Greenies, Not Climate Change,
the Cause of the 2009 Australian Victorian Bush fire Tragedies
Bushfires: Not climate change, not arson, but Greens to blame
(1) Bushfires: Parks Victoria did not carry out fuel reduction burning - Phil Cheney
(2) Bushfires: Green ideas must take blame for deaths
(3) Fired-up forests have more impact than the loggers, by Mark Poynter
(4) Bushfires are a major emitter of Carbon Dioxide + Greenhouse Gases
(5) Fewer Skilled workers in Forests once Logging is banned; sawmillers used to fight fires at source
(6) The Green Inferno, by Phil Cheney
(1) Bushfires: Parks Victoria did not carry out fuel reduction burning - Phil Cheney
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25033770-12377,00.html
Royal Commission should examine fuel reduction, says CSIRO bushfire expert
February 10, 2009
Article from: Australian Associated Press
ONE of the nation's top bushfire experts says the Royal Commission investigating the Victorian blazes needs to examine the declining practice of fuel reduction in heavily forested areas.
While temperatures rising several degrees might increase the fire danger by one or 2 per cent, doubling the fuel load doubled the threat, the head of CSIRO's bushfires research unit Phil Cheney said.
"It's very difficult to protect a home and life in tall forest," Mr Cheney said.
"If fuel reduction was carried out around homes and in adjacent forests there was an excellent chance of people staying and protecting themselves and their homes."
Fuel reduction practices had changed dramatically in the past 20 to 30 years, Mr Cheney said.
"I really think that is what the government has to address in this royal commission."
Organisations such as Parks Victoria did not carry out fuel reduction burning on a broad-area scale, he said.
"Unless it is applied in a mosaic, in a professional and sensible way, then it's not going to work."
To save a home in fires like those at the weekend, residents would have needed to have cleared an area of about 30 to 40 metres of flammable material, Mr Cheney said.
That would have been "extraordinarily difficult" to do because in eucalyptus forests leaf litter was falling all the time.
Evidence from the 2003 Canberra fires also suggested anyone with a mulched garden around their house guaranteed its destruction.
Another CSIRO expert, Andrew Sullivan, said nothing could be done about weather and topography.
"Methods for managing the fuel is about the only option we have in trying to mitigate the impacts of fires," he said.
(2) Bushfires: Green ideas must take blame for deaths
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/green-ideas-must-take-blame-for-deaths-20090211-84mk.html
Green ideas must take blame for deaths
Miranda Devine
February 12, 2009
It wasn't climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend. It wasn't arsonists. It was the unstoppable intensity of a bushfire, turbo-charged by huge quantities of ground fuel which had been allowed to accumulate over years of drought. It was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts, and which prevents landholders from clearing vegetation to protect themselves.
So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.
Governments appeasing the green beast have ignored numerous state and federal bushfire inquiries over the past decade, almost all of which have recommended increasing the practice of "prescribed burning". Also known as "hazard reduction", it is a methodical regime of burning off flammable ground cover in cooler months, in a controlled fashion, so it does not fuel the inevitable summer bushfires.
In July 2007 Scott Gentle, the Victorian manager of Timber Communities Australia, who lives in Healesville where two fires were still burning yesterday, gave testimony to a Victorian parliamentary bushfire inquiry so prescient it sends a chill down your spine.
"Living in an area like Healesville, whether because of dumb luck or whatever, we have not experienced a fire … since … about 1963. God help us if we ever do, because it will make Ash Wednesday look like a picnic." God help him, he was right.
Gentle complained of obstruction from green local government authorities of any type of fire mitigation strategies. He told of green interference at Kinglake - at the epicentre of Saturday's disaster, where at least 147 people died - during a smaller fire there in 2007.
"The contractors were out working on the fire lines. They put in containment lines and cleared off some of the fire trails. Two weeks later that fire broke out, but unfortunately those trails had been blocked up again [by greens] to turn it back to its natural state … Instances like that are just too numerous to mention. Governments … have been in too much of a rush to appease green idealism … This thing about locking up forests is just not working."
The Kinglake area was a nature-loving community of tree-changers, organic farmers and artists to the north of Melbourne. A council committed to reducing carbon emissions dominates the Nillumbik shire, a so-called "green wedge" area, where restrictions on removing vegetation around houses reportedly added to the dangers. In nearby St Andrews, where more than 20 people are believed to have died, surviving residents have spoken angrily of "greenies" who prevented them from cutting back trees near their property, including in one case, a tea tree that went "whoomp". Dr Phil Cheney, the former head of the CSIRO's bushfire research unit and one of the pioneers of prescribed burning, said yesterday if the fire-ravaged Victorian areas had been hazard-reduced, the flames would not have been as intense. ==
Kinglake and Maryville, now crime scenes, are built among tall forests of messmate stringy bark trees which pose a special fire hazard, with peeling bark creating firebrands that carry fire five kilometres out. "The only way to reduce the flammability of the bark is by prescribed burning" every five to seven years, Cheney said. He estimates between 35 and 50 tonnes a hectare of dry fuel were waiting to be gobbled up by Saturday's inferno.
Fuel loads above about eight tonnes a hectare are considered a fire hazard. A federal parliamentary inquiry into bushfires in 2003 heard that a fourfold increase in ground fuel leads to a 13-fold increase in the heat generated by a fire.
Things are no better in NSW, although we don't quite have Victoria's perfect storm of winds and forest types. Near Dubbo two years ago, as a bushfire raged through the Goonoo Community Conservation Area, volunteer firefighters bulldozing a control line were obstructed by National Parks and Wildlife Service employees who had driven from Sydney to stop vegetation being damaged.
The poor management of national parks and state forests in Victoria is highlighted by the interactive fire map on the website of the Department of Sustainability and Environment. Yesterday it showed that, of 148 fires started since mid-January, 120 started in state forests, national parks, or other public land, and just 21 on private property.
Only seven months ago, the Victorian Parliament's Environment and Natural Resources Committee tabled its report into the impact of public land management on bushfires, with five recommendations to enhance prescribed burning. This included tripling the amount of land to be hazard-reduced from 130,000 to 385,000 hectares a year. There has been little but lip service from the Government in response. Teary politicians might pepper their talking points with opportunistic intimations of "climate change" and "unprecedented" weather, but they are only diverting the blame. With yes-minister fudging and craven inclusion of green lobbyists in decision-making, they have greatly exacerbated this tragedy.
There is an opening now in Victoria for a predatory legal firm with a taste for David v Goliath class actions.
devinemiranda@hotmail.com
(3) Fired-up forests have more impact than the loggers, by Mark Poynter
Fired-up forests have more impact than the loggers
By Mark Poynter - posted Thursday, 30 November 2006
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5213
Most of Melbourne's forested water catchments are conserved in national parks. But about 13 per cent - mostly in the Thomson Dam catchment - is available for sustainable harvesting by the timber industry. About 0.2 per cent of the total catchment area is annually logged and regenerated.
With Victoria in the grip of long-term drought, it is being claimed that this annual timber harvest is denying Melburnians access to significant water resources because post-logging regrowth uses excessive volumes that would otherwise flow into storages.
While it is well known that regrowth uses more water than mature forests, predictions that ending logging would increase flows into storages are dubious; they are based on all catchment forests reaching maturity and staying that way forever.
Given Victoria's history of severe bushfire, it is almost certain that Melbourne's catchments will always contain substantial areas of post-fire regrowth that will prevent attainment of theoretically optimum levels of water production, regardless of whether or not logging continues.
Advanced regrowth from the January 1939 Black Friday bushfires already occupies about 40 per cent of Melbourne's catchments. It will continue to have a far greater impact on inflows into storages than the relatively small amount of regrowth from logging staggered across decades.
Severe bushfires that burn everything in their path over huge areas are unquestionably the greatest threat to Australian water supplies. They can initiate massive regrowth that reduces stream flows for decades and can dramatically degrade water quality.
The most stunning recent example was in 2003 when two million hectares of alpine and mountain forest in south-east Australia burnt over a two-month period. It has been estimated that regrowth initiated in the areas most severely burnt by this fire will absorb 430 billion litres of water a year for the next 50 years - water that would otherwise have flowed into headwater tributaries of the Murray River.
In addition, hugely increased sediment loads entering streams in the years following the fires significantly reduced the quality of town and city water supplies, including Canberra's.
Despite being portrayed as a villain, timber harvesting in the form of thinning can substantially counteract the impact of fire regrowth on water yield. The benefits of regrowth thinning have been widely studied throughout Australia. In Melbourne's catchments, strip-thinning trials have shown that up to 2.5 million litres a year of additional run-off can be generated from each hectare of thinned regrowth. A program of thinning the 1939 regrowth could add billions of litres of water to our storages.
Western Australia has been quicker to take advantage of thinning as a water management tool. Earlier this year, a $20 million, 12-year thinning program was initiated in a substantial segment of Perth's catchment following four years of exhaustive public and stakeholder consultation. Every 1,000 hectares thinned is expected to deliver an additional one billion litres of run-off into the Wungong Dam a year.
Although this involves substantial public expenditure because of forests mostly unsuited to timber production, the thinning of older and larger regrowth would most sensibly involve the production of timber that can fund the operation.
Compared with simply locking up catchments, active management of fire regrowth to increase water flows potentially offers a range of other benefits, including stronger imperatives for fire protection and improved stream health.
With a hotter and drier future, management authorities across all public land tenures may need to seriously consider substantial regrowth thinning in regions badly affected by fire.
For example, future thinning of regrowth in north-east Victorian catchments burnt in 2003 could substantially improve Murray River flows.
There are good reasons to restrict human activity in water catchments, but carefully regulated active management in parts of catchments has an important role to play. On this basis, it would be counterproductive to ban timber harvesting.
The debate should not be about whether or not logging is permitted in the catchments, but how and where it could best work as a self-funding water management tool.
Hopefully the community will acknowledge that severe fire is by far the greatest determinant of catchment water yield and adopt a more rational attitude to timber harvesting. ==
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5456
As bushfires continue to ravage southern Australia there are claims that the 2006-07 fire season may well be our worst. While prolonged drought has been the primary influence on the severity and controllability of these fires, the political obsession with creating national parks and other reserves is an important factor that should not be ignored.
Particularly since 2001, forest policy in mainland states has been largely shaped by pre-election commitments in response to environmental activism. In New South Wales, Western Australia and Victoria this has led to a substantial re-badgeing of publicly-owned state forests as national parks and conservation reserves to appease political forces representing a city-based demographic with limited knowledge of what it is campaigning for and little exposure to its ramifications.
While this has occurred primarily to curtail timber production, the implications for wider forest management have generally been ignored or dismissed. This was illustrated during the 2006 Victorian election campaign when the government announced that the contentious Goolengook forest in East Gippsland would become a national park, and foreshadowed the closure of the red gum timber industry to create further national parks along the Murray River.
That these commitments were announced with much fanfare despite on-going, partially completed investigations into these issues by the government’s own environmental assessment body, VEAC, confirms the dangerous disregard for scientific expertise that now typifies politically-expedient interference in bushland management.
Although all native forests are important for biodiversity conservation, the environmental movement has afforded national parks a special status akin to static museum exhibits that can be “locked up” and left. Unfortunately, this ignores the reality that forests are dynamic entities constantly changing in response to age as well as factors such as feral animals, weeds, and fire.
Most forest scientists acknowledge that inappropriate fire regimes transcend all other threats to represent the greatest danger to the environmental integrity of Australian forests and acknowledge the need for human intervention through controlled burning to manage fire frequency and minimise the threat of intense summer wildfires.
By being so fixated on logging, the environmental movement has traditionally ignored the infinitely greater threat of fire.
This was highlighted when lobby group, the Victorian National Parks Association, failed to consider fire as a significant management issue in their 2002 proposal to create an expanded Australian Alps National Park. Similarly, the Wilderness Society has traditionally ignored fire except in designated Wilderness Areas where it sees no place for managed cool burning and supports letting natural summer fires burn.
Now, after recent landscape-scale events, environmental activists are expressing strong opposition to the controlled use of fire in autumn and spring which they irrationally view as damaging to the environment despite the far greater potential for uncontrolled summer wildfires to severely damage forest ecology as well as impact on human life and property.
While public land managers continue to view fire protection as a critical management function, the conversion of state forest into parks and reserves has substantially reduced government revenue (from timber sales) with a concurrent loss of considerable forest and fire expertise from government agencies.
Most significantly, it has diverted management emphasis and limited funds away from the broad-acre considerations of state forests to a far narrower focus on localised recreational, tourism, and conservation issues in the substantial proportion of public forests now designated as parks and reserves.
While more sparing use of fuel reduction burning and access track closures in these areas reflects this changed priority, it arguably also reflects a lower enthusiasm for the broad-scale use of controlled fire that appears to be inherent to park management largely rooted in the ideals of urban-based environmentalism.
This contrasts sharply with the strong culture of active management and heightened summer readiness that was traditionally associated with state forests. This was typified by relatively high levels of fuel reduction burning, maintained road and track access, larger and more experienced government workforces located closer to forests, an economic imperative to protect timber resources, and far greater availability of skilled timber industry men and machines for fire-fighting.
While there is no direct link between timber production and fire per se, it is widely acknowledged that as the industry has declined this culture has been substantially weakened.
This should be a grave concern in view of recent comments by international fire expert, Dr Stephen Pyne, who implored Australia to retain its culture of controlled burning or risk the ecological damage that has befallen other developed countries such as the USA, where governments largely abandoned controlled fire in response to environmental activism.
Unfortunately, the forest policies of the past decade or more have already put us part way down this path and with factors such as heightened bureaucratic risk aversion requirements, more people living at bush interfaces, and expectations of a hotter climate making controlled fuel reduction burning more difficult and expensive, it’s use may further decline.
Countering this requires State governments to treat forests as more than just repositories of “green” votes by permanently committing substantially more to active, all-year-round bushland management. However, instead of permanently increased expenditure on the extra personnel required to deliver this, forest fire management is currently typified by a short term, reactive focus on summer fire suppression.
This involves hiring casual fire-fighters, extra water-bombing aircraft, and importing deployments of interstate and overseas fire-fighters. In addition, there is an increased reliance on the good-will of unpaid volunteer fire-fighters working far from the homes and communities they enlisted to protect.
This “as-needs” seasonal focus has potential for substantial savings during benign summers. However, the preference of state governments for such an approach over the ostensibly greater, year-round expenditure on fire prevention and protection is proving to be false economy - both financially and ecologically.
(4) Bushfires are a major emitter of Carbon Dioxide + Greenhouse Gases
Bushfires' colossal effect
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21047926-661,00.html
Matthew Schulz
Herald Sun, Melbourne
January 12, 2007 10:17am
VICTORIA'S monster bushfires have generated the power of more than 100 atomic bombs and pumped out millions of tonnes of pollution, greenhouse gas and toxic clouds, scientists say.
The tens of million of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by the 1 million ha blaze exceed the combined emissions of the state's power stations, industry and cars by about 30 percent, according to figures compiled for the Herald Sun online by the CSIRO.
Victoria produced about 7.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the past month from burning coal, petrol and gas; while bushfires raging in the same time pumped out 10.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
CSIRO atmospheric scientist Mick Meyer said the emissions from Victorian fires were about 10 times normal.
The fires also generated 2.5 million tonnes of carbon monoxide; 300,000 tonnes of volatile organic compounds such as benzene, formaldehyde and hydrocarbons; 85,000 tonnes of methane; 64,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides; and 59,000 tonnes of smoke, Dr Meyer's calculations show.
He stressed the carbon dioxide from fires would not add to global warming because replacement trees will absorb the increased carbon dioxide over time.
But the methane and nitrogen oxide emissions would add to global warming with the heat-absorbing gases creating an effect equal to 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
"The emissions from bushfires including savannah fires, wildfires and fuel reduction burns account for about 3-4 per cent of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions," Dr Meyer said.
The energy produced by the blazes also dwarfs that produced by humans, according to data provided by the CSIRO and energy agencies.
The fires have burned enough fuel to provide the entire state's electricity needs for two-and-a-half years, or 125,000 Gigawatt hours, equal to the energy of 112 one-megaton atomic bombs.
CSIRO Fire behaviour expert Justin Leonard said the emission estimates could also vary depending on whether the fires blazed through eucalypt or pine forests, grasslands or scrub, and the thickness of the fuel.
A new study by the Melbourne University, the CSIRO and the national Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre has begun to better gauge the amount of pollutants produced by bushfires.
Country Fire Authority spokesman Ken O'Brien said many people were unaware of the colossal power of an out-of-control bushfire.
"You only have to see a reasonably small fire to realise the amount of energy produced," Mr O'Brien said.
"But one million hectares being burned is an awful release of power."
Researchers say the most immediate pollution threat to Victorians came from tiny particles in smoke - with about 59,000 tonnes flung into the atmosphere by the fires.
While comprising just 0.25% of the emissions, the Environment Protection Authority reported last month that the air quality over Melbourne was the worst since records began thirty years ago.
NASA satellites also clearly showed massive plumes of smoke spread as far as New Zealand and Tasmania.
An EPA high smoke advisory for the Latrobe Valley and East Gippsland was still in place late this week as smoke levels there remained up to ten times normal levels.
EPA spokesman John Williamson said the community could expect poor visibility and high levels of air particles from bushfire smoke.
The state's chief health officer Dr Robert Hall said excessive smoke could aggravate heart or lung conditions including asthma and also trigger respiratory problems in others.
“It is likely that everyone within the community may be affected and they should avoid prolonged or heavy physical activity and stay indoors whenever possible," he said.
(5) Fewer Skilled workers in Forests once Logging is banned; sawmillers used to fight fires at source
http://www.tca.org.au/reportssubmissions/docs/Victorian%20Bushfire%20Inquiry%20Submission.pdf.
THE IMPACT OF PUBLIC LAND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON THE FREQUENCY, SCALE AND INTENSITY OF BUSHFIRES IN VICTORIA
A submission to the Environment and Natural Resources Committee
... The management of fuel loads and our ability to prepare for the inevitable fire in our forests is an issue at the forefront of our communities’ aspirations. In introducing this Submission, the committee is asked to first consider this quotation:
The year … had been one of exceptional heat and drought. Pastures had withered; creeks had become fissured clay-pans; water-holes had disappeared; sheep and cattle had perished in great numbers, and the sun-burnt plains were strewn with their bleached skeletons; the very leaves upon the trees crackled in the heat, and appeared to be as inflammable as tinder. As the summer advanced, the temperature became torrid, and on the morning …, the air which blew down from the north resembled the breath of a furnace. A fierce wind arose, gathering strength and velocity from hour to hour, until about noon it blew with the violence of a tornado. By some inexplicable means it wrapped the whole country in a sheet of flame —fierce, awful, and irresistible. Men, women and children, sheep and cattle, birds and snakes, fled before the fire in a common panic. The air was darkened by volumes of smoke, relieved by showers of sparks; the forests were ablaze, and, on the ranges, the conflagration transformed their wooded slopes into appalling masses of incandescent columns and arches.1
Whilst this quote could apply to the 2006/07 fires it is actually written about the bushfires of 1851. Fires that occurred just months after the colony separated from NSW and before it was named Victoria.
Since that time there have been massive and devastating bush fires impacting on the State. Red Tuesday in 1889, Black Friday in 1939, Ash Wednesday in 1983, the Eastern Victorian (Alpine) Fires 20 03 and countless fires in between these days that have not been named. This history of major bush fire confirms to the community that bushfire is part of the Australian Bush and that we need to prepare for next major fire. It is not just a recent phenomenon due to climate change or global warming but a frequent event in Victoria’s history.
In the absence of fire, dead wood, leaf litter, bark and under storey plants in our forests builds up. This accumulation of forest debris provides a ready fuel source for bushfires. As a general rule, the greater the amount of fuel, the more intense the fire. Intense fires are very difficult, if not impossible, to control and can be very damaging to our assets and the natural environment. Each summer, bushfires in our forests pose a significant threat to communities in rural areas, and on the rural-urban fringe 2
TCA is concerned that after each major bushfire season there is a tendency to hold inquiries rather than introduce practical measures. ...
The recommendations and findings of the House of Representatives Select Committee into the recent Australian bushfires are also still very much supported by Timber Communities Australia. TCA was disappointed that State Governments did not participate in this 2003 inquiry. Perhaps if they did so, there may have been an opportunity to reduce the impact of this summer’s bushfires.
A key recommendation supported by TCA that is relevant to this inquiry was:
Recommendation 12
The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth through the National Heritage Trust, offer assistance to the states and the Australian Capital Territory to develop specific prescribed burning guides, at least to the quality of Western Australia, for national parks and state forests through out the mainland of south eastern Australia.4
Timber Communities Australia is also concerned at the impact of the change in land tenure of many areas of public forest. In the last two decades there has been a change from multiple use production forest to National park and conservation reserve. Not only has this brought a change in management philosophy but also a change in resources in terms of people and machines to immediately be able to combat a fire outbreak. Whilst this process is ongoing the Department of Sustainability and Environment reported:
In 2003 Victoria’s total land area was approximately 22 million hectares. Of this, about 8.3 million hectares or 36 per cent was forested. Approximately 3.4 million hectares was classified as State forest and 3.7 million hectares classified as national parks and other reserves. Privately owned forest accounted for 1.2 million hectares of largely native forest and 360,000 hectares of plantation. Of the 3.4 million hectares of State forest, approximately 1 million hectares was protected in conservation reserves and will not be harvested. Of the remaining area, approximately 740,000 hectares was available for timber harvesting.5
This has meant a reduction of workers and machinery in our forests, resources that would be immediately available to combat bushfire and employed by businesses that had a vested interest to protect the commercial value of the forests.
Athol Hodgson - chief fire officer with the Victorian Department of Conservation, Forests and Lands from 1984 to 1986 – publicly warned that the state was at risk from feral fires due to “flawed policies and blinkered politics”.
In the Australian newspaper Mr. Hodgson said
4 Select Committee into the recent Australian bushfires, 2003, A Nation Charred: Report on the inquiry into bushfires House of Representatives Canberra 5 Department of Sustainability and Environment, 2005, State of the Forests, DSE Melbourne
“that in 1985 there were 111 lightning strikes in mountainous country that were “remarkably equivalent” to the current bushfire crisis. But in 1985 there was a different outcome.
“They flared into about 50,000ha in the alpine area and we stopped them at that acreage without the aid of rain,” he said.
“We did it because at that time there was a very significant number of people who worked in the forests and parks earning their daily bread. The difference now is that when fires start, that workforce is not there.”
Mr. Hodgson said about 3000 people worked in the forests in the early 1980s, in forestry, the electricity commission and saw-milling. It was a condition of the saw-milling licenses that if a fire broke out, the workers had an obligation to fight it.
“They stomped on fires very quickly and very, very effectively, and that has all changed.”
Mr. Hodgson said firefighters now had to be brought in from outside, causing a catastrophic delay. “Instead of having four or five fires running out of control, on this occasion they had about 50, and it became too big a job.” 6
Mr. Hodgson comments were supported by Rod Incoll, chief fire officer for the department responsible for Victorian forests and national parks from 1990 to 1996, who said “ funds have been stripped from fire management, skilled foresters have virtually disappeared, and the culture that knew how to manage fire has totally changed.” ...
A common story amongst firefighting personnel that highlights a vast difference between approaches to fire management between firefighting agencies is of earthmoving equipment being turned away from fire line work because the officer in charge of a particular fire sector believes that the machinery is too big and will do excessive damage to the landscape.
This mentality has been present within firefighting agencies for many years and has lead to countless hectares of forest being needlessly burnt. In times of fire there needs to be a clear understanding for all involved that under utilization of heavy firefighting equipment because of personal beliefs is not acceptable. It is all of the forest that needs protecting in a fire situation and the establishment of a control line, whilst it may have a negative impact on a small area, could save thousands of hectares. ...
Permanent Fire breaks, access roads and containment lines are essential tools in fighting wild fire and must be maintained. The fire line along the Monda track, in Toolangi, is a perfect example of what the new system of firebreaks will look like in a couple of years. Most people would not be aware that the track is a strategic fire break and is a result of forward thinking. TCA commends the government for their commitment to undertaking a fire break system and hope to see the program expanded to ensure a better fire fighting system for the future.
Mr. Cheney a recognized expert in fire management has outlined the requirement of effective fire fighting. In the inaugural oration to the Stretton Group he outlined the basic firefighting principles:
11 Dexter B & Hodgson A, 2003 The Facts Behind the Fire, Forest Fire Victoria, Melbourne
• Forest fire must be controlled by a bare-earth fire line, burned-out, mopped-up and patrolled for at least three days before the onset of extreme fire weather. • Fire is easiest to suppress when it is small by fast concentrated initial attack. • Initial attack will have a better chance of succeeding if it is undertaken by people who have been trained and are skilled in techniques that are appropriate to the fuel being burnt. • Fuel reduction makes firefighting safer and easier and extends the window of weather conditions under which effective firefighting can be conducted. • Heavy earth moving equipment is essential for direct firefighting in forest fuel if the fire exceeds the few hectares12. ...
TCA believes that the downsizing of the timber industry has had a significant impact on Victoria’s fire management capabilities.
Over the past two decades the number of departmental personal with real knowledge and understanding of the bush has been drastically reduced because of the downsizing of the timber industry in Victoria.
(6) The Green Inferno, by Phil Cheney
http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/533/the-green-inferno
The Stretton Group Inaugural Oration
by Phil Cheney
“The Green Inferno”
(The Politics of Bushfires and Conservation)
Thursday 25th November, 2004
About the Speaker:
Mr Phil Cheney of CSIRO is one of Australia’s foremost bushfire experts.
Mr Cheney enjoys wide international recognition for his research into environmental management, bushfire studies and their interaction with the urban lifestyle. He is currently an expert witness into the ACT Coronial Inquiry into the 2003 Bushfire Crisis in the Australian Capital Territory.
The Green Inferno
Do we really want to minimise Disaster fires?
Presentation to the Stretton Group by N P Cheney, 25 November, 2004 in Melbourne
I see I’ve been given the title “THE GREEN INFERNO – The politics of Bushfires and Conservation”. What I really want to talk about is the responsibility of governments and their agencies to manage their land and thereby play a leading role in protecting the community from bushfire. Perhaps it will turn out to be the same thing.
There are many technical reasons why land management agencies have a responsibility, both in law and in practice, to undertake fire management including prevention, hazard reduction, suppression, and education of the community.
Quite simply, if you are in the business of land management in this country, fire and its consequences are part and parcel of that management. However, in recent years managers of both public and private land have become increasingly reluctant to accept his responsibility and face up to the considerable cost.
The problem is by no means new. And since this is the Stretton group I will quote Judge Stretton, writing in the report of the Royal Commission to inquire into the 1939 bushfires: -
“There is one fundamental policy of fire prevention and of protection against fire. There is only one basis upon which that policy can safely rest, namely, the full recognition by each person or department who has dominion over the right to enter the forests of the paramount duty to safeguard the property and the rights of others. No person or department can be allowed to use the forest in such a way as to create a state of danger to others.
If conformity to this rule cannot be brought about, the offender must be put out of the forest, or, in the case of a public department its authority curtailed, or enlarged so that the rule may be enforced, or voluntarily observed as the case may require.”
This may seem as though Stretton was having an each way bet. He wasn’t! The managers of forest land, be they government or private, have a clear responsibility to protect the community from fire emerging from their land. If they cannot do this, they must either be replaced by someone who can, or be given sufficient funding to do the job properly.
1
Stretton went on the point out that government agencies should not rely on the bushfire brigades to put out the fire because their activities only started after the fire had started
and they had no authority to carry out any pre-emptive action. The land manager on the other hand had many options available to him.
Nor is the problem limited to Australia – it is worldwide. Even the remote territory of Yukon, Canada is facing similar problems in that land owners/managers are becoming more reliant on the government suppression agencies, and are not contributing to the protection of the wider community.
I will come later to the problems that have arisen out of the rapid expansion of conservation reserves in the last 25 years. However, this is a problem that is far wider, and "land management agencies" actually includes anybody that manages land including private citizens, forestry companies, agricultural companies, catchment authorities, absentee landholders and government forestry and Park authorities. Each has a core business and fire affects that business in different ways.
The basic thesis is simple enough -- if you own the fuel you own the fire.
Fire is not the rampant “red steer” of poets and legal precedent.
Fire needs fuel. And fuel determines how far and fast it will travel; how difficult it will be to round up and stop; and how much havoc and destruction will be wrought if the beast enters your property. So it is not just the landholder on whose property the fire starts that is responsible for the damage. All landholders affected contribute to both the spread and damage by the way they manage the fuel on their land.
You own the fuel – you own the fire!
But in reality it's not that simple - because depending on both the fuel and the weather there comes a point when no matter what has been done, fire will be uncontrollable and will spread and do damage beyond the land tenure on which it originated. This then brings in the concept of reasonableness.
I don't think anybody can argue with the common law proposition that the landholders should take "all reasonable steps" to prevent fire starting on their property escaping and doing damage to others. This proposition has in it, inherently, the concept that under certain conditions fire will burn and spread in a way that nothing can be done about it. And it rolls off the tongue easily doesn’t it, "take all reasonable steps".
But what are "reasonable steps"? They obviously differ between land managers and their capacity to invest in systems to protect their asset, and incidentally, their capacity to pay for the damage done to others.
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Reasonable steps for a grazier might be to put in firebreaks, purchase his own fire unit and join up with a rural fire brigade for mutual cooperation. But what about the hobby farmer who owns a 5, 50, or 100 hectare block? Is it good enough for him simply to pay the fees to the rural fire brigade and rely on the people at home or who work in the area to
do the fire fighting for him? After all, he has a job and in the city and it is unreasonable to be on call to respond whenever fire might happen breakout - or is it?
And what about the absentee landholder who has thousands of hectares of land set aside as an investment, and living far away or even overseas? What are his responsibilities to manage fire on his land and take all reasonable steps? Both of the latter groups are do not earn a living from land and therefore wildfire does not constitute a threat to their income. The worst they can lose are their assets and these can be insured and relatively easily replaced. Perhaps it is reasonable for the absentee owner to compartment his property and make it available for local brigades to undertake hot fire training in prescribed burning and suppression.
“Reasonable steps” for the government land managers of native forest in the past were to establish a network of roads and fire trails, install detection and communications systems, train and equip firefighters to undertake rapid initial attack, and develop management systems to coordinate the control of large wildfires. These were all in place before the Australian Interagency Incident Management system was introduced to effect efficient coordination between agencies.
Most State forestry departments accepted the responsibility for fire suppression as part of their business even though this responsibility was, in some States, not binding on the crown. They understood the role that fire played as a threat to their business and pioneered both the research and the operational management that was required to minimise this threat.
They at least recognised that in many areas, fuel management was a “reasonable step” that could be integrated within their business.
They took heed of Stretton's words and recognised that fire in the forests was a threat to the wider community and depending on location and the resources available, classified the land as receiving intensive or extensive protection. They also recognised that there was land of low value to forestry, where resources were too sparse or too distant to be effective, and classified the land as unprotected. Suppression was undertaken when it threatened assets of value. However, being classified unprotected land this enabled the neighbour, who had assets to protect, to undertake burning-off and take suppression action himself whenever he saw fit.
Fire protection is expensive, and forestry agencies with limited budgets attempted to provide a cost-effective balance between preparation and suppression with the introduction of fuel management by prescribed burning. By and large they were not given credit by government for protection of the wider community and were criticized when expenditure on fire protection extended beyond the forest boundary.
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They were also not given credit for managing land for multiple uses where by the money earned from timber production contributed to management for conservation, water production and recreation. What an anathema for the economic rationalist.
Forestry has been a convenient whipping boy for governments attracted by the votes of the green revolution. The land grab for conservation reserves provided the opportunity to place management over much of the formerly "unprotected land” but it was not accompanied by the funding needed to implement management. Instead government took the opportunity to reduce expenditure on fire protection by their land management agencies.
Politically it was far more attractive to foster the emergency service industry, demonize fire, and ignore its role as a natural factor of our environment and bathe in the public relations kudos of new red trucks and large helicopters.
Then when the shit hit the fan, as it inevitably would, the politicians and their executives could hide behind the tabards and the tunics of the volunteers.
Production forestry has been placed into government run business corporations, even though timber production was only one of the objectives under multiple use management, or sold off to private enterprise. Now expenditure of money on aspects of forest protection that primarily concern protecting the community is no longer seen as part of the forestry business.
Today we see forestry companies not including the full cost of fire management as part of the business. As one manager of a Tasmanian forestry company with international assets told me: - "We are not going to spend money on fire management, and particularly fuel management, because if management in this country is too expensive we will simply acquire our timber offshore. As in other businesses they could take advantage of operating in other countries where the labour costs are lower, and more importantly the fire climate is benign, and ignore their obligations to the Australian community.
Even worse, today we have the rise of the forest investment companies planting huge areas of blue gums with almost no capacity for undertaking effective suppression. Far more cost-effective to hire a friendly consultant to say that blue gums don’t burn and don't pose any threat to the community, and provide only a token effort to the rural fire services by providing industry brigades. When they do sustain major losses, and they will, they can always say that weather were conditions well beyond anything that allowed safe and effective firefighting and bad luck for the investors – it was after all a speculative investment.
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I have no problem with the proposition that fuel management by prescribed burning or other means cannot be totally applied to an industrial forest enterprise or any other enterprise for that matter. However, if the company is to fulfill its obligation to the community then it is the responsibility of that business enterprise to provide a suppression force which is equipped and capable of effective fire fighting in the fuels they have fostered when conditions are less than extreme. They should not be allowed to bludge on the governments emergency funding, volunteers, and the wider community, to do their job for them.
Much is known about fire behaviour in different fuel types and of our capacity for suppression. Basic firefighting principles have not changed:
• Forest fire must be controlled by a bare-earth fire line, burned-out, mopped-up and patrolled for at least three days before the onset of extreme fire weather.
• Fire is easiest to suppress when it is small by fast concentrated initial attack.
• Initial attack will have a better chance of succeeding if it is undertaken by people who have been trained and are skilled in techniques that are appropriate to the fuel being burnt.
• Fuel reduction makes firefighting safer and easier and extends the window of weather conditions under which effective firefighting can be conducted.
• Heavy earth moving equipment is essential for direct firefighting in forest fuel if the fire exceeds the few hectares.
Much is also known about the nature of fire and its impact on the biota. To our native plants an animals fire is not just a destructive force that kills but is an ecological process that influences flowering and regeneration, habitat and has shaped the flora and fauna of this country. The requirements of different communities range from needing fire every year through almost every combination of frequency and intensity to no fire at all.
However in managing fire for conservation it is important to realise the fire doesn’t care what it burns. The ecology doesn’t care! Whatever the regime, some suite of plants and animals will thrive in it.
We should care and government agencies should care. If we are to truly manage for biodiversity we need to able to apply the regimes that are required to create the environment that will achieve our objectives. Priorities will need to be set that align conservation with other objectives including, optimizing our water resources, recreation and protection of the wider community.
This is why fire management and suppression must be the responsibility of the land manager. Because they, and only they are in the position to know the hazards of their fuels, the fuel reduction strategies needed to protect their assets, both built and natural, the suppression techniques that will be most effective and, how to implement these techniques.
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Fire management of conservation areas may be more complex than for production forestry, but this only means that fire management and fire suppression skills have to be more sophisticated. Management for biodiversity in the future to will need to involve intervention and manipulation. It will need to use fire, and will require more sophisticated burning prescriptions than those currently in use.
These prescriptions for will need to be developed from both fundamental and operations research. They will not come from the Cooperative Research Centre. Don’t get me wrong. As someone who has battled for research dollars for 30 years I do welcome this initiative but there are no magic bullets and anyway 99% of all research is incremental.
Most land management agencies don’t have the resources to apply the knowledge we have today. Government needs to invest in fire management so that the agencies can employ fire scientists trained in the CRC, train them in fire management and fire suppression and then develop the operational procedures that are applicable to specific fuel types in their area.
To fulfill their responsibilities to the community, the land management agencies will need to establish and just how difficult fire suppression is in different fuel types and develop the skills in fuel management to reduce the risk of high-intensity fire both to their own firefighters and to the wider community.
They need to demonstrate what are "all reasonable steps".
The first step is for the Chief Executive of each land management agency to take full responsibility for fire on their land.
The next step is to remove the layers of bureaucracy between the chief executive and the fire management staff. We must remove the conflict that arises because of divided responsibility for policy, fire suppression and fuel management. We must remove those advisory bodies that have no responsibility for fire control but whose influence can make fire management particularly onerous or even unworkable.
By all means seek advice and expertise from all areas including the bearded bush-walker and the coffee-table conservationist. However, as has been demonstrated in fire suppression, real progress in fire management is made when the executives of the organisation accept the responsibility to set an objective and put in place an expert team to ensure the knowledge is available to achieve that objective.
And of course there will be need for co-operation with emergency service organisations to control some fires. But if volunteer firefighters are expected to work in heavy or unfamiliar forest fuels, the agency has a duty of care to those volunteers to train them in the appropriate firefighting techniques for those fuels. Otherwise, the manager has to accept the techniques that the volunteer is familiar with, which in some cases may be retiring to the grassland interface and burning out all the intervening country.
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Today I believe that our capacity for fire management in forest land is going backwards. We need land management agencies to set a clear direction and develop the fire management systems that are needed for the future without fear or favour. Above all, we must be honest about our capacity to deal with fire and work with the community to
ensure that everybody has taken “all reasonable steps” to reduce the impact of wildfires on their property.
The 2003 fire season demonstrated just where we are placed with fire management. Governments, State, Territorial and Federal did not address the problems they had created for land managers but rather they accepted the convenient deception that the conditions were so bad that nothing could be done about it.
True, some States set up enquiries, but none of these included people with experience with fire management on forested land. Rather, they were conducted by people with a background in emergency service and academics in ecology but with no experience in applying fire for ecological purposes. Not one senior land management executive was called to explain why they had adopted policies that limited their resources so that they were incapable of suppressing even small fires over 10 days of benign weather.
The one judicial enquiry that was established is currently in limbo because the government does not like the evidence presented by the experts selected to advise the coroner. This must indicate perceived bias on the part of the coronial team – even though not one expert in forest fire management has been called to challenge their opinions.
On this note let me finish with one final quote on dealing with government:
"The truth was hard to find. Accordingly, it was sometimes sought in other places as I am entitled to do. Much of the evidence was coloured. Much of it was quite false. Little of it was wholly truthful. Some people were afraid that if they gave evidence they would not be given future employment. Departmental officers were, in the main, youngish men of very good character who were afraid that if they were too outspoken, their future advancement in the departments employ would be endangered".
Not a recent quote, but again one from Leonard B Stretton, 65 years ago, which has a contemporary and decidedly unhealthy ring about it.
Reference
Stretton L.B. (1939) The report of the Royal Commission to inquire into the causes of and measures taken to prevent the bushfires of January, 1939, and to protect life and property. Government Printer, Melbourne 36pp. 7
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