Well i have fam that are full time firefighters and thats not what they are saying at all... well apart from the weather of course everyone agrees the extreemly dry climate and hot weather is the main cause.
back burnings are now restricted to professionals rather then everyman and his dog like the old days.. but this is not the main issue... btw unsupervised back burns used to cause a hell of a lot of out of control fires and damage in the past.
all the old hats i know say the main issues right now are the dry tinderbox conditions, lack of advanced spotting and response, plus current resources to deal with so many fires big fires at once..
the gov was warned of the tinderbox conditions and projected weather in advance but saw it was best not to spend money in preparation just in case the fires never eventuated.. thats the crux of it..
government would be crucified by conservatives if they upped public spending to prepare and there was no major loss.. and are now being crucified by everyone else for not doing so. But no major loss for them as every true conservative dumb dumb will say everything is the greens fault no matter what. So they probably played it well at the publics long term expense
