Fires Take a Toll on Australian Forests

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Originally Posted by Imme

I may be shot down for saying this....no disrespect to those who are going through a very hard time with the fires at the moment however......

I live in a place that backs on to state forest managed by the Vic government.
The forest is a tinder box waiting to go up. When it does there is a good chance my house will as well if the conditions are right. It doesn't matter what I do to try and mitigate that....if the wind blows the right way it's just a fact it'll occur at some point either while I live there or in the future.

This is a choice I make.....I dont blame greenies, government or anyone else. I chose to live in nature and fully expect nature will bite me on the 4rse one day.

If I want to protect myself from fire I should move to the inner city.

People need to stop pointing fingers.....it's nature. Fires occurred naturally well before we were on this earth and they will continue to occur once our species has died out.

Jon,

I for one won't shoot you down as I don't totally disagree with your sentiment.

Life is full of risks & pretty much none can be mitigated to the nth degree to make it all perfectly safe...

I also don't disagree with your comment regarding nature & fires but, I do believe we can in fact do more to mitigate the risks to both those people who choose to live in the bush & those species whose natural habitat it is.

We cannot, as you say prevent a bushfire from ever happening but, there are things that can be done to reduce the risk & severity. In that regard, I believe fingers do need to be pointed at those in a position to do something to reduce the risks, who for whatever reason, choose to do nothing.

Should you choose the option of moving to a city to try to completely protect yourself from the risk of fire, sadly, you'll just exchange one risk factor for a multitude of others so, me, I'd probably stay in the bush.

To use just one example, we introduced seatbelts, drink driving laws, speed limits & improved other the safety features in cars to reduce the risks involved in driving & having accidents. We've successfully done it in many other areas of our lives including mitigating the risks that nature throws at us.

Don't you think that where possible, we should be looking at other risk reduction strategies to protect ourselves to some degree in other areas?

Cheers

[Wavytone]

Originally Posted by Outcast

Jon,
... We cannot, as you say prevent a bushfire from ever happening but, there are things that can be done to reduce the risk & severity. In that regard, I believe fingers do need to be pointed at those in a position to do something to reduce the risks, who for whatever reason, choose to do nothing...

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.

[Outcast (Carlton)]

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

[Astronovice (Calvin)]

Great posts Carlton.

With Eucalyptus Regnans as in the Victorian and Tasmanian mighty Mountain Ash forests that remain, the choices are stark. Either burn off and reduce fuel load such that if fires do occur they are so called “cold fires”, or fail to do so and if the resulting fire is extreme the consequence of which is total loss of the mountain ash as they do not regenerate other than by human replanting. As evidence of this you only have to visit the areas of the Strezlecki Ranges in Gippsland that we’re burned on “Black Saturday” to see the total destruction of the mountain ash that used to dominate the mountain slopes.

Sadly I think we have now reached a point that unless we all make enough noise to make those in power listen and resource appropriately and plan to mitigate risks as far as is possible to do so, then nature will continue to do the burning for us with all the trauma that brings.

[dikman (Richard)]

I recall seeing somewhere that when the aboriginals came to this country 60 - 70,000 (?) years ago the country was quite different, a lot greener and wetter overall. Their penchant for lighting fires is what changed the country, plants that couldn't tolerate too much burning died out, leaving those which actually rely on burning left. Look at what we've got here, most of the native flora re-shoots pretty quickly after a fire, in fact some of it needs fire (and smoke) to regenerate.


As for the aboriginals being "masters of controlled burning"..... Are you saying that before lighting a fire they looked at their topographical maps (pretty good for a race that never had a written language), consulted their meteorological experts so that they would know which way it will burn, figured out where they would need to be to stop it spreading and moved their firefighting equipment into place, just in case?


Or, (and yes, this is probably a politically incorrect idea these days) being your basic stone-age hunter-gatherer people who kept moving in order to survive they simply decided we need to kill a beastie for food, lets light a fire to chase something out, easier than having to hunt something. All they had to do was make sure they walked away from the fire.



Which idea makes the most sense......

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Originally Posted by dikman

I recall seeing somewhere that when the aboriginals came to this country 60 - 70,000 (?) years ago the country was quite different, a lot greener and wetter overall. Their penchant for lighting fires is what changed the country, plants that couldn't tolerate too much burning died out, leaving those which actually rely on burning left. Look at what we've got here, most of the native flora re-shoots pretty quickly after a fire, in fact some of it needs fire (and smoke) to regenerate.


As for the aboriginals being "masters of controlled burning"..... Are you saying that before lighting a fire they looked at their topographical maps (pretty good for a race that never had a written language), consulted their meteorological experts so that they would know which way it will burn, figured out where they would need to be to stop it spreading and moved their firefighting equipment into place, just in case?


Or, (and yes, this is probably a politically incorrect idea these days) being your basic stone-age hunter-gatherer people who kept moving in order to survive they simply decided we need to kill a beastie for food, lets light a fire to chase something out, easier than having to hunt something. All they had to do was make sure they walked away from the fire.



Which idea makes the most sense......

Actually, it's a little more complex than that & you can freely read up on just how they managed areas should you choose to...

[Outcast (Carlton)]

Originally Posted by multiweb

Chill out, enjoy the Christmas break and rack in some sky time if you have the opportunity. Stay safe

Trust me Marc,

I'm trying, really really trying...

[RyanJones]

Originally Posted by Imme

I may be shot down for saying this....no disrespect to those who are going through a very hard time with the fires at the moment however......

I live in a place that backs on to state forest managed by the Vic government.
The forest is a tinder box waiting to go up. When it does there is a good chance my house will as well if the conditions are right. It doesn't matter what I do to try and mitigate that....if the wind blows the right way it's just a fact it'll occur at some point either while I live there or in the future.

This is a choice I make.....I dont blame greenies, government or anyone else. I chose to live in nature and fully expect nature will bite me on the 4rse one day.

If I want to protect myself from fire I should move to the inner city.

People need to stop pointing fingers.....it's nature. Fires occurred naturally well before we were on this earth and they will continue to occur once our species has died out.

Hallelujah!

Merry Christmas everyone.

[Retrograde (Pete)]

A short but interesting read on the nuances and difficulties of hazard reduction from a former NPWS head.

"In the cool of the evening, ahead of forecast bad weather, there was too much moisture and too little fuel to get an effective burn, even though we all knew the vegetation would burn furiously, threatening nearby houses, 24-48 hours later when the weather turned."

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/sto...ting/?cs=14246

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Retrograde

A short but interesting read on the nuances and difficulties of hazard reduction from a former NPWS head.

"In the cool of the evening, ahead of forecast bad weather, there was too much moisture and too little fuel to get an effective burn, even though we all knew the vegetation would burn furiously, threatening nearby houses, 24-48 hours later when the weather turned."

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/sto...ting/?cs=14246

Thanks for the link Pete. Straight from the horse's mouth.