Bushfires - are we making them worse?
On November 5, 2014 Darren Gray, Rural affairs reporter for The Age published an article entitled: 'Victoria's bushfire risk measured at disastrous levels.'
He wrote that 'former CSIRO bushfire scientist David Packham has warned, "Victorian bushfire fuels are at "disastrous levels" and if a megafire ignited in the Dandenongs or in Melbourne's eastern or northern fringe, thousands of lives could be lost.Such a fire could devastate Melbourne's water supply and leave the state with a massive bill... Never before in human presence in Australia (30,000 - 50,000 years) have our bushfire fuels been at such disastrous levels. We now have a new type of fuel that has resulted from intense unrestrained disaster fires over the last 10 years. The returning fuels after have changed the rules for bushfires in Australia, maybe leading to a much more intense and an extensive fire threat."'
He wrote that 'former CSIRO bushfire scientist David Packham has warned, "Victorian bushfire fuels are at "disastrous levels" and if a megafire ignited in the Dandenongs or in Melbourne's eastern or northern fringe, thousands of lives could be lost.Such a fire could devastate Melbourne's water supply and leave the state with a massive bill... Never before in human presence in Australia (30,000 - 50,000 years) have our bushfire fuels been at such disastrous levels. We now have a new type of fuel that has resulted from intense unrestrained disaster fires over the last 10 years. The returning fuels after have changed the rules for bushfires in Australia, maybe leading to a much more intense and an extensive fire threat."'
In response, Kevin Brewer wrote:
'I despise this stuff. We have a teaser, a 'new fuel, making the situation in the Dandenongs disastrous. What is it: petrol tanks? Badly designed houses? Above ground electricity wires? By the article it sounds like people.
We can't burn 12% of the bush every year, the cost is too great. We know that in Australia the cost is about $4 billion in yearly fire damage and we pay about $15 billion. Cheaper to let it burn. We know thousands of lives aren't lost, never have been, in one bushfire.
This is cheap scaremongering and people who say this should be ashamed of themselves. There was a report awhile ago that suggested fuel reduction burns are a waste of time and money, an idea which to me seems perfectly logical, as we never know the point of ignition so we can burn 12% of the bush and the fire never goes near it.'
'I despise this stuff. We have a teaser, a 'new fuel, making the situation in the Dandenongs disastrous. What is it: petrol tanks? Badly designed houses? Above ground electricity wires? By the article it sounds like people.
We can't burn 12% of the bush every year, the cost is too great. We know that in Australia the cost is about $4 billion in yearly fire damage and we pay about $15 billion. Cheaper to let it burn. We know thousands of lives aren't lost, never have been, in one bushfire.
This is cheap scaremongering and people who say this should be ashamed of themselves. There was a report awhile ago that suggested fuel reduction burns are a waste of time and money, an idea which to me seems perfectly logical, as we never know the point of ignition so we can burn 12% of the bush and the fire never goes near it.'
Sally Goers Fox it's called managing the bush - using the fire-stick the way it was used here for millenia before us white folks rocked up.
Kevin Brewer There is very little science, in fact about zero, that says it works in the forests. It certainly works in grasslands. There is no evidence at all that Aborigines managed forests by fire. I have had a look at this history, not a complete look at it, but nowhere did I find any indication of fire managed forests.
The first time the mountain ash forest of the Victorian alps were tampered with was when the woodcutters went in in the colonial era and chopped out 400 foot trees, a sign that many a good century had past since they were burnt. Mountain ash grow a metre a year and requires burning to regenerate.
There is good evidence, and even some science, that burning works in grasslands, particularly in northern Australia where there are even fire resistant species. The squatters were burning off from very early on. When they built fences they would burn along them, usually in August or September when they would get cool burns, but they were also burning native grasses like themeda and poa species which are C4 plants that respond to summer rains, so the grass was drier in what we call our winter and spring.
Most of the history that is retailed-that is sold-on burning is better used to manure the veggie patch. The problem for bushfires, if you look at the incident maps of Victoria, is there are 3 hotspots, the Grampians, north of Melbourne grasslands, Gippsland. Most of the Black Saturday fires started north of Melbourne in grasslands.
It isn't burning the bush that is important it is keeping the matches out of the hands of the arsonists, and a reversion to the old practice of firebreaks in the grasslands to slow the fires down in the days of hot northerlies that are the drivers of killer fires like Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday.
Once the fire gets into the scrub or the forest nothing stops it. If a fire is caused by lightning strikes, no one, no amount of prescribed burning unless the whole forest is a mass of black sticks, will stop it. This what really happened, a picture painted by Duncan Elphinstone Cooper in the early 1840s, you can see the Pyrenees in the background. Fire in the grass.
Kevin Brewer There is very little science, in fact about zero, that says it works in the forests. It certainly works in grasslands. There is no evidence at all that Aborigines managed forests by fire. I have had a look at this history, not a complete look at it, but nowhere did I find any indication of fire managed forests.
The first time the mountain ash forest of the Victorian alps were tampered with was when the woodcutters went in in the colonial era and chopped out 400 foot trees, a sign that many a good century had past since they were burnt. Mountain ash grow a metre a year and requires burning to regenerate.
There is good evidence, and even some science, that burning works in grasslands, particularly in northern Australia where there are even fire resistant species. The squatters were burning off from very early on. When they built fences they would burn along them, usually in August or September when they would get cool burns, but they were also burning native grasses like themeda and poa species which are C4 plants that respond to summer rains, so the grass was drier in what we call our winter and spring.
Most of the history that is retailed-that is sold-on burning is better used to manure the veggie patch. The problem for bushfires, if you look at the incident maps of Victoria, is there are 3 hotspots, the Grampians, north of Melbourne grasslands, Gippsland. Most of the Black Saturday fires started north of Melbourne in grasslands.
It isn't burning the bush that is important it is keeping the matches out of the hands of the arsonists, and a reversion to the old practice of firebreaks in the grasslands to slow the fires down in the days of hot northerlies that are the drivers of killer fires like Ash Wednesday and Black Saturday.
Once the fire gets into the scrub or the forest nothing stops it. If a fire is caused by lightning strikes, no one, no amount of prescribed burning unless the whole forest is a mass of black sticks, will stop it. This what really happened, a picture painted by Duncan Elphinstone Cooper in the early 1840s, you can see the Pyrenees in the background. Fire in the grass.
Neil Barraclough I attended the meeting in Bairnsdale where David Packham spoke and as a volunteer fire fighter of some 40 years totally endorse everything he said. I've known David for some years, he's acknowledged as one of Australia's leading fire scientists and I have the greatest respect for him personally and his knowledge. Bill Gamage who wrote the book called the Worlds Greatest Estate or some similar name also spoke. I suggest anyone who has any concern for the environment who hasn't read his book read it as it leaves any open minded reader in no doubt that the Aboriginies burnt most parts of Australia very extensively and regularly, a subject I have been writing on for over 25 years. Ceasation of protective burning has produced a world class environmental disaster.
Kevin Brewer 7 November Neil, I'm sorry, but nothing you have said contradicts the report I posted.
It is interesting this stuff, because on Black Saturday I had afternoon tea with my then landlord-I was at a serviced flat in Vermont- who was the Control Room director or whatever they call themselves on Ash Wednesday. He had a lot of interesting things to say about fire management and fighting, and he was not impressed by his successors or their efforts that day.
I was amazed at the loss of life when I had heard Brumby on TV the night before talk about how bad Saturday was predicted-he was right-and advised people to activate their fire plans immediately. garnering from the news and the Royal Comm, the obvious area that should have been explored is why so many people change their minds so late. And then there is the immediate pressure after the fires to rebuild and to waive any new and harder restrictions on building regs. The report above is a greenie report. And to my way of thinking for them to out and say that sort of stuff, which is fire science applied to modern GIS and dbase management techniques, certainly should ruffle the feathers of retired bushfire scientists. It is closer to what the Unimelb bloke whose name I forget has been saying, and that is where the cutting edge is. And I am sorry to say that no amount of experience can contradict that research or those results unless it is better research and better results, and if I was in or running the CFA I would be taking notice of it because it has implications for the fire seasons to come.
Gammage has very little evidence of aboriginal burning as there is none except as far as game hunting goes, and it is called mosaic burning. I used to believe that stuff but started looking for the evidence both from history and from science and have found almost none, that's why I put DEC's watercolour from the 1840s up, to show that it did happen, and the squatters did see the use of it and began to emulate the same sort of low scale grassland burning. But never tried it in the forests, and it has never been down in the forests in Vic. Looking at the palynology of the western districts lakes and there is very little evidence of extra carbon from firing the grasslands, and very little any where.
What removed the nothofagus from Lake Terang was climate change. So of this so called history I suspect a large part of it is made up, or as most of what Mark Twain called Australian history: 'beautiful lies, all of them true'.
The valorisation of Aboriginal practices is not good history, and these days their historical evidence is encrusted in the politics of nobility and altruism.
What I think is causing the grass fires is the increase in population in the fringes, fire bugs centred on the northern grasslands and in Gippsland, and most definitely the cessation of fire breaks ploughed around every paddock which in my youth was the main late spring activity of farmers. And for evidence of its efficacy I cite Kangaroo Island. The farm, my farm so regularly ploughed has been burnt twice since he left because the young farmers have put their ploughs away and gone to the pub. When I was there the country to the north, from whence subsequent fires have come was mainly scrub land. It has since been largely cleared into pastures, and when a strong north wind gets into dry grass it moves at up to 25-30 km/hr.
And since you were there, what was his new fuel? Was it bad journalism?
It is interesting this stuff, because on Black Saturday I had afternoon tea with my then landlord-I was at a serviced flat in Vermont- who was the Control Room director or whatever they call themselves on Ash Wednesday. He had a lot of interesting things to say about fire management and fighting, and he was not impressed by his successors or their efforts that day.
I was amazed at the loss of life when I had heard Brumby on TV the night before talk about how bad Saturday was predicted-he was right-and advised people to activate their fire plans immediately. garnering from the news and the Royal Comm, the obvious area that should have been explored is why so many people change their minds so late. And then there is the immediate pressure after the fires to rebuild and to waive any new and harder restrictions on building regs. The report above is a greenie report. And to my way of thinking for them to out and say that sort of stuff, which is fire science applied to modern GIS and dbase management techniques, certainly should ruffle the feathers of retired bushfire scientists. It is closer to what the Unimelb bloke whose name I forget has been saying, and that is where the cutting edge is. And I am sorry to say that no amount of experience can contradict that research or those results unless it is better research and better results, and if I was in or running the CFA I would be taking notice of it because it has implications for the fire seasons to come.
Gammage has very little evidence of aboriginal burning as there is none except as far as game hunting goes, and it is called mosaic burning. I used to believe that stuff but started looking for the evidence both from history and from science and have found almost none, that's why I put DEC's watercolour from the 1840s up, to show that it did happen, and the squatters did see the use of it and began to emulate the same sort of low scale grassland burning. But never tried it in the forests, and it has never been down in the forests in Vic. Looking at the palynology of the western districts lakes and there is very little evidence of extra carbon from firing the grasslands, and very little any where.
What removed the nothofagus from Lake Terang was climate change. So of this so called history I suspect a large part of it is made up, or as most of what Mark Twain called Australian history: 'beautiful lies, all of them true'.
The valorisation of Aboriginal practices is not good history, and these days their historical evidence is encrusted in the politics of nobility and altruism.
What I think is causing the grass fires is the increase in population in the fringes, fire bugs centred on the northern grasslands and in Gippsland, and most definitely the cessation of fire breaks ploughed around every paddock which in my youth was the main late spring activity of farmers. And for evidence of its efficacy I cite Kangaroo Island. The farm, my farm so regularly ploughed has been burnt twice since he left because the young farmers have put their ploughs away and gone to the pub. When I was there the country to the north, from whence subsequent fires have come was mainly scrub land. It has since been largely cleared into pastures, and when a strong north wind gets into dry grass it moves at up to 25-30 km/hr.
And since you were there, what was his new fuel? Was it bad journalism?
Neil Barraclough Kevin, in the 1980's I went through a lot of Australian explorers diaries and read the accounts of many early settlers, there is an enormous amount of detail of Aboriginal burning, particularly in the explorers diaries, it shows very extensive burning, it's there in black and white. In Gippsland Alfred Howitt gave very clear details of environmental change with the disposetion of the Aboriginies and their management of the land with fire, he details instances right across Gippsland including areas now covered with thick scrub and forest. Regards the science, double the amount of fine fuels and it doubles the rate of combustion with all else being equal which gives a fire four times as intense. The estimated 4-5 tones of fine fuels per hectare in pre-European times is now 30-35 tones in many areas which equates to a fire that could be in the order of 100 times as intense and such fires have caused the totally un-natural devestation in the photo. Many Australian mammals have evolved to have only one young a year and have been eliminated from massive areas because of policies advocated by the Wilderness Society (which I belonged to in the late 70's when I was protesting about the intended dams in Tasmania) and if such was part of their evolutionary background they would have evolved to have many young a year.
Kevin Brewer I read all that stuff too, then read the squatters' diaries. There is a lot of detail about burning.
And I thought as you. I don't now. I am starting to think that if we want forests then we ring fence them and let them do their thing.
The idea that we are responsible for managing them is ludicrous and another example of the arrogance of the homo sapiens lemming. We can barely manage the built up areas where every stick and brick was placed there by human hand, so managing a vast area of unknown unknowns is not going to be, how successful?
And as for burning, the largest bush fire was the 1974 fire that swept through the NT, burning 15% of the country. And that is a place where most of the mosaic burning takes place.
As for explorers' diaries, with few exceptions they traversed the easy bits. Those that didn't ate koalas to survive.
And I thought as you. I don't now. I am starting to think that if we want forests then we ring fence them and let them do their thing.
The idea that we are responsible for managing them is ludicrous and another example of the arrogance of the homo sapiens lemming. We can barely manage the built up areas where every stick and brick was placed there by human hand, so managing a vast area of unknown unknowns is not going to be, how successful?
And as for burning, the largest bush fire was the 1974 fire that swept through the NT, burning 15% of the country. And that is a place where most of the mosaic burning takes place.
As for explorers' diaries, with few exceptions they traversed the easy bits. Those that didn't ate koalas to survive.
C. Thornton: During the millennia prior to the arrival of human beings in Australia, the land was forced to manage itself without depending on human intervention. That whole time, the country was covered from coast to coast with dense rainforest. Beneath the canopy, countless animals of countless varieties thrived. Respected research scientists such as Professor Tim Flannery have found evidence that after human beings arrived and started setting fires they were unable to put out, thus burning most of the country, the rainforest disappeared, the megafauna went extinct and up sprang the genus that was most able to cope with fire - the gum tree. The gum tree not only copes with fire, it attracts it. Now Australia is covered from coast to coast with fire-attractant flora. Kevin Brewer this would appear to back up your statement, 'the idea that we are responsible for managing forests is ludicrous and another example of the arrogance of homo sapiens'.