Volunteer FireFighters AssociationIt is high time bureaucrats...

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    Volunteer FireFighters Association

    It is high time bureaucrats and politicians stopped blaming climatechange for a bushfire crisis that is very much of their own making and isputting lives at risk.

    The ABC were at it again last week, fawning over 23 former fire andemergency leaders who commented, outside their area of expertise, about analleged relationship between bushfires and climate change.

    It is worth asking how the non-expert views of such people are evennewsworthy.

    But the propaganda in relation to climate change, from the classroom tothe university to politicians and to most of the media, has to give cause forconcern.

    As The Australian newspaper editorialised at the weekend, “It is timefor a dose of icy water. Climate change did not cause the fires.

    Drought and even deadlier blazes have been part of Australian life formore than a century … even if Australians eliminated all of the nation’sgreenhouse gases, about 1.3 per cent of the global total, and pandered toextremists who want meat consumption, grazing and flying reduced markedly,nothing, virtually nothing, would be achieved …”

    Well, let’s deal first with the “deadlier” blazes.

    Firey’sare constrained in executing their duties by Greenies and green policies –Artwork: Terry Pontikos

    Dramatic language has been used to suggest that the devastation of lastweek is “unprecedented”, “apocalyptic”, “catastrophic”, and the result of the“worst bushfire conditions ever”.

    So what is to be made of the Black Saturday fire in Victoria in 2009which burned 450,000 hectares of land, killed 173 people and destroyed morethan 2000 homes? Or the Ash Wednesday fire in Victoria and South Australia in1983, which burned 520,000 hectares, destroyed 2400 homes and killed 75 people?Or the Tasmanian Black Tuesday fires in 1967, which burned more than 260,000hectares, destroyed something like 1400 homes and killed 62 people? Or, back in1939, the Black Friday fire, which burned almost two million hectares, destroyedmore than 700 homes and resulted in 71 fatalities?

    Dramatic language has been used to suggest that the devastation of last week is “unprecedented”, “apocalyptic”, “catastrophic”, and the result of the “worst bushfire conditions ever” – Picture: AAP/Jeremy Piper

    Adding Fuelto the Fire

    No one is denying thegravity of what people and fire fighters have been through now, but it is nouse gilding the lily here. You can’t have a fire without fuel.

    Two factors above all elsecome into play here.

    In NSW, when Bob Carr wasthe minister, and later premier, he ratified moves to have fire trailsabandoned. Carr’s moves prevented access to those fire trails by the Rural FireService, under the pretext he was keeping four 4WDs and campers out.

    The government (and howmany problems that we face today are created by government?) put locked gateson these national parks and planted big rocks at the entry to the fire trails.

    Understandably, the firetrails are now overgrown with regrowth forest, impenetrable to everybody exceptnative and feral animals.

    The fire trails are now overgrown with regrowth forest, impenetrable to everybody except native and feral animals – Picture: AAP/Jeremy Piper

    Yet it was these fire trails that enabled the fire fighters to get tothe heart of a fire.

    They could then create back burning and land clearing.

    Fire fighters could mobilise earth-moving equipment and successfully putthe fire out.

    In those days, water bombing wasn’t in vogue.

    It wasn’t necessary and, anyway, it was too expensive. The fire trailswere “fit for purpose”.

    Today, the fire fighters know they are hopelessly limited by where theycan gain access to the fires. They have to rely on very expensive water bombingstrategies.

    The greenies, of course, endorse this strategy.

    Except that they, disturbingly, prefer the use of freshwater, which wedon’t have, over salt water in putting out bushfires.

    And that is allegedly to “protect” the environment.

    The Black Saturday fire in Victoria in 2009 which burned 450,000 hectares of land, killed 173 people and destroyed more than 2000 homes.

    As one of my listenerssaid: “This sounds like fiction but it is not. What is all this ‘protect theenvironment’ hypocrisy? When have we seen any Greens MP, Zali Steggall, AdamBandt, Sarah Hanson-Young and their leader, Richard Di Natale, line up withTony Abbott to fight the fires?”

    Then-senator John Williamssaid in 2013, “The problem in our national parks is that we have these savagefires with huge amounts of fuel per hectare; we are killing the trees, we’rekilling the animals, we’re killing the koalas and anything else that lives inthese areas and we call it conservation …” You and I would call it destruction.I repeat, you cannot have a fire without fuel.

    Re-Learn toBurn

    When you think there areseven million hectares of national parks in NSW alone, 200 of them in Sydney,and yet hazard reduction burns have occurred on less than 1 per cent offire-prone land, then we are staring at a potential inferno.

    This has nothing to dowith climate change.

    Dr Paul Read, co-directorof Australia’s National Centre for Research in Bushfire and Arson, puts thenumber of bushfires in Australia per year at, on average, “62,000 andincreasing”.

    Of those, 13 per cent arestarted deliberately and 37 per cent are suspicious. That means 31,000Australian bushfires are either the product of arson or suspected arson, everyyear. That means that up to 85 bushfires begin every day because someone leaveshome and decides to start one.

    The Ash Wednesday fire in Victoria and South Australia in 1983, burned 520,000 hectares, destroyed 2400 homes and killed 75 people.

    Thousands of men and womenare risking their lives fighting fires and many have been deliberately lit.

    The guts of the problem isagain government.

    Local governments arebeing blamed for all of this, but they have no power to even lift a fallen treeor remove a broken branch.

    If they want to back-burnor reduce the fuel on the forest floor, they must get permission from stategovernment and jump through endless hoops.

    That is, if localgovernment want to reduce the fire hazard.

    Indigenous Australiansknew how to deal with fire. We have learnt nothing from them. The problem issimple. There is too much fuel on the floor and we cannot get at it.

    Arguing that we need morewater bombers, and we will have to buy them from overseas, is attacking thesymptom, not the disease.

    BureaucraticUndergrowth

    The current strategieshave us facing potentially appalling consequences and have nothing to do withprotecting the environment.

    We need an independentbody, removed from all government, with a simple brief to secure hazardreduction.

    I saw a pathetic defenceof government policy last week when Environment Minister Matt Kean said thegovernment had exceeded its own “five-year rolling target for hazardreduction”.

    And “that target says thatover five years, on average, we will do hazard reduction of 135,000 hectares”.

    NSW Rural Fire Service crews monitor the burn of a containment line around a property at Colo Heights, north west of Sydney on November 16 – Picture: AAP/Dan Himbrechts

    National parks in NewSouth Wales cover more than seven million hectares so at the rate of 135,000hectares a year, you are looking at more than 51 years to complete the hazardreduction in all of them. That is somewhere south of useless.

    With all the odds againstthem, massive build-up of fuel on the floor, dry weather, frightening winds,arsonists and governments pandering to the Greens, our fire services andvolunteers are veritable heroes and should be recognised as such.

    And so are the employerswho fund the volunteers while they do their work.


 
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