Control burns in state and national parks are becoming a problem in themselves in Victoria.
All too often they get out of control and in the case of NE Vic. saturate our air with smoke for months on end [from October to May].
Despite all that 'control-burning' that work has neither prevented major bushfires nor reduced the impact they have.
Among the worst examples is that the great bulk of Wilson's Promontory NP was almost entirely burned through soon after having earlier being almost entirely burned through!
We are getting it fundamentally wrong!
We desperately need to focus our efforts on where people live, work and play. For example, if a school is built in a fire prone area it's buildings must be designed to ensure the survival of people who get caught there instead of being built to reduce costs.
We need to make it much harder for arsonists to easily light fires, much easier to detect them doing so and apply massively greater penalties to those who deliberately set fires going.
Especially at the outbreak of fires our fire services should include mass capacity water-bombing aircraft or more advanced technologies - if the US can use specially kitted out monster planes to do so; what's our problem?
We have a myopic leader with a passion to fight major bushfires with a shovel and rake.
