Thread: Climate Change and our Land of Fire, Flood and Drought.

Originally Posted by Johndoe

Fires have been around a while.
Seems like we are going around in circles.
Spend a few million on a few inquiries, employ a few more people / scientists and lets talk about fires.

Meanwhile i drive fire tracks around my area and there is trees over tracks and just overgrown in general.

I would HATE to be a volunteer around here driving a fire truck down some of these tracks during a fire! Deathtrap.

So the guy is wrong because he works mostly in an office? He has studied the data and impacts of all recent fires. I would trust his word everytime over an armchair expert.

Originally Posted by 4bee

Didn't someone here describe recently how a particular park in NSW, Gospers Mountain, had been made inaccessible by the ripping up of tracks, mounds of soil being placed strategically to reduce access, Plantings been made on those ripped tracks & just generally ****ing up the area so that fire control was near impossible & contributed to the large fires there at present?

Who thinks this **** up, some distant shiny arse?


Mick,


I believe we will see Cool Burns return to the table, if not, this stuff is going to be repeated every few years at great expense to the States & the residents. I simply cannot see how not doing this will reduce Fire Risk.

Some (probably most privately owned) native forest here has not seen a fire of any size for many years when CFS Training Nights & reams of paper Reports were knocked on the head some years ago here. Certainly not during my residency here in 30 years.

I suspect it also came under "The too Hard Basket"/ Can't be arsed" headings in many cases.

Cool burns are already on the table. The issue is there have been no conditions to conduct cool burns properly in the last 5 years in Victoria. It's either too cold and wet or too dry and hot. You need dry and cool for cool burns. And you need a number of days of it. We had a spring burn season of two days here. Any fire lit after that would've caused a bushfire. The relative humidity and fuel moisture were just too low to burn two days after the rain stopped.

How would I know? It's been my job for the last decade. But then I'm just a shiny arsed bureaucrat so what would I know?

Originally Posted by gusthedog

So the guy is wrong because he works mostly in an office?

If you say so. Not sure what an office job has to do with anything but whatever.

Originally Posted by gusthedog

I would trust his word everytime over an armchair expert.

Words are good no question but i think its becoming obvious now that action needs to follow words.

Originally Posted by gusthedog

Cool burns are already on the table. The issue is there have been no conditions to conduct cool burns properly in the last 5 years in Victoria. It's either too cold and wet or too dry and hot. You need dry and cool for cool burns. And you need a number of days of it. We had a spring burn season of two days here. Any fire lit after that would've caused a bushfire. The relative humidity and fuel moisture were just too low to burn two days after the rain stopped.

How would I know? It's been my job for the last decade. But then I'm just a shiny arsed bureaucrat so what would I know?

My point was that some 'shiny arse' appears to have placed physical barriers in situ in that park, making it damn near impossible for any strike team to operate safely & efficiently, from what I read of the original post here.

The Cool Burns was my opinion. You can't help the weather but you can stop, what appears to be making stupid decisions in restricting safe movement. It wouldn't have been just one person's decision either.

You got a problem with that?

Originally Posted by Johndoe

Fires have been around a while.
Seems like we are going around in circles.
Spend a few million on a few inquiries, employ a few more people / scientists and lets talk about fires.

Meanwhile i drive fire tracks around my area and there is trees over tracks and just overgrown in general.

I would HATE to be a volunteer around here driving a fire truck down some of these tracks during a fire! Deathtrap.

My point was that some 'shiny arse' appears to have placed physical barriers in situ in that park, making it damn near impossible for any strike team to operate safely & efficiently, from what I read of the original post here.

The Cool Burns was my opinion. You can't help the weather but you can stop, what appears to be making stupid decisions in restricting safe movement. It wouldn't have been just one person's decision either.

Doe knows what I am talking about.

2019 was Australia's hottest and driest year on record
2019 was Australia's hottest and driest year on record - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Yes, he advocated indigenous style slow burns of low vegetation to create a park-like setting and reduce the intensity of blazes, as practiced successfully for 60,000 years by the Aborigines.
I noted he recommended reading the excellent 'Dark Emu' by Bruce Pascoe for its description of Aboriginal fire stick farming methods.

No problem sir. I misunderstood your earlier point (I got confused as to who was posting what)

Cool burns are one option that we have. Mechanical removal is another. It's not as favoured as it has other consequences and isn't cheap.

However, the science shows that above a very high fire danger day, most fuel modification does squat. If you still have forest, it will still burn regardless of its structure.

Perhaps we will get to a point soon where we realise we can't live in some areas of extreme risk?

Yes, it's been a reality check to hear the fire commissioners warn that sometimes nothing will stop a fire except sustained rain.