent phenomenon, and they appear to be becoming more frequent. And not just for Australia.
Since 1997, SE Australia has been in a new climate regime. There has been a step change downwards in rainfall and upwards in max temperature. There are reasons to suggest that the previous big shift occurred in 1976 – certainly El Nino changed from that date.
If the 1977 to 1996 period is compared with 1997 to 2007 over a 1×1 degree grid over Melbourne (data from BoM), av. temp went up by 0.4°C, min by 0.3°C and max temp by 0.6°C. Rainfall dropped by 160 mm over the same period (almost 20%). Max temp is anti-correlated with rainfall, so if this relationship has not changed, about half the increase in max temp can be explained by the drop in rainfall (less cloud – warmer daytime temps). The other half would be independent warming.
Since 97, there have been three big fire events in SE Aust: in 02-03, 06-07 and 08-09. We got lucky in 97-98. The statistics of fires are as rough as guts because they are so episodic, but this is unsettling because never have we seen three such severe events so close together.
Extreme fire weather statistics have not been developed for spatial climate data – they have been for a few individual stations. My guess is that if a spatial data set was created going back to 1976, the post 97 part would be statistically different – very different. It’s hard to analyse past dry periods (before 1957) because of data problems. Days above 35°C and 40°C also appear to have jumped since 1997 and this needs more work to be certain, because of the high variability of extreme hotsa days from year to year.
The suggestion that we are in a new regime of critical risk with regard to fire hazards needs to be taken seriously. This must temper ideas of re-building. Of course communities don’t disappear with buildings, but we need to ensure that new Kinglake and new Marysville and other places are safe and sustainable. Peri-urban areas in Australia are highly risky places to live and becoming riskier.
Knowing more about the potential risk may not have made a big difference this time, but if we don’t want these risks to get substantially worse, we need to adapt to the new regimes, and work as hard on mitigating climate change as we can. The latter would not show up as a real benefit until after 2030, so for the next few decades communities are going to have to adjust to changing conditions in a big way.
My deepest sympathies to those injured and the families and friends of those killed. Emergency services and communities have done brilliantly, given the speed of the events.
My one fervent wish is that Australia’s national research agencies stop their endless management reforms and concentrate on the science that is needed to better understand these changing risks.
I should have added “ground hugging” jet blast fire storms. I thought that I saw in some of the footage a grass fire that appeared to be fanned by a down draft (and not from the helicopter that took the shot).
Paul on previous Fire and Flood thread:
I notice that some of Bolt’s chooks at his blog have, predictably, put themselves forward as instant experts on fire hazard reduction burning and attempting to blame environmentalists for the alleged lack of it. One wonders how they explain the 1939 and 1983 disasters.
Oh, they always do that. They should turn some attention onto the human firestarters – it’d be a good outlet for their anti-terrorist zeal to latch onto some homegrown terrorists. Ya think?
.
With regard to the “Say or Go” argument, I agree with BilB@16. Following the devastation of cyclones Althea and Tracey, considerable work went into building design for the tropics and new standards developed. With so many houses destroyed and so many killed, something is clearly wrong. Either we don’t live in these (potentially) dangerous environments (which is silly because 99% of the time they’re ideal) or we need to look at how we live in them.
Also, if we’re going to allow people the option to stay (and some always will), they need to know that, regardless of the conditions, they will survive. It’s pretty clear that many, once faced with the reality of the fire, decided to run. So cellars, fireproof rooms, fallout shelters – what ever is has to be, anything rebuilt in these areas should have something that offers this protection.
I was listening to some talkback on ABC local and there was the inevitable reference to the SA Native Vegetation Act impeding good vegetation management, as well as the suggestion that cold burns are not undertaken because of fear of a backlash from the ‘greenies’.
I work in conservation and have yet to meet a person in my field who objects to fuel reduction burns, in many circumstances they can be complimentary to conservation efforts, [except when those burns make impact on a threatened species and, usually, burns can be planned around such areas]. After all a lot of the fuel loads in these areas are exotic weeds.
The Native Vegetation act allows for vegetation clearance around homes, and indeed planning laws make it mandatory. The problem is, we have come to think that properties can be made safe under any circumstance, and that is simply a myth. Things like fuel load reduction are drummed into landholders, but it leads to the [false] perception that such clearance equals safety, that it provides them with an area to ‘defend’, and that is very problematic. Ground that was close to bare carried a fire in the Port Lincoln fires a couple of years back. We are encountering fire conditions that are unprecedented and attitudes need to change. I make a point not to discuss fire management strategies in my reports, because I don’t believe that native vegetation can be ‘made safe’, it would be wise for people who live near native vegetation to recognise that reality. I think in my 10 years in this industry I have encountered only one landholder that has built a house that genuinely respects the risks that the landscape poses.
The stoic, “WE WILL REBUILD THESE TOWNS” rhetoric from Brumby is foolish, and should be challenged. I make my living in these landscapes, and I love Australian nature, I’m a passionate advocate for preserving bushland, but I I’m amazed at the naivety of some of the people I encounter who live in these environments. My policy is not to work on fire ban days – that is very disruptive to me making a living, it’s hard to manage employees, but that’s the reality – it is simply not safe. If people who live in these environments aren’t able to deal with the disruption that leaving their properties on fire ban days would mean, they should really question building in the first place.
I choose to live in the suburbs because I don’t believe it is safe to live in a forested environment, I also don’t think it is reasonable to expect volunteers to risk their lives to defend peoples properties on small rural roads that often have no way out. I know that living in the suburbs is no guarantee that my home will not be threatened by a fire, but at least clusters of homes are easier to defend, and there is usually an adequate road infrastructure to move people from areas under threat, and to allow for the safe movement of firefighters.
Chookie, the anecodatal evidence is that the “jet blast”firestorms are becoming more frequent -every-where.
The mechanism for these is as I have described in a previous post. The fire front can move at very high velocity. There was gripping account of two guys in ute travelling at over 60 kmh to escape the flames in a teatree fire (onother high oil low flashpoint plant). In theory; once the much of the oil is near to the flashpoint you can explode the lot in one big bang. The thermal mass of the trees tends to mediate the burn rate a little.
The eucalypts have to go; or we do, it’s as simple as that.
Huggy
GoTroppo: sure. And there’s no question it can be done.
The market for this kind of thing tends to be mainly American survivalists at the moment, but here is an example of the kind of thing that might do the job. Yours for only 16,000 USD plus installation.
From what I’ve read the reason why so many people tried to flee last-minute was not some form of ignorance or deliberately ignoring advice: they had decided to stay & defend their homes, but then got hit by a fire-storm that made many panic and try and flee. Completely understandable, and the results just so tragic. Given the intensity and speed of the fires, I’m not convinced until we get a lot more information later down the track that the death toll would have been any different if people had stayed. The number of people dead in their homes is another stark feature of this fire – it’s not something we normally see.
In terms of ‘blaming the greenies’, a few points:
Here in Tas, mosaic burning as part of conservation-based fuel reduction burning is well understood. The thing that has stood in its way for most of our public land is a massive under-resourcing of the Parks and Wildlife Service. It not only is expected to manage all our national parks (the famous 27% of the state), but has been progressively handed ‘management’ of vast swathes of crown land without any commensurate increase in resources. Compare and contrast to Forestry Tasmania who have good fire management crews, being much better resourced, and will also tell you they hate having to work with the PArks Service, because the latter are so under-resourced they take unacceptable risks.
From what I’ve been observing over several years, many state governments have been systematically under-resourcing their public land management agencies, including Victoria’s DSE. We can understand the science to the cows come home, but governments must resource the relatively labour-intensive business of mosaic burning.
Secondly, the annual burning regime in NT is right for the NT, it’s largely savannah. I studied Vegetation Management including fire management at uni; for most of SE Australia’s forests, there’s a need for mosaic fuel reduction burning on a 5-15 year cycle for our grassy woodland to lightly forested ecosystems. Dense wet eucalypt forest is the hardest to manage because it drops so much fuel load attempting fuel reduction burning can be very hazardous; but most of this type of forest favours areas with higher rainfall and are not so prone to bushfire – this is where climate change will really challenge us though.
Finally, I’d just like to point out that the Greens have been calling for years for the establishment of a world bushfire research centre
I think that a redesigned laundry room would do the trick, Robert. One bunch of people survived by huddling together in the middle of a sports field. Nothing there to burn but their clothing.
‘Fraid not, Helen. The dingbats who set fire to the countryside aren’t swarthy enough or Muslim enough for Bolt’s Flying Monkeys.
Maybe I should have described that further. New era laundry. Concrete walls floor and ceiling with a fireproof door and really fireproof window shutters, and perhaps an external (outside the building) exit/entry. Minimal additional cost to a new building (of which there may be many in those areas).
Robert Merkel said “NotAmused: interesting piece. One comment though – there is no “open country” at St. Andrews, or near it, at least not in the sense that I’d use the term.”
Could be Robert. I don’t know St Andrews and maybe I misinterpreted Gary Hughes’ article. I do know Kinglake and Kinglake West though, and that is a mix of paddocks and light bush.
Robert M at 12.37pm
I think the value in persuading people to take precautions, to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, and to stay indoors (all of which John Brumby said) was spot on. It doesn’t take a Premier’s serious warnings, to provoke an arsonist.
And the (illusory??) fear of provoking arsonists should be clearly overridden in the interests of community awareness.
Robert, it was a combination of forecast high temperatures, strong winds, previous drying-out of (potential) fuels, and LOW HUMIDITY.
All of these factors were pointed to by fire experts I heard on both Thursday and Friday last week on ABC radio in Victoria. The reasons for the dire warnings were spelt out clearly. The warnings were calm and considered. One bloke said, “The conditions are as bad as they were before the Ash Wednesday fires.” You couldn’t have asked for anything clearer.
John Brumby was following expert advice. I can’t fault him.
BTW, Robert Merkel
My comments are not in the spirit of “you were wrong”; there’s no wrong and right here. Citizens’ survival is at issue. We need to learn from these events, as you said.
cheers
Myriad @ 36 – damn good point about the resource allocation – NPWS is certainly underfunded (to the point that it takes years now for relatively simple repairs to be made to tracks).
The DOC in NZ is so obviously better funded it’s not funny.
As several people have noted the intensity and speed of the fires hit hard and fast – in fact it seems remarkably similar to some of the Dresden and Berlin reports. Seems a proper firestorm (Heat column wind-generation sustains and feeds fire growth). Even stubble in an open paddock can burn quickly in a good wind and can spread fire more effectively than spotting between tree groupings. From the photos I’ve seen it looks like anything more than bare dirt was burnt.
I have a customer who has been doing research on bushfire protection for several years and has looked into the “dugout” solution. His research indicates something with a sturdy, well-insulated roof (soil with a thin concrete cap) and a crude double-door is enough to keep the heat at bay (in soil at any rate). Air supply would be the critical item in a drawn out situation…As always the research is funded by scrounging from various sources and is never constant.
Heartfelt wishes to those effected by these fires – good luck and god speed getting them out.
fb @ 33 – what sort of clearance do you need around a house to make it reasonably safe? Its pretty clear from many of the photos of the burnt out areas that people really were living amongst the trees.
HuggyBunny – after having had a huge gum tree branch drop about 10 metres away from me in perfectly calm conditions with no warning I have sympathy for you desire to remove them
I wonder if anyone noticed a trend in evening television advertising as Victoria was first gripped by the disastrous bushfires. With the fires already raging, there came the sudden appearance of the ‘fireready’ website ad, which I’d never seen before the fires started. Last night, I noticed, on Victoria’s channel 9, an increased screening of the government ad urging personal action on climate change (the black balloon ad), but also the ad for the terrorism hotline (‘Have you seen anything unusual?’ etc.).
In light of Penny Wong’s recent comments that record summer temperatures reflect climate change, the question is whether this pattern of advertising is genuinely for the purpose of public information, or to manage the potential public perception that part of the blame for the devastation of the fires lies with the Australian and state and territory governments for their inaction on climate change (approval of new coal mines, coal-fired power stations, inadequate targets etc.), and their failure to adequately prepare for bushfires given their knowledge of the likelihood of extreme fire conditions.
In this regard, it would be very interesting to examine when the ads in question were booked, and how the pattern of government advertising in this disaster period compares with the normal schedule for such advertising across the major metropolitan and regional television stations. Though it is indeed expected that our leaders involve themselves in such disasters, the personal involvements of Premier Brumby and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have been very much in the forefront of the media coverage, with Kevin Rudd quoted this morning as likening the deliberate lighting of fires to mass murder (which, of course, is tragically accurate).
Nevertheless, are the Federal and Victorian State governments using spin in the mass media to distract the public from their own culpability in this tragedy, rather than informing us about what needs to happen to minimise further harm from the fires? Blame personal inaction on climate change, highlight the role of arsonists, and even insinuate terrorism, but turn scrutiny away from government complicity in bringing about the conditions that led to these fires, and may well lead to future ones. That just might be one rationale of the current television advertising campaign, and, if so, it’s wrong.
As for air supply, the crucial thing is apparently the CO2 concentration, not the oxygen supply, and in most conceivable situations a small room would provide ample breathable air for more than long enough for the fire front to pass. See this old thread from Google Answers.
In any case, a couple of CO2 scrubbers and, possibly an oxygen candle or two, would expand that time to far, far beyond any conceivable fire.
My bigger concern would be getting trapped in the damn thing if something heavy fell on the door. The shelters I linked to above had hydraulic rams to force the door open even if an object weighing several tonnes fell on it.
I totally agree with myriad@36
“the reason why so many people tried to flee last-minute was not some form of ignorance or deliberately ignoring advice: they had decided to stay & defend their homes, but then got hit by a fire-storm that made many panic and try and flee.”
Unless you have experienced a few bushfires any bushfire is scary, a firestorm like this is truely frightening. Doubting your ability to do much no matter how well prepared in face of a wall of flame is understandable and so is any panic that develops. I’m a volunteer firefighter (NSW) with a bit of experience and I doubt I could have done anything in the reported conditions other than try and save myself and my crew. Anyone untrained would have been overwhelmed.
And a short comment on hazard reduction burning, it is not as easy as it sounds, the conditons have to be right because if not it will either not burn or burn out of control. One planned HR was attempted 3 times and it was either to wet or to dry/hot/windy.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54005260910&ref=nf
While the sentiment is pure, i’m not sure this guy thought through his bushfire tribute group.
Chris @ 44 That would be a red gum then. In the Western District they call them “widow makers”.
All the reports so far indicate that a critical point was reached and then the bush “exploded”. Probably due to the flash point of the eucalyptus oil. Perhaps the CSIRO could do some field trials as well as correlate flame front generation with ambient temperature. We could then feed it into a model that would say – either stay and fight or get the hell out of there – now.
Robert I don’t think being trapped is problem (unless you are a survivalist in some totally remote area) Simple communications such as loud hailers, radios mobile phones should bring the rescue parties who are most likely combing through the debris any-way.
I am serious about the eucalyptus pest, I totally understand that the nature of the country will be changed forever if we eradicate it. No I don’t subscribe to the notion that humankind has been given dominion (by some non existent god) over nature. It’s just survival Charles.
Huggy
sublime cowgirl at 48.
Oh dear. How unfortunate. I’m sure s/he means well. Not quite the most appropriate tribute I would have thought. Personally, I think a better tribute would be an entry on your credit card statement with a donation to one of the appeals (Red Cross or Salvos are running them) or maybe a band-aid on your arm where you’ve given blood.
Huggybunny your cunning secret aggenda is clear to me….
Make Australia a rabbit warren and rid the country of the cute Koala by taking away its food source. Shame on you!
“Nevertheless, are the Federal and Victorian State governments using spin in the mass media to distract the public from their own culpability in this tragedy, rather than informing us about what needs to happen to minimise further harm from the fires?”
In a word Darren, no. If you apply Occam’s Razor (now available in biodegradable and solar powered versions) you’ll realise that it’s not all that likely that Premier Brumby, Minister Wong and Prime Minister Rudd would have had that much time – let alone the inclination – to pass the weekend plotting and executing a cunning advertising strategy…..
Robert – you’re spot on about the CO2. Another thing to be careful of would be ensuring things such as door seals wouldn’t melt and/or outgass any nasty/flammable volatiles (the little things that make a difference!).
As for things falling on top – I guess I was thinking more of the external shelter in a more open area seperate from the house with a “hooded” access trench to prevent blown debris.
I’ve seen the old bomb shelters (OT – check out http://www.subbrit.org.uk) and they would provide certain protection at a fairly high price (almost always have an escape hatch as well). I think the majority of fires could be survived by a simpler design, but as always with this kind of engineering, the only way to check is to test, test, test.
Another trick might be to ensure the local CFA have a simple picture/diagram of where the shelter is in relation to other buildings so that becomes first priority for rescue/recovery efforts (colleagues in Texas have a similar setup for tornado shelters).
After seeing what my customer came up with (on a tight budget) I do think it is worth looking into – what does everyone else think?
Geoff@52
I’m not suggesting they spent the weekend plotting, but that their governments and minders are so sunk in spin that the machine sprung into action, though no doubt with their endorsement and the thought of how they come out of this without suffering damage in the polls. The releases and appearances, even in these urgent circumstances, aren’t haphazard – there are still the chiefs of staff, the media handlers etc. doing their jobs.
Joe2@51.
Oh yes the bloody Koalas. Have to give them a place to live. Me and my mate were once guilty of the crime of stopping all the traffic on a major highway so a Koala could cross safely. The abuse we got from some drivers was amazing.
How about a compromise? Around every town we plant an eucalyptus free zone of about 6 km with deciduous trees – say like Mt Beauty. The Wallabies, Koalas, Possumy things and the mud brick and hay bale house builders can have the rest.
Wabbits will be ewadicated.
Huggy
Transcript of Bill Mollisons 1981 talk on Permaculture for Fire Control
http://www.churchofdeepecology.org/perm05.pdf
the death toll is staggering, but also spare a thought for those that will have to go through the rest of their lives with painful and disfiguring burns as a result of this. my mum’s worked in a burns unit and it sounds like pure hell.
do you think al Qaeda is taking notes?
do you think the new counter-terrorism police powers (indefinite detention without charge or trial) will be employed to catch the arsonists?
Re general media treatment of the Fires: Much of the coverage is referring to “the weekend disaster”, or “Sunday’s disastrous Bushfires” etc etc.
Here’s the thing: bushfires go on and on and on. Many of the fires in Vic are still going strong, for instance the ones near Beechworth have joined up (as they do), and many places are still either being burned or are in danger. The situation seems to be escalating, given that they’ve deployed the army, and are sourcing fireys from Tas, NSW and now New Zealand.
Not content with just reports from their Victortian colleagues, Ch 7 here in Perth have sent Newreader Rick Ardon to Victoria to do some live crosses.
Talk about milking a Tragedy.
Robwindt@55
Thanks for that link.
Extract:
“Eucalyptus are a positive no-
no, and so are pine trees. Both are to some extent fire weeds.
Both carry cones and hard fruits that often don’t open until
fires. After fires, you will see a widespread covering of new
growth from the seed of these trees. That is what they are
waiting for, a fire to enable them to extend their range a little”
Bill is on the money here. Eucalyptus are the fire weed supreme,many don’t even need to set seed they just sprout from nodule things on their trunks.
We should engineer the state of Victoria to have a huge matrix of eucalyptus and deciduous trees. The deciduous trees will slow the fires that will be inevitable after drought and during prolonged high temperatures. By all accounts this is the most rapidly moving hottest bush-fire so far. Not forgetting the terrible fires in the ACT.
I am serious, we need to do something about these eucalyptus or abandon the country-side in Victoria and most of NSW altogether.
Huggy
Wilson Tuckey blamed the situation on both major parties “who go running around putting in more reserves to get green preferences”.
Despicable creep.
In fairness, the 7.30 report is dealing with it as an ongoing situation.
For most bush fires people who stay can protect their property successfuly, but Saturday, like Black Friday 13th Jan 1939, was a nasty confluence of circumstances, a dried out landscape, a month of searing 40+ temperatures and high winds. With hindsight on Saturday people should have evacuated on Saturday morning. Now I knew it was a high fire danger day with fires burning around Beechworth so I sleazed an invite to a beach house but I didn’t expected that fires would erupt and wipe out Marysville etc.
With a regime of forced evacuation all country people through out the state might be evacuated multiple times a year in Jan & Feb each high risk day. Cynically we might not have such severe fire conditions again until 2089.
In the USA the fire fighters are paid, in Victoria the CFA fire fighters are volunteers. Many residents of these country towns have been CFA fire fighters and they actually know how to defend their homes from fire
If you have forced evacuations then the CFA is unlikely to get volunteers to join the local fire brigades.
Gov depts do as much HR burning as they can. Nobody serious stops them or even wants to stop them. (It’s actually green dogma nowadays that burning is part of the Australian natural system.) The problem is that there’s only so much they can do each year.
I hate to say this in the midst of such great tragedy but everytime I see a bushfire burning a house down I think it: WHY DO YOU BLOODY IDIOTS BUILD HOUSES OUT OF WOOD!!!!!!!!!
“WHY DO YOU BLOODY IDIOTS BUILD HOUSES OUT OF WOOD”
See the link at 56 = a white painted weatherboard can protect its occupants better than brick or stone
Adrien: “brick” houses burn down too. There’s no shortage of highly flammable stuff in them.
I’m a blockhead when it comes to links but today Andrew Bolt linked to Geofrey Blainy who said a couple of things I found interesting. 1. There were bigger fires before 1770 [??] and 2. “curiously meteorologists accurately predicted saturdays weather”. I can only surmise he means they are wrong about global warming [fits in with A.b.] and therefore couldn’t be right about anything else?
Can somebody help out with the link?
Darren, I can assure you, your take on Government reaction so far is very wrong. However I’m sure there will be plenty of time for the blame game dance eventually.
In the meantime, the death toll is now expected to reach at least 200, whole towns have been razed to the ground and the official bush fire season will soon be extended well through March and perhaps into April.
It’s already the biggest natural disaster in Victorian history and the fires are still burning.
It was the perfect storm, a combination of factors that could only be clearly predicted how they’d work together a few days out – and even then with much uncertainty about where exactly it would strike hardest.
While waiting for the Royal Commission to find out what went wrong and what went right, you can donate to bloodbanks or to the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund through the Red Cross. Goods and services donations are not what’s needed right now – just blood and money.
If you know anyone personally affected by the fires, tell ‘em to go here.
http://www.dhs.vic.gov.au/emergency/current-events/bushfire
Has it been explained so far, why the extremely cheap (in fact it costs nothing) strategy of compulsory bushfire shelters (proper dugouts, not just cellars) has never been implemented? I lived out bush in the 1970s in south eastern NSW and we had one. First thing we built. An old-timer had told us about the 1939 fires and how a sewing machine had melted into a puddle. And we knew the local fire brigade chief had a reputation as a firebug … anyone living in the hills should have one, and they should be frequent along roads as well.
“And we knew the local fire brigade chief had a reputation as a firebug … anyone living in the hills should have one, and they should be frequent along roads as well.”
You may need to rephrase that last sentence.
Yer, rephrase please. I know multi-tasking is the new big thing but that is taking things a bit too far.
Adam, I watched an extensive interview with Brumby on the 7.30 report. Not one mention of a dugout. Most strange.
In Saturday’s conditions burning off may not have helped much – the Bendigo fire reportedly crossed an area which had a controlled burn only 6 months ago.
The conditions and resulting firestorms that people faced on the weekend, and are still potentially facing were unprecedented. Brumby has announced a Royal Commission will be held but already there are issues we have to consider.
Conditions like the weekend’s will become more frequent with climate change. Is it any longer appropriate to approve dwellings in fire-prone areas? Particularly isolated dwellings on bush acreage.
Housing construction has to change, even in suburbia as Canberra so horribly showed. Not simply that a house may survive but to provide a survival pod for people. We need publicly funded research to develop fire-retardant building materials, coatings & designs that are compulsory.
Fire plans for fire-prone properties must be reviewed annually by local authorities, either local councils or RFS/ CFA units. The number of people who have spoken about not having time to use their pumps suggests poor planning & poor fire knowledge. If you were facing 40 plus high wind conditions, your sprinklers should have been on, supplementary hoses inside, fire-resistant clothing on. Though from descriptions I’ve read & heard, many of the poor bastards didn’t stand a chance given the extreme conditions.
Public education has to become more sophisticated. Evacuating means leaving EARLY. If anyone is faced with those predicted weather conditions, and is not unbelievably well-prepared, go. And go early.
I was on Bushfire Emergency status for 15 days in mid-January. I worked my arse off preparing the property, and had a fire plan in place where I would stay & defend the property. After seeing what happened on the weekend, I will now leave when the next fire threatens in bad weather conditions. I, nor anyone else, can defend an isolated house on a bush block, and I cannot expect RFS crews to put their lives at risk to save mine.
Couldn’t agree more with Huggy #55 and #60 that eucalypts are (often) a “pest”/menace in human settlements.
Huggy, Can you expand on this a bit please in relation to places like Port Stephens or Bateman’s Bay that are unlikely(?) to experience temperatures above 43C for a while yet? You also haven’t differentiated between shade temperatures and temperature at the top of an unshaded eucalypt forest canopy.
I’m not an ecologist or arborist but it has struck me for some time that if Australia was going to plant lots of trees as carbon sinks, we’d be better off (at least in the Canberra region where I am for example) planting quick-growing and relatively-drought-resistant deciduous trees like Malus alba (White mulberries) and Chinese elms (Ulmus whatever). The war memorial plantings of deciduous trees in small settlements around these parts (eg Lake George and Berrima) have held up well.
I’m not fixated on the particular species I mentioned (and both have potential to become weeds) – since I haven’t done any research or googling on this – but I AGREE wholeheartedly with your suggestion in #55 that we should keep densely-eucalypted areas out of built-up areas.
Something Australians seem to have difficulty getting their heads around is the benefit of shade and particularly the benefits of shade from deciduous trees that keep houses cool in summer and allow sun-warmth to penetrate in winter.
So Huggy, I’m all in favour of your recommendation that we stop living near masses of eucalypts.
Cheers
Don’t pay the Herald-Sun columnist any attention. It’s what he craves.
Perhaps its no accident that the fires coincide with the major Eucalyptus oil producing regions in Australia (E. Radiata). Those prolonged high temperatures are going to act on the trees to produce a really volatile vapour – rather like spraying petrol over the trees.
Thus the speed and ferocity of the flames;in those conditions underground bunkers such as they had 100 years ago are probably the only safe place to be.
Huggy
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25031389-7583,00.html
Time are also running a long story, discussing, amongst other things, David Packham’s extraordinarily prescient call last week on the property and death toll.
Anyone know much about him?
It would be nice to hear some resolve from governemnt to create real solutions to the fire menace. The Huggy solution, the Robert M solution and others, should all be seriously considered and implemented. But if those long faces in parliament simply suck up the tome of national sympathy then get back to what they were doing before, then this will be a recurring nightmare. In the past money thrown at the bushfire services has seen to be the solution, but in these fires we see that all of that equipment is useless at the moment of the destruction. The problem is broader and must be examined and understood. The South Australian fires of a few years ago that virtually pushed people into the sea should have been a wakeup call. We are still waiting.
BilB@79.
Good summary; we need positive action. We need proper solutions not the stuff about “bringing the arsonists to justice” and those national security ads that are being run now. Gimme a break are they trying to pin the fires on a bunch of “muslin fire lighters”. To quote David Packham “Fire is determined by fuel and ignitions. If people don’t light it, then nature will light it through lightning strikes. If the fuel is there, then sooner or later the weather will come – and the esoteric science of thermodynamics says that if a thing can burn, it will.”
http://www.abc.net.au/blackfriday/aftermath/dpackham.htm (See Sublime Cowgirl)
The recent fires in Victoria follow an unprecedented heat wave and seem to have burned with unprecedented intensity. When these conditions return the old “stay and fight” paradigm will have to be abandoned.
The solution, is fuel reduction either through a huge and on going burning off program or by the introduction of permanent modifications to the vegetation and land cover. For example there is an oak forest near Castlemaine (Mt Alexander) that would be a good firebreak (I guess) also much better at sequestering carbon than those shit gum tree weeds.
The problem is the “Greens”; they want to take us back to the good old days pre -invasion when noble savages tended the land and all was well. Nice if we could but short of a serious ethnic cleansing not possible. We have invaded the the country, we have killed off most of the original people and destroyed their culture, now we have the duty to replace it with something worthwhile. If this means that we have to change the face of the landscape to cope with the global warming problem that we have created then so be it.
We are the problem; not the bush. As I said earlier; either we fix it by modifying the bush or we get out of there. You can be certain of one thing; as the globe warms the fires will become even more fierce and more frequent. Unless we fix this there will come a day when the entire strip of Eucalyptus forests between Melbourne and Sydney will be on fire from end to end.
Huggy
Can you drop it for now Huggybunny. The fires are still going. There will be plenty of time for postmortems but please, not now. My aunt and uncle have just been evacuated from Healesville
Armagny @ 2 – there is a Bushfire Arson Bulletin at the Australian Institute of Criminology which attempts to profile and identify people who commit bushfire arson. As you say, the perpetrators are typically young males in late teens/early 20s. Typically lacking purpose in life, and seeking some kind of recognition or relief from boredom. Sometimes people even set fires so that they can become a “hero” in their efforts to fight the fire. I can’t really fathom it. Perhaps we need to look at factors which would help stop people doing this kind of stuff in the first place.
SG @ 78
Packham has an op-ed in today’s Australian.
Huggy, just curious…exactly who are these Greens who “want to take us back to the good old days pre -invasion when noble savages tended the land and all was well.” that are having such an influence on politicians etc. that inadequate burning off is being done? Can you name three?
Many of the people who live in the Kinglake/Marysville area choose to live there precisely because they want to live in the Aussie bush, among gum trees etc. Pre-saturday I don’t doubt they would have been the first to object if you seriously proposed replacing all the eucalyptus with less-flammable species.
(BTW, we can see the smoke rising from the Yarra Valley fires from our backyard in Doncaster East. But that’s nothing compared to what we saw driving back from Sale yesterday after a perhaps ill-advised camping trip at the Gippsland lakes, where we had to abandon camp due to the high winds and soot and ash that was just everywhere. There were burnt out sections of the Princes Freeway that didn’t look like intentional firebreaks, and definitely weren’t there on the way down, and for most of the trip there was smoke visible on the horizon, especially in the Churchill and Bunyip state park areas).
In response to the cudos being handed to the annual NT fire regime people should be aware that that fire regime has changed dramatically in the past 100 years where once there were low temperature burns early in the dry season we now see late dry season high temperature burns. These are having a dramatic ecosystem changing impact that is not yet understood and still being researched. Dont be too quick to commend fire regimes until you have more facts.
For some historical perspective, see here:
The link is a description of the circumstances surrounding William Strutt’s iconic painting of “Black Thursday” 1851.
Reading contemporary accounts, the circumstances were identical to last Saturday — drought, extreme heat, huge north wind followed by a sou’westerly change.
In regard to the alleged fuel mitigation practices of Aborigines, the paintings of Nicholas Chevalier, who made many images of the heavily forested areas of Victoria in the 1860s, reveal a tree cover of eucalypts essentially identical to what we can see today.
A point worth noting is that “Black Thursday” began with a firestorm roaring towards Melbourne from the North across cleared plains denuded by drought and overstocking.
Laura,
I have some sympathy with your feelings. A friend who lives near Churchill, has a friend who lost two adult sons (both trained fire fighters) on Sunday morning. My wife’s work colleague has lost both his mother-in-law and a brother-in-law at Kinglake. This catastrophe has had enormous impacts.
cheerio
Laura, there is still time for people to do things to defend their property. If this was a flood people would be out sand bagging. What does one do ahead of incinerator strength fires? We are looking for some creative thinking here. Next week, when the fires have passed, we will be back to warmly talking up the wonderful benefits of “clean, white, shiny” coal, and other stuff. Right now we’re thinking about fires. It is the way things work on Mars.
Laura, my thoughts are with you and your family. I lived through the Ash Wednesday fires as a child, and still have vivid memories of being evacuated from Lorne as the fire exploded tree tops behind us.
Huggy, drop the ‘blame the greens’ bullshit. There’s not a single credible person you will find who speaks for the conservation or the green political movement who opposes fuel reduction burning. Both Paul Norton and myself have both provided links that directly contradict this rubbish.
In the meantime the Greens like all other political parties are collecting donations of clothes and money to pass on to the survivors of the fires. At least the political parties overall seem to realise this is not a time for partisan propoganda and muck-throwing.
Laura,
This has become so big that many of us from Victoria have lost friends or relatives or have friends or relatives who have lost their homes. We owe it to them to do what we can to ensure that it does not happen again. Sorry if I come across a bit flip.
Huggy.
The Australian are at it again. They’ve found some tame Emeritus (tanslation: senile) academic who’s prepared to blame the Greens for the fires in Victoria. Apparently our incredible power base of what? about 10 MPs spread over the whole country (Federal and State) has prevented the use of burning off to reduce fuel load (despite party policy actually supporting controlled burns).
Oh well, they’ve never let the facts get in the way of a nice beat-up before, so why would they start now?
They’re here now, sleeping. It looks like their place will be ok, but Bilb, neither of them has been to bed since Friday night. They’ve been driving around the area putting out spot fires with their water tank for the farm. I’m just happy they’re alive.
Packham’s op-ed doesn’t point to any evidence – he doesn’t name the academics he’s referring to, nor provide evidence of (G/g)reen opposition to fuel reduction burning.
Incidentally, the Koetong fire you may have seen on the news is about 5 kilometres from my sister’s farmhouse, but the wind is blowing the fire directly away from them at this point.
While no reasonable person can feel anything but deep sympathy for the bushfire victims and seek to assist them as far as humanly possible , excessively emotional responses do not achieve anything . Whether persons who deliberately set fires should be charged with murder , arson or a lesser offence has to be determined by prosecutors , in the light of evidence and legal principles . In some instances , a charge of murder may be likely to result in a conviction . In other cases , manslaughter may be mor likely to succeed . Usually , an intent to kill or cause serious harm will be necessary in order to lead to a murder conviction . At least a deliberate disregard for human life or safety will have to be proven .
However , rather than looking at punishment , it is better , in a less emotional atmosphere , at wider questions about the future avoidance of bushfire tragedies , including whether persons should be permitted to reside close to potential bushfire sites [ it may be desirable to acquire some residences compulsorily , with fair compensation , so that owners can relocate ] , to what , if any extent , national parks should be subject to regular fire hazard reduction , whether persons who have not insured property should receive compensation for loss of uninsured property and the like . The desirability , or otherwise , of tree – changers , alternative lifestylers and hobby farmers , residing in potentially dangerous areas also requires consideration .
As am I, Laura.
In 1968 I found myself defending my girlfriend’s family’s beautiful 100 year old house. And I learnt a lot from that experience. That was 40 years ago. What is happening now should not be possible. How can it be?
My family of Venutians, just last night. By trickery I was able to channel the news. “Oh those poor people!!”…..”Now can you put that back onto Futurama??”….”What do you mean that this is important….We’re a long way from the bush!”
Indifference. Your family is at risk because of 40 years of indifference and missperception. So while your Aunt and Uncle are resting, for those of us who are unaffected ….this time…. our rage should be building that this tradgedy should be possible in our today’s world. Our technological world.
Indifference is, again, just a week away. Are we going to let it happen another time? This time?
Good luck, to Robert’s sister.
Fuel reduction burning has been a big issue in Victoria for many years now. After the huge alpine fires in north-east and east Gippsland, many landholders claimed that the DSE had been doing too little fire reduction burning. But as several posters have indicated, with these forests there are only ever VERY narrow windows of opportunity in Spring and Autumn to do it safely.
In central Gippsland, we see the brown smudge of burning-off (fuel reduction burning) smoke regularly, in those seasons.
When we lived in the Jeeralang hills, a small fire in mid-JULY got away and burnt only half an acre of grass once. Cold day, there had been rain, but it was WINDY: just one fire-promoting factor can be enough.
In the third week of April 2003, I watched as water-bombing aircraft and 29 fire trucks were used to control a blaze that started just south of Churchill, and was heading south. It burnt out a few farm fences, no houses. Normally, locals would have considered late April “safe”. Fire can be unpredictable in so many ways. After that small fire, I asked someone why there had been such a massive fire fighting response. He said, “Well, if it had jumped Jeeralang West Road, it could have raced over the top of the Strzelecki Ranges and not been controllable until it reached Yarram.”
That’s more or less what actually occurred last Saturday. The fire started on Glendonald Road, south of Churchill, and off it took.
The Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Victorian Legislative Council conducted an Inquiry into the Impact of Public Land Management Practices on Bushfires in Victoria. The establishment of this Inquiry was supported by the 3 Green MLCs. If one reads the submissions it is clear that there is no general opposition by Greens,or by greens, to hazard reduction burning. Rather, there is a quite complex debate about what hazard reduction policies and practices should be put in place, and to what ends, in an environment as diverse as Victoria’s.
Drug-free Old World
Packham was demonstrably correct in his risk analysis, so he has to be taken seriously.
However, I think there is no point in blaming the “greens” (yes I know I did). This is now too serious for point scoring and cheap shots.
We have to get down to it and really work out some solutions or we are going to see these terrible events repeated year after year.
In another life I lived in the bush in a mud brick home we built and it was wonderful. Many years later the situation has changed forvthe worse and will go on changing because we have been too stupid to tackle the problems at source.
Nothing we can do will reverse the climate change in our lifetimes, the temperatures are gointg to go on rising. If this means that we need to modify the flora then so be it. Either that or let the fire weeds take over entirely. I doubt – on basic thermodynaic principles- that burning off will do it.
Huggy.
Huggy
It would make more sense to surround human habitations with non-native flora than to attempt to replace the entire flora statewide, which, even if it was a good idea in the first place, is clearly impractible. Neither is it helpful to describe indigenous vegetation as “weeds”. As Bernice suggests, we should look at minimising human habitation in fireprone areas. Exotic species would help as a buffer.
Sure, exotics could be a good buffer, but don’t they mostly need a whole bunch of water?
He also doesn’t say anything about whether the fires actually started in national parks or other conservation reserves.
The wholesale removal of Australia’s eucalyptus forests isn’t a sensible topic of discussion.
The interspersion of settlements and state forests/national parks adds significantly to the risk factors faced by residents.
But many Victorians seek out those locales. Any government that seeks to reduce the availability of that lifestyle is asking for electoral defeat. Perhaps repeated bad experiences may change those popular sentiments.
Katz,
That is not what is proposed, nor is it possible. The fire buffer is the solution. There are many Australian trees that are suitable. Lillypilly and pittostrums for instance. These trees have a different shape to the eucalypts. They fill down to the ground with a vertical cone shape, and they do not easily erupt into flame. Their advantage is that they force the wind upwards breaking it away from the undergrowth. Eucalypts on the other hand encourage the wind to fan the burning of the undergrowth which then sets off the canopy. However in the fires that we are seeing it is the ground hugging inflamables that we want fringing our tinderbox houses. This also reduces and localises the hazard reduction burning necessary to protect bush communities.
As for water, our dwellings shed more than sufficient water to support a healthy fire barrier. A family that I grew up with had a magnificent willow on the bush side of their house that survived handsomely on the dish water.
This is all commonsense stuff. We all need to turn off our preconceptions and do some clear thinking. Thinking that is in scale with the problem. And the scale is that the area of bush surrounding our communities is just the smallest dot in relation to the total amount of bush.
“A family that I grew up with had a magnificent willow on the bush side of their house that survived handsomely on the dish water.”
I bet you pounds to peanuts it was living on the sewage pipes it was destroying. Do not ever plant a willow anywhere near any pipes.
Katz the modified scheme calls for exotic buffer zones around fire endangered towns and settlements. Not wholesale removal. This Leaves the Koalas etc plenty of living space and incidentally removes them from the range of cats and dogs. If people still want to go live in a tinderbox then it will be incumbent upon them to show that they have safe refuge on site or to have built a fireproof dwelling.
FDB – given a lot of TLC in the beginning exotics can be establish any-where almost. Now here is the really interesting thing, many exotics – once the root system is established – do two things: They expire a lot of water vapour and have a local cooling effect (the Plane trees in Melbourne are probably a good example). They also shed their leaves in winter and deposit nutrients in the soil.
By contrast the Eucalyptus transpires as little as possible and has the meanest and most nutrient free leaf system of all. Not only that, but the leaves are toxic to many other plants. Like I keep saying they are a toxic weed that has been a very successful predator. I don not lump all Australian plants into this category. There are still remnants of the Gwondanaland species and many wonderful native trees.
If you really want to know who fucked the bush have a look at some old photo’s of the goldfields and Gippsland – total devastation of the bush. All the trees have gone. Now these trees were originally large, they sat in a park like vista that went on for miles.
The early settlers chopped them down for pit props etc and the result was massive coppicing (regrowth fromt the stump) and the growth of all the smaller trees that had been kept in check by the shade of big ones. The forests that we love are often just degenerate weeds that grow where once giants stood. Sometimes in the bush you will come across a lone survivor of this time and it is breathtaking.
In those days just a few fires every year kept the situation under control. Today no amount of burning will have any effect.
I once had a licence to remove trees from the state forest, the licence was very clear, the purpose was to thin the forest and to attempt to restore it to the original form. To this end there were strict rules about using techniques to inhibit coppicing.
Huggy
For anyone who’s interested…the view from Doncaster East (I walked 50m up the street to get the clearest shot I could):
Yarra valley fires
I don’t believe there’s any real threat to suburban areas, but there’s no question the danger isn’t over.
Just for those wishing to donate money, goods or other items, Our Community has a number of appeals listed regards the bushfire disaster. They are listed here:
http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/bushfiredisaster
One of them is the Alfred Hospital’s appeal, with the hospital the centre for treatment of bushfire burns victims atthe moment.
Donating to these appeals via Our Commmunity’s online giving centre costs nothing, and the only fees are the ones the credit card companies have in place.
For more information on other ways to donate, visit – http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/giving/giving_article.jsp?articleId=4026.
Thanks Chris. While the whole thing is tragic, my heart really goes out to the burn victims in hosp fighting for their lives. Several years ago my father sustained full thickness burns to 40% of his body (an accident during a seizure) and we spent weeks and weeks in the Royal Brisbane Burns unit with him.
Recovery is very slow and excruciatingly painful, and the scarring is terrible, particularly early on. He recovered well though, and after wearing the burns suit for a long time, his scars did improve.
My love to all the families affected.
“Katz,
That is not what is proposed, nor is it possible.”
BilB@104, I think it would be very fair for Katz to draw that conclusion concerning the Eucalypt, from the previous Huggybunny say, before it moved to change its spots.
Greenys are now safe, as well, it would seem.
I really suggest people go read the literature put out by the Vic, Tas or NSW (I don’t know Qld etc., so not trying to be discriminatory) fire services about what to plant (or not) near houses.
Everyone focuses on trees. Three minutes of reading fire safety literature will educate one to the fact that the main danger is actually posed by small highly combustible elements less than 1″ thick, which create the really high levels of radiant heat and a great deal of burning debris, plus create ‘ladders’ for the fire to climb up dwellings from – fires burn up, not down.
Eucalypts in most situations crown and the fire moves on, leaving a slowly burning tree, which is of course a threat, but nothing like that posed by small shrubs etc. creating huge levels of ember, radiant heat, and convenient ‘ladders’ for fire to climb up. This is why all fire protection talks about buffer zones etc. Planting non-natives or even fire retardant natives near your home is just plain foolish as any vegetation will burn in a decent fire. The point is not to have vegetation near the dwelling, period.
Paul Norton wrote (re Packham) “He also doesn’t say anything about whether the fires actually started in national parks or other conservation reserves.”
OK, here’s some info for free.
1. Delburn/Boolarra/Darlimurla fires of 2 weeks ago, started in an area that includes eucalyptus planatations, farms, state parks, township, private dwellings on “acreage”
2. Bunyip State Park fire started about a week ago (by lightning they say) but on Saturday 7th jumped across onto open farmland, patches of native vegetation, approached townships, etc. e.g. Labertouche, Tonimbuk, approached Jindivick and Drouin West (typically 2-5 hectare hobby farms, some forest, some larger farms, etc.)
3. The Churchill fire last Saturday began on Glendonald Road just south-east of the township (Churchill), in a PINE PLANTATION; apparently deliberately lit; then raced uphill into the Strzelecki Ranges – forest, eucalyptus plantations, farms, hobby farms, private bushland dwellings, etc., etc.
I doubt that you’d persuade the owners of a pine plantation to agree to hazard reduction burning. A large plantation on flat, open ground between Morwell and Traralgon, close to Churchill, was burnt out entirely in summer a few years ago. Start of 2003 I think. Not far from Churchill.
On the subject of deciduous exotics, I’ve got a Robinia that’s thriving unwatered in the Perth Hills. Thriving to the extent that it’s throwing off offspring almost faster than I can dig ‘em up and replant them.
Not sure how flammable it might be though.
‘Stay or Go’ has been and is a good policy for ‘normal’ fires- eg. the kinds of fires we are used to. Some of the posts here seem to blame people who stayed for their own deaths. Nobody knew what these fires would be like- everyone expected the ‘known’: the kind of fire that can be survived if the advice of the authorities is followed.
These were not ‘normal’ fires and many died while following all the best advice.
Deaths in outer suburban areas show that its not the choice of tree changers or people living alternative lifestyles that has caused recent fire deaths.
People are dying in such big numbers because this is not the kind of fire we prepared for, this is not normal or expected.
As for ‘fire prone areas’- all of Victoria is a fire prone area. Should everyone live in the cities? What about the outer suburbs- someone has to live on the edge of the city. Will it be their fault if they’re burnt?
There seems to be a kind of anger towards the victims- ‘do the uninsured deserve help?’ ‘they shouldn’t be there anyway’ ‘the houses are built wrong’ ‘why don’t they have bunkers’ etc and so on.
People live in different places for many different reasons- a big factor in Victoria in recent years is affordability. Many country areas, and almost all outer suburban areas are more affordable. Fire safety is not the most important question when you are looking for a home- it is ‘where can I afford to live?’
I find it frustrating when these kinds of discussions become utterly divorced from the material world. Until its possible for every Victorian to live in a brick terrace in the inner city this pondering whether anyone should live in the bush or outer suburbs is pointless and maddening.
We didn’t expect this kind of fire event. Hopefully we can learn and figure out how to deal with this kind of event.
“There seems to be a kind of anger towards the victims- ‘do the uninsured deserve help?’ ‘they shouldn’t be there anyway’ ‘the houses are built wrong’ ‘why don’t they have bunkers’ etc and so on.”
I haven’t noticed any anger or blame. Questions are being asked about how to act to reduce the threat in future. Don’t you think this is a good idea? Lots of measures that could have been taken after previous fires were not taken – do you think this should happen again?
Why?
“Hopefully we can learn and figure out how to deal with this kind of event.”
Without actually addressing the underlying issues (house construction, bunkers, buffer vegetation etc etc) then ‘hopefully’ doesn’t sound very hopeful.
Hear, hear, Cameron.
Some of those pointing an accusatory finger now, may well cry out “blaming the victim!!” in a non-bushfire-related context.
It’s easy to blame; much harder to do the forensic, scientific, logical work of examining fire behaviour and the logistics and communications difficulties (for instance) of effective fire fighting – or fire prevention, come to that.
The odious Danny Nalliah has come out and claimed that the fires are the result of Victoria upsetting his god by decriminalising abortion.
Myriad @ 111,
I think that what you have said there will ultimately prove to be false after closer examination of real outcomes. I’ve seen a reasonable amount of video evedence that suggests that dense and high green low flammability shrubbery protects houses. The fire service information is advice that I certainly would completely discard based on what I have seen so far. It is that very clear area of ground between the heat source and the dwellings that appears to allow this jet blast of super heated air to set fire to these houses so quickly. The fire service information, however well intentioned, may very well be exacerbating the problem. Further information is required.
My 10 year showed me a educational simulation game yesterday that he had been learning about/playing in school last year about managing worldwide natural disasters.
Created by the UN and the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction it features, as one of the possible scenarios, bushfire prevention and survival in Australia.
I had a quick look and it reminded me of SimCity, except you clear vegetation, make firebreaks etc. I would be interested to hear a critique the info/strategies in light of this weeks disaster, as apparently it is widely used in schools in Australia (and beyond).
http://www.stopdisastersgame.org/en/home.html
i should mention/warn, one measure of success/failure is number of fatalities, and the numbers mount if you get the fire prevention strategy wrong.
I probably wouldn’t recommend sharing it with any kids at this time.
Cameron, I’m certainly not “blaming the victims”. The point of this discussion is to start thinking about what can be done better in future.
And clearly something substantial has to change. It is simply unacceptable for so many people to die in events whose root causes will recur, and given climate change will probably recur more frequently in future.
Where the Grampians burned in ’06 the undergrowth has regrown, in drought conditions, so dense in places that a new fire would again be catastrophic even without the extreme conditions of saturday. Huggy is right to point out that the bush becomes more prone to burning with every new burn. When Mitchell came through here it was referred to as Australia Felix easily negotiated by his huge caravan. Today with such a party he would be lucky to have covered 1000 meters a day. I’m well positioned to stay and defend but saturday has me very concerned. That is the 3rd and the worst day I’ve felt at the mercy of nature and has convinced me that on such days, and we were told it would be such a day, we should prepare for the worst and that, in nearly all cases, to me means find a safe area.
I think SC that what we are seeing now is that there are different types of fires. Slow fires where the air is likely to slower but turbulent pose a danger by creating clouds of embers that can settle or lodge in nooks cracks in houses and given some time can set a building alight. These are the types of fires where some vigilance can keep a dwelling safe. These current fires, however, appear to be more of a high velocity air flow type where streams of super heated air act like blow torches and ignite whole structures in a single blast. The only thing that will work with this second type of fire is deflection, preventing paths of direct blasts against structures with barrier vegetation. This will of course create the first problem with lots of embers and turbulent air, but there is a far better chance of surviving that scenario than there is of surviving the second. As was seen in Canberra it does not take a lot of fuel to super heat a high velocity air flow close to the ground. Such a sheet of hot air cuts through buildings like a knife. The only solution to this is to force air flows to move away from the ground. They call this mechanism wind a break in every other part of the world.
Thanks AEotW- I agree there is alot of work to be done. System wide changes and new policies and fire advice may eventuate.
But I disagree with FTB- I think we have learned (and taken action) from previous fires and I don’t think that expensive alterations or additions to private homes is necessarily going to be the answer.
I think there’s little logic in making individuals so responsible for their safety. First there is the issue of affordability, which I pointed out earlier. Those who could barely afford a cheap bush weatherboard cannot afford a bunker.
Secondly it is very clear in this and many other tragedies that communities working together have a better chance than lone survivalists.
The ability to give earlier warnings, safer places for communities to go to, new triggers for mass evacuations- these are the first three things that occur to me. But there are much smarter people than me working on it.
The thing is, “stay or go” is undoubtedly safe 99% of the time in bushfires. Awesome as they might look, they are not so hot that the houses can’t protect you until the front has passed, and not so fast moving that if you get out early you can’t escape them. True firestorms that create their own massive winds are fortunately unusual and localised, but its hard to know what to do about them.
You can’t reliably predict them, you can’t outrun them, and as others have said they’re hard to shelter from (in Hamburg and Dresden most of the victims suffocated in bunkers). So in those cases is hard to know what advice to give.
Logic should tell us that large trees with leaves that do not contain volatile oils are going to provide a serious impediment to the superheated blasts that destroy a home in a few minutes. Smaller plants have a role to play also. Sure you are going to lose a few trees as the Eucalyptus do their best to destroy them. It’s war out there.
My grandfather had a huge stand of Boobiella planted between the house and the paddocks. He told me it was to stop the fire coming up the hill to the house.
Some native plants are listed here: http://www.global-garden.com.au/burnley/feb00dte.htm
Acacia howittii
Acacia iteaphylla
Acacia pravissima
Angophora costata
Hymenosporum flavum
Magnolia grandiflora
Photonia glabra
Banksia marginata
Grevillea victoriae ‘Murray Queen’
Myoporum parvifolium
Hakea salicifolia
Pelargonium peltatum
Verbena peruviana
TREES: according to: http://www.carlsbadca.gov/fire/miscpdf/wildfire.pdf
Any Citrus
Brisbane Box
California Sycamore
Flowering Cherry
Chinese Pistache
Cottonwoods
Maples
Pistachio Nut
Willow
White Poplar
White Alder
Oaks
African Sumac
Flowering Plum
Walnut
Crape Myrtle
Sweet Gum
Mexican Palo Verde
Mexican Red Bird
Pohutukawa
Manzanita
Strawberry Tree
Tulip Tree
King, Guadalupe and
Blue Hesper Palms
Surely it should not be beyond the wits of our agricultural scientists to draw up a list of trees that will retard the fire front. Interesting about citrus trees.
It would appear that there is no shortage of trees and plants – next excuse?
Huggy
Here’s a case in point, of blaming rural residents, after a fire. The amazing Adrien (above):
“I hate to say this in the midst of such great tragedy but everytime I see a bushfire burning a house down I think it: WHY DO YOU BLOODY IDIOTS BUILD HOUSES OUT OF WOOD!!!!!!!!!”
That will suffice, on this thread.
Can I just say that the official response to this disaster has itself been a total disaster and is IMHO a sad portent of what is in store for us as governments world wide gradually takes over our ‘failed’ economy.
My brother in law and his wife live right in the heart of the worst hit area – about 1Km from Kinglake. For three days my wife has been frantically trying to contact them. The only contact point has been the Red Cross where she has given her details twice. ALL other phone numbers lead back to this one phone number. This number is always engaged and is very difficult to reach.
An hour ago she eventually made contact with them and thankfully they are safe ( as is their house). She eventually made contact through a social networking forum where she actually got a response from someone else who knew them. One thing led to another and she managed to speak with them.
It turns out that Margaret ( the wife ) managed to get to Kinglake this morning and registered with the Red Cross. Here it is 7 hours later and NO word from the Red Cross. Yet we have pollies prancing around sounding important and promising heaps of dough. This is disgusting. In fact my wife just told the Red Cross the good news and she had to speak to someone in WA! They didn’t even have access to a bloody computer to put in her details (again)!
Before anyone thinks I am criticizing those on the ground, the CFA and Red Cross – this is not the case. But the balls up in the higher echelons is creepy. Just soothing words to all on the TV. Welcome to our new world.
To those still waiting for news there are apparently still lots of people alive but still not contacted.
Cameron has misread the tone of this thread.
But the point he makes about the whole of Victoria being fire prone is correct. The house we lost in 1983 was in coastal heathland. Virtually none of the foliage was more than head-high. Yet the combination of a hot day and a sou’westerly buster proved fatal.
If your assets are in the wrong place in relation to the fire front when the wind change arrives, whether you are in Kinglake or on the coast, they will be indefensible.
I make these comments independent of any question of whether climate change or any other cause may make such catastrophic events more common than before.
These days we all have access to the Bureau of Meteorology radars. On Saturday on the radar I watched the Wallan fire stream south just before the sou’westerly buster blew in. Those two forces intersected at precisely the wrong place for Kinglake.
Knowing something of these phenomena allows an hour or two window for an attentive person to decide roughly where the firestorm is going to hit.
The wonders of the intertubes. We couldn’t do that in 1983.
I’m wondering if the ‘stay or go’ policy might be based on some flawed arguments coming out of the Ash Wednesday fires. From the LA article:
To which I say: so what, survival of houses ain’t the issue – they can be rebuilt.
An obviously biased sample. In 1983, stay and fight hadn’t been popularised, so well prepared people with highly defendable houses (and possibly an escape route) would have been over-represented in the sample of those staying to defend. I’d also note that in this weekend’s tragedy many of those who opted to stay and fight ended up being killed ‘in vehicles or out in the open’. Which makes me wonder if there was some blurring of the categories.
I have no idea what is the best approach or under what conditions, but I’m very cynical about the use of statistics for these sorts of debates. It’s so easy to support any position you wish to take.
Cameron: I’m not suggesting individual (or group) bunkers are the be-all and end-all, just an option that should be considered for high-risk communities.
But I would dispute your claim that affordability is a primary driver here. Places like Kinglake and Marysville are not cheap to own or rent property. Small bush blocks go for six-figure sums.. In that context, $15,000 for a bunker is pretty small bikkies.
Australia, and Melbourne particularly, has no shortage of flat, treeless land surrounding it on which to build dwellings. The choice to live in hilly eucalypt forests is generally just that.
Thanks for the link Danny (comment 118) – just so completely noxious as to defy understanding or belief.
Maybe if we bng the good Pastor up in Healesville right now, he might be able to forcback the flames just using the righteous power of his words
“So in those cases is hard to know what advice to give.”
Well, many folk seem to be assuming that residents either stay to the bitter end, or dash away half an hour before the fire front arrives. These are NOT the only alternatives. I know a couple who’ve decided they’ll NOT attempt to defend their home in the Jeeralang hills.
So on the morning of EVERY Total Fire Ban day they drive in a leisurely fashion to the town of Traralgon, and spend the day relaxed and comfortable, in relatiuve safety. They are highly unlikely to be caught unawares or trapped on a burning road.
By the way, on p.1 of today’s “Australian” a story headed ‘Spot-on forecast and early warning: so why was no one ready?’ really annoyed me.
The CFA, police, ambulance service, MFB, DSE, DPI were all ready. Do they mean, “so why did anyone die?”…? If so, a very stupid question. It goes go on to talk about “activating a person’s fire plan”. There are dozens of possible actions in a fire plan. Filling the gutters with water, you can do hours ahead. Starting up the fire pump? Well: no use having it idling for hours, using up fuel, before it’s needed…. When to take each action is based on judgement, best made by well-informed residents.
“The old advice, leaving it to individuals to decide whether to stay on their property or escape, assumed they had hours to make the call”, write George Megalogenis and Milanda Rout. Not necessarily. You might have 40 minutes. It depends on the exit route, visibility, etc.
But if it turns out to be a firestorm, jeepers creepers, I dunno.
I agree with Cameron about the housing affordability issues in regard to this crisis, and I think a community fire shelter in townships may be the answer. In some instances locals broke into cool rooms and cellars of pubs etc, so it may be possible that the infrastructure already exists in many small towns to cope with such situations, and it just needs to be formalised.
I also think that making the areas of our cities that are more affordable much more desirable, less homogeneous places to live may alleviate some of the ‘survivalist’ tendencies we see….I have two brothers that live on bush blocks that made that choice based more on a dislike of suburban developments, than on a love of nature.
Also, the sweeping statements regarding eucalypts v exotics is a bit tiresome, and dangerously simplistic. I have no idea what kind of head-space you need to be in to describe the dominant genus of this country as a ‘toxic weed’, but it seems to me that Mr HuggyBunny has an agenda and is indeed using an horrific event to promote it.
Shaun @ 118
Ahh – so it wasn’t the greens after all.
Furious balancing.
No fucking agenda at all except that I have probably been in more fires than you have had hot lunches; lost more friends than I care to think about. Stop your patriotic blather; “dominant genus” indeed. What next the master race? Have I been found guilty of offending the national pride? Get a grip.
The evolutionary success of the “dominant genus” is obvious. The downside for us is that it basically fire-proof and at the same time burns like buggery.
The only agenda I have is that I recognised this problem years ago.
Huggy.
Stay or Go? From what I’ve seen of these fires it is Go. But in future years it may not be so simple. For each round of losses our insurances are likely to increase. And remote locations may become uninsurable. It is a big subject that will require real solutions.
Don’t be so ridiculous, it’s not patriotic blather, or national pride, it just happens to be an accurate description of the landscape.
I suggest you don’t make assumptions about what I have or haven’t experienced in my lifetime, nor try and ‘one-up’ people you don’t know about what they might have endured, it’s crass and insensitive.
Shaun@118:
I’m actually surprised it took this long. I like the ‘I had a dream back in September stuff’ – wierd how he did fuck all to warn everyone…
Bilb and HuggyBunny,
you two can blather on all you like with your ‘theory’, or you could, you know, go and read all the research already done on bushfires, fire retardant species and preventing loss of buildings and life – all of which talk about not having any plants near your home, don’t focus on trees as the greatest threat, and don’t support exotics over natives but rather, good planning.
I spent a year of my third undergrad studying under the man who is now Tasmania’s leading expert on fires, conservation and management, and I only wish he had ten minutes with you because he wasn’t one to suffer fools, or people who don’t actually bother to read the research.
“don’t focus on trees as the greatest threat”
What then?
BilB @ 119 – one thing that came out of the inquests into the Canberra fires was that people had planted shrubs and small plants close to their houses. They may have been green when the fire came through, but because of water shortages people had mulched their gardens. The mulch burned very well and caused some houses to go up.
IIRC one other recommendation was around metal shutters for all of the windows. As people discovered again with the recent fires when a fire front comes past, the windows in the houses can shatter and this lets embers in and the house catches on fire. There were also comments about making sure that nothing can get under the house or into the roofspace.
Myriad,
I’d be happy to debate the issue with you mentor. What is his name? I’ll give him a call. I am also happy to be wrong, if I am indeed so. But to date I have seen nothing to convince me that I am. I am aware that there is research on the matter and from a discussion I had with Hans Drielsma recently the outcome is not exactly clear. Who is your expert?
Myriad @ 140
Any chance of a name? I’m looking for a genuine expert for a project in prospect on fire management in Tas. I’ve talked to a few people but nobody has convinced me yet that they have a strategic approach to hazard reduction burning and I’m totally confused as to what the authorities are attempting to do. Clear around urban areas and/or forest assets? Systematically reduce fuel loads for all forested areas? Separate burnable areas into ‘mosaics’. A bit of each? So I’d be very grateful for the name of an expert or a suitable document to read.
Tasmania does have the advantage of widespread, numerous non-eucalypt species and piles of rainfall. Let’s not forget that eh?
FDB: not all of it. Hobart’s annual rainfall is only about 600mm.
They do, however, have the advantage of not having too many 46 degree days.
“not having too many 46 degree days”
Plus zero chance of 50+km/h winds blowing in from across a desert.
But in any case, this mystery man may well be an expert in mainland fire prevention too, so I don’t want to suggest he’s got nothing to contribute.
I thought Packhams’ article was sickening.
He blamed the CFA, greenies and unnamed ‘academics’ for allowing fuel buildups. Packham should know that there is no consensus on the effect of regular burning off to reduce fuel loads. Yes, it might reduce the amount of flammable material on the forest floor, but it also encourages regrowth of more volatile, densely packed, fireprone vegetation. ‘Ecological drift’ I think it’s called.
Anyway that had absolutely nothing to do with the Kinglake fires. I know Kinglake West well. The area around Kinglake West is farmland and open bushland which had recently been burnt. There was no buildup of fuel there. What made the fire so devastating was its speed. There’s one story I heard of a family huddling around the air-conditioner, curtains drawn, listening to the radio who comfortably believed the fire was thirty kilometres away. The first they knew that it was upon them was when their kitchen exploded.
Packham came across as someone who was settling a few scores. And wouldn’t you just know it would be The Australian that would publish it.
Chris 142,
Low immature shrubbery will not offer much protection in a high blast situation as happened in Canberra. The aim is to force the air flow upwards to roof level. This takes a considerable thickness and height. The Canberra terrain allowed for a steady laminar flow which had no difficulty in demolishing immature plants. Possibly the only defence that would have worked in that situation would have been an established stand/row of trees 50 metres away from the nearest houses with a metal fence to protect the undergrowth on the open side. This would have driven the airflow upwards creating slower turbulent air on the lee side. Still a considerable fire hazard, but a different one.
And that brings up the issue of land ownership. The field depth that is required to create successful fire protection is beyond the control of those affected by approaching fires, as a rule. It is an interesting study to look at the vegetation around outback homesteads that have survived decades of everything that nature can throw at them. These properties have the space to create a properly structured wind break.
How would you have protected those houses in Canberra, Myriad?
HuggyBunny, it’s boobyalla, not boobiella. It’s a low growing shrub found in coastal areas of Tasmania. I’ve not heard of its fire-retardant properies before now.
BilB @ 142 – note that in Duffy in Canberra there was a gap of about 200-300m of empty land between the houses and the pine plantation. The conditions were so bad though that the radiant heat and embers set the gardens and houses on fire anyway – the fire front just jumped across. Perhaps a line of trees in the middle like you suggest would have helped.
You can see still sort of see the gap between the houses and where the pine plantation was here. The area between Cotter drive and Warragamba avenue was empty before the fires.
There’s a great article by Guy Rundle in Crikey.
Not amused, there are alternative spellings. http://myfolia.com/plants/686-boobyalla%20/view
However I am not sure that what we called “boobywhatever” really was this. The “trees” were smallish dense like a jungle but Grandpa swore by its ability to stop fires – and considering thet the homestead is still there after 100years+ I guess he might have been correct.
I think that a lot of the confusion here has arisen because as Chris has written 300m of open country will not save you from a really hot fire if the wind is wrong.
The final word I would like to say is that by all accounts this was the fiercest and hottest fire on record. We should expect more and we should not expect that the old fire-fighting techniques will continue to work. Or that the present land management techiques (such as they are) will also continue to ameliorate the fire.
Kinglake is clear evidence that fuel mitigation methods are irrlevant in certain circumstances.
Huggy
Huggy and notamused: whatever they’re called, it’s titillating.
Jenny – Mark Chladil. You’ll find his papers through the literature. He specialised in micro climates, fires and conservation fire management. At the time he lectured me he had just finished his PhD, so about 1996. He was with the Tas Fire Service for many years, but as I’ve moved out of the field I haven’t kept track of him, so am presuming he’s still there.
FDB, as I said above, the principle threat that research has identified, and I paraphrased a way up above, is from small combustible materials of around 1″ or smaller. If you google CFA fire preparedness literature for households, you’ll immediately find this.
And I can only shake my head at the usual woeful ignorance of mainlanders about Tasmania. two thirds of Tasmania is classified as semi-arid, and it has twice as much coastline as NSW and Victoria combined, meaning an abundance of coastal open woodland, heaths etc – all fire adapted. As is the Northwest Coast. Everyone thinks of the Southwest as all wet – guess what it’s largely made up of buttongrass plains, which research is showing is highly fire adapted thanks to the burning practices of Tasmania’s Aborigines, placing us at a strong chance of losing it because we exclude fire. Of course we never experience strong winds – we’re only in the path of the roaring 40s, get the Antartic winds and the hot winds off the ‘north island’. No wind here- just 120km winds about 3 weeks ago in Hobart.
In the 1967 bushfires here, 69 people died. Apparently none of you have heard about it. The fire travelled from Blackmans Bay to North Hobart in 45 minutes (you can do the leg work and google map that), on a 42 degree day with 4% humidity. We have had similar conditions since then, and will continue to experience them. Only a few years ago the East Coast experienced a fire so bad that one coastal town’s population was forced to shelter on the beach as a great deal of the town burnt around them. Howard flew in for that one.
We just sent 92 fire experts to Victoria to help. But of course we know nothing, we’re all wet and cool. Where’s my emoticon.
Was just about to mention the 67 fires – anyone who knows anyone from around then can see the similarities to the current situation.
In fact, in terms of loss of life, in relation to population, it would be the worst fire in modern Australian history.
Having lived among many survivors, the long term scars on peoples psyches are still very apparent.
Huggybunny: ”
Kinglake is clear evidence that fuel mitigation methods are irrelevant in certain circumstances.”
yes, and we need to be prepared for the fact that those circumstances may become the norm. The idea that any type of vegetation is safer, as you were suggesting in your condemnation of eucalypts is, as I said, dangerously simplistic.
It may be those people that chose to live in bushland build very inexpensive, almost expendable homes, and rely on community bunkers in extreme events….??? That’d be quite a cultural shift, I guess.
Also, regarding affordability. I am still waiting to hear from a friend who is certainly in the category of people who bought a bush block near Kinglake West, because he could not afford an inner-city home, and the outer suburbs were not his thing. Sure, I think there are a lot of wealthy people in those areas, but I can’t bring myself to support the idea that being able to afford a $16000 bunker should be a pre-condition of people moving to city fringe towns. I don’t like any situation that eliminates choice for the less affluent, the lack of choice in the suburbs is what drives people out of cities in the first place.
That makes sense myriad that growth of up to 1 metre would act like a source of continuous kindling. I remember Tasmania as being at times hot, very dry and yes, very windy.
Shaun, PZ Myers has picked that up at Pharynugula.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/australias_current_afflictions.php
Shaun@118: As soon as I heard about it I wandered over to Saint’s place so I could partake of the searing outrage the kind of which has not been seen since Bob Brown gibbered something about air conditioning. Bitterly disappointed that such blatant victim blaming has yet to be punished with the limp asparagus lashing that is an outraged blogger.
I just have to comment on this. Brumby was not privy to any kind of expert information that the general community was not freely given. It seems that the only commentators that were sceptical were those that have little understanding of weather. The Bureau was warning about the atrocious conditions that were expected three days out from the event. Weather forums were talking about how bad it was going to be at least a week before Saturday. This event went off textbook like from what was forecast – record breaking heat, very low humidity, strong winds gusting up to 100k/h from the N-NW at the start of the day, followed by a strong SW change with gusts over 100k/h. The fires each behaved according to that forecast – there were no wild wind swings from the SE or such. For some reason people chose not to listen, or they had very little idea of what these conditions actually meant. The Fire Index maxes out at 100 – which is considered an uncontrollable fire. Some regions were listing a Fire Index of 300+ on Saturday morning.
If you’re going to live in fire prone areas, it makes sense to ensure you have at least a cursory understanding of weather conditions.
What a farce.
Further to my post @ 129. We informed the Red Cross at 2.00PM that my Brother and Sister in law were OK. My brother and sister in law had registered with the RC earlier that day but the RC had no record of them being OK when we rang. We are still getting emails from desperate relatives and friends who had registered for news at the RC but have NOT BEEN TOLD!!!!!
These people got our email address because my wife sent out an appeal for news at a forum.
Yet officially my B and S in laws are still ( still! ) missing.
Furious Balancing;
Maybe there is no safe alternative to Eucalyptus trees in the Australian bush. I do know that these trees produce very volatile oils with a very low flash point. It seems logical to do some tests with strategic plantations of trees that have either no oils or higher flash point oils and trees that produce less summer leaf and trash fall than gum trees. I don’t think this is dangerously simplistic at all.
Huggy
It gets worse.
We now learn that both the CFA and the Red Cross knew my brother and sister in law (who live right in KingLake) were safe – as in personally seeing and entering their details – not this morning but SUNDAY morning for the CFA and MONDAY morning for the Red Cross. Yet the RC repeatedly told us ( 3 times ) that there was no info. Probably 50 friends and relatives have been at whits end over this. One of them spent 2 days searching and my wife took 2 days off work and has probably aged a year due to straight out incompetence.
Meanwhile, the pollies prance around promising the earth. And people believe them.
fiztig,
We drove along the Princes Highway for 40km on Saturday morning in West and Central Gippsland, noticed very light traffic, and wondered if folk had heeded John Brumby’s warning not to be outdoors or driving unless it was unavoidable. I thought it very good advice at the time. We were indoors by 11am, when temp reached 39C.
Chris 152
Was the pine forrest that close? The heat would have been immense. I remember the open flat area. That is what set up the sheet of hot air. Is my recollection correct that there were few or no fences around the houses? I saw in last nights Victoria footage that in many areas the tree tops were not touched by the fire, but in Peats Ridge every thing was black, and they looked like very tall trees. It is hard to imagine what “on the day” preparation could possibly do in that amount of heat.
Myriad,
Those 1967 fires that you mention sound very much like the South Australian fires of a few years ago where people were pushed right onto the beach, and people died in cars and houses. It would be interesting to know what the tropical weather was doing at the time. Because as you will know those high pressure cells that form in the bight and your area are the falling air that has risen in the tropics causing all of that flooding, while on the exact opposite side of the globe there are massive snow storms. Is it part of some global air mass balancing system? And thanks for the name, I will seek out Chladil’s work.
Fire safety in Tasmania
http://www.lgat.tas.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Guidelines_for_Development_in_Bushfire_Prone_Areas_August_4.pdf
Fire retardant plants from web site authored in part by Mark Chladil.
http://www.fire.tas.gov.au/mysite/publications/1709%20Brochure.pdf
It all looks good to me. It is a shame we do not get that kind of advice here in NSW!
Another article from the Oz blaming these mysterious “green groups” that apparently argued that residents should be allowed to grow/keep trees too close their houses “for aesthetic reasons”. Again, no names, no quotes.
If anyone had argued residents should be allow grow/keep vegetation on their own land you’d think it’d be the libertarians.
Actually it does seem I slightly misread that – apparently the “green groups” pushed for legislation that actively prevented people from removing vegetation and even co-erced them to plant more.
While I can certainly believe there were some environmentalist types who wanted to see older trees that acted as important habitats for wildlife etc. preserved, despite the possible increased threat they posed in the event of a bushfire, I really struggle to believe anyone argued such trees could not be cut down “for aesthetic reasons”.
Peter@160,
Yep, PZ has nailed it. At least Costello has spoken out against Nalliah despite other flirtations.
gilmae@161,
Heh.
So the Oz wants to complete raze our native forests, then?
I think this problem is being tackled at the wrong end.
The fires that destroyed many lives in Victoria had clearly grown into a ‘thing’ utterly unstoppable. Fires do not start out that way. Whoever was responsible for not throwing all their resources and then some at these fires when they started, along with the fuckwit who may have started them, is in my view culpable. These days it is not a responsible response to ‘contain’ fires or ‘monitor’ them, the only responsible action is to move heaven and earth to put them out before that actually becomes a fanciful notion. Many more resources need be spent on fire spotting, having air cranes (tell me there is more than one) available at all times, to dump water on even the most minute and remote outbreak. At least six full time people need to be employed at every two bit fire station in high summer 24 hours a day concentrating, specifically looking out for signs of smoke and then calling in the big guns immediately if the outbreak is too remote or they are not able to extinguish it themselves. And not waiting as is so often the case,just to see what it does or which way the wind blows. All fires start out small, and that is the time to put them out.
Caroline, while I suspect that at the royal commission there will be questions asked about the speed of the initial response, I’m not sure that a blanket ‘extinguish everything right now” policy is either feasible or necessarily desirable.
You’d need fleets of Ericsson Skycranes, fuelled up and ready to go, at bases all over the place. They can travel at roughly 150 kilometres an hour, so if you want ten minute response, you need one within a 25 kilometre radius, maybe 20 to be sure. Those things cost $2.5 million dollars a season to lease, and $12,000 per day to run.
What you are saying, Caroline, is what allowed the Canberra to progress and later allowed a small fire to escape into the Grose Valley. Paper work by fire bureauracy that is required to release resources. There are some people in government who need to be unplugged and Matrix spat.
“At least Costello has spoken out against Nalliah despite other flirtations.”
Easier to dump on the mad happy clapper than his colleague, though. Where is that public denunciation of Wilson Tuckey by The Liberal Party for his repulsively inappropriate politicking?
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/tuckey-points-finger-at-parties/2009/02/09/1234027956206.html
Here is the text of a letter which I sent to the OO in response to Packham and others, but which has not been printed:
Bilb,
I hoped you noticed though that the key thing, emphasised again and again, it to keep a no / minimum vegetation buffer around your house of anywhere between 10-50m, depending on slope.
Re:Canberra. All I can say is two things – I wouldn’t personally live near a pine forest. The fact that they are just as volatile as eucalypts but also often have low hanging vegetation and are very dense really prejudices me against them. I’m not claiming that’s necessarily a ‘factual’ response.
Second, I’ve never lived in suburbia to know how I’d defend; but then one of the reason I wouldn’t live in bush-filled suburbia is it has the potential to be the worst of both worlds: dense housing with limited water storage plus dangerous fire conditions.
I currently live rurally on a small block in the southern midlands of Tasmania, surrounded by dry sclerophyll forest. Our house is an old Hydro weatherboard on a north facing slope, with bush starting 1/3 way down that slope and bush behind us, but not close. We are perched well below the ridgeline – we bought the house this way. We have a 50m clear zone around the house at least on all sides. The most dangerous side would be that immediately below us to the north & NW which are lightly forested including a gully. There we’ve increased the buffer zone, and done a little thinning. The house is largely surrounded by native pasture grass, bare dirt, and the garden the little old lady who lived her put in, largely succulents (good for fires) and geraniums and african daisy (not good at all). As we’re in the middle of year 3 of a drought I haven’t had the opportunity to do any mosaic burning – too dnagerous for most of the year, and the grass cover is so sparse I’m more likely to trigger erosion than help either regenerate or manage the fuel load. My neighbor burns every year trying to get grass for his few sheep and no doubt as part of a misguided fire management approach – all he’s managed to do is trigger the growth of hundreds of very fire loving silver wattle.
I’m removing all the geranium and African Daisy (real weeds that sprout again and again), ‘xeroscaping’ around the house with gravel, sparsely planted pigface mounds, a few well spaced poa, and a few low flammability banksia at least 20m back (they won’t grow higher than 1.5m as I coppice them). The banksia are my one indulgence as while nowhere near as flammable as other natives, they obviously, as a bushy plant, are technically a no-no, but I love them and the birds they attract.
We have a diesel fire pump, fire-grade hose and over 10,000 gallons of water storage. I’m still thinking about buying one more large tank and putting it immediately near the house. Our tanks are ‘plastic’ (in essence) which will melt of course in decent fires, but we couldn’t afford concrete and they are strategically placed to help us and our neighbors use their water as a fire progresses. If that’s not possible, we’ll go into survival mode and shelter in the wide, shallow pond we have.
Our biggest threats are wind (I live in a nw facing valley), a tree-lined single exit road which makes fleeing impossible unless done very early, and two large wooden sheds on our property, one within 15 m of the house.
Like a lot of people I know, I’m prepared to lose my house – survival is the trade off for me living in this lovely area. I think if you choose to live in areas like this, you need to focus on a survival plan, not a ‘save all my possessions’ plan.
Having said all that, I’m not sure a damn thing I’ve talked about would save you in a fireball like that experienced in Victoria – the extreme conditions can make a mockery of any sort of individual preparation.
Great letter Paul – and Helen, yes Guy Rundle’s Crikey article is excellent.
Sadly the fire at Steels Creek has claimed Jenny Barnett of the VNPA. She was a huge repository of knowledge about conservation and wildlife. Ironically (and sadly for the people who could have benefited) she was studying fire prevention and mitigation techniques in the national parks. Her death is truly like a library burning down. Vale Jenny.
Good letter, Paul Norton.
Caroline: bucketloads of (fire) extinguishment may sound like a great idea, but sadly is not feasible. Speed of spread, spotting, wind turbulence, safety of fire crews, steep terrain, etc. In some conditions the water bombing aircraft can’t fly into the maelstrom. At least these days they have infrared gear which can pinpoint hot spots through (visually) obscuring smoke.
There are many smaller water-dumping aircraft. Some were used, for example, on Monday afternoon to help control a blaze at Thompson’s Road, a few kms east of Churchill. Several homes lost, but no fatalities.
The Red Cross has said it has sufficient blood for the moment, but wants people to register to donate in the near future.
http://www.donateblood.com.au/
Myriad,
You seem to have the idea that I have suggested surrounding houses up to the wall with shrubs. Never. What I have argued for years is for the inclusion of low combustibility trees of the European Lime shape of tree in the bush fringe around our timberland communities. This sort of tree shape mixed in amoung the Eucalypts has the effect of shutting off the ground flow of air that ingnites the undergrowth and drives even high wind flows upwards. Their dense foliage has the potential to reduce flying embers as well. Rather than fly off the handle, I ask that you stop and think about the nature of the different types of trees and how they fit together. I think that you will find that this is entirely compatible with Mark Chladil’s advices.
I’m not sure that a blanket ‘extinguish everything right now” policy is either feasible or necessarily desirable.
I cannot understand how you could think it not desirable Robert. My point is that all fires start out small and that is the time to put them out. You don’t wait until they become raging infernos. Extinguishing a small fire does not require a fleet of air cranes.
I have seen fires in the Mountains ‘way off in the distance’ and been astounded that basically nobody has done a thing about it until the following day when a conspiring wind has fanned it into something that is now posing an almost unstoppable threat, whereas the day before, when it was first seen it could easily have been extinguished with a couple of buckets of water slung under a helicopter.
In 2001 a friend of mine called me at 1 pm to say she had just driven through Blackheath and could smell smoke. She had called in at the fire station–nobody there, she had told a policeman sitting in a car out the front, he hadn’t heard of any fire (ipso facto no fire). Eight hours later we faced a raging inferno that almost destroyed the house I was living in and did in fact devour a house on the highway. The fire jumped the highway in one direction and burnt all the way to Leura and in the other it danced in the valley below the escarpment for a further five days, before finally speeding up the hill with incredible heat and ferocity, missing our southern flank by a mere metres. My friend could have led a small posse of fireys directly to it, to put it out, had anyone been prepared to take her seriously. Its unlikely she was the only one that day who could smell the unmistakable smell of bushfire smoke.
There is no way it is not feasible or desirable these days with satellite technology and helicopters to put out all bush fires where and when they start. But you have to be looking for them and be prepared to act immediately.
this might explain part of the reason why it’s taking so long to let people back in to their houses – there’s plenty of asbestos left in those burned-out houses…and of course, the asbestos doesn’t burn…
Caroline
I can see the point of your 2001 anecdote: happy to agree that the outbreak should have been extinguished immediately.
But it’s unfortunately a huge leap in logic (and logistics) to draw the general conclusion you’ve drawn.
In the 1960s, dozens of persons were employed every summer in Victoria to sit on fire (surveillance) towers, looking around for smoke – then phoning or radioing in reports. It was apparently considered very effective. But what THEN is done, once a fire has been observed, that’s the practical question.
Good luck with your further thinking and suggestions.
Myriad #140,
thanks for the comments to try and bring some science into the debate – the key words are fire ecology.
I have been far too upset by many comments on this thread advocating landscape modification to construct a reasonable response. I would break the comments policy big-time.
Some comments to try and frame the debate:
1. We are in a new climate since 1997 – hotter and drier. This is measurable and is affecting the frequency of number of days above 40.
2. Fire behaviour is different at these extremes. It would help if people thought of different stages of fire – these are off the top of my head, there is probably something better in the literature
a. Cool burn – fire in undergrowth, scorching to several metres
b. Hot burn – fire into canopy, minor spotting
c. Crown fire – fire across the canopy, major spotting
d. Fire storm – anywhere, everywhere, faster than you might imagine, rampant spotting (awaiting a decent characteristic description)
3. Each of these has a different set of rules for how they burn and how they can be managed. Our current strategies are set for b and c: hot burn and crown fire. Those strategies have worked pretty well. It is clear that from Canberra (2003) and Melbourne, the behaviour under fire storm conditions renders many of these strategies ineffective. I suspect that many of the suggestions made in posts above would also be ineffective and create a great deal of ecological damage to boot. One example: planting environmental weeds in “buffer zones” (and there are many such species in the lists above), will lead to a net increase in fuel loads as those weeds spread.
4. We have had three severe episodes in a decade under these new hotter and drier conditions (counting 2006 in NE and E Vic where there was total forest kill of trees many hundreds of years old). The climate over that time has made fuel reduction burns difficult, but there has been renewed activity where climatically possible. There have been outbreaks as some of those burns escaped and the authorities get pilloried every time. Local communities need to accept some risk of outbreak and a loss of air quality as part of this – not always easy. Peri-urban communities overall face vastly increased, but as yet unquantified, risks.
5. There is every reason to assume that extreme fires will continue at the same rate. We need to understand how to manage these risks. I think there is a threshold in terms of forecast fire weather and veg condition where an appreciable risk of fire storm may be proposed (the CSIRO model on Friday, forecast 45C for Saturday, for instance). This needs to be constructed and factored into management, warnings and response. For one, I welcome the Royal Commission.
Bilb, a long response from me does not equal ‘flying off the handle ‘ -you asked me a question, I gave you a response. It’s not really possible to explain a fire plan in short, or answer a question like ‘how wold I prepare for the Canberra fire’.
Having read your responses for a while now on a range of threads, I know you’re rather attracted to large landscape modification style projects, which I fundamentally disagree with. On this thread you’ve been advocating all sorts of theories with no evidence to back them, and when people have pointed out that the evidence contradicts your position, you refute without evidence. So far you’ve gone from enthusiastically supporting Huggybunny’s ridiculous idea of wholesale removal of eucalypts and replacement with deciduous trees to enthusiastic support for planting decidious and fire retardant plants around houses, to now talking about some sort of mix. I’m glad you went and read Chladil’s readily available work, but what I was trying to point out to you is that a clear zone around a house is the key, not ultimately what’s planted, although volatile plants should be avoided.
Roger says the rest better than I can reaching back into 10 years of memory, but I’ll add one more factor, if I may Roger, that’s fundamental to the new conditions and fires we are experiencing – Soil Dryness Index. As we experience lower average rainfalls and more frequent droughts, the loss of moisture in the soil makes everything more flammable and aids fires to effectively ‘skate’ across even bare ground, unimpeded by moisture being released – thus aiding fire storms to develop.
Caroline and Robert (in particular), current thinking in WA appears to be along the lines of immediate extinguishment. From my observations of fire responses in the Perth Hills area over the past couple of summers, any fire starting is immediately hit with pretty much every crew within about a 40 km radius, supplemented with water bombers.
So far, it seems at least moderately effective, although I wouldn’t be drawing any major conclusions just yet.
However, our terrain and flora are somewhat different from those in the affected areas of Victoria.
But it’s unfortunately a huge leap in logic (and logistics) to draw the general conclusion you’ve drawn.
Ambigulous–why the big problem in logistics, what makes you assume such? The most logical course of action is to make a call, organise a helicopter or you drive your ‘appliance’ out to the said location and start hosing, and if its too big you call in for help–quickly even if that means overkill. You just don’t wait around filling in requisite forms, and maybe ringing around to see what half a dozen dozey blokes reckon about stirring themselves on a Saturday afternoon.
What is your experience of fires?
Maybe it’s their experience of pranksters wasting their time calling about phantom fires, or reports of bushfires when it’s some idiot burning leaves in their backyard. I would say that the cost of mobilising if it turns out not to be a real fire or real threat would have something to do with it. Unfortunately, as in your friend’s case sometimes real fires get ignored. But how do you stop the crackpots?
Paul Norton, I think you were a bit naive to expect the Oz to publish any facts that counter their preconceptions about environmentalists.
After all, it’s not as though it’s a newspaper …
Well, David, perhaps the Sydney Morning Herald will publish my response to the greenie-bashing column which will inevitably appear tomorrow under the byline of that eminent fire ecologist, Miranda Devine.
Myriad,
If you go back to thewording you will see that I avoided “enthusistically” supporting the huggy theory. I said that all things need to be considered. But from my perspective he more right than wrong.
Yes the soil moisture content is to be a progressively worse problem. It may well be too late even now to do much about vegetation. Some forecasters talk about the southern zone as becoming a vegetationless dust bowl. I hope not.
But on a brighter tone I have decided that the fire safety device to install in existing properties would be either a concrete garden shed (product suggestion for any out of work potential entrepreneurs) or a concrete water tank with a suitable man hole. The basis is that these are useful devices that we tend to buy any way but they can provide some shelter in the worst case fire scenario.
Caroline: I’m not sure what mountains you live near, but I grew up near quite a few, and still have family and friends living near the alpine areas of north-eastern Victoria.
There’s a nearly contiguous region of almost uninhabited forest country extending from the eastern boundary of Melbourne, all the way to Mallacoota, extending north to the state border and beyond, and including everywhere south of Corryong, south-east of Myrtleford and Mansfield, and roughly across to Broadford.
I’m buggered if I know how you’re going to station fire crews and helicopters sufficiently close to stop every fire immediately in a region of that size.
I should add that there are very few bitumen roads in the area; the access tracks are narrow, twisty, and steep four-wheel-drive tracks.
Here’s a few thoughts to toss into the mix of discussion going on – FWIW:
– Regular burning of Oz landscape started with the indigenous peoples. By the time we turned up, our landscape was Eucalyptus dominated/monoculture because they recover so well from fires. Source: Peter Andrews’ book “Back From the Brink”.
- In that book he also has a lot to say re retaining moisture, increasing fertility,biodiversity, landscape management etc etc (all referenced) – which will be very important in Post Fires reflections.
Re the Future of living in country SE Australia:
- Have Fire Storm Shelters in every community
- And those of us who live out there have cellar/bolthole things for our precious goods
- and houses/sheds which are more temporary? So that if a fire gallops through, it’s less of a trauma to replace it. I know the Japanese have had something similar in the past because of earthquakes.
Robert,
Even with the best preparation these fires would probably have taken the same course under the same conditions.
One thing that I would like to see tried is a true fire bomb. A punnet of water hung from a helicopter which is exploded near the fire surface with a small charge of explosive. I wonder what the fire knock down effect would be like. It would be nice to know if this had been tried on something other than oil fires.
Myriad:
Tah muchly.
Bilb, in the 67 fires down here, several people boiled in concrete water tanks, just fyi, or were dumped out when the the tanks cracked under heat. An old firie told my class horror stories of people found boiled in their water tanks after the 67 fires.
One of the worst places to be in a fire, meaning almost certain death, is in a water tank of any type, with the only exception I can think of being an underground concerete tank. You’ve also got to be able to get out again of course!
out of interest / comparison, this is why I can’t believe that people hadn’t heard of / remembered Tasmania’s 1967 fires – they were (until now) considered one of Australia’s worst natural disasters:
125 separate fire fronts burnt through some 2,640 square kilometres (652,360 acres)(264,000 ha) of land in Southern Tasmania within the space of five hours. Fires raged from near Hamilton, Tasmania and Bothwell, Tasmania to the D’Entrecasteaux Channel as well as Snug. There was extensive damage to agricultural property near the channel, the Derwent Valley and the Huon Valley. Fires also destroyed forest, public infrastructure and properties around Mount Wellington and many small towns along the Derwent estuary and east of Hobart.
The worst of the fires was the Hobart Fire, which encroached upon the city of Hobart. In total, the fires claimed 62 lives in a single day. 52 people died in the Hobart area. Property loss was also extensive with 1293 homes, and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. The fires destroyed 80 bridges, 4800 sections of power lines, 1500 motor vehicles and over 100 other structures. It was estimated that at least 62,000 livestock were destroyed. The total damage amounted to $45,000,000 in 1967 Australian dollar values.[2]
– from wiki.
Jenny – you might also find the bushfire CRC useful.
Well aren’t you just the cheery one, Myriad. Clearly your message to those facing a fire is to run right into and die quickly because there is nothing that any one can do. Going to university did you no good at all from a fire understanding point of view, apparently.
On the other hand, I wonder how many people have actually saved themselves by climbing into tanks and hiding in stone sheds and survived without telling you ablut it? I suspect that there are hundreds of survival stories. But some people just collect tradgedies.
Have you got a survival story to tell? Have you got any positive advice at all?
Myriad – Richie Benaud spent a bit of time yesterday discussing that fire and the cricket match that was held as a subsequent benefit/fundraiser.
Gentlemen, please remember the LP comments policy.
You’re just frankly bizarre, Bilb – what do you want me to do, tell you ‘yes, build a concrete water tank as a safe place in fire’, knowing full well it is known to be a death trap?? I know it’s not always nice to have your ideas rebuffed, but I’d suggest it’s better than being dead.
It’s definitely not nice to suggest that I’m telling people to suicide by fire, and I’d ask you to withdraw that comment, it’s a truly appalling thing to say, and particularly at a time like this.
Going to uni taught me a great deal about fire ecology and fire management. It’s why my land looks like as described above. I’m not stupid enough though, to think that there’s any preparation you can realistically do at this stage to survive a fire storm. As Roger so accurately described above, Australian research and the practical application thereof has focussed on hot burns and crown fires.
The Royal Commission is needed. I wouldn’t presume to tell people how to survive a fire storm. I would personally have evacuated given the conditions predicted for Victoria, but that’s because unlike many people who have moved into bushland areas recently, I have experienced disaster scale fires, and I studied them at uni. This is not to say I presciently saw a fire storm coming like this, I didn’t. I just would not have been confident in myself of being able to stay and protect in those conditions, even if the fire hadn’t turned into a firestorm, particularly as my partner is American with no experience of staying to defend a property, so it would be just about psychologically impossible for her to cope with.
We need the Royal Commission to see if we can establish a clear set of indicators for a possible fire storm prior to the event, and a series of best measures for saving lives if one is predicted. Underground bunkers or community shelters strike me so far as one of the more likely possible ‘solutions’, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Here is a story.
http://www.smh.com.au/national/mother-hid-under-floorboards-20090210-83ig.html?sssdmh=dm16.360144
It will be interesting to see if the inputs to the Royal Question on the issue of hazard reduction burning contribute anything significantly different from what was contributed to the Victorian Upper House Inquiry to which I linked above. That Inquiry reported in June 2008 and the Victorian Government only released its response to its recommendations in December 2008.
Caroline
Thanks for making it personal. Robert has sketched out what I meant by logistics. I did NOT mean filling out forms. I meant getting the fire trucks and indeed helipcopters to the right place(s) in time to be effective.
My experience?
1) helping put out a tiny fire in roadside grass on a 39C summer day, just before the farmer’s truck came racing down their driveway to do the same, South Gippsland circa 1986
2) putting out small fires on steep partly treed hillsides in the Jeeralang Hills near Churchill
3) watching water bombing of a fire just south of Churchill in April 2003 which threatened (but didn’t destroy) several houses
4) hearing the stories of former neighbours in the Jeeralang hills, whose houses were very close to burning down, last Saturday 7th Feb. ["The Churchill Fire"]
5) driving through alpine Vic last December, observing hundreds of hectares of burnt-out landscape, not far from Robert’s old stamping ground, Benambra
6) hiking in the Vic high country circa 1964, seeing huge tree stumps; being told they would be remnants of the ’39 fires
It’s not much, but it’s enough to be going on with. I salute the CFA.
7) watching water bombing of a fire in Thompson’s Road, Hazelwood; Monday 9th February; several houses lost, several saved. Approx 4km east of Churchill. Undoubtedly flared up from last Saturday’s fire.
I’ve never fought fires directly – I moved away to Melbourne once I turned 18 – but I saw a few as a kid, and saw the consequences of more, including on Mount Benambra, which the title of my personal blog refers to (not Benambra, the township, though I have been there several times).
I also helped ferry supplies up to Mount Beauty when they fought the 2003 fires. I never saw the fire itself. Heck, once you got anywhere near the fires, you couldn’t see anything much. The smoke was so thick you couldn’t see far enough to drive more than 60 km/h, if I recall correctly.
Myriad 205,
Just because some one died in a water tank once does not mean that a water tank is not a safe refuge. Certainly a water tank in the full glare of a fire and with logs stacked up around, it would be a less than safe refuge. But a water tank (concrete) with some sheltering of an earth mound or behind a brick wall could very well be an ideal refuge. In all probability the people in your scenario suffocated first. It is difficult to see how a body of water would heat up in the short duration of a burn through, unless the tank was very small. So it is not cut and dried “some one died that way once so that won’t work”. That gives people absolutely no hope or guidence. Where under considered circumstances, it could very well be the other way.
It will be a very long time before a bunch of lawyers mull through the ashes of this disaster to come to some regal conclusions. But I ask you, what for the many thousands of people who live already in fire prone areas and may well face similar fires before this wisdom is handed down? In fairness to you, your advice, finally, is “head out at the first suggestion of fire”. And that is good safe advice.
What we as a community hope to get from our professionals and thinkers is considered balanced advice, ideas, hope and scope. But if these people simply block examination of possibilities and offer nothing alternative then what hope is there. So do I take back the comment? Up to that point in the discussion that is the only option that I felt that you had left open. So, No!
ABC 702 is soon to be talking about what can people do to survive fires. That will be interesting.
Some of my earliest memories are of fires in Gippsland, we kids were put into a strange house with a whole lot of mums , who then cooked stuff. There was no telephone, nor communications , don’t even remember a radio. Have been a member of two CFA brigades since; things have improved a lot since then.
There is no way you can fight a serious crown fire from the ground, don’t even think about it, all you can do is retreat as fast as possible. I think most of the fire truck fatalities were caused when the fire suddenly “crowned” and basically toasted every-one with a blast of intense infra red radiation. Likewise you cannot drive through or even past a really serious eucalyptus or pine tree fire.
There has been considerable discussion of fire shelters. Tanks are a no no but tunnels are excellent.
In one very fire prone site I visited the homesteader had dug a tunnel about 10m into the side of a hill; he had bored a ventilation hole down from further up the hill. When it was really hot the entire family would take refuge in the hole.
A backhoe could dig a suitable trench any-where in a couple of hours then you roof it over with some curved corrugated iron (use tank sections) and then pile all the dirt back on top and you would have a bunker that is basically bomb and fire proof.
Huggy
Bilb, you simply can’t read – or more accurately, comprehend.
First up, I’m not an expert, and never claimed to be. I’ve simply talked about my experience and my study with people who are, and pointed out there’s a lot of research already done that is relevant to the discussion, and refuted a lot of theories and thoughts on this thread.
Second of all, my personal feeling for potential fire storm conditions is ‘get the hell out’. There’s nothing wrong with ‘stay and defend’ for lower fire intensities for people who are well-prepared.
And tell you what Bilb, you find me a single reference that says sheltering in any kind of tank, concrete or otherwise, that is above ground is a good idea as a refuge, and you might have a point. Multiple people died in tanks in 1967 in Tasmania, seeking refuge. Suffocation, boiling, drowning – doesn’t make any difference if it wasn’t a safe refuge, does it? You posited it as something to look at – I merely pointed out that it’s been tried and people died. Based on that I’d be surprised if the Royal Commission will bother looking at a known deathtrap as a possible viable recommendation for people to survive firestorms.
As for balance and scope, I’d point out to you upthread you were questioning Laura’s relatives choice to evacuate, like you’d know what the conditions they faced were, who they were & what shape their property is in!
What you did was say that I was suggesting people throw themselves into a fire. That’s disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself, and I’m done talking to someone so illogical.
Even with the weather on their side the firefighters have issued an urgent fire warning for Mansfield. Nobody and nothing could survive the conditions on saturday if they were unlucky enough to be directly in the eye of the fire-storm. Ceramic pottery welded together! One couples house exploded as the husband, a veteran firefighter of 30yrs experience, with what could be described as the ultimate in equipment and a fire plan and situation developed for all those years with bushfire in mind, realized the enormity of the approaching fire-storm and incredibly was able to get into a vehicle. Against all odds he drove into the fire and through to burnt ground and safety.
Meanwhile, it seems that up to 100 people might be dead in Marysville – a town of only about 500 people.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/newshome/5313409
I remember going for holidays there when I was a kid. It’s the town where my parents had their honeymoon in 1948. Unbelievable.
I am amazed that no-one, not even Kate Legge in her piece in the Australian today on Black Friday and the 1938-1939 bushfires has picked up on the fact that both Marysville and Kinglake burned in January 1939; that they burned in almost identical climactic conditions to February 2009; and that on 8 February 1939 the Stretton Royal Commission that investigated those fires began its hearings at the Kinglake Hotel, given that it was believed the origin of one of the fires that obliterated five towns the month before began in the bush around Kinglake.
So FF, I think what you’d take away from that is that when they rebuild Kinglake and Marysville – they should rebuild “them” in some place other than what was Kinglake and Marysville.
At least that’s how it appears. They’ll always be in the firing line…?
I just listened to a wonderful rant by a firefighter in Gippsland, about arsonists there who are still lighting fires!!!!
Firefighters can’t rest because they have to continually patrol for these. Scumbags!
I’m disappointed at the discussion so far on this thread for a number of reasons. Above all I think the land-property-personal management-speak and focus speaks volumes about the skewed priorities that got us into this mess in the first place. It highlights the kind of extreme anthropocentrism that assumes nature exists solely for the sake of humankind an approach to nature which unimpeded will surely lead to our doom. We are simply part of nature, not its “managers”. Bushfires like this expose our sheer impotence and always will.
At the 1939 Royal Commission, counsel A.E. Kelso and a number of other key witnesses argued for maintaining or trying to recover the original state of the forests and bush because they are far less fire-prone as a result of natural resistance. A forest undisturbed by fire for a reasonable period not only returns to its natural equilibrium, it protects itself by gradually closing over the canopy and preventing the growth of wattles and shrubby undergrowth that feed destructive wildfires. I support this approach. No burning at all of bush or forests.
It is impossible to fireproof Australia, and so Huggybuggy is in fact the most realistic one here. We either cut down or burn all the native bush or we don’t burn it at all. I’d prefer the latter approach. The idea of fighting fire with fire is ludicrous but unfortunately the dominant if by no means universally supported approach amongst people who have studied, work around and care passionately about this issue.
See the link at 56 = a white painted weatherboard can protect its occupants better than brick or stone
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Mollison’s assertion that brick transmits heat hence wood is better seems to leave out the fact that wood not only transmits heat but is also fuel for a fire.
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http://www.kansasforests.org/fire/wui/hazardtest.shtml
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Just brick isn’t going to make you safe. You need to manage things like proximity of trees (not to mention type thereof) etc. But still. In the Blue Mountains there are heaps of wooden houses built in to the side of slopes overlooking a forest. Many of my relatives lived up there. One of their houses was low lying brick. Another was the aforementioned wood on stilts. Guess which one went up?
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I really can’t believe anyone would be foolish enough to assert that a wooden house is safe. Yes brick places can go up especially if there’s not sufficient clearage around to keep the fire at a reasonable distance. But jeez.
I’m with you FF and have argued that fire makes the bush more fire prone for most of my 70yrs.
It highlights the kind of extreme anthropocentrism that assumes nature exists solely for the sake of humankind an approach to nature
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Indeed. One view.
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But another might say it highlights the natural tendency that mammals in general and humans in particular have when members of their species are tolchocked by nature. And the resultant determination to do something about it.
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Thousands of years ago two distinguishable spiritual and philosophical vantages emerged. One in the West and one in the East. In the East there was the acceptance of Nature and our place in it. And a subsequent striving to obtain harmony. In the West the idea was that ‘Man is the Measure’ we tended to see ourselves as Masters of the Domain set to tame Nature.
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Now the latter was born of an illusion but that illusion precipitated in ways that weren’t entirely disadvantageous.
Sorry FF, but you are incorrect entirely in your assessment of either cut it all down, or never burn it. The point that’s not been particularly well discussed in this thread is that Australia’s ecosystems on the whole are adapted to fire, and if we want the same bush that we enjoy now to remain, it requires fire, preferably a mosaic patch burning approach that roughly mimics what Aborigines did in some areas.
If you don’t burn it, you alter the ecosystem; if you burn it too frequently you alter it to a more fire -loving ecosystem prone to erosion in many cases to boot. The problem we have to grapple with from an ecological perspective is how to mimic fire stick practices (in simple terms) when there are people living now amongst those ecosystems. The Aborigines were able to essentially light an area up in appropriate conditions and stay the heck out of the way, having also ensured they didn’t light during the summer months. For us now with people scattered through the bush, and in higher densities, the question is how to maintain a fire regime that both protects those ecosystems and humans.
So please don’t make the mistake of thinking that not burning is how you maintain the vast majority of our current eucalyptus-dominated ecosystems, it’s not.
And for myself, there’s a reason I wrote quite plainly that I accept attempting survival, not trying to maintain my possessions, as a reasonable trade-off for living in a fire-loving dry sclerophyll forest, that will eventually burn no matter what I do. I think it’s a reasonable compromise to maintain a fuel-free buffer zone and think carefully and apply mosaic burning to private and public property. What’s not reasonable is what happened as just one eg in Tas after the 67 fires; landowners became obsessed with fuel reduction and burnt off every year, creating more fire-loving ecosystems close to Hobart and causing significant erosion and loss of biodiversity.
Striking a balance will take significant resources. As to fire storms, which we are now far more likely to experience courtesy of climate change, we need a human survival strategy that recognises that such events are just as catastrophic for the bush, so we shouldn’t be out there trying to clear it to buggery etc. either.
myriad what proof do you have that early Australians lit fires in the Victorian High Country in a mosaic or any other pattern for the specific intention to preserve the forest. If the undergrowth in this forest was capable of burning then the whole forest would have been.I cut trees in my youth 8 ft in diameter and I knocked up trying to count the hundreds of growth rings. These trees were Ash and Ash unlike Mesmate or Stringybark or most of the smooth barked gums, dies in a fire. Have you ever seen the photo’s of the enormous Ash cut by the earliest timbercutters? Hundreds of years without ever being burned. The sight of the huge ghosts towering above the new Ash forest around Matlock in the early fifties as a result of the ’39 fires killing trees that were hundreds of years old is enough proof for me.
Myriad, reconstructing accurate pre-1788 Aboriginal views of the world and their place in it is extremely difficult. It is even more problematic for us at this distance to comprehend, on the basis of scattered, uninformed, settler observations, what significance fire had and how extensively it was used by Aboriginal groups that are now extinct, disrupted or displaced. Of course, Aborigines used fire but we have no idea of how frequently, to what extent and for what purpose (apart from assisting hunting). We know that large tracts of eastern Australia, including dense forests, were only rarely penetrated by Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people did not “manage” the landscape. Their connectedness to the land and fauna was localised, relational and spiritual.
The Australian landscape has been made vulnerable to fire because of the profound way in which it has been altered by settlement and clearing, the introduction of pest species, agriculture, forestry and mining. The historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the most widespread and disastrous fires in Australia began in the decades 1830 and 1850 with settlement and squatting, reinforced by the impaction of the soil by hard-hoofed animals, the loss of fire-adapted Australian flora and the widespread introduction of feral plants and fauna. Besides, whatever Aboriginal fire regimes were, they were not infallible. How could they be? There is no point in romanticising little understood practices as perfect and the answer to the dilemma facing us today in such a totally different environment.
Of course fire will remain an integral and nature part of the Australian landscape. But we should aim to lessen not extend its frequency. Constant, broadscale, deliberate lighting of fires especially away from settled areas, should be stopped. There needs to an unequivocal commitment to the primary value of the natural world in our forests and bushland. All other assets should be subsumed by and subordinated to that.
Blue Mountains NSW. Robert–don’t live there anymore.
Ambigulous, wasn’t getting any more personal than what I took as your assumption that I was being illogical and the every so slightly patronising, keep thinking up the ideas line.
Daily light aircraft fly overs, manned fire towers and every rural or country fire station with full time employees, pilots of both varieties. Satellite reporting, mobile phones, binoculars, that sort of thing. is how you’d cover it. Problem is too many people inside watching telly all day.
Also wonder whether in some rural areas its actually considered unmanly or un-Australian or something to appear to get too excited about a little puff of smoke way off in the distance. Much more manly I suppose to wait until you’re faced with a thirty foot wall of flame to get overly excited about and point your impotent hose on.
That is correct, zorronsky. We know that the alpine areas of NSW and Victoria were largely left alone by Aboriginal people except for moth-gathering and spiritual reasons.
Robert; EPR Stands for European Pressurised Reactor it is a standardise design intended for all Europe (The US Version is called the USPR – what else?)
It is about 1650 MW and has 4 cooling systems and lots of concrete and has never been built before etc. But it is the design agreed to by the Camel design committee of the EU and the US. Thus it is guaranteed to be a total dromedary and to melt down soon after it is commissioned.
It can burn a mixed fuel with lots of Pu if you want.
I doubt very much if your little boutique reactor would even get close in cost* despite the stuff ups with the first installations of the big ones. They are just a PR puff to excite the academics and opinion leaders. “Oh look here is this friendly little nuclear reactor perhaps you could even take one home”. And.”Nothing to fear it’s just a baby and it comes in five different colours”.
BTW work on the Finnish plant started in 2005 – it is not expected to be finished until 2012.
The French version has a similar completion date
I think it about time that the nukeboosters woke up to the fact that serious reactor construction cannot start until about 2020 (Unless of course they want to build hundred of untested designs).
This means that it would be 2030 before we would see a useful fraction of generation passed over to nuclear. Its too little too late and really stupid.
Huggy
*Cost is here defined as cost per MW and cost per MWh delivered.
Many local councils require that a permit be granted for the removal of certain indigenous and exotic trees from your house block unless it more than a couple of metres from your house.
It is not just conservationists – it is a mainstream view that vegetation be protected from clearing.
There are parts of the Mornington Peninsula where fire risk is quite high; there are stacks of people living there now; and from a purely fire-safety perspective there is scope for wholesale rewriting of planning regs. That would be a shame.
Hopefully the backlash against vegetation following the RC will not be too strong.
Fear a relative of friends of mine here in Armidale is missing in the Victorian bush fires but haven’t been able to get on to them to confirm it. If so, very concerned for them as they are quite close to me.
People died doing exactly what they were told to do
This is my take on the “rough” frequency of burning regimes from early written accounts of Victoria from the early 1800s, fire ecology research in SE Australia (have not seen the latest) and palaeoecological studies (mainly charcoal in wetland cores).
Grasslands < 5 yr frequency. Gellibrand (late 1830s) walked from Westernport to Geelong and only once he mentions tall kangaroo grass – the rest was recently burnt and easy to traverse. In spring, summer, autumn the pall of smoke around Pt Phillip was often dense due to burning. All early writers mention the frequently burnt grasslands.
Woody grasslands to grassy woodlands – Koori people worked cool burns through here pretty frequently, probably 5 – 20 year return period. Confirmed by park-like descriptions of these areas.
Heathlands 10-40 depending on the type
Dry sclerophyll – some of the trees in box-ironbark forests before being cleared for stamping mills and bakeries were absolutely massive. Clearly the understorey, full of short-term fire promoted species was burnt often, but the trees were big. Soils too infertile for grasses in box-ironbark. 10-30 years, but not too hot? Perhaps longer in some areas
Messmate dry 25-75? Just guessing here. Heathy understoreys burnt more frequently.
Wet sclerophyll – 50-200, except for open areas burnt for bush tucker
Ash 200+
Rainforest 500+
The other kicker is climate. It seems in southern Vic that climate was wetter for the last 2,000 years pre-European and that in the forests, conditions were much wetter. We had mist on southern peaks for days according to early diaries. Not now. Climate has dried (from 1840 and significantly from 1997), we have opened up the forests; most land-use creates drier conditions than climate alone under natural conditions. The crap was burnt out of forests during the clearing phases in the late 1800s. I have transcribed weather data from the Cape Otway lighthouse in the 1890s where nearly every January and February day was obscured by smoke.
Climate is changing. The frequencies that all of these ecosystems were burnt has changed massively over the historical period and the nexus between climate and land-use is forcing all burning frequencies shorter and hotter. We burn the grassy systems less frequently and the wetter forests more frequently. There is no going back.
Can we sustain healthy ecosystems and habitat for humans and other animals under a modified, drying and warming climate? This is an enormous challenge – history can help us understand the dynamics of these systems but it no longer provides a template for their management.
Caroline: There are fire towers in plenty of places, including this one. I’d imagine there are a number of them through the Blue Mountains as well.
However, as noted, it’s not spotting the fires that’s the problem. It’s getting to the fires quickly enough to do something about them. While that kind of saturation coverage might theoretically be possible nearer Melbourne, it’s simply not possible to get to fires on the Dargo High Plains, or near Woods Point, of north of Orbost in a hurry.
Myriad,
But then on the other hand, I should not have said above what I said and certainly not in the way I phrased it. I sincerely appologise for being offensive. I’m sorry for getting carried away with the flow.
Robert, maybe then, there is a very good case for more full time employee fire-fighters based in say 5 or 6 strategic regional centres, with airports, who could rush to put bush fires out the moment they are spotted.
It might mean that a purpose built airport or two would need to be built for inaccessible areas that could deal with an elvis visit or, the likely more important, permanent smaller dumping plane and helicopter traffic.
The general point that Caroline makes, of getting onto things early, makes very good sense to me.
joe2: it’s worth thinking about, sure. But as I understand it, while fire bombers are an essential asset, they can’t do the job on their own. And getting ground crews and their equipment in fast enough, on a day like Saturday, is pretty much impossible.
But I’m sure this will be something that the Royal Commission should seriously look at.
Caroline: apologies.
What I called “illogical” I should have called “impractical”. If there are 100 small fires in an area (large or small), it is, I believe impractical for the fire services to put them all out immediately. [It took two helicopters plus ground crews at least an hour to control the Thompson's Road fire last Monday afternoon near Churchill: relatively easy terrain, local road access. And uniquely: a CFA staging area nearby at Churchill. Ideal fire suppression conditions, and yet....]
By all means, try to put out those fires that can be dealt with swiftly. I’m not suggesting ‘laissez-faire’: “let’s just sit back and see what happens next”. By no means! I lived in the bush for 23 years.
But see Robert’s comments at 11.01pm last night. It seems I share many views of bushfire fighting with him. But he expresses them more clearly and succinctly than I.
I think there may well be some blind indifference (or ignorance) amongst some rural dwellers, but I haven’t seen much evidence of that in Gippsland.
I very much doubt that “ignoring” a fire is due to macho, “manly”, patronising pride. The blokes I know take fire preparations and fire safety very seriously and don’t underestimate the dangers. As I said earlier, two of these men evacuate their house early, as a matter of course. Their manly instincts and knowledge of fire persuade them that “discretion is the better part of valour”. They participate in fuel reduction (clearing around the house) as much as anyone else. They are not blase.
This is a complex problem, and I’m sure I need to do a lot of careful thinking over the next few months, before summer and the next fire season. The garden “dugout” shelter in open ground and protected by a soil roof appeals strongly at present. But perhaps I’m being “illogical”?
cheerio
Yesterday I wrote:
Exactly as predicted, this.
Nathan, you’re not a prophet, just a very naughty boy.
Wrote my own letter to the SMH this morning, inspired by anger that they could publish such tripe at this of all times.
But it’s balanced by counter-blame from everyone’s favourite Akubrist, oh prophet.
Wow, Paul, spooky. I was particularly struck by this bit:
All their own fault, see? I’m surprised she didn’t mention that quite a high proportion of people like that have probably had abortions as well. Talk about your howling restraint.
Devine makes me ill with this blame game. It’s just so inappropriate.
FF and others:
We seem to agree that there is nothing particularly sacred about the Australian bush. FF puts it rather well when he says we either do something about it or go.
Robert implies that we could see one huge fire from Melbourne to Coolangatta if (when) the days of acute high temperatures come back.
More fire will not fix it.
This is the Huggy plan:
1. Sheep must be removed from the dry lands of the East Coast, they degrade the grasslands and destroy the soil and watercourses with their nasty little feet. Cattle too.
2. Plant wide bands of fire resistant trees in a huge matrix across the state; after wood chipping all the gum trees that stand in the way. Tree selection should include large numbers of deciduous trees in an open formation that would improve the soil fertility
3. Surround each town with a 2-6 km wide ring of fire resistant trees. Fire resistant means a tree that impedes the progress of a fire not one that thrives on it. The idea is to let the fire enter a zone where there are no volatile oils in the leaves and where the water content of the tree is high. This will allow us to deal with the fire.
4. Prohibit the planting of Eucalyptus or Pinus species inside town boundaries.
5. Mandate underground fire refuges in every dwelling or building that is located in the bush
I would hazard a guess that the native wildlife will benefit mightily from this strategy as they will now have refuges to go to, grass and leaves to eat and water to drink when the soil returns to pre white invasion state. (There are some amazing photos circulating of firefighters, cyclists and kids giving wild Koalas water to drink)
What sort of livestock to replace the hard hoofed sheep and cows?
No Idea. Since Diabetes is such a problem we could set up camel milk farms perhaps?
http://www.ijddc.com/article.asp?issn=0973-3930;year=2002;volume=22;issue=2;spage=70;epage=74;aulast=Agrawal
Huggy
Devine Blame Game.
Obviously the people who continued to work in or visit the Twin Towers in NYC brought their deaths on themselves.
The buildings had been the target of a serious (basement) bombing attack circa 1993. What were they thinking? It was clearly unsafe to be there.
And here is where the most destructive of the fires began – on a grassy hill outside Kilmore, many kilometres away from the nearest national park.
Further, if one uses Google maps, satellite view and street view to check out the terrain, it would appear that the hill is on farmland with a pine plantation immediately to the east
Devine is the crudest of propagantists. Not only does she ignore the facts that don’t suit her ‘argument’, she is prepared to exploit an unfolding tragedy for cheap political purposes.
It is discraceful that the SMH continues to give her column space on a regular basis.
So it’s the “greenies”!
Miranda Devine, like many of her wingnut confreres, is partial to a conspiracy theory. In her intemperate rant, the “greenies” play the same shadowy, but undefined role in her story as the “Elders of Zion” play in countless wingnut plots — omnipresent but unidentified.
Do these “greenies” have names, Miranda?
This is as close as she gets:
Yes, at the centre of this vast greenie conspiracy is … the Nillumbik Shire Council. The Devil Incarnate!
But wait! How did these fiends achieve their satanic might? Oh, that’s right. They were elected into office by “tree-changers, organic farmers and artists”.
Bingo! Eureka! Miranda has found the Hands that Signed the Paper. These folks are very familiar whipping boys of the Right. Put out more flags. The Culture War is on again!
Wingnut catchprase: “We have to destroy the commune in order to save it!”
Katz, it’s also worth noting that I looked up the 2008 Council election results and found that none of the three Green Party candidates for Nillumbik Shire Council was elected.
“The Kinglake area was a nature-loving community of tree-changers, organic farmers and artists to the north of Melbourne.”
You think that was bad , this is what the editor had to work with…..
“The Kinglake area was a nature-loving community of tree-hugging greenies, so called organic ‘farmers’, nudists, unemployed artists and academics to the north of Melbourne.”
My sympathies go to the many families, relatives and friends, and everyone across Australia for this tragedy. The entire nation is suffering. We need to pull together as a community and nation to help recover and assist those who are grieving and have suffered great loss.
Opportunistic political comments by those pushing agendas are grossly insensitive to bushfire victims.
The only focus at present is still finding the deceased and helping the survivors and others deeply affected. I and many of my friends (some of whom are still fighting the fires and are on the ground in affected areas) have been deeply personally affected by these bushfires and the loss of life.
Oh, and I forgot…..”and people choosing outwardly gay lifestyles”
I know Nillumbik (nee Eltham) very well. It is impossible to win a council seat there unless you are tinged with green. That has been the way in that neck of the woods at least since the 1960s.
Not only nudists, hippies, wiccans, and practitioners of macrame vote for these folks. The mass of the punters vote for this tendency as well.
The commonly expressed sentiment is that maybe one day my house will burn down, but that is the price I’m willing to pay to live among the trees.
A regular roll-call of bushfires has done nothing to erode that sentiment. In fact, the sentiment has grown stronger. Ash Wedneday didn’t change it. I wonder if 2009 will.
As harsh as it may be, I believe the most effective way to change this behaviour may be to make it expensive to ensure such properties. But even that won’t work. It was stated on the radio this morning that 25% of properties in Kinglake weren’t insured.
Such a policy would mean that the area would fill up with adventuresome self-insurers, the very kind of folk who are less likely to want to “pave paradise”.
Bottom line. Nothing is likely to change.
I live in Nillumbik. The woman who I’ve been buying all my vegetables from for nearly two years was a Kinglake organic farmer. No inverted commas. She and her husband passed away in the fire but her three children survived. This community is so profoundly damaged that it’s hard to imagine how it’s going to recover. Katz, I think everything has changed.
Time will tell Laura. 70 years of co-existence with the threat of fire suggests otherwise.
I recall similar sentiments to your own being expressed after Ash Wednesday 1983. After a few fitful efforts, folks slumped back into their tree-loving ways.
NTTAWWT.
It seems that having some respect for the dead and grieving and experiencing humane sympathy and displaying decency, is beyond some writers.
Laura: our hearts go out to you.
I saw some AU news in Dili this morning. Apparently “greenies’ are to blame – not arsonists.
Thats funny, because last time I looked, “Greenies’ werent in chanrge of the VIC govt, who presumbably set policy on uel reduction.
Obviously, the fact that the fires took place on the hottest day ever recorded in vic history has nothing to do with it, and we neednt think this disaster prefigures future events if we fail to reduce emmissions
These fires should really signal the end of climate change denialism in this country. NO wonder their desperate for green scapegoats. Pathetic.
Bilb, no worries, and thanks very much. It’s a topic we’re all no doubt feeling some emotion about.
FF,
exactly what did I say that suggested a misty eyed romatic and illogical view of the Aboriginal approach to the Australian landscape? I’m not sure how you got there from me pointing out we need to look at (and I quote) roughly mimicing what they did in some areas – and in simplistic terms – cos you know, this is a blog and trying to reproduce the thousands of pages of research on conservation fire management and fire ecology doesn’t seem very weildy. That goes for you too zorronsky.
I’m not necessarily arguing for some pristine exactly-as pre 1788, but that it’s than direction we need to be looking for both the preservation of biodiversity and human safety. In fact what you wrote seems to basically agree with it, with the large exception of for some reason thinking that wholesale exclusion of fire is a good thing – why? on what evidence? Here in Tas exclusion of fire from forest ecosystems adapted for certain fire regimes has caused far greater fire hazards than it has reduced – and when I say hazards, I certainly don’t mean just to humans and their interests, I mean to the very survival of that ecosystem. Encouraging conditions that create high intensity fires is an ecological as well as human disaster. Seed banks are destroyed, soils are effectively sterilized, we create fire-deserts.
My view is not a romantic but a practical and at least for Tasmania, science-based view: being surrounded by ecosystems that have been adapted to tolerate and essentially encourage medium intensity fires to maintain themselves & their biodiversity, and also maintain manageable fuel loads is far more desirable than living next to high density, high fuel load forests that explode like a bomb when they finally burn taking their ecosystem with them. Removing / controlling introduced species and reducing the impacts of European stock is part and parcel of that, if we are serious about trying to manage our native ecosystems sustainably.
Evidence in Tasmania only increases, not decreases, with regard to the Aborigines did indeed manage the landscape to a great extent via fire. Manage is certainly appropriate word, here.
You’re both contending that the Aborigines didn’t burn particular areas in Victoria – not my area of knowledge. I’d be surprised though if there was evidence necessarily of large fires that took out major trees as a result of Aboriginal practices (except for oopsies obviously), as to my knowledge Aborigines used fire in the vast majority of cases to create open grassy woodlands, with canopy, that favoured their favourite game, not to take out forests wholesale – hence burning in the wet, cool months (where they did).
But as Roger says, the really big challenge now is climate change and how it will radically impact on our native ecosystems, and encourage extreme fire events.
Well said Ambigulous.
LeftyE
You are exactly right.
These ultra hot days are not going to go away. We will have to learn to survive in them or else. Just a few more days of flash point temperatures such as last weekend and the entire bush in the state would have erupted. No arsonists required.
The fires that followed after the wind change were “normal” and we should not confuse the two.
These intense fires are an unforeseen consequence of global warming and can only get worse. The denialists have to stop blathering about the benefits if increased average temperatures and go learn some basic physics. If the average temperature in a chaotic system (the weather) increases it means that an immense amount of energy has been injected into the system. This means both higher and lower extreme temperatures.
Fire is mediated by peak temperatures and relative humidity.
In the case of the recent fires the temperatures were very high and humidity very low – this is the worst possible case.
It is worth noting that Queensland is not considered really fire prone despite having a similar flora, this is because the humidity is far higher here and as a consequence the peak temperatures seldom get above say 35C. Inland Queensland can get very hot but it is not forested in the same way as Victoria.
On the globe, the humidity is highest at the equator- where there is a nearby sea.
As you approach the polar latitudes the humidity declines. Equatorial temperatures in sea linked locations never get above 40C if they did it would be all over rover.
Huggy
ditto, Adrian. Well said Ambigulous. And Laura, I’m so sorry.
Vale Jenny Barnett
Devine should be overjoyed – “greenies” are being harvested
She is a disgusting, disgusting person.
Jenny (and her husband John), are two examples of the finest in our communities. Much of Jenny’s work was in finding the balance between the bush, fire and people.
Friends of mine appear to have lost a nephew in the fires. He is missing and there is absolutely no sign of him. While I agree these fires are a harbinger of things to come, and an absolute sign that dangerous global warming is a reality, at the moment, the main concern should be for those people overwhelmed by this dreadful tragedy.
It was heartwrenching to read my friend’s e-mail on this. I won’t comment further as it would be utterly inappropriate to give the details in a public forum such as this.
Laura, my deepest sympathies.
Shout-out – Do your weekly supermarket grocery shop at a Coles supermarket on Friday night (13th) if you can. Coles has said they’ll donate profits from their sales for that night. Thanks to my daughter for the tip.
I thought it was all day, Ms Node.
Oops, yes, my bad. Blame it on Ms Node.
Controlled burning with its objective of “fuel reduction” and the protection of people and property has been controversial since the 1950s when it was introduced here on a broad scale. Data from a range of studies and arguments have long suggested that such fire practice has far-ranging implications, not all of which are understood and with undesirable consequences not restricted to impacts on “fuel”. Fortunately, as as starting point at least, we have a richer understanding of fire ecology which challenges simplistic assertions that Australian biota are “adapted to fire”.
Fact is wildfires continue to occur here irrespective of planned burning over large tracts of bushland, as we have tragically seen yet once again in the past heartbreaking week. And yet wildfires and planned burning have together greatly increased the area of forest land burnt each year since the 1950s. Why?
We know the demand for prescribed burning increases after every devastating wildfire. But is this this really the answer or even any real protection? Prescribed burning is now applied to over 10,0000 square km a year in southern forests. The result: a totally new fire regime of very frequent, low intensity fires which is totally different to that which the majority of native plants and animals evolved under and to which they have adapted.
Of course, such a program may have some benefit in near-urban bushland areas – benefits for people and property – but it remains a very controversial land management program in the wider forested lands in conservation and nature reserves and in national parks. It’s also increasingly questioned in terms of its contribution to local and regional atmospheric pollution. And then there is its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, only just beginning to be assessed.
Planned burning has demonstrably not reduced the number of unplanned fires and the area burnt by these fires. In fact the opposite is indicated and there is highly questionable justification for its extensive use today given its detrimental impact on native vegetation, animal habitats, biodiversity and water quality, as well as the probable contribution to gaseous and particulate atmospheric pollution. The literature has long shown that burning in southern Australia more frequently than 7-8 years results in a decline in biodiversity and controlled burning will never remove the threat of large wildfires unless we destroy a significant part of the above ground biomass – the Huggybunny option.
Re Aborigines. There are weaknesses in the ethno-historical record about Aboriginal fire use the main one being its inability to answer the question of whether or not Aborigines had a predictive knowledge of the ecological consequences of burning, especially long-term outcomes. And then there is the historical record’s inability to determine accurately the spatial extent of deliberately lit fires, the different types of vegetation and the reasons why fires were lit.
We may never know if the Aborigines used fire skilfully to achieve specific ends, apart from Aboriginal lore that insists they did. I am not disputing that precious oral history and cultural record but there is little written down about it to fairly assess. There is a definite constituency in the broader environmental movement and amongst scholars and professionals working in the field that all logging and broadscale burning in forests should cease immediately. I am part of that longstanding current. The less human intervention the better for the recovery of forests’ dynamic equilibrium which is the best protection against the damage caused to us and other animals by wildfires.
The firestick farming theory is now used by people with a pro-development ethos whose aim is to exploit as much of nature as possible for economic gain and to do so by dominating and managing the environment including by burning it constantly and frequently.
And that is very scary.
Just found out I can’t give blood because of the big C. Was making arrangements to go up tomorrow, but a health-worker friend of mine I asked to drive me into town said “Don’t bother. They won’t let you in case there’s cancer cells in the blood.” Ah, well.
FF, I’m not sure if your post up there was for me, but at any rate, thanks, very interesting.
I would note a couple of things:
pardon me if, even as a green voter and member, and someone who’s studied in this area I have precious little time for the Wilderness Society, not least because they still have ‘wilderness’ in their title. I know you didn’t mention them specifically, but I’m not sure who you are referring to as those who believe fire should be excluded, other than arguments I’ve seen put forward by them. Most conservation etc. agencies and literature I’m familiar with is more along the lines of what Paul Norton linked to, for eg, from the Australian Conservation Foundation. The work of Bush Heritage to in practical application also comes to mind.
Your points for me still don’t answer a fairly fundamental question: sure we don’t have enough knowledge about Aboriginal practices at this time, and more research in all relevant areas viz fire ecology is needed. Your scenario of keeping fire out though doesn’t seem to account for the scenario that between the Aborigines and normal climatic/geological/ecological forces, fire is indeed necessary for many Australian ecosystems. Because if you’re wrong, we’re going to lose them, particularly so with the chance for climate change to really screw things up and encourage ‘ground zero’ style wildfires. I’m also really not sure how you’re ‘not disputing’ Aborignal oral history then sits with keeping fire out of areas Aborigines and other evidence points to being previously fired as part of a regular cycle.
It also runs counter in my experience to the growing consensus that whether we like it or not, we have interfered and ‘leaving it alone’ is not an option anymore; similar to it not really being an option to have people walk off the land and leave it be, because weeds and pests will go unmanaged and cause even more damage.
And in case it ain’t evident, I’m not a pro-development shill. Ta.
Bad luck Paul but it’s the thought that counts. Well said FF. And in addition to the oral record of fire stick burning, why is it that the oral record from ancestors all of whom were either timber workers and rural Victorians for several generations , given little credence?
Myriad, if you’d like to send me your email I will send you the vast references backing my position, which have nothing to do (ugh!) with the dreaded ACF or Wilderness Society (not that they didn’t have a contribution to make).
And for the record, and in the interests of fair disclosure, I am a woman, a founding member of the Greens (NSW), a conservation activist for many years prior to that, and for the last three years an Aboriginal cultural heritage professional employed by state government.
Good point, Zorronsky. I almost literally grew up in rainforests inland from the Gold Coast which in fact were initially preserved as national parks in the post WW2 period primarily through the efforts of loggers and their families who fell in love with their beauty and wanted above all to protect them, live in them and make them known and accessible to others who’d love and appreciate them as they did, without despoiling them.
Hats off to Romeo Lahey, Arthur Groom and their families, the loggers who saved these exquisite places that are my dreaming place.
Zorronsky, where are you? The Grampians?
I’m 15yrs a Grampians fan and resident, after nearly 30yrs in South Aust. in the Adelaide Hills and Fleurieu Peninsula and initially Mid-Gippsland. I still carry [and often use]a four and a half pound Kelly racing axe to clear fallen limbs and trees on the local back roads.
Good to hear you carry an axe, zorronsky. Some of my friends in mid-Gippsland carry a chainsaw for the same purpose.
Don’t be narky Ambi, I’ve got 3 chainsaws but I like a good excuse to swing the Kelly.
I wasn’t being narky. I genuinely believe it’s a good idea to be equipped to clear a tree or bough off a road, if you live in the bush. Just common sense and neighbourly.
apologies if you took it any other way
nothing like swinging an axe now and then – agreed!
Sorry Ambi, I’m a bit prickly m’self lately what with the barbed wire connection, no sign of a working broadband in ADSL or Wireless anytime in the near future and ribs that aren’t mending as quickly as I’d like. By the bye, I lived at Delburn ’till 53 yrs ago and played footy with the 5 Snells in the ’56 premiership year at Mirboo Nth.
Victorian Environment and Sustainability Minister Gavin Jennings is talking some sense and decency on the prescribed burning issue.
As for the McIntyres, Devines, Tuckeys and Nalliahs of this world, they give every impression of having been beside themselves with glee ever since the scale of the catastrophe became clear.
Zorronsky
My brother just bought a place in Mirboo North.
It didn’t go up, as you know, but the Boollarra fires came too close for comfort.
His house is on the main road next to the Catholic church and across the road is a dry and thickly forested gully.
Two Sundays ago they had the Festival of St Paul at the church and to celebrate, they had a full fireworks display.. including rockets and the whole biz… at nine-thirty in the morning… (as everyone points out, you can’t see fireworks at that time of day) in the gully opposite!
!…!
I find your comments highly interesting and informative BTW.
Helen I know The spot and I was onto your previous comments re Mirboo Nth. Seems a bit reckless, fireworks I agree. I recall fireworks and bonfires for Guy Fawkes being outlawed years ago. Most of the area uder fire I worked in for the Aust Paper Mills Forests dept’ back when, and one of the few mementos I have that survived Ash Wednesday is a photo’ taken between Delburn and Darlimurla after cutting down a stag tree [no chainsaws] with my Grandfather myself and an Italian migrant who was with Italo Delpozzo’s Radiata pine nursery crew. That nursery provided the saplings used for the first plantings for the Silver Ck pine plantation, the first of the pines planted in that area. I still feel guilty for being a part of that process but we were told back then that the plantations would be in strips between the native forest. One thing about felling these old giants with the crosscut was that it gave time for the animals to vacate.
Hi Zorronsky,
I lived near Churchill for 22 years. We used to drive up Creamery Road behind Yinnar, going through eucalypt plantations, then along the Strzelecki Hwy to Mirboo North via Darlimurla. It’s great that LP gives the three of us space to chat and reminisce. The fire damage at Boolarra was terrible. But as it turned, merely a prelude….
BTW, after the Delburn fires, a CFA firefighter on the radio said they were attending a small fire in School Road Mirboo North, when she saw a 4WD pull up on a road about 500m away: the driver set a fire then drove off. Around 9pm I think it was.
It’s not the right time for light relief…. but…..
The toilers of Toongabbie Have stripped them for the fray,
The boys of Boolarra Are out in force today.
The messmates of Traralgon Have mustered from afar,
With stringy-bark from Morwell And blackbutt from Yinnar.
…
They met a team from Melbourne And showed them all they knew,
When charging down full-chested As Gippsland players do.
For little marks and umpires They hadn’t time to spare,
But caught up their opponents, And whirled them in the air.
…
They met a team from Melbourne, And brought them to their knees;
They were a combination Expert in falling trees.
And, oh! those men in Melbourne, Like grain in Autumn dropped,
For some of them were ring-barked, And many more were chopped.
…
The clever team from Melbourne Were quickly in the dumps,
With floundering by the swampside, And bouncing off the stumps;
For half the team were injured, The other half were sore
This was the kind of football They’d never played before.
…
Oh send abroad the tidings Pass it from peak to peak,
From Whitelaw’s Track to Foster, Which once was Stockyard Creek.
Tell fishermen by Toora, The stirring story tell,
How Melbourne went to Gippsland, And like dead timber fell.
…
I ask you to remember, When speaking of this game,
That Yinnar is not Melbourne, Nor are its ways the same.
It may not mark so deftly, It may not kick so far
But when it comes to falling things, Why – Melbourne’s not Yinnar.
…
They gathered up the fragmenrs, And washed away each stain,
With Bullock-team and jinker, They drove them to the train.
Laid out in splints and stretchers, They tucked away each man,
And sent them back to Melbourne, In the Casualty Van.
– “Melbourne’s not Yinnar” (Anon., 1905) – in “Shadow and Shine: an Anthology of Gippsland Literature”
FF,
not sure how to send you an email? Can’t seem to find yours on this site and your handle is not coming up as a link.
I think time is the key factor in terms of taking into account oral records. It doesn’t mean you discount early settler experience, but it doesn’t span several thousand years. Also, while early settlers in many ways adapted admirably to Australian conditions, a Eurocentric approach to a vastly different landscape is very evident and is really only being challenged on a broadscale in the last, what, maybe 30 years?
Wow! Fantastic. I love it. I spent my first few months for APMF in a tent against a fence on what was then Mountain Hut Rd within walking distance of Yinnar. Had to visit the magistrate for taking trees too close to the[wrong side of] boundry for what was to become the new highway to Mirboo Nth. Here’s one of mine about a redgum left behind by sleeper cutters in the Devil’s Garden near Halls Gap. Felled and ready to split I guessed they probably left it behind to get away from fire as Blackwoods, Black and Silver wattles and malelucas had grown around it hiding a prize firewood log until I saw it from horseback.
Red Heart.
The tree had seen an ancient tribe camp down beside its huge canopy and gather dried and discarded branches to create the coals to heat the flesh of creatures that had grazed beneath or played among the shelter from the burning summer sun.
The tree had seen the smoke approach from fire escaped from tribes control and fanned to heat so searing as to shut down life outside of bark while red heart inside awaits cool rains drenching flooding life reviving.
The tree had seen the new creatures with a new tribe white and clothed march through and cut and slash and burn digestion now a frenzy by mouth and blade and plough and fire and noise when pain of saw and axe bit deep through sap wood and red heart..crashed down.
The tree had seen through life within slow dying yet still living giving providing for smaller creatures many gnawing scratching still digesting yet producing earth to earth, More fires now as many as the rains then screaming saw and axe again red heart exposed to new tribes fires.. red coals.
onya zorronsky!
Once Yinnar’s in your heart it will never leave. Cheerio.
FF # 265
Re your comments about prescribed burning and its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.
This article indicates that Victoria’s bushfires have released carbon dioxide almost equal to Australia’s industrial emissions for a whole year.
The Kyoto Protocol didn’t include emissions from deforestation. The article notes that:
Of course this has serious implications for Australia’s carbon emissions targets and could blow them out of the water. There could also be huge financial imposts if special allowance isn’t made for “accidental” bushfires.
Prescribed burning under a new climate change agreement would appear to be difficult unless it could be proven to be essential. And your comments indicate it might not be an effective method anyway?
Are mechanical means of hazard reduction more effective than prescribed burning?
It seems like an enormous task, but is large-scale mechanical means of hazard reduction (e.g. removing dead material, pruning, larger fire breaks etc) a feasible option, at least around populated areas? It might be a labour-intensive and expensive option, but given the risk to human life, and the potential financial liability under the possible new climate change agreement, would it be more practical than prescribed burning?
There needs to be trade off here. Burn more around existing settlements sure – but no more settlements in existing forested areas.
Or if you do move into new bush then you must comply with some type of fire survival regimen including mandatory evacuation and building codes that give some chance of safety in a big fire.
Squatters were using controlled burning in the years soon after settlement of the Western Districts. They obviously took the practice from their landlords and would regularly burn in August. This would have a positive effect on the grass-themeda australis requires burning to open up the swards- but it did not stop the wildfires of Black Thursday 1851, when burning ashes fell on northern Tasmania. I think controlled burning ceased as a general rule when wooden fences were built. This was before climate change.
I remember during my childhood a big fire started in Flinders Chase on Kangaroo Island. My father was a farmer like all our neighbours, who went off on their tractors to fight it, leaving behind bewildered sons with shovels and wet super bags as the rear guard. They came back a week or so later. A couple of years later a fire started in the neighbour’s paddock by lightning, although the sky was almost clear. I heard the thunder, then saw the smoke. Again it was tractors and wet bags. How naive we were.
As for climate change in the present debate, it is only recently the obvious conclusion of an extensive study was made that el nino does not influence SE Australian weather as much as the IOD, Indian Ocean Dipole. No mention was made in the newspaper reports of other factors such as the ABC: the Asiatic Brown Cloud is known to influence the northern Australian monsoon by providing increased microparticulates for rain cloud formation. The ABC is partly caused by woodland fires in SE Asia which are used to provide clear land for palm oil production.
I suspect our climatic cycles are on a longer basis than our research enables us to grasp. And we don’t know yet whether the averages we have been working on for rainfall are based on a period of wet or dry climate. Australian rainfall, as we all know, is very variable, and we have had long droughts before, for instance 1895-1925 was a period of almost constant drought. The Mightly Murray was two feet wide at Echuca in 1923. The average runoff in the Murray basin is equivalent to 25mm of rain a year. The Mississippi basin has runoff of more than 500mm, 20 times as much.
And another thing: I have noticed that no cyclones have crossed into the Australian land mass this season, particularly into Western Australia. They provide the low pressure systems passing along the southern coasts with upper level moist tropical air, which often falls as downpours in the south during the summer. We had a couple of these events at the end of 2007 which may have been as the result of lows in the north linking with lows in the south.
As for the policy of go or stay, I suggest that the meaning of the ‘go early’ part is that one gets in the car and has breakfast in a fire refuge. Going early on Saturday, when we all knew it was going to be hot and dangerous, meant first thing in the morning, not just before the fire came through. It seems to me, those decisions are made before the fires start anywhere, while one is eating toast and is calm. That being so, I have noticed in newspaper photos that many of the houses were burnt yet the vegetation around seems green. The Age had several pictures the other day where the grass around the houses in Marysville also appeared to be green. It was like the fire picked out the houses and left the trees. These may have been undefended houses so the effect of ember attack was to destroy the houses. In other words the fire front was pushing embers forward-and we heard of distances like 15km-and they destroyed the houses, the fires appear not to have got to the towns.
Finally: we can analyse as much as we like, point fingers, blame or not, grow oak trees-good idea-but nothing we can say can detract from the courage of those who lived, and unfortunately died, during this firestorm, and those who continue to fight the fires. There are too few words.
That being so, I have noticed in newspaper photos that many of the houses were burnt yet the vegetation around seems green. The Age had several pictures the other day where the grass around the houses in Marysville also appeared to be green. It was like the fire picked out the houses and left the trees.
Our neighbour’s lawn remained the only green thing after fire swept through (Medlow Bath 2001) and it was undoubtedly because they watered it every other day and it had as I heard someone say 30% moisture in it. The house which did burn down, slowed the fire front down enormously as it was a complicated affair, an A-Frame ‘Mansion’ (with a Guinness Book of Records Teddy Bear collection in the attic). It was as though the fire really wanted something to get stuck into. Fire seems to hunt out a fuel source. As I stood on the highway looking on, pandemonium reigned, choppers everywhere narrowly missing each other, scooping up water from the most minute water sources, twenty or more fire trucks, many from Sydney had gathered outside the Hydro Majestic, an historic hotel which because it was threatened probably saved us all. As I surveyed this scene I saw that the A-Frame had an enormous hole in its roof. How did the fire do that? I wondered. I later learned that the Elvis aircrane had dropped the entirety of its load atop the house, some 5 tonnes of water which smashed a hole in the roof and the first floor and actually did more damage than the fire.
I wonder and its seems counter intuitive, if actually creating a complex fuel source within the boundaries of a contained fire might give it something to really work on and cause it to burn itself out. No idea how that could be done though.
I’m also thinking that simple human sized wombat-like burrows or tunnels with two entrances would be pretty effective as fire shelters. Its not as though you’d have to stay in them for very long and they could be roof bolted for stability if necessary.