Quote:
Originally Posted by Wavytone
But this is precisely the point I made ages ago.
Fighting fires is a mitigating strategy - the event has occurred. The challenge is to stop dreaming of what the countries might once have been, and instead decide what we want it to be in future.
In England, China and Japan this occurred over thousands of years, but now every rock, every tree you see is there either because someone liked, it or put it there. If they dint, it was removed. And yes the native fauna is all but gone. All of it.
So frankly the time is now to stop dreaming of gum tree forests, koalas and kangaroos, and think about what is both safe, and sustainable, in future.
Conversely if 5% was to be burnt systematically every winter I'll suggest a lot of other groups will have problems with that - starting with locals affected by air pollution, tourism and a lot other aspects. that why it never happened .Essentially the areas in the major National Parks - and the Sydney water catchment - have not had a major fire in 70 years. The "hazard reduction" efforts in these areas have frankly been pathetically inadequate.
If you want to burn areas on average every 20 years that means 5% of the parks and state forest areas have to be burnt EVERY YEAR. To be frank, the efforts in the past decade have been woefully less - "nibbling around the edges" would be a better description.
From a safety management perspective, if you want to apply a stronger approach, there are ways, though unpalatable to many. The first is elimination of the hazard - the strongest form of prevention. That means either
a) get rid of the gum trees, all of them; the fires have effectively done this; and
b) do not allow residential housing within 1km of a forested area.
To those who want to live among the gum trees, all I can suggest is have a bloody good insurance policy, and a fire plan, and be prepared to follow it.
|
Nick,
To some extent, I share your sentiment... we cannot turn back the clock, many of the strategies that might mitigate the risk further are either not practical or simply too extreme to be acceptable to many.
I'm with you, the future is what we need to be looking at carefully & deciding what we can & can't do to enable a relatively safe & sustainable future.
We may disagree on what that strategy is & that is okay; FWIW, I completely understand the hierarchy of risk control & have a considerable experience in risk management. I'm not convinced that elimination of the risk is in fact possible but, there are other controls that could be considered & there are potentially broader strategies that might reduce the likelihood of conditions getting to the point we are at.
I'm not sure I totally share your sentiment that fighting fires is a risk mitigation strategy but, only in the context I am thinking. However, yes, to some degree, it is entirely a risk mitigation strategy after all else has failed. Similar to your sentiments on hazard reduction, our efforts to properly equip those who fight fires to enable that form of risk mitigation to be even remotely effective has also been woefully inadequate.
Cheers