Another Remote Ignition that has destroyed another National Park
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One of the many bushfires that beset New South Wales this month, purportedly ignited by lighting in the Warrumbungle National Park on Saturday 12th January 2013, has over a week later burned out over 54,000 hectares.
Warrumbungle National Park bushfire map
Labelled by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS) as the ‘Wambelong Fire‘,
since the ignition occurred in the vicinity of the Wambelong Creek inside the national park.
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Once again it seems that the remote location of the ignition prevented immediate response by a predominantly truck-based bushfire management organisation dependent upon volunteers.
The forecast bushfire weather last month was for this month to be extreme and worse, ‘catastrophic’ in inland and southern New South Wales. Temperatures were forecast to be in the 40s Celsius and with some regions expected to have strong winds. The bushfire risk was known. The Rural Fire Service warned the public of the risks of bushfire across the state.
However, the publicised information is spatial with the maps, and the following pertinent facts for this ‘Wambelong Fire‘ , a classified ‘Major Fire‘ have not been published.
Why not?
Forest Fire Danger Index, including the derived calculation breakdown shown
Fire fighting log of actions
Location of ignition(s) and estimate time of day
Time of detection (lag between ignition and detection)
Cause, even if unknown and still being investigated a week hence
Response time onsite resources (ground/air)
Initial fire-fighting resources deployed in first day/second day..
Issues and problems experiences by fire fighting due to lack of resources – prevention, monitoring, detection, response, suppression
Direct cost of fire fighting (RFS, and outsourced air charter, interstate resources)
Economic cost of the fire
The wildlife impact, given that it has burnt in National Park ecological assets
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If the public was provided with such information for each bushfire, taxpayers would begin realising the immense triple bottom line costs of bushfires (economic, social and ecological) and accept that more needs to be done about resourcing bushfire fire-fighting in order to mitgate bushfire substantial, destructive and long-term impacts.
In the case of the ‘Wambelong Fire‘ only the following information is currently officially published on the RFS website, with the previous days records back to 12th January archived and removed from the website :
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Wambelong WNP Fire (Warrumbungle National Park)
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ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: Broadly bounded by roads linking Coonabarabran, Bugaldie, Tooraweenah, Coonabarabran 1km Sth Bugaldie village, 8km west Coonabarabran, western boundary entrance to Warrumbungle NP, 5 kms north of Tooraweenah township, 2kms from Newell Highway (east of Tooraweenah) Siding Spring Observatory is near the centre of the area burnt
COUNCIL AREA: Warrumbungle
STATUS: Being Controlled
TYPE: Bush/Scrub/Grass fire
FIRE: Yes
SIZE: 54,207 ha
MAJOR FIRE UPDATE AS AT 21 Jan 2013 07:11: A 53,000 hectare bush fire is continuing to burn in the Warrumbungle National Park to the west of Coonabarabran.
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 20 Jan 2013 15:45 (Ed: late yesterday)
<<A 53,000 hectare bush fire is continuing to burn in the Warrumbungle National Park to the west of Coonabarabran.
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Current Situation
The bush fire is burning in the Bugaldie area, 1km south of Bugaldie village, 8km west of Coonabarabran and 5km north of the Tooraweenah township. Crews will spend today backburning along Mt Terrace Road. People in the area may see an increase of smoke and fire activity as a result.
Rainfall across the area has reduced fire activity on the fireground, this is helping firefighters work to contain the fire.
53 properties, 113 outbuildings, livestock and farm machinery have been destroyed as a result of this fire.
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Advice
If your life is at risk, call Triple Zero (000) immediately.
Continue to monitor the situation and follow your Bush Fire Survival Plan.
Keep checking www.rfs.nsw.gov.au, listen to local radio or by call the NSW RFS Bush Fire Information Line on 1800 679 737.
For information on road closures check http://livetraffic.rta.nsw.gov.au. Roads may be closed without notice.
For information on national park closures, please visit the National Parks and Wildlife visitor website.
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Recovery Information
NSW Police and the Ministry for Police and Emergency Services are coordinating the recovery effort.
Details of assistance can be found online at www.emergency.nsw.gov.au or by phoning the dedicated hotline number on 1800 018 444.
Counselling and Chaplaincy services are also on hand to provide assistance to residents.
A Disaster Recovery Centre is open 7 days a week from 8am-6pm. The centre is located at Coonabarabran Town Hall Supper Room on John Street.
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The next update on this fire will be at 10:00am Monday 21st or unless the situation changes.>>
National Parks ignored as ‘Ecological Assets’ worth saving from bushfire
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The Australian Government delegates management of national parks across Australia to the respective state governments. It is not working. State funding has been slashed and State governments’ interest in national park conservation are wanting and falling well short of 21 Century community expectations. The current and disturbing retrograde trend is seeing most state governments treating national parks under their care as tourist and recreational resources that in the case of bushfires are but a costly burden and expendable.
In New South Wales the authority charged with ecological conservation and protection of all national parks across New South Wales is the State-based NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) , which currently a diluted division with the Department of the Office of Environment and Heritage. The NPWS has an operational section that deals with bushfire management in national parks and works in co-operation with the RFS, a largely volunteer force sourced from local communities. The coalition of the RFS and the NPWS in NSW function with a joint delegated responsibility and accountability for bushfre management in national parks and reserves across NSW.
On its website, the NPWS only provides information about the closure of National Parks affected by bushfires, thus:
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<<Warrumbungle National Park – Fires, floods and park closures
Last update: 18/1/2013 11:59PM
Closed areas: Park closures will remain in force for this park or reserve for the next several days. Park closures and bans will be reviewed at 14.00hrs each afternoon.
Clearly, the combined management of the NPWS and the RFS in respect to bushfire fighting in the Warrumbungle National Park has been an abject failure. Most of the magnificent Warrumbungles have been incinerated. No information about the extent of the burning through the national park itself is provided by the NPWS or the RFS. Only the total 54,000 or so aggregate area, which includes farmland and rural property, has been reported.
This bushfire is yet another example of the national parks not being respected a conservation assets to be protected from burning like human life and property.
Just last October 2012, the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park was largely burnt out during the bushfire labelled as the ‘Macleay River Fire’ which burnt out 59,663 hectares. Responsible agency was the Rural Fire Service.
Before that in August 2012, the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, the NPWS deliberately started a broadscale hazard reduction burn deep into the Grose Wilderness well north of the township of Springwood. The fire escaped containment lines as the wind picked up and burnt out 5,000 hectares of protected natural World Heritage vegetation, before threatening the community of Bowen Mountain Park.
NSW Rural Fire Service spokeswoman Brydie O’Connor has said: “Conditions have been good for that hazard reduction. Obviously the wind came up a bit today but since it breached containment lines it actually dropped down a bit.”
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In the Warrumbungles, the ignition on 12th January was allowed to whip up into a fire front that become uncontrollable; “absolutely ferocious” according to Rural Fire Service deputy commissioner Rob Rogers.
But was it ferocious in the first hour of being ignited on 12th January – probably not. We’re RFS resources already stretched? Probably.
The bushfire under extreme weather conditions has ended up not only incinerating the majority of the Warrumbungles National Park, but has subsequently destroyed over 53 homes, more than 113 outbuildings, livestock, kilometres of fencing, pasture and agricultural machinery in the Coonabarabran area, as well as several buildings at the Siding Spring Observatory, Australia’s national astronomical observatory.
What National Park ecological values have been incinerated?
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The Warrumbungle National Park forms a vital part of the Brigalow Belt bioregion which otherwise has been largely deforested over two centuries of colonisation, leaving just the Warrumbungles natural for any remnant dependent biodiversity.
The affectionately named ‘Warrumbungles‘ support woodlands dominated by blue-leaved ironbark (Eucalyptus fibrosa), scribbly gum (Eucalyptus rossii), black cypress pine (Callitris endlicheri), whitewood (Atalaya hemiglauca) and rough-barked apple (Angophora floribunda) found on stony sandstone plateau and its streams.
Silver-leaved ironbark (Eucalyptus melanophloia), spotted gum (Eucalyptus maculata) and smooth-barked apple (Angophora costata) occur on stony hills in the north of the bioregion. Narrow-leaved red ironbark (Eucalyptus creba), white cypress pine (Callitris glaucophylla), red stringybark (Eucalyptus macrorhynca), patches of mallee (Eucalyptus sp.) and broom heath (Melaleuca uncinata) occur on gentler sandstone slopes.
There are 3 endangered ecological communities within the bioregion listed under Schedule 1 of the TSC Act. These are the semi-evergreen vine thicket Cadellia pentastylis (poline or scrub myrtle) and carbeen open forest communities. The bioregion is important for the long-term viability of these vegetation communities which are predominantly found here, with a small area lying in the Nandewar Bioregion. The carbeen open forest communities are now restricted to the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion and very limited areas of the Darling Riverine Plains Bioregion.
Benson (1999) notes brigalow, box woodlands and plains grasses as the most threatened plant communities in the bioregion. The grassy white box woodland community also occurs in this bioregion. It is nationally endangered and protected under the EPBC Act 1999. At a species level there are 4 endangered and 12 vulnerable species listed in the schedules of the TSC Act. Records within the bioregion tend to be concentrated in the major reserves and forests of the bioregion such as Goonoo State Forest, the Warrumbungles, Mt Kaputar and the Pilliga.
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What has been the bushfire’s impact on the Significant Fauna?
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Warrumbungle National Park circa 1992
[Source: ^http://las.new-england.net.au/2010/02/08/from-the-archive-warrumbungle-national-park/]
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Few faunal studies have been conducted by the NPWS in the Warrumbungles, so the pre-bushfire faunal population is little known.
<<Although few systematic surveys have been conducted in the bioregion, records from a variety of surveys can be used to illustrate the vertebrate fauna of the bioregion, which consists of 18 amphibian species, 68 reptiles, 281 birds and 82 mammal species.
Many of these species are considered threatened, including the endangered malleefowl (Leipoa ocellata), for which the bioregion contains important habitat, and the vulnerable koala (Phascolarctos cinereus) which has important populations in the Warrumbungles, the Pilliga and the area around Gunnedah (NSW NPWS 2000a). In this bioregion the tree species often selected by koalas include Blakely’s red gum, river red gum and white box, while pilliga box, poplar box, narrow-leaved ironbark and rough-barked apple are occasionally used for food (NSW NPWS 2000a).
Another significant mammal species in the bioregion is the vulnerable eastern pygmy possum (Cercartetus nanus) which has a very patchy distribution, with more than 10 records of the species known from each of only 5 locations in NSW, the Pilliga State Forest being one of them (NSW NPWS 2000a).
The birds of the bioregion are highly diverse, mainly consisting of tropical woodland species and comprising the largest number of Australian resident species of any bioregion. There are no major populations of rare or threatened birds in the bioregion and although many birds within the bioregion have restricted ranges, none is endemic. Exotic species are low in numbers and those present are located mainly around towns.
Although bird species diversity is high relative to other NSW bioregions, the Brigalow Belt South Bioregion has experienced major declines in ground-nesting, ground-feeding insectivorous and grassland birds, a trend common to many parts of Australia. An increased reporting rate in the bioregion’s rainforest and temperate forest taxa may reflect greater survey effort in these habitats. Reduction of bird diversity in habitat fragments and the continued loss of woodland and freshwater birds seem to be the prediction for the future. However, there was an increase in the numbers of mallard (Anas platyrhynchos), cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) and the common myna (Acridotheres tristis).
Conservation of habitat is crucial to the survival of small grassland and woodland birds. This should include protecting a substantial and representative proportion of the woodland and grassland landscapes of the bioregion, as well as maintaining and increasing the connectivity between seasonally variable food sources. >>
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Apparently 80% of the heritage listed Warrumbungle National Park has been destroyed by this fire.
In anyone’s terms, 80% loss is an abject failure of fire-fighting.
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Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata)
(An endangered native of the Warrumbungles)
The circumstance of this ‘Wambelong Fire‘ has similarities to the McIntyre’s Hut Fire which in January 2003 started in remote national park, was left to burn because it was difficult to attack and was not immediately threatening houses. Ten days later it coalesced with other fires and became the infamous Canberra Firestorm where four people perished.
This ‘Wambelong Fire‘ also has similarities to the Gross Valley Fire of November 2006 in the Blue Mountains, which started on a remote Burra Korain Ridge, was similarly left to burn because it was difficult to attack and was not immediately threatening houses. Ten days later it coalesced with another fire and incinerated over 14,000 hectares of the magnificent Grose Valley including the iconic Blue Gum Forest.
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By 15th January this year, the RFS faced over 170 identified bushfires raging across the State and over 485 million hectares of bushland, national park and farmland have been destroyed by the bushfires. RFS fire-fighting resources were unquestionably stretched.
An aerial photo of the Wambelong Fire (Warrumbungle NP) smoke plume travelling 14km up into the atmosphere.
(Photo by a commercial airline pilot)
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Yet the NSW Government wants to cut Bushfire Fighting Resources ?
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The current New South Wales Government Treasury has demanded that the NSW RFS cuts costs of $11.7 million over four years, yet expects front line fire-fighting to meet community expectations of bushfire protection and suppression.
The current RFS resources cannot cope with current bushfire emergencies with what they’ve got, let alone to achieve the same fire-fighting outcomes with less resources.
How absurd, irresponsible and negligent!
In the face of known major bushfire emergency risk impacting the State of New South Wales and causing widespread destruction, the NSW Government by cutting resources to its sole emergency response agency and one already chronically under-resourced, is a callous abrogation of the NSW Government’s fiduciary duty to the people and assets of New South Wales.
Under catastrophic bushfire weather conditions, the NSW Government will be deliberately and unacceptably exposing rural New South Wales to catastrophic bushfire risk and disaster and opening the government to substantial civil class actions, yet more bushfire enquiries with damning reports, if not individual criminal prosecutions for the implicated Ministers and Premier.
The following article is telling. It dates from September 2012, just four months ago:
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<<With a bad season forecast, rural firefighters worry budget cuts may threaten property and lives, writes David Humphries.
For 50 of his 71 years, Brian McKinlay has been fighting bushfires or doing his utmost to prevent them. He was a brigade captain at Hornsby in 1970 and has been a group captain overseeing several brigades (mostly in the Hawkesbury) for the past 30 years.
A man not given to hysterical outbursts, right now he’s hot under the collar. And the brushfire he’s helping to fan as president of the Rural Fire Service Association – covering the 70,000 volunteers who make the RFS not only the world’s biggest fire service but also one of its higher-rated emergency services – threatens to spread on fronts across NSW.
In the process, firies hope to shake the O’Farrell government from the slumber of a cost-cutting policy that looks, when stripped bare, like penny-pinching, but which would burn more than political fingers if predictions of a horror bushfire summer are realised.
“We’re trying to make the state government aware a global approach to budget savings will have an unfair and unjust impact on bushfire fighting,” says McKinlay, a semi-retired registered surveyor. “The effects long term on the RFS will be quite profound and will hit morale.”
Advertisement
But why such anxiety? First, some recent history.
State government revenues are in a pickle because receding consumer confidence and other factors have driven down goods and services tax (GST) receipts, and because other state sources such as property taxes are weak. The government’s labour bill is judged to be too high and a 1.1 per cent haircut was ordered across departments and agencies, with police the one exemption.
At the RFS, that converted to the fire chief, Shane Fitzsimmons, this month inviting staff to apply for voluntary redundancy. He’s said to want 120 departures from the 900 RFS staff – about one in eight.
“While the NSW RFS is committed to delivering on its cumulative savings target of $11.7 million over four years,” Fitzsimmons said in a media statement this week, “this process would not affect front-line and key support service areas, especially in relation to supporting and serving the community.”
Well, that’s that, then. We can all sleep soundly. But not quite. Assurances about not affecting “front-line” services are par for the course in such announcements. But the RFS is all about front-line services; they are its purpose for existence. If any job at the RFS was not directed at bolstering the bushfire fighting capacity and effort, what was it doing there in the first place?
“Seventy per cent of RFS staff are also volunteers or have been volunteers,” McKinlay says. “They have a great understanding of the system. They’re not in there just for the job.
”RFS staff are about 1% of the total and some are on dedicated programs, like work crews and management support for things like hazard reduction.”
If this was an efficiency drive targeting waste and inadequacy, let the government say so. Instead, it’s dressed up as fiscal imperative.
And that’s where we find the big sting. The RFS and other emergency services – the Fire and Rescue Service (the metropolitan fire brigades) and the State Emergency Services – are not funded like other government agencies. Their budgets comprise mandated contributions: 14.6% from the state, 11.7% from local government and 73.7% from insurance companies.
In other words, when the RFS talks about labour savings of $11.7 million over four years, the state government benefits by just $1.7 million, or about $427,000 a year.
McKinlay says: “One needs to appreciate the government predicament with revenue reduction but this brings about a harsh outcome with no real savings to the Treasury.”
So a one-size-fits-all policy, projected to the public as budget trimming, delivers to that purpose just a seventh of the promised pot. Most of the saving goes to insurance companies, which are under no promise to pass any savings to policy holders.
Indeed, the insurance lobby – now joined by the Shires Association – has been pressing for at least a decade to have the emergency services funding formula scrapped and replaced by a levy on properties, despite 6 per cent of NSW ratepayers already defaulting on rate demands they claim they cannot afford.
The NSW Treasury has hinted at sympathy for this switch and has begun formal talks on options. One emergency services insider told the Herald this week “the smoke and mirrors” artificial saving to government was regularly pointed out to ministers and backbenchers but this had not shifted government sentiment.
The Rural Fire Fighting Fund – the RFS budget – dropped this year from $271 million to $263 million. The government share was $38.5 million. It was the first time in 14 years that RFS funding fell. In that time, funding nearly quadrupled and rose on average by about 13 per cent a year.
That’s because nothing quite focuses government minds like disaster and the prospect of it. To be caught fiddling while the state burns is political folly of extraordinary arrogance or stupidity, akin to driving an unregistered car with dodgy brakes.
“The unprecedented rain we’ve had in recent years has led to an increase in fuel growth, particularly grass growth west of the Divide,” the RFS said in a written reply this week to questions from the Herald. “In some parts of western NSW, there has been more growth than we’ve seen in 30 or 40 years.”
And here’s a spooky thought. For the past 70 years, these conditions prevail about every 10 years. The last two occasions were in 1994-5 and 2001-02.
In the former, four people died and 225 homes were damaged or destroyed. The senior deputy state coroner, John Hiatt, investigated for 1½ years. His report became the basis for the 1997 Rural Fires Act and the modern RFS, with its single command and control structure replacing the disjointed previous regime of local governments effectively running their own brigades with all that meant for under-resourcing, incompatible communication systems and lack of clarity about who called the shots.
Some brigade tankers were built around 1930s flat top trucks, lacking speed, protection and cross-country endurance. What followed was a massive re-equipment program – involving 2500 new tankers and communication upgrades – as well as volunteer retraining and the professionalisation of RFS management.
By the summer of 2001-02, Sydney again was under fire. This time, however, we were better prepared. One hundred and 20 homes were lost or damaged but no lives were lost and the city’s outer defences were not breached, as they were six years earlier and as they would be with Canberra in 2003.
These aren’t improbable scenarios for Australia’s biggest city. With national parks to the south, west and north, much of Sydney is built on sandstone shelves that keep bushland root systems shallow and thus vulnerable to intense burning.
“Volunteers are concerned because they don’t know what’s going to happen to the RFS,” Brian McKinlay says. He concedes they are not likely to stop volunteering – an outcome that would give the Treasury a real financial headache – but warns that morale is a delicate fig leaf that would reveal unpleasant consequences if left to wither.>>
Meanwhile, instead of the NSW Government quickly and responsibly coming to the financial and humanitarian assistance of residents who have suffered directly from this ‘Wambelong Fire‘, and in many cases lost everything as a result, the local Warrumbungle Shire Council has set up the Warrumbungle Shire Mayor’s Bushfire Appeal and is appealing for donations from members of the public who wish to assist.
State Government disinterest, under-resourcing and disregard for bushfire emergencies is disgusting.
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Footnote
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<<The Blue Mountains District sent several crews of volunteers to fires in western and southern areas of NSW last week.
A strike team of five trucks, 22 volunteers and team leader Duncan Allan travelled to Coonabarabran on Sunday morning, January 13 where 51 properties were lost in one of the worst NSW bushfires in a decade.
(Ed: If these fire fighters were paid NSW Fire Brigade members, each would have been compensated thousands for their efforts in earned pay and award entitlements under The Crown Employees [Fire and Rescue Permanent Firefighting Staff] Award 2011. This is how our governments with ‘other’ priorities save money).
Several other Blue Mountains RFS volunteers and staff assisted the Incident Management Team, and a team from the Police Rescue also attended.
Strike team leader Duncan Allan said the group returned to Katoomba RFS district headquarters on January 18 very tired but satisfied after five tough days helping communities near Coonabarabran.
“It was a sizeable and complex fire over there and by the time we’d left, the perimeter of that fire was about 100km,” he said.
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“There’s a world of difference because they don’t have as many resources and equipment as most of the Blue Mountains brigades…many of them are farmers and have been there for generations.”
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“It covered both national parks and private farmland and there was also a smaller fire burning further north of the main fire front. Our strike team consisted of brigade members from Glenbrook, Blaxland, Warrimoo, Linden and Woodford and our role was in maintaining the control lines at the southern end of the fire.
“It was pretty hot conditions and we didn’t get much sleep, but we got to meet some of the local rural brigade members in the Coonabarabran region which was good.
“There’s a world of difference because they don’t have as many resources and equipment as most of the Blue Mountains brigades, but they make up for that with incredibly good local knowledge, as many of them are farmers and have been there for generations.”
Air operations specialists from Blue Mountains District left for the town on January 19 (Ed: a week after the fire started) and a remote area fire team, airbase operations and air radio operations specialists were despatched to Cooma where another major bushfire struck.
Other Blue Mountains RFS volunteers helped with fighting a bushfire in Wollondilly.
After a welcome return to cooler and more humid conditions in recent days, most of the fires are no longer threatening property and some are only under ‘patrol’ status now.
In a statement on its Facebook page last weekend, Blue Mountains District RFS said “the effort and commitment put in by our volunteers has been amazing and is very much appreciated by our colleagues in these areas.” (Ed: Compulsory government spin to supplant genuine compensation – i.e. money).
“It is wonderful to know that we have so many people willing to help where they can.”>>
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[Source: ‘Local Firies help bushfire emergency’, 20130123, by journalist Shane Desiatnik, Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper, p.13)
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This fire has now burned out 56,281 ha, just like Macleay River Bushfire in Oct 2012!
Official RFS Update on this Bushfire as at 20130129
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Wambelong WNP
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ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: Broadly bounded by roads linking Coonabarabran, Bugaldie and Tooraweenah. 1km south of Bugaldie village, 8km west of Coonabarabran, western boundary entrance to Warrumbungle NP, 5km north of Tooraweenah township, 2km from Newell Highway (east of Tooraweenah). Siding Spring Observatory is near the centre of the burnt area.
COUNCIL AREA: Warrumbungle
STATUS: Under Control
TYPE: Bush/Scrub/Grass fire
FIRE: Yes SIZE: 56281 ha
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 29 Jan 2013 13:25
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[Source: New South Wales Rural Fire Service, Current Fires and Incidents, Wambelong WNP Bushfire, ^http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_content.cfm?cat_id=683], accessed 20130129, note this information is routinely deleted by the RFS so will shortly not be available to the public. It’s called hiding the truth).
China Central Television (CCTV) building in Beijing in a gloomy coal fired smog
An all too regular and deadly occurrence for Beijing locals.
[Photo: Reuters]
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China’s urban air pollution is serious, lethal and chronic.
It is a direct consequence of excessive dependent use of coal-fired power by industry, exponential growth in petrol/diesel vehicle use. In the capital Beijing’s case, Beijing’s geographic location at the northern tip of the North China Plain bounded by the Xishan and Yanshan mountain ranges, places it in natural valley head air trap.
Under frequent meterological conditions, ambient air around Beijing has nowhere to go, and so lingers and becomes trapped for many days at a time.
But introduce massive industrial and transport pollution with this natural and known lack of breeze, unable to fan away and dissipate local carbon monoxide pollution somewhere else, and so Beijing’s air becomes suffocatingly deadly smog.
So Beijing is not a place tolerant of industrialised pollution.
Beijing does not have to aspire to 1980s Los Angeles smog infamy, yet blind industrialism has slowly fueled a degradation of this ancient cultural city into a replica Los Angeles with all the ugly economic waste negativity.
In the past three days, this is just what has again besetted Beijing – trapped ambient air pumped with massive local Beijing industry and transport carbon monoxide, has grabbing again world attention and empathetic concern for Beijing locals trying to breathe.
As part of an emergency response to ease seriously dangerous air pollution the government of China has ordered government vehicles off Beijing roads.
<<Beijing hospitals have been inundated with patients complaining of heart and respiratory ailments and the website of the capital’s environmental monitoring centre crashed. Hyundai Motor’s venture in Beijing suspended production for a day to help ease the pollution, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
Measurements of PM2.5, fine airborne particulates that pose the severest health risks, rose as high as 993 micrograms per cubic metre in Beijing on January 12, compared with World Health Organisation guidelines of no more than 25.
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‘Beijing’s Air Quality Index was as high as 500 at 6am on Monday.’
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Air Quality Index (AQI)
PM2.5
Health Advisory
Good (0-50)
None
Moderate (51-100)
Unusually sensitive people should consider reducing prolonged or heavy exertion.
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups
(101-150)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.
Unhealthy
(151-200)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion; everyone else should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion.
Very Unhealthy (201-300)
People with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should avoid all physical activity outdoors. Everyone else should avoid prolonged or heavy exertion.
Hazardous
(301-500)
Everyone should avoid all physical activity outdoors; people with heart or lung disease, older adults, and children should remain indoors and keep activity levels low.
Long-term exposure to fine particulates raises the risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases as well as lung cancer, according to the World Health Organisation (^WHO).
”Pollution levels this high are extreme even for Beijing,” the Beijing head of ^Greenpeace East Asia climate and energy campaign, Li Yan, said.
”Although the government has announced efforts to cut pollution, the problem is regional and to fix Beijing’s problem, we also have to fix industrial pollution in neighbouring regions like Hebei and Tianjin and even as far as Inner Mongolia.”
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Exposure to PM2.5 helped cause a combined 8,572 premature deaths in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xi’an in 2012, and led to economic losses of $US1.08 billion ($1.02 billion), according to estimates in a study by Greenpeace and Peking University’s school of public health published on December 18.
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”The number of people coming into our emergency room suffering heart attacks has roughly doubled since Friday when the air pollution became really severe,” the deputy head of cardiology at Peking University People’s Hospital, Ding Rongjing, said.
China, which the ^World Bank estimates has 16 of the world’s 20 most-polluted cities, is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases.
On Sunday, Beijing began its emergency-response plan to the pollution, which included ordering government vehicles off the roads to cut usage by 30%, according to Xinhua, citing the director of the city’s environmental protection bureau’s air quality department, Yu Jianhua.
The plan also calls for construction sites to limit activity that creates large amounts of dust and asks industrial companies to reduce emissions.
Residents are advised to stay indoors and use public transport if they need to go out, while primary schools should reduce outdoor activities, Xinhua said.>>
[Ed: Problem is that Australia’s coal exports, while driving China’s prized economic boom, at the same time are poisoning urbanised Chinese with coal-fired carbon monoxide.
The progressive narrowness harks to Dickensian London:
“This is a London particular . . . A fog, miss.”]
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Australian Government Clean Energy Future..plan
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<<..Outlines the existing policies already underway to address climate change and cut carbon pollution and introduces several critical new initiatives.
The plan has four pillars: a carbon price; renewable energy; energy efficiency; and action on land. The plan also details how the Government is supporting Australian households, businesses and communities to transition to a ‘clean energy future‘.>>
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Foreword
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<<The Australian Government has been advised by scientists that the world’s climate is changing and that there will be adverse effects on our nation if the trend of rising temperatures continues.
As a hot and dry continent, Australia has more to lose from climate change than all other developed countries. There are significant risks to our environment and our economy.
The clear scientific consensus is that human activity which releases carbon pollution into the atmosphere, mainly the use of fossil fuels, is risking dangerous climate change. This is why the Government has adopted a plan for a clean energy future for Australia.
The plan will cut pollution and drive investment helping to ensure Australia’s prosperity in the low pollution world of the future.
We will do this by introducing a carbon price into Australia’s economy. This will put a price tag on every tonne of carbon pollution released into the atmosphere by the country’s biggest polluters – around 500 businesses will be required to pay for their pollution under the carbon pricing mechanism.
The carbon price will create a financial incentive to reduce carbon pollution that will flow through our economy.
Households will be looked after with tax cuts, higher family payments and increases in pensions and benefits, to meet the costs passed through by some businesses.
The carbon price will change Australia’s electricity generation by encouraging investment in renewable energy like wind and solar power and the use of cleaner fuels like natural gas.
Treasury modelling shows the economy will continue to grow strongly with a carbon price. Extensive analysis by economists and independent institutions such as the Productivity Commission has demonstrated that market mechanisms like a carbon price or an emissions trading system are the cheapest ways of reducing pollution.
The Government is committed to supporting jobs as the economy is transformed. That is why we will support jobs throughout manufacturing, including in the steel and food processing industries, and in coal mining.
Australia has boundless renewable energy resources. We need to do more to take advantage of these resources.
The Government’s Renewable Energy Target, combined with the carbon price, will deliver around $20 billion of investment in renewable energy by 2020 in today’s dollars. It will mean that the equivalent of 20% of Australia’s electricity will come from renewable sources by 2020.
The Government will also drive this shift by creating a $10 billion commercially oriented Clean Energy Finance Corporation to invest in renewable energy and innovative technologies to cut pollution. The world is moving and economies which do not start cleaning up now will fall behind.
Australia has spent the last decade working out that putting a price on carbon pollution is the cheapest way to tackle climate change. The Government’s plan for a clean energy future has been negotiated by the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee. The Committee has agreed to a comprehensive set of measures to help fight climate change.
The Government is separately investing in further measures to ease the economic transition to a carbon price, as well as taking additional steps to reduce carbon pollution… Carbon pricing and moving towards a clean energy future is a reform we need to keep our economy competitive, to protect our environment and to do the right thing for our children and future generations.>>
[Ed: Note: Due to this large file size, it may be quicker to click on the above link, then on your web browser select File, Save As… , then once downloaded, to access the saved PDF file]
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Meanwhile, Australia’s coal exports to China continue unabated – in 2011, 13.7 million tonnes of metallurgical coal.
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One of the many of Australia’s working open cut coal mines, this one in the Hunter Valley
[Source: ^http://www.kateausburn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/DSC052381.jpg
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Australia provides around 30% of the world coal trade, which still accounts for 40% of total world power generation.
In 2011, Australia was the world’s largest exporter of metallurgical coal and the second largest exporter of thermal coal. Australia is also the fourth largest producer, and has the fifth largest resources of black coal in the world.
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[Ed: This makes Australia the prime pusher of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet.]
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Australia’s accessible economic demonstrated resources are sufficient to sustain current black coal production rates for nearly 100 years.2 Brown coal accessible economic resources are estimated to be able to sustain current brown coal production for over 500 years.2
Coal is Australia’s largest energy export earner. In 2010–11, Australia exported 283 million tonnes (Mt) of metallurgical and thermal coal to world markets worth A$43.7 billion. Total coal (black, saleable) production in Australia in 2010–11 is estimated to have been 345 Mt. Over the medium term, total Australian metallurgical and thermal coal exports are forecast to increase by nearly 72 per cent: from 283 Mt in 2010–11 to 486 Mt, valued at $56.5 billion, in 2016–17.
The majority of Australia’s metallurgical and thermal coal exports were exported to the Asian region in 2011. This leading position has grown over many years of coal trade, based on the quality of Australian coal resources and the ability of Australian industry to meet and respond to the needs of its customers.
In 2011, Australia’s top four export markets for metallurgical coal were Japan (40.8 Mt), India (28.9 Mt), Republic of Korea (16.5 Mt) and China (13.7 Mt). Australia’s top four export markets for thermal coal were Japan (65.4 Mt), the Republic of Korea (29.5 Mt), China (19.9) and Taiwan (19.1 Mt).
Australian brown coal (lignite) production, mainly from the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, was 68.75 Mt in 2009–10. Brown coal is used domestically in electricity production. Coal, both black and brown, accounted for over 75 per cent of Australian electricity generation in 2009–10..
Hunter Valley Coal Train, loaded with black coal for export
Australia: committed to supporting jobs in coal mining, despite a domestic economy not allowed to fall behind, while climate change negotiations are for other government departments to distract the limelight.
So the Australian Government’s plan for coal exports is to nearly double capacity from 2008 to 2017, while at the same time..
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“adopting a plan for a clean energy future for Australia to cut pollution and drive investment helping to ensure Australia’s prosperity in the low pollution world of the future.”
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How is such a ‘plan’ not a right proper farce?
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Coal stocks await loading for export in Newcastle. Photo: A record 114 million tonnes of coal was export from Newcastle in 2011
(Corey Davis: Getty Images)
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Newcastle Port Corporation CEO Gary Webb says record coal export figures are due to all stakeholders working together on the Hunter’s coal chain network.
There were record figures for December while the total coal export figure for 2011 was just over 114 million tonnes – up 11 per cent on the previous year.
The trade is worth nearly $13 billion. There were several extended maintenance outages on the coal chain network in 2011, but Mr Webb says they had no impact.
“Those known maintenances are factored in to the modelling that is done for the coal chain,” he said. “And it is just a credit to all the players, the miners, the load points, the above rail operators, ARTC, the terminals and ourselves to make it all fit together.”
Newcastle Port Corporation says there is no doubt coal export records will continue to be broken, as new infrastructure comes on line. Planning is currently underway for Port Waratah Coal Services T4 loader, while mining magnate Nathan Tinkler also wants to build a loader.
Mr Webb says further growth is inevitable. “These records will become regular things,” he said. “The framework provides for the right place for the next terminal. It provides for the certainty for long term contracts to be met and realised. And certainly we will continue to see export records continued to be met calendar year and financial year for the next few years.”
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[Source: ‘Record coal exports for Hunter’, ABC News, 20120106, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-06/record-coal-exports-for-hunter/3760768]
The Australian Government continues to encourage operation of Australia’s most polluting coal-fired power station. Worse is that corporate owner AGL pays no tax.
<<More than a decade after first trying to get control of Loy Yang Power Station, AGL has won the prize and is paying just $400 million less than the $3.5 billion enterprise value of the original deal.
Along the way, it has created competition policy history by challenging the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission in court. Yesterday, it finally forced the regulator to admit it had erred in its original rejection of the deal. Politically, its timing is perfect because it gets to collect $240.1m in cash to compensate for the cost of a carbon pricing scheme that Tony Abbott says he will scrap when he gets into government next year.
The $1.1bn carbon permits AGL boss Michael Fraser will collect will be worthless, but then he won’t be paying any tax.
The Loy Yang vehicle is virtually in the hands of its bankers now, which is one reason AGL wants to take full control before its 32 per cent equity stake turns into a millstone around Fraser’s neck.
Joint venture partner, Japanese utility TEPCO, is under government control since last year’s nuclear accident in Japan.
On balance, Fraser can say he has got a good deal, but against the history, this maybe not be quite as good as it first looks.
Certainly, it is not as good a deal as his bankers got when you consider Citibank and Deutsche will collect $8.3m in underwriting fees on a deal with zero risk, being sold at a massive 22 per cent discount on a stock that, for its defensive qualities, will fly out the door.
This must rank as the most expensive call centre in Australia.
Citi picks up another $900,000 for advisory work and just how much the real star of the show, competition lawyers Ashurst, picks up was not disclosed.
The ACCC had blocked the deal because it was worried Australia’s then biggest energy retailer, by controlling 30 per of Victorian coal, would set the scene for mass consolidation.
Barriers to entry created by the vertical integration were, of course, not as the ACCC first imagined, as the Federal Court told the ACCC in 2003 and the market has shown ever since.
The market is now dominated by three integrated suppliers — AGL, Origin and TRUenergy — with a plethora of smaller retail firms and generators headed by Tasmanian Hydro and Snowy Hydro.
While final ACCC clearance was a walk in the park, Fraser has timed his run well, because the next consolidation will be looked at more seriously. This is saying something, when you realise this deal was the result of some five months of negotiation.
Fraser says the deal works out cheaper than the NSW assets it missed out on 18 months ago and cements the company’s place in the Victorian and South Australian market. And he still has plenty of fire power to bid for the next round of NSW privatisations.
Just how the political windfall over the carbon pricing mechanism works remains to be seen. The Opposition Leader has said he will abolish it, but what will be left in its place is the key. Abbott could reduce the confusion by laying down the specifics of his plan.
The carbon tax is, of course, another impost for already stretched consumers, but utility prices will be the main item to increases in price. On government estimates, a $50 shirt will cost 65c more when the scheme starts on July 1, and most shirts are imported, anyway.
Myer has said its costs will rise by only $4.5m on a $1bn cost base. That explains why the retailers should be leading the charge telling consumers the impact won’t be as severe as some fear. Still, consumer sentiment is such that that will be a tough sell.
Big impact: The huge plume of smoke from the Victorian fires as seen from the NASA earth observatory 20070111.
[Source: Herald Sun]
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Grossly Under-resourced bushfire emergency management sees millions of tonnes of smoke polluting Australia.
2007 (even before the 2009 Bushfires):
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<<Victoria’s monster bushfires have generated the power of more than 100 atomic bombs and pumped out millions of tonnes of pollution, greenhouse gas and toxic clouds, scientists say.
The tens of million of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by the 1 million ha blaze exceed the combined emissions of the state’s power stations, industry and cars by about 30 percent, according to figures compiled for the Herald Sun online by the CSIRO.
Victoria produced about 7.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the past month from burning coal, petrol and gas; while bushfires raging in the same time pumped out 10.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
CSIRO atmospheric scientist Mick Meyer said the emissions from Victorian fires were about 10 times normal.
The fires also generated 2.5 million tonnes of carbon monoxide; 300,000 tonnes of volatile organic compounds such as (Ed: acetaldehyde), benzene, formaldehyde and hydrocarbons; 85,000 tonnes of methane; 64,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides; and 59,000 tonnes of smoke, Dr Meyer’s calculations show.
..The (Ed: carbon monoxide), methane and nitrogen oxide emissions would add to global warming with the heat-absorbing gases creating an effect equal to 2.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
“The emissions from bushfires including savannah fires, wildfires and fuel reduction burns account for about 3 to 4 % of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions,” Dr Meyer said.
The energy produced by the blazes also dwarfs that produced by humans, according to data provided by the CSIRO and energy agencies.
The fires have burned enough fuel to provide the entire state’s electricity needs for two-and-a-half years, or 125,000 Gigawatt hours, equal to the energy of 112 one-megaton atomic bombs.
CSIRO Fire behaviour expert Justin Leonard said the emission estimates could also vary depending on whether the fires blazed through eucalypt or pine forests, grasslands or scrub, and the thickness of the fuel.
A new study by the Melbourne University, the CSIRO and the national Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre has begun to better gauge the amount of pollutants produced by bushfires.
Country Fire Authority spokesman Ken O’Brien said many people were unaware of the colossal power of an out-of-control bushfire.
“You only have to see a reasonably small fire to realise the amount of energy produced,” Mr O’Brien said.
“But one million hectares being burned is an awful release of power.”
Researchers say the most immediate pollution threat to Victorians came from tiny particles in smoke – with about 59,000 tonnes flung into the atmosphere by the fires.
While comprising just 0.25% of the emissions, the Environment Protection Authority reported last month that the air quality over Melbourne was the worst since records began thirty years ago.
NASA satellites also clearly showed massive plumes of smoke spread as far as New Zealand and Tasmania.
An EPA high smoke advisory for the Latrobe Valley and East Gippsland was still in place late this week as smoke levels there remained up to ten times normal levels.
EPA spokesman John Williamson said the community could expect poor visibility and high levels of air particles from bushfire smoke.
The state’s chief health officer Dr Robert Hall said excessive smoke could aggravate heart or lung conditions including asthma and also trigger respiratory problems in others.
“It is likely that everyone within the community may be affected and they should avoid prolonged or heavy physical activity and stay indoors whenever possible,” he said.
<<The deadly bushfires that have claimed hundreds of lives will also harm the environment as the carbon-rich eucalypt forests release their payload of CO2.
The deadly bush fires in Australia have released millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, equivalent to more than a third of the country’s CO2 emissions for a whole year, according to scientists. According to Mark Adams of the University of Sydney. “Once you burn millions of hectares of eucalypt forest, then you are putting into the atmosphere very large amounts of carbon.”
Australia’s total emissions per year are around 330m tonnes of CO2. Adams’s previous research has shown that the bush fires in 2003 and 2006-07 had put up to 105 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because they burned up land carrying 50 to 80 tonnes of carbon per hectare.
This time, however, the forests being destroyed are even more carbon-rich, with more than 100 tonnes of above-ground carbon per hectare. The affected area is more than twice the size of London and takes in more than 20 towns north of Melbourne, so the CO2 emissions from this year’s disaster could be far larger than previous fires.
“The world’s forests are crucial to the long-term future of the planet as they lock away millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide,” said Robin Webster, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “More must be done to protect them – deforestation is having a devastating effect and as climate change takes hold, forest fires like those in Australia are likely to become more frequent.”
The carbon dioxide emissions from forest fires are not counted under the agreements made by countries in the Kyoto Protocol, though it is being considered for inclusion in the successor treaty that will be debated later this year in Copenhagen. The usual reasoning behind it was that, with any fires, new growth of vegetation would take up any extra CO2 that had been released. “That is true to a point, but if the long-term fire regime changes – we are now starting to have more fires – we may completely change the carbon balance of the forest,” said Adam.
He added: “All informed scientific opinion suggests that whatever new protocol is signed [at the UN summit] in Copenhagen or elsewhere will include forest carbon, simply because to not do so would be to ignore one of the biggest threats to the global atmospheric pool of carbon dioxide, the release of carbon in fires.”
Another out-of-control bushfire in Warrumbungle National Park (350km NW of Sydney)
This one a few days ago shown raging towards Australia’s Siding Spring Observatory in the Warrumbungle Ranges.
Photo: NSW Rural Fire Service, 20130113
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This latest bushfire episode has reported over 40,000 hectares of National Park burnt, which is how much CO2?
<<The worst bushfires in NSW for more than a decade have ripped through the state’s north-west, taking 33 homes and destroying 40,000 hectares of land.
More than 80 Rural Fire Service volunteers supported by 18 aircraft spent most of Monday trying to contain the 100-kilometre wide front that burned through the Warrumbungle National Park near Coonabarabran.>>
Warrumbungle National Park and Australia’s Premier Observatory
(Source: Google Maps)
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<<About 100 people living in the area were forced to evacuate their homes and the RFS on Monday night said the blaze remained ”a large and dangerous bushfire” that was worse than the Black Christmas fires in 2001.
On Monday night there were 125 bushfires burning in NSW, 30 of which were uncontained.
The acting Premier, Andrew Stoner, described the bushfire season so far as ”a hell of a week” but while milder temperatures helped firefighters on Monday, winds and temperatures were expected to increase by Friday.
The Bureau of Meteorology said most of the state would be in the high 20s to mid-30s with Sydney temperatures rising from 30 degrees on Wednesday to 37 on Friday. Bourke is forecast to be in the high 30s for most of the week, peaking at 40 degrees on Saturday.
As Australia recovers from last week’s record-breaking temperatures, the head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, said it was clear heatwaves were occurring more frequently, and would increase further as the planet warms.
”It [last week’s heatwave] could be [a result of climate change], but I wouldn’t draw any conclusions on one single event,” Dr Pachauri said. ”I think you have to take the whole aggregation over a period of time and then come up with the conclusion, which is precisely what we have done.
”They [the findings] are very, very clear. Heatwaves are on the increase, extreme precipitation events are on the increase, and on that there is really no room for doubt any more.”
An RFS spokesman said the Warrumbungle National Park fire had been ”absolutely shocking”.
”At one point there was a smoke plume rising 14 kilometres in the air. The fire was so big and there was so much smoke, it was shocking,” he said.
”It’s still not under control. It’s still burning in the Bugaldie area. It’s been a big effort to get around it.
”The winds, the temperature, the low humidity, just shocking.”
A teacher at Coonabarabran’s high school, Peter Morrissey, nearly lost the family home in the Yerrinan Valley.
”We’re very lucky, but unfortunately that’s not the case for everyone,” he said. ”The home just next door has been burned to the ground, while others have remained untouched.”
Firefighters were able to establish containment lines on a fire about 20 kilometres east of Cooma, in the state’s south. The fire burned through more than 12,000 hectares of bush and grassland.
RFS volunteers have worked for a week now, fighting more than 100 fires across the state. ”They are an amazing bunch of men and women,” the spokesman said. ”They’re buggered but they’re not broken,” he said.>>
[Ed: “Shocking” belies a cultural, even inherited colonial mindset of submissive genuflection in the face of Act of God ‘natural disaster.’
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Such primitive defeatism encourages complacent status quo of those in charge to prevail and with impunity be able to rise above all criticism, just like in the presence of devine aristocracy]
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Tasman Peninsula Bushfire January 2013
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Ed: Australian uncontrolled Major Bushfires must be releasing more than 100 Hiroshima’s of Carbon Monoxide every year ~ yet culturally no-one raises a questioning eyelid of the slightest concern.
They want to stop labelling species as “common” like the “Common” Wombat. Many once ‘common’ wildlife species like the Koala, Thylacene, Platypus are either extinct or approaching extinction due to Humanity’s dismissive common treatment, disrespect and slaughter.
Many wildlife species with the word ‘common’ in their name: Common Brushtail Possum, Common Ringtail Possum, Common Wallaroo are mostly treated with common contempt as if vermin. Look at Lenah Meats of Launceston in Tasmania. Common Possum and Common wallaby are native wildlife but are being poached for butchering, fur and profit. Lenah claims it is a company with “a deep ethical position“…operating from “a climate change perspective“. ^http://www.lenah.com.au
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The intrinsic value of ‘Home Range’
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Many species of wildlife are territorial. It does not so much mean that they are aggressively territorial, as modern society has come to interpret the word ‘territorial’, but that the wildlife adopt a ‘Home Range‘. They live, feed, breed within that home range, because Nature has endowed sufficient food richness and sanctuary to enable them to survive in an ecologically sustainable population. Territorial wildlife that are forced outside their home range, generally die. Deforestation and large bushfires do this. The cumulative impact is regional extinction, particularly given that much wildlife habitat has long been reduced to remnant disparate islands barely large enough to sustain territorial wildlife populations.
Similarly, when people live in a place for a while, they become more acquainted, familar, fond and attached to the place. They get to know the local characteristics, habits, patterns, and idiosyncracies of a place that are particular to that place. Their knowledge about the place deepens to an insight and a local wisdom and this instils affection and a sense of belonging to the place and an empathy and custodial, if not parental, responsibility for its inhabitant creatures and their habitat. Personal attachment to a place is the when a place becomes valued as a home. One’s home is not just a roof over one’s head. It is the immediate surroundings, connections and amenity – the Human Home Range. The place becomes ‘special’.
A home and a home range hold personal value and over time, one’s daily life, lifestyle and home and home range become intertwined. This naturally engenders a need to preserve and protect the place almost in a territorial sense, because without it one’s own daily life and lifestyle values are impacted. After all humans are animals and have derived common primordal instincts and behaviours.
And so it is wholly understandable that when external harm impacts upon one’s home and home range, response is powerfully emotive and vocal because the sense of loss is personal and soulful.
This month’s tale about the killing of the local Wylie’s Baths Octopus may seem to outsiders to be a relatively ephemeral case in point. But what matters is the impact on people and their home and on wildlife and their home. Another example could equally apply to BP oil covered Pelicans along the Lousianna coast, firestorms and tempest that have ripped through human and ecological communities. It is about a place that has become special and this is revealed in the emotive way the tale is told and the feelings expressed by locals.
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Coogee’s historic Wylie’s Baths, Sydney’s seaside pool at Coogee since 1907
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<<It was an unusual whodunit: a much-loved octopus found dead at Coogee’s historic Wylie’s Baths. But it did not take long to find the likely perpetrator – an overzealous cleaner armed with chlorine.
”I’ve been swimming there for 11 years and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this,” said Coogee resident Matthew Martin who described the scene at the tidal bath as a ”dead sea”.
Wylies Baths Coogee.
”Not only was every marine fibre bleached white and dead, so was every marine creature that usually lives in the pool.”
The Wylie’s Baths Trust, which runs the site, has posted a mea culpa on its website about the death of its resident octopus ”apparently as a result of chlorine contamination”.>>
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<<As you may be aware, very regrettably our resident octopus recently died, apparently as a result of chlorine contamination in the pool. Chlorine has been used to clean the pool surrounds for many years. It is a necessary function of our duty of care to manage serious slip hazards caused by the build-up of marine growth.
The success or otherwise of the cleaning process is a complex issue, dependent upon many factors including frequency, volume, timing, tide, temperature and swell. It appears in this instance, we got it wrong.
Wylie’s Baths Trust and Management are engaging Randwick City Council and the EPA on the matter and will be reviewing our pool cleaning procedures as part of the investigation. We look forward to patrons ongoing support in our endeavours to maintain the pristine, safe and natural Wylie’s Baths environment we all hold so dear.>>
<<The notice said the ”success or otherwise of the cleaning process” – to routinely remove slip hazards posed by algae growing around the pool – was dependent on a range of factors including ”frequency, volume, timing, tide, temperature and swell”.
”It appears in this instance, we got it wrong,” it said.
But that was not enough for Randwick City Council, which said the pool must come up with another cleaning method to prevent slip hazards at the baths.
Although some Sydney councils use chlorine or another algicide to do this, all pools cleaned by Randwick – including the neighbouring ladies’ baths – are cleaned using a hot-water pressure system.
”We are committed to safe maintenance practices which do not harm our local marine life,” a council spokeswoman said.
A spokesman for the trust, Tony Cousins, said it had asked the Environmental Protection Authority to help it review its cleaning.
”If there’s a good option for us to use other than chlorine, we’ll be dead keen on using it, I can assure you,” Mr Cousins said.
But he said he did not think the incident had stirred lingering disquiet about management changes last year, which were part of an attempt to make the pool more financially sustainable.
Regular swimmer Fiona Giles said the mishap was ”arguably a direct result of the communication problems that persist” at the site.
Wylie’s had recently returned to cleaning the pool with chlorine after using grit and a bristle brush proved ineffective.
Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences director Peter Steinberg, a professor at the University of NSW, said the effect of chlorine on marine life was localised and short-term, but its use had ”diminished significantly in recent years”.
”It’s frowned upon by the agencies that worry about those kinds of things,” he said.
Work was ongoing to develop non-toxic wax coatings to control algae, he said, but other experiments using small grazing snails have been abandoned.
”It was difficult to corral the snails in the end,” he said.
A Coogee local, Reg Chappell, said management might have made an error cleaning the pool. But he and fellow regular swimmer Sam Camer said the marine life – which in the past has included bream and a Port Jackson shark – would return with the tide. Less conventional methods have been deployed in the past to clear Wylie’s of unwanted marine visitors: a persistent wobbegong was once hurled back into the sea by its tail.
”We threw him over the corner, but then he just came back in again,” Mr Camer said.>>
This month’s tale about the killing of the local Wylie’s Baths Octopus at Coogee compares with a previous tale just a few beaches up at Clovelly about the killing of a well known Blue Groper fish affectionately known by many locals simply as ‘Bluey‘.
Clovelly’s much loved Blue Groper – a gentle giant
(Eastern Blue Groper – Achoerodus viridis)
[Source: ^http://regainingparadise.wordpress.com/category/clovellys-blue-groper/
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“In the old days (1940’s and 1950s) my friends and I used to be able to go to Rottnest (Perth’s holiday island) and spear a boat load of dhuies (best fish around). These days there’s nothing there – I don’t understand it.”
~ 85 year old veteran Western Australian spear fisherman Maurie Glazier quoted by niece Jo Buckee 20040908.
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2005
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<<Outraged beachgoers have accused divers of spearing one of Sydney’s friendly, much loved blue gropers at Clovelly Bay, a repeat of the “murder” of a similar fish which sparked a public outcry three years ago.
NSW Fisheries and Randwick Council (Sydney) are investigating claims that two men emerged from the water with a 1.5-metre spear and a mesh bag containing a female groper at about 9.30am on Sunday.
In 2002, the then premier, Bob Carr, expressed outrage at the killing of a groper at Clovelly which was initially thought to be Bluey – an inquisitive fish which was something of a local character.
Sam Zahedi, a member of Clovelly Surf Club, was among those who remonstrated with the divers involved in Sunday morning’s incident.
“I saw two men come out of Clovelly baths – both of them had diving suits on,” he said.
“One had a spear about five-and-a-half feet long and one had an underwater bag with a groper in it.” He said the fish had the distinctive yellow and grey-brown colouring of female gropers.
Kelly Stevens, a spokeswoman for NSW Fisheries, said: “We have had a report of this incident and we are investigating.”
A council beach inspector spoke to the men about spearfishing, although it is unclear whether the officer saw a groper.
Gropers are a cherished element of Sydney’s sea life and are famed for their tame behaviour. The coast between Bronte and Coogee is an aquatic reserve and killing gropers carries a fine of up to $11,000.
Among their fans is Mr Carr, who enjoys snorkelling at Clovelly and who described those responsible for the 2002 death as “mongrels”. It later emerged that Bluey was still alive and that the victim had been another groper.
Geoff James, president of Clovelly Surf Club, said that any attack on a groper would be deplored by local people: “All the members of Clovelly Surf Club and the Clovelly community abhor any such event or practice. The gropers are part of the unique nature of our little beach and community.”
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Gentle Giants
The blue groper has been the official fish of NSW since 1996.
Known to snorkellers and divers for their fearless, inquisitive nature, the fish can grow to 1.2 metres long and have distinctive large eyes.
Gropers are born female, with a grey-brown colouring. Some turn into bright blue males later in life.
They are natives of Australian waters and largely found between southern Queensland and Wilson’s Promontory, Victoria.>>
<<He’s probably Sydney’s favourite fish, popular with tourists and locals alike – even though nobody’s really sure if he’s still alive. Bluey – the eastern blue groper that was thrust into the public spotlight when it was “murdered” at Clovelly Bay in 2002 – is somewhat of a local character.
On January 22 that year, the Courier published an article titled ‘Appeal to find groper killer‘, after it emerged that a spear fisherman was seen holding a metre-long groper.
“Bystanders saw the young man emerge from the water with the groper still alive and watched as he bashed the fish with a diver’s knife,” the report read.
Locals were outraged and the then premier Bob Carr, a close friend of Bluey, described his killer as “a mongrel”.
A week later, in the Courier’s January 29 issue, it seemed the tide had changed for Bluey.
“Stop nailing that coffin,” journalist Andrew London wrote, as he explained of how two readers, both avid scuba divers, claimed the Clovelly fish was not the groper killed.
Fred Angles of Randwick said he had fed Bluey after the spearing incident and reckoned the fisherman killed one of the smaller female gropers in the area.
“Bluey is huge,” Mr Angles said in the report. “There is no way he could have paraded Bluey on his spear because he is so heavy.”
Phew! Bluey was still alive, and his legend would live on.
Then in November 2005, outraged beachgoers accused divers of spearing another groper at Clovelly, but this one was definitely a female, so it seemed Bluey was off the hook once again.
All gropers are born female, with a grey-brown colouring, and some turn into bright blue males as they age.
Greg Towner, a diving instructor for Deep Six Diving, said at least two blue gropers were seen regularly at Clovelly, and about four or five frequented the area further out to sea near Shark Point.
“They are pretty much everywhere along the Sydney coastline, but you can be reasonably sure that Bluey is still there [at Clovelly],” he said.
But Clovelly surf club captain Alan Kane said it more was likely that the fish which swimmers, snorkellers and scuba divers call Bluey is another blue groper.
“The name ‘Bluey’ seems to get passed down a fair bit,” he said. “Where the original Bluey is, I’m not too sure, but there’s a bit of a hand-me-down arrangement to whoever is the dominant blue groper at the time.”
Whether or not the true Bluey is still nibbling on the toes of swimmers at Clovelly is not that important, Mr Kane said.
“We love our Bluey,” he said, “and lots of people from all over the place come out to see him, so we think they love him, too.”>>
“I’ve been diving at Gordon’s Bay since 1965. I’m a big supporter of the aquatic reserve. It just gives people an opportunity to interact with wild animals and I believe that enhances their life. Because they also get a better appreciation of their environment. Nothing’s going to give me greater pleasure than my grandchildren are old enough to take them for a dive and introduce them to Bluey. And I think that would be just a wonderful thing.”
The legendary Clovelly Bay groper, famed for befriending many a Sydney snorkeller, may have returned. Or he’s spawned a family.
Intriguingly, the new Bluey on the block could also be a female that has changed sex and simply replaced him, a phenomenon characteristic of the eastern blue groper species.
Bluey was thrust into the spotlight in 2002, when he was “murdered” by an unknown spear fisherman. So loved was the fish, the then NSW premier Bob Carr called the killer ”a mongrel”, before announcing five new aquatic reserves near Sydney beaches to protect marine life.
”I have seen the groper,” the premier pronounced at the time. ”I have swum with him. I know the groper, he was a friend of mine.”
But then a year or so later, Clovelly swimmers sighted Bluey, sparking debate on whether rumours of his death had been greatly exaggerated. And this summer a large bright blue dominant male has been spotted.
A Coogee Pro Dive scuba master, Evan Batten, confirmed a Bluey lookalike was in the area, but said it was impossible to verify whether it was the original. Such sightings are so regular Mr Batten calls Bluey the ‘Elvis of the Sea‘.
”Bluey is definitely a legend, he was extremely large, 1.2 metres long and a very rich blue. But did he get killed? Was it really Bluey they speared? Maybe he escaped and now has come back?”
To John Rowe, the secretary of the Gordons Bay Scuba Diving Club, Bluey is ”the Phantom”, named after the comic-strip character who never dies. While he was a long-time fan of Bluey, Mr Rowe said no one knew when the legend began ”especially because when the dominant Bluey dies a dominant female becomes the new Bluey,” he said.
All eastern blue gropers start life as greenish-coloured females, though some will change sex and colour to become blue males.
Professor Steve Kennelly, the director of fisheries research at the Department of Primary Industries, doubts the original Bluey is still alive and suggested another fish may have simply replaced him. ”It’s safe to say a Bluey or Bluey’s relatives are back but it’s definitely not him or his son,” he said. ”I’d be very surprised if it was the original as he wouldn’t have lasted this long.”
Professor Kennelly said public outrage over Bluey’s death had helped promote a need to protect the species. It has been illegal to spear gropers since 1969 – they can only be fished with a rod and line. In 1998, the eastern blue groper was announced the official fish of NSW.
News of Bluey’s possible return excited Mr Carr.
”I snorkelled at Clovelly a few weeks ago and was happy to see a family of gropers enjoying the crystal clear water with me,” he said. ”Why anyone would spear them is still beyond my understanding.”>>
<<The NSW Department of Primary Industries (NSW DPI) has fined a man for spearing four Blue Groper, which is the official fish of NSW, at Twofold Bay at Eden.
The 49-year-old man was caught as a result of a routine fisheries inspection by NSW DPI Fisheries Officers.
NSW DPI Director of Fisheries Compliance, Glenn Tritton, said there are strict rules for catching Blue Groper in NSW.
“It is very disappointing to see the illegal taking of our State emblem, especially when it has been protected from spear fishing for more than 40 years,” Mr Tritton said. “Anyone who undertakes any sort of fishing on our waterways needs to know the rules, ignorance is no excuse.
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“NSW DPI will not tolerate the spearing of Blue Groper and penalties can range up to a maximum of $11,000.”
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Mr Tritton said the 49-year-old man was found snorkelling, carrying a speargun, adjacent to a small inflatable boat on the southern side of Twofold Bay.
“Fisheries Officers approached the man and the small vessel and allegedly observed four Blue Groper in the boat that had wounds consistent with those made by a spear,” he said.
“When interviewed, the man admitted to spearing the four Blue Groper.”
The man was formally interviewed and was issued a $500 penalty notice on the day.
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Fishing Rules for Groper:
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A recreational fishing licence must be held for all methods of fishing in NSW
In NSW Groper can be only taken by using a rod and line or a handline
Groper cannot be speared and have been protected from spear fishing since 1969
Groper cannot be taken and/or sold by any method of commercial fishing
There is a bag limit of 2 Groper per day
There is a size limit of 30 cm (only 1 of which can be longer than 60 cm)
People must also comply with any additional restrictions which apply in marine parks and aquatic reserves.>>
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(Ed: It is about time the Blue Groper was respected properly as a legally protected species nationally under Australia’s EPBC Act, without having to wait for its numbers to further decline. Why should wildlife species be denied a right to ecological protection unless their numbers have become endangered? The rarity basis for wildlife protection is but base moral relativism, and exploitative convenience.)
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<<The Blue Groper became the official fish of NSW following the death of “Bluey” at Clovelly in 2002, who was killed by an unknown spear fishermen. It is protected from spear fishing because it is so tame and inquisitive, so it is highly vulnerable to this method of fishing.
The Blue Groper presents in several different colours including blue, green, brown and red and changes sex from female to male during its life cycle. The largest specimens are males that are coloured the bright blue from which it takes its name.
Anyone witnessing illegal spearing of Groper is urged to contact their local fisheries office immediately.>>
Elephant cruelly butchered for Traditional Chinese ‘Medicine’ (read ‘quackery’)
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<<The world is dealing with an unprecedented spike in illegal wildlife trade, threatening to overturn decades of conservation gains. Ivory estimated to weigh more than 23 metric tons—a figure that represents 2,500 elephants—was seized in the 13 largest seizures of illegal ivory in 2011. Poaching threatens the last of our wild tigers that number as few as 3,200.
Wildlife crime is a big business. Run by dangerous international networks, wildlife and animal parts are trafficked much like illegal drugs and arms. By its very nature, it is almost impossible to obtain reliable figures for the value of illegal wildlife trade. Experts at TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, estimate that it runs into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some examples of illegal wildlife trade are well known, such as poaching of elephants for ivory and tigers for their skins and bones. However, countless other species are similarly overexploited, from marine turtles to timber trees. Not all wildlife trade is illegal. Wild plants and animals from tens of thousands of species are caught or harvested from the wild and then sold legitimately as food, pets, ornamental plants, leather, tourist ornaments and medicine. Wildlife trade escalates into a crisis when an increasing proportion is illegal and unsustainable—directly threatening the survival of many species in the wild.
Stamping out wildlife crime is a priority for WWF because it’s the largest direct threat to the future of many of the world’s most threatened species. It is second only to habitat destruction in overall threats against species survival.>>
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Traditional Chinese ‘Medicine’ driving wicked Slaughter
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The demand for elephant ivory is stronger than ever in mainland China and Thailand. Ivory is used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat fevers, nosebleeds, convulsions, stroke and as an aphrodisiac.
But TCM doesn’t work. It is quackery and witchcraft. It is immoral because it involves using and prescribing wildlife parts and drives the illegal cruel slaughter of endangered wildlife and its trafficking. TCM is wicked and backward. TCM needs to be internationaly banned just like cannibalism.
TCM: ‘Timeless Wisdom for a Modern World”?No, TCM has the same legitimacy as Cannibalism
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The following websites link to organisations pushing this TCM trade:
<<Hong Kong customs officers have confiscated nearly 4 tons of ivory worth $3.4 million in their biggest ever seizure of endangered species products, authorities said on Saturday.
Acting on a tip from customs officials in neighboring Guangdong province in mainland China, Hong Kong officials found the ivory tusks and ornaments in two containers shipped from Tanzania and Kenya.
Officers on Tuesday found nearly 1,000 pieces of ivory tusks weighing more than 1,900 kg as well as 1.4 kg of ivory ornaments in a container from Tanzania. The ivory was hidden in bags of plastic scrap.
A day later, officers found 237 pieces of ivory tusks weighing about 1,900 kg in a shipment from Kenya.
Authorities in China have arrested seven people, including one from Hong Kong. The ivory seizure tops one in 2011 worth $2.2 million.
“This is the biggest haul of ivory tusk in Hong Kong customs enforcement history in a single operation,” said Lam Tak-fai, head of Hong Kong’s Ports and Maritime Command.
Wildlife activists blame China’s growing presence in Africa for an unprecedented surge in poaching elephants for their tusks, most of which are believed to be smuggled to China and Thailand to make ivory ornaments.
Under Hong Kong law, anyone found guilty of trading in endangered species products can be faces up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $640,000.>>
Unlike humans, poached wildlife such as Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Bears and Tigers are increasingly approaching extinction as species. Genocide of humans falls short of speciescide, which should be put in perspective.
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Wildlife Parts need to be valued as Human Parts. The Wildlife Parts Trade need to internationally attract the equivalent penalties as does the Human Parts Black Market by: (1) those who commit the barbaric slaughter, (2) by those traffic in wildlife parts, and (3) by those who use wildlife parts. Penalties need to be Life Imprisonment accordingly, and for corporations fines of up to US$1 million per animal and all corporate assets seized and the corporation wound up].
Poor Victim of Organ Gangs
[Source: ^Bloomberg, 20111101]
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Jan 2013: ‘Poachers busted with 779 Elephant Tusks’
779 elephant tusks uncovered in Hong Kong shipping containers in January 2013 (just 3 days ago)The crime is escalating!
The tusks discovered in Hong Kong this week were presumably going to be turned into jewelry, knicknacks, and religious icons.
(Photo: SkyNews.com/YouTube Screengrab)
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<<Last month, TakePart reported on some revolutionary new tactics that will be implemented in order to hinder the proliferation of the very lucrative poaching industry. Those efforts can’t come fast enough; this week, another massive shipment of blood ivory was discovered in Hong Kong, the shipping port’s third discovery of illegal ivory in as many months.
According to Sky News, this week customs agents discovered 779 elephant tusks hidden in the false bottoms of shipping crates, marked as “archaeological stones”. Worth about $1.5 million, this massive shipment from Kenya represents at least 389 elephant deaths, but doesn’t even qualify as the largest the port has seen in recent months.
Two previous shipments recently discovered were actually substantially larger, with the biggest topping out at 4 tonnes of elephant tusks, worth about $3.4 million. That was just in November.
Hong Kong’s port is a popular through-way for the poaching trade because it serves as the hub for Asian markets, where the demand for ivory is at the world’s highest. The tusks are not only used to make jewelry, but trinkets and religious icons for the Chinese, Japanese and Thai markets.
The poaching industry has recently exceeded record levels with animals like Elephants, Tigers and Rhinos being slaughtered by the hundreds across continents. The kill-methods represent a level of cruelty that’s so barbaric it seems the stuff of fictional villains. Nonetheless, knowledge of the industry’s brutality does nothing to dampen sales.
Activists estimate about $10 billion a year is made from poaching’s international black market.
According to National Geographic, these recently uncovered shipments of elephant tusks just scratch the surface of the damage caused by poaching in the last 12 months.
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In 2012, 633 Rhinos were killed in South Africa (448 in 2011), their horns hacked off while they were still alive.
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“Hundreds of thousands” of African Grey Parrots were shipped off for sale. Less than 300 Sumatran Rhinos are left and only four Northern White Rhinos remain in captivity.
Every year, approximately 25,000 Elephants are killed for their tusks, accounting for their disappearance from the African and Asian plains.
The magazine reports that China’s recent stronghold in Africa is fueling a resurgence in the poaching industry. The country’s presence there, where it funds roads, dams, and municipal
buildings makes it a major player on the continent, giving it the power and access to easily extract the illegal goods and ship them home.
As activist Steve Boyes wrote in his National Geographic piece on the subject,
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“We are standing on the precipice of a mass extinction and Africa is just about to be lost forever.”
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In the meantime, the World Wildlife Fund, in partnership with Google, is trying launch the wide-scale implementation of drone technology, which will covertly monitor poachers’ activity
from hundreds of feet in the air. The secret system would alert ground crews of oncoming danger and send them in to areas where poachers are detected. Part of the initiative also
includes research into DNA tracing capabilities, allowing authorities to definitively trace poached animal parts.>>
<<Hong Kong officials intercepted 794 elephant tusks bound for mainland China from Malaysia.
The seizure comes in the wake of two other large shipments of African ivory being intercepted at the end of August by Malaysian officials.
Wildlife conservationalists have been struggling with the supply of ivory from illegal poachers in Africa paired with the demand in China. Ivory is often used for ornaments or for medicinal purposes, particularly in mainland China.
According to the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Malaysia is becoming a first choice as a transit country for the trade of African ivory to China.
Although being lauded for the August discovery of illegal ivory shipments, critics wonder why Malaysian officials were not able to stop this two metric tonne shipment.>>
<<KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight bluejeans and sneakers.
But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only after dozens of these hulking, relatively rare animals were dead and their precious horns sawed off that an extravagant scheme came to light.
The Thai women, it ends up, were not hunters at all. Many never even squeezed off a shot. Instead, they were prostitutes hired by a criminal syndicate based 6,000 miles away in Laos to exploit loopholes in big-game hunting rules and get its hands on as many rhino horns as possible — horns that are now worth more than gold.
“These girls had no idea what they were doing,” said Paul O’Sullivan, a private investigator in Johannesburg who helped crack the case. “They thought they were going on safari.”
The rhino horn rush has gotten so out of control that it has exploded into a worldwide criminal enterprise, drawing in a surreal cast of characters — not just Thai prostitutes, but also Irish gangsters, Vietnamese diplomats, Chinese scientists, veterinarians, copter pilots, antiques dealers and recently an American rodeo star looking for a quick buck who used Facebook to find some horns.
Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.
“Get caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine, you will receive a very significant prison sentence,” said Ed Grace, a deputy chief with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But with a kilogram of rhino horn, he added, “you may only get a fine.”
The typical rhino horn is about two feet long and 10 pounds, much of it formed from the same substance as fingernails. Yet it can fetch nearly $30,000 a pound, more than crack cocaine, and conservationists worry that this “ridiculous price,” as one wildlife manager put it, could drive rhinos into extinction.
Gangs are so desperate for new sources of horn that criminals have even smashed into dozens of glass museum cases all across Europe to snatch them from exhibits.
“Astonishment and rage, that’s what we felt,” said Paolo Agnelli, a manager at the Florence Museum of Natural History, after three rhino horns were stolen last year, including a very rare one from 1824.
American federal agents recently staged a cross-country undercover rhino horn sting operation, called Operation Crash, “crash” being the term for a herd of rhinos.
Among the 12 people arrested: Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler from Texas, who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking dozens of horns that he found through hunters, estate sales and Facebook; and two members of an Irish gang — the same gang suspected of breaking into the museums in Europe.
In an e-mail to an undercover agent, an Irish gangster bragged: “Believe me WE NEVER LOSES A HORN TO CUSTOMS, we have so many contacts and people payed off now we can bring anything we want out of nearly any country into Europe.”
Corruption is a huge element, just like in the illegal ivory trade, in which rebel groups, government armies and threadbare hunters have been wiping out tens of thousands of elephants throughout Africa, selling the tusks to sophisticated criminal networks that move them across the globe with the help of corrupt officials.
Here in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s last surviving 28,000 rhinos or so, the country is throwing just about everything it has to stop the slaughter — thousands of rangers, the national army, a new spy plane, even drones — but it is losing.
The number of rhinos poached in South Africa has soared in the past five years, from 13 killed in 2007 to more than 630 in 2012. The prehistoric, battleship-gray animals are often found on their knees, bleeding to death from a gaping stump on their face.
“Ever seen a dead rhino?” asked Philip Jonker, who works for a private security firm that has gone into wildlife protection. “It’s worse than going to a funeral.”
The only answer, some contend, is to legalize the trade, which would flood the market with rhino horns, lower the price and dissuade rhino poachers from risking their lives — or so the argument goes. Rhino horns regenerate, and the horns can be shaved down every few years and sold off without significantly hurting the animal.
One of most passionate advocates of this legalization movement is John Hume, a South African entrepreneur who now owns more than 800 rhinos, with names like Curly, Titan, Hillary and Pinocchio, and has amassed a 2,000-pound mountain of horn worth millions of dollars — if he is ever allowed to sell it.
“Why shouldn’t the person who breeds rhino get a reward?” he asks.
Every time Mr. Hume’s ranch hands trim down a few rhinos, they organize an armed escort to take the horns straight to a safe-deposit box in a bank because the same gangs that waylay armored bank trucks are now cruising around South Africa looking for Rhino horns.
But many wildlife groups say legalizing the rhino trade would be a disaster.
“The consuming power in my country is growing so rapidly that the supply would never meet the needs,” said Jeff He, spokesman for the Chinese branch of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “And besides, it’ll always be cheaper to poach an animal than raise it.”
Kruger National Park, an enormous wildlife refuge in South Africa’s northeast, is where many rhinos are being poached. The park lies on the border with Mozambique, a much poorer country still scarred from years of civil war. Park rangers say Mozambican gunmen are pouring through Kruger’s chain link fences, downing rhinos left and right.
Some sophisticated poaching rings use helicopters to spot the animals and veterinarians to dart them with tranquilizers. Others don women’s shoes, to leave misleading tracks. “At any one time, there are up to 10 groups operating inside the Kruger,” said Ken Maggs, a South African National Parks official. “These guys are trying new methods daily.”
Scientists say that maybe a million rhinos once roamed the earth, and for some reason, humans have been fascinated with the horn for ages. The ancient Persians thought rhino horn vessels could detect poisons. The Chinese thought rhino horn powder could reduce fevers. The Yemenis prized the horn for coming-of-age daggers, presented to teenage boys as a sign of manhood.
In Asia, faith in traditional cures runs strong, fueling demand as Asian economies grow, though there is no scientific proof that rhino horn can cure cancer.
In 2008, a Vietnamese diplomat in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, was caught on camera receiving Rhino horn — in the parking lot of the embassy. Around the same time, a Chinese company opened a secretive rhino breeding center in Hainan Province, reportedly to produce rhino-based medicine.
In the past 50 years, the overall rhino population has plummeted by more than 90 percent, despite an international ban on the trade in rhino parts since 1977.
But in South Africa, it is legal to hunt Rhinos, creating the loophole that the Thai prostitutes sauntered through. Hunters must agree to keep the horn set (rhinos have a large front and smaller back horn) as a trophy and not sell it, and hunters are allowed to kill only one White Rhino every 12 months. (Black rhinos are critically endangered and very few are hunted in South Africa.)
According to South African law enforcement officials, gang leaders in Thailand and Laos decided that to maximize the number of Rhinos they could kill, they would enlist Thai prostitutes who were already in South Africa with valid passports, which were used for the hunting permits. The women then tagged along on the hunts, often dressed in catchy pinks and blues, but somebody else — usually a professional hunter — pulled the trigger.
“I don’t know whose idea it was to use the ladies, but it was a damn good one,” said Mr. O’Sullivan, the private investigator.
None of the two dozen or so prostitutes involved have been prosecuted — the intent was to get the big fish. So Mr. O’Sullivan leaked a photograph of an enormous stockpile of ivory and rhino horns to one of the women, along with a message for her boss, a bespectacled Thai man named Chumlong Lemtongthai, that everything was for sale: “I wanted the big man himself to come here and negotiate.”
Mr. Lemtongthai did exactly that, and he was arrested soon after. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in November to 40 years.
“I do not want to see a situation where my grandchildren will only be able to see rhino in a picture,” said the judge, Prince Manyathi.>>
Seized rhino horns are shown with alleged Vietnam smuggler Pham Quang Loc, 56, arrested at Suvarnabhumi airport when he arrived from Ethiopia on his way to Vietnam
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<<BANGKOK — Thai authorities have seized more than $500,000 worth of rhino horn from passenger’s luggage at a Bangkok airport.
Thai Customs officer Khanit Isdul said Sunday that officials acting on a tip-off found four rhino horns in the passenger’s luggage at Suvarnabhumi International Airport. (‘They were allegedly hidden inside a souvenir hippo carried by Mr Loc.)
Officials arrested Phan Quangloc, a 56-year-old Vietnamese passenger who arrived with the case from Ethiopia on Sunday. He is expected to face a jail term in Thailand if convicted of smuggling. Officials estimated the value of the confiscated horns, cut into 6 sections, at 18 million baht ($586,000).
Asia is the main market for smuggled rhino horn, as some people believe it can cure diseases.
Trade in rhino parts is banned under international agreements.>>
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Nov 2011: 366 Rhinos slaughtered for TCM since January
Lam Tak-fai, acting head of (Hong Kong) Ports and Maritime Command, arranges Rhino horns, part of a shipment of 33 horns, ivory chopsticks and bracelets seized by the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department, during a news conference in Hong Kong.
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<<It could just be a new method used by syndicates to smuggle Rhino horn out of the country: bulk consignments, hidden in containers and sent by sea. But Rhino syndicates are not just using new smuggling routes, poachers also appear to be changing their tactics to target more animals.
On Monday, customs officials in Hong Kong discovered 33 Rhino horns that had been hidden in a container on a ship that had left Cape Town. They also seized 758 ivory chopsticks and 127 ivory bracelets, which they estimated was worth HK$ 17.4 million (R18.17m).
Customs officers had apparently selected the container “acting on risk assessment”. It was marked as carrying 63 packages of scrap plastic. Using X-ray equipment, they found the contraband hidden inside a package of plastic scrap that had been placed at the rear of the container. The 33 horns, which weighed 86kg, constitute nearly a tenth of the Rhinos poached in SA this year.
Dr Richard Thomas, the communications co-ordinator for Traffic International, said such a large seizure of Rhino horns was unusual. “Usually there are reports of one or two horns being smuggled out through the airports, I can’t think of such a shipment before,” he said.
Thomas said the Cape Town to Hong Kong sea route was usually used by perlemoen smugglers, and that Rhino horn syndicates might be using the same network.
What he suspected was that from Hong Kong the horn might be smuggled overland through China on to Vietnam, with its large market for rhino horn. There is also an active ivory-smuggling route between the two Far East countries. Two weeks ago, Vietnamese authorities seized a ton of ivory that had come from China.
South African Revenue Service spokesman Adrian Lackay said they had received news of the confiscation and had been in touch with the Hong Kong authorities.
“We will assist the foreign agencies with a local investigation if needed, because the goods came from South Africa,” he said.
Since January, 366 Rhinos have been killed across the country. Of those, the majority of the killings have been in the Kruger National Park, where 209 Rhinos were slain.
To date, 199 poachers have been arrested since January – compared to 165 arrested for last year. Thai nationals Chumlong Lemtongthai and Punpitak Chunchom are currently in court for exporting Rhino horn.
Lemtongthai, the syndicate’s alleged kingpin, used Thai prostitutes and strippers as bogus Rhino hunters. He would allegedly obtain legal trophy permits to shoot the Rhinos.
SANParks CEO Dr David Mabunda said that despite the higher number of Rhino killings this year, the number of incidents was declining. The reason was a change in modus operandi by the poachers. They were still using AK-47s and other heavy-calibre weapons and hacking off the horns. But poachers were attacking in larger groups than before, sometimes up to 16 armed members. Mabunda said the source of the Rhino horn in the container came from several parks: private and state owned. The bust showed the urgency for the DNA profiling of the Rhino, currently being done by the University of Pretoria.
It would tell where the Rhino had been killed, and once a horn could be linked to a carcass, a poacher could be charged with killing an endangered species. Killing an endangered species carries a heavier sentence than possession of Rhino horn.
Mabunda said they continued to work with the police and the SA National Defence Force, and at any time, there were between eight and 10 anti-poaching groups operating in the Kruger National Park.
The strengthening of the park’s law enforcement meant that crime was being displaced to other parts of the country. The hardest hit areas were Limpopo, Mpumalanga and rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal.>>
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Jan 2013: 633 Rhinos slaughtered in 2012, just in South Africa
<<FORMER home affairs director-general Mavuso Msimang, who has been set the task of researching ways of saving the rhino from poaching, is expected to report in the first quarter of this year. His report will also advise on whether South Africa should apply to trade in rhino horn under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).
The trade issue has polarised many South Africans who have the rhino’s best interests at heart. Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa will have the unenviable task of deciding whether South Africa should apply to trade in rhino horn.
Although South Africa will not be making any proposal on trade until 2016’s Cites meeting, there will be discussion on Kenya’s recent proposal to the international body that a trophy-hunting moratorium be placed on South African white rhinos, says Southern African Development Community rhino management group chairman Mike Knight.
The proposal will be considered at the Cites Conference of Parties in Bangkok in March. If approved, the moratorium will be instituted until 2019, says Lion Aid founder Pieter Kat.
Mr Kat says Kenya argues that despite progress made by South Africa in instituting more demanding control measures, rhino poaching continues to rise.
Controls include the development of an electronic database for licence applications, mandatory registration of existing rhino horn stockpiles, bilateral treaties to improve law enforcement, increasing penalties and improving the gathering of intelligence.
“Kenya is of the opinion that such poaching has resonated across borders and that the recent upsurge in rhinos poached in Kenya is directly linked to a problem made in South Africa,” Mr Kat says.
Mr Knight says that integral to the Kenyan proposal is that countries such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, and countries where rhino horn is sought after such as China and Vietnam, should respond to its proposal.
It is agreed that South Africa is not winning the war on rhino poaching. The country lost a record 633 rhinos between January 1 and December 19 last year. The previous record, for 2011, was 448. Already two rhinos have been slain in the first week of 2013.
Arrests have increased and sentences for the convicted are harsher. South Africa also signed a long-awaited memorandum of understanding with Vietnam in mid-December. The agreement aims to curb rhino poaching.
South Africa is home to more than 80% of the global population, and scientists have warned that if poaching increases at the same rate as it did between 2009 and 2011, when the tally jumped from 122 to 448, just more than a threefold increase, the species will be extinct by mid-century. It could go into decline by 2016.
Conservationists see Vietnam as key to curbing the poaching that feeds the illegal horn trade. The country, a known destination for much of the illegal rhino horn poached in South Africa, posted the highest wildlife crime score in the World Wide Fund (WWF) for Nature’s 2012 Wildlife Crime Scorecard report.
Rhino horn, prized in Vietnam as a “pick-me-up”, cancer cure and even an aphrodisiac, fetches about $60,000/kg in the Southeast Asian country.
The agreement that Ms Molewa and Vietnamese Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Cao Duc Phat signed last month refers only in general terms to addressing illegal wildlife smuggling.
However, there were “clear indications” that rhino horn trafficking would be “top of the new agenda on co-operation between the two nations”, WWF-SA said immediately after the memorandum was signed.
Mr Knight says it is likely South Africa will turn more to technology to help it fight rhino poachers, with the possible use of “unmanned aerial vehicles”, or “drones”.>>
WWF urges South Africans to be proud of their Rhino heritage on World Rhino Day (22 September).
More than 75% of all the world’s Rhino today are found in South Africa.
Rhinos have ranged far and wide across Africa and formed a magnificent part of our cultural and natural heritage for thousands of years. Long before becoming part of the iconic Big Five, rhinos were revered by African royalty as epitomised by the Golden Rhino buried with the King of Mapungubwe 800 years ago. South Africans are rightly proud of their rhino history and the critical role they played in the remarkable recovery of white rhino numbers over the last century. Today three out of every four rhinos alive are found in this one country.
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Yet, rhino deaths from poaching continue to rise. As of 16 October 2012, 455 rhinos have been illegally killed for their horns this year.
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Rhino numbers continue to grow as more are born than are dying – even when poaching mortalities are taken into account. However, we are coming ever closer to the danger zone where populations start to decline. WWF urges all South Africans to play a part in rhino protection at this pivotal point in their future. Report threats to rhinos or any signs of suspicious behaviour on the Department of Environmental Affairs Rhino Hotline.
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What does WWF do to help rhinos?
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On Rhino Day 2012, WWF-SA launched its new National programme to strengthen and support rhino conservation efforts in South Africa in response to the dramatic increase in cases of rhino poaching. Conservation activities will be based around a new five-point strategic framework to combat the threats to rhinos.
The five key areas are:
Continuing the protection of key rhino populations and creating new resilient populations in South Africa through our Black Rhino Range Expansion Project (BRREP)
Developing buffers in local communities around rhinos as the first critical line of defence
Supporting and tightening proactive law enforcement efforts to break illegal trade chains
Improving co-operation between South Africa and consumer countries
Understanding rhino horn trade in end-user markets and influencing demand
We are working with our colleagues in Vietnam to develop tactics to shift new markets and new uses leading to increased demand for rhino horn.
During the first week of October, BRREP translocated a further thirteen black rhino from Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife reserves to another property in northern KwaZulu-Natal.>>
Black Rhino
(Photo byJeff McNeely)
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“10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.”
<<Illegal and/or unsustainable wildlife trade can cause a species to reach a point where its survival hangs in the balance. In fact, illegal wildlife trade is one of the main reasons that many species are endangered.
For example, Rhino poaching to fuel to demand for the illegal Rhino horn trade reached an all-time high in 2011, with 448 Rhinos poached in South Africa alone. This could unravel years of conservation success with African Rhinos.>>
It’s another hot summer that Australian state government fire services all brand the ‘bushfire season‘, because inevitably bushfires occur yet still recklessly get out of control.
It’s 2013 and we didn’t have to wait long. Since yesterday (and prior) bushfires have raged across the state.
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Remembering Hobart’s Black Tuesday
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Tasmanians lost their bushfire innocence in 1967 when on 7th January 110 separate fire fronts burnt through some 2,640 square kilometres (652,360 acres)(264,000 ha) of land in Southern Tasmania including Hobart within the space of five hours.
It became known to Tasmanians as ‘Black Tuesday‘. Tragically, sixty two people died, another 900 were injured and over seven thousand were made homeless. Property loss was extensive with 1293 homes, and over 1700 other buildings destroyed. The bushfires also destroyed 80 bridges, 4800 sections of power lines, 1500 motor vehicles and over 100 other structures. It was estimated that at least 62,000 farm animals were killed. The total direct economic loss amounted to $40 million in 1967 Australian dollar values.
The bushfire causes were attributed to:
Dense and tinder dry Eucalypt bushland following an eight month dry spell
Many flammable properties situated close to and amongst bushland and tall dry grass
Very hot dry windy weather to 39 °C, yet such weather conditions are not abnormal for Tasmania nor many other regions of Australia during summer. McArthur’s report on the fire noted that ‘very similar conditions have occurred on three or four occasions during the past 70 years’.
An ineffective fire fighting response including poor communications
Many victims were disabled in one way or another to enable them to properly respond (Investigative Report by McArthur and Cheney found that most people who died within their homes or within a short distance of their homes were either very old and infirm or suffered from some physical disability; and the homes of approximately half of the people who died whilst escaping the fire did not catch fire and it could be reasoned that they may have had a reasonable chance of safety had they stayed inside their homes).
Poor and last minute decision making
The direct cause was the deliberate lighting of burn offs at a time of extreme bushfire risk. Reports into the causes of the fire stated that only 22 of the 110 fires were started accidentally. So 88 ignitions were deliberately lit as reckless burn offs or else being criminal bush arson.
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The Tragic D.E.A.D. Pattern
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1967 Black Tuesday wasn’t a ‘Natural Disaster‘. It certainly became a ‘National Emergency‘, but Black Tuesday was a ‘Man-Made Disaster‘. Lightning hadn’t ignited the fires; people had, habitually burning off in summer!
As after all bushfire disasters, and Australia has had more than its fair share, the survivors as victims and those affected mostly tend not want to attribute blame, but invariably the common feeling is that people just want to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
But to make sure it can’t happen again, the causes and contributing factors need to be identified and understood. Problem is that even despite the causes and contributing factors being identified and understood, solutions are not followed through. Bushfire disasters happen time and again and people tragically lose their lives and properties. After the disaster, there’s the government enquiry, the recommendations. Few of the recommendations are implemented and within a few years, it’s back to business as usual. Government complacency fuels apathy and so communities fall vulnerable to the next disaster.
The cynical acronym by those analysing bushfire histories is:
This is 2013. It is unacceptable that like motor vehicle deaths, the forces that cause the most horrific and costly tragedies in Australia (i.e. ‘bushfires‘) are treated with such ambivalence, negligence, token resourcing and culpable under-preparedness by Australian governments at all levels. Bushfire Risk Management is clearly lacking. The recklessness at government level, has long learned from bushfire experience and can no longer rely on the excuse of innocence. Governments have a fiduciary duty to protect their dependent communities from avoidable harm. Governments that under-resource bushfire management to adequately do their fire fighting task in known extreme weather conditions are culpable of negligence. Governments allowing burn offs in summer are criminally negligent.
And it’s not about kneejerk scorched earthing of Tasmania into a barren landscape, as the ‘bushphobes‘ like WA Liberal Senator Chris Back would favour. It is about addressing the direct causes of bushfires, namely in Tasmania’s case, the senseless burn offs in summer and on days of heightened bushfire risk. It is about adequately resourcing fire management (serious resourcing) so that ignitions can be quickly detected, responded to and suppressed before they cause disaster.
[Source: ‘ Local Knowledge and Gender – Re-evaluating the 1967 Hobart Bushfire fatalities’, Jan 2008, by Katharine Haynes, Amalie Tibbits and Thomas Lowe, (jointly Macquarie University and RMIT), ^http://www.riskfrontiers.com/newsletters/rfnewsV7Issue2_Jan08_web.pdf]
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2013: Fast-forward Two Generations
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So in 2013, 46 years hence, Tasmanians are not bushfire innocent, but ought to be extremely bushfire risk wary and better prepared. But are they? Is the Tasmanian Fire Service adequately resourced and prepared. Does the Tasmanian Government still adopt an attitude of defeatism – that extreme bushfire conditions are beyond anyone’s control? Is this attitude acceptable to Tasmanian society in 2013?
The weather is similar this time of year. Hobart recorded 41.8C at 4.05pm yesterday. Thirty seven years ago Hobart recorded 40.8C. [Source: ^Hobart Mercury] The vegetation is the same. Still many flammable properties continue to be situated close to and amongst bushland and tall grass, arguably indefensible in the event of a major bushfire threat under extreme bushfire weather conditions.
Isn’t that why the bushfire risk grade of ‘catastrophic‘ is now being used by all Australian fire agencies, including the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS)?
Pertinent questions for the Tasmanian Government (ultimately responsible for bushfire emergencies in Tasmania) remain however:
How better prepared and equipped is the Tasmanian Fire Service today to properly detect, respond and suppress bushfires under such extreme weather circumstances?
How better prepared and equipped are Tasmanian property occupiers to properly recognise and react appropriately to save themselves and their properties in the event of a bushfire under such extreme weather circumstances?
More concerning is why are burn offs are permitted in summer at all at a time of extreme bushfire risk?
What do we pay our taxes and rates levies for bushfire emergency services, if when there is a major bushfire emergency the response is invariably: ‘everyone for themselves‘?
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Just two days ago (3rd January 2013) a total of 14 bushfires had been reported active across Tasmanian on the TFS website, and these were in addition to others that had been reported in previous days that had either been suppressed or were being contained or monitored.
The fires all seem to be distributed near rural properties so are rural folk continuing to light ‘burn offs‘ when temperatures are in the high 30 Celsius range and beyond? Why are Fire Permits being issued this time of year when the risk of bushfire is considerably heightened? Don’t people learn?
Or are holiday makers lighting campfires and not properly extinguishing them? Surely there are no deliberate hazard reduction burns this time of year?
Or is there a spate of bush arsonists starting these fires?
The public isn’t informed about the causes of most bushfires and the causes are not reported on the official Tasmanian Government website. At the time of the bushfires, while admittedly the exact cause(s) may simply not be known to authorities, the problem is that subsequently the causes are rarely reported anyway. So all these bushfires start yet the public is kept in the dark about the causes aside from tacit reporting of the status of the fire fighting effort.
Is it for reasons of embarrassment or culpability?
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Dec 2006: The Scamander Bushfire
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In December 2006, a bushfire destroyed eighteen houses and a restaurant in the small seaside village of Scamander on Tasmania’s north east coast. The cause is not readily published, but was it yet another escaped burn off?
<<On December 12th, 2006 Scamander and surrounds (were) enveloped by a bushfire coming from the south-west in the area of St. Marys. The township had little warning and really was unprepared in the extreme. If any luck existed for Scamander township was the fact that it occurred in late afternoon. Thus as evening approached the windy conditions which had been creating inferno like conditions, where it looked like nothing would stop it, lessened. Not to belittle this event but people further south of Scamander in the area of Four Mile Creek ‘took a copping’ the next day with winds changing to northerlies.>>
Scamander, a loss of 18 houses and a restaurant is considerable for such a small communitySeven years hence, has the community recovered?
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<<The most destructive Tasmanian bushfire in years menaced the island’s east coast last night, challenging fire authorities’ message that defended property would survive.
Heartbroken owners stood amid the ruins of houses and businesses at the coastal town of Scamander, where 18 properties were destroyed or damaged. But many more people in the same bushy back streets survived the flames, to stand dazed amid their unburned assets.
As the fires raged on into the evening through forests south around the town of St Marys, firefighters and home owners stemmed further losses despite the magnitude of a 20-kilometre front.
The fire impacting Scamander
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“I have every confidence in the advice we have been giving: stay and defend, or leave early,” Tasmania’s chief fire officer, John Gledhill, said.
About one in 15 of the bush block dwellings in southern Scamander burned, and many of those were defendable, according to Tasmanian Fire Service acting district officer Ian McLachlan. “We feel some of the structures destroyed may have been saved, had people stayed,” Mr McLachlan said.
He stood amid the ruins of a restaurant and art gallery where the operators fled from what was said to be a rapidly moving wall of flame. One man was injured in the fire. He was flown to Royal Hobart Hospital where he was in a satisfactory condition suffering from burns and smoke inhalation, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The mayor of the local Break O’ Day Council, Robert Legge, said emergency services had managed to cope with the terrifying devastation.>>
The Meadowbank Bushfire started on Saturday 25th Feb (late summer), reportedly by “accident” at the Meadowbank Dam east of Karanja near Maydena (Central Highlands).
It burnt out over 5000 ha and two days later was still officially ‘out of control’. Was it too an escaped burn off by pastoralists or foresters or perhaps another log pile burn by industrial logger, Norse Skog? “Accidental?”
<<Sixteen units with about 50 personnel have been deployed to the fire along with heavy machinery and helicopters for water-bombing. The fire is burning in open grassland and light bush and there is no immediate risk to communities. However, hot conditions are expected later today with a fire danger rating of very high. The bushfire is currently not controlled. Fire under forecasted conditions may be difficult to control.
The fire has been investigated by Tasmanian Fire Service and the cause was found to be accidental. Reported road closures are: Rockmount Road, Meadowbank Dam Road and Meadowbank Road.>>
<<A fire that raged near Symmons Plains (south of Launceston) yesterday burnt through 530 hectares of private land – more than three times larger than was originally thought. The fire is now contained but fire crews will remain on alert as the North endures another high fire danger day today.
The fire started at 3.30pm yesterday and quickly spread to Powranna Road, fanned by strong winds and 30 degree temperatures.
A Tasmania Fire Service spokeswoman said cooler conditions overnight helped firefighters establish containment lines around the blaze. Earthmoving equipment was being used to construct fire breaks and fire crews remained on site to monitor the fire, which started at Powranna Road. Powranna Road remains closed but the spokeswoman said the fire was no longer a threat to lives or property.
“If it stays like this there will be no concerns at all,” she said. “It just depends on the weather.”>>
How caused? No answers. Why? Another burn off in summer escaped again?
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Feb 2013: Official TFS Media Releases
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Wed 2 Jan 2013: ‘Severe Fire Weather Expected’
The weather forecast over the next few days will see temperatures reach into the thirties together with dry winds and low humidity’s. This will mean fires burning will be extremely difficult to control as fire danger ratings increase to Very High and Severe across much of the State.
Tasmania Fire Service have ceased issuing fire permits in the Northern and Southern Regions as a result of the forecasted weather conditions, and it is highly likely a Total Fire Ban will be declared for Thursday & Friday although this is yet to be confirmed.
TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown said “now is not the time to start any new fires and members of the public need to make sure any fires lit on their properties over the last week are completely extinguished. This means making sure fires that have been extinguished are cool to touch and checking the fire is not burning in the root systems of plants.
Special care must be taken when using machinery that emits sparks, such as mowers, slashers, grinders and other cutting tools, as this type of activity have the potential to start fires”.
Campers, bushwalkers, and anyone heading into rural areas over the next week need to be vigilant. Campers should refrain from lighting fires over the next 48 hours and all fires MUST be extinguished fully and cold to touch before leaving them unattended.
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Later that day:
A Total Fire Ban has been declared for the Southern Region of Tasmania from midnight tonight, Wednesday 2 January 2013 until midnight Thursday 3 January 2013.
This includes the municipalities of:
Brighton
Central Highlands
Clarence
Derwent Valley
Glamorgan/Spring Bay
Glenorchy
Hobart
Huon Valley
Kingborough
Sorell
Southern Midlands
Tasman
Chief Officer Mike Brown said: “Due to tomorrow’s forecast for hot conditions, the Tasmania Fire Service has banned all fires out of doors in the Southern Region. There are significant penalties that can be imposed on anyone not adhering to the Total Fire Ban restrictions”.
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Thu 3 Jan 2013: ‘Total Fire Ban Statewide’
Extreme Fire Weather Leads to State-wide Total Fire Ban from Midnight Thursday 03/01/2013 until Midnight Friday 04/01/2013
“Forecasted temperatures in the high 30‟s and strong dry winds across Tasmania have led to the declaration of a State-wide Total Fire Ban commencing midnight tonight”. The TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown announced today.
“Conditions forecast for tomorrow are the worst since the 2006/07 season where large fires impacted in the States North East, Hobart’s eastern shore, Mt Nelson and Epping Forest. We have additional strike team crews, heavy machinery and aircraft at ready to respond but under the Extreme conditions firefighting will be very difficult”.
“With the conditions we are expecting the safest option for people who are not prepared is to simply leave early and go to a friend or relatives place away from bushland areas. Those choosing to stay must remain vigilant about the conditions around them, review and practice their Bushfire Survival Plan and be ready to respond to any fire that maybe in their vicinity. A plan to „wait and see‟ and leave late is one of the most dangerous options” Mr Brown said.
All Tasmanians are asked to actively keep aware of the developing fire situation by monitoring local media and the TFS website www.fire.tas.gov.au.
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Feb 2013: Three Major Bushfires across Tasmania
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Two days ago (Thursday, 3rd January 2013) according to the Tasmanian Government’s official website of its Tasmanian Fire Service, three particular ‘Vegetation Fires’ started, separately near:
Bicheno Bushfire (East Coast)
Lake Repulse Bushfire (Central Highlands)
Forcett Bushfire (South East)
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These three fires have become Major Fires involving significant spread and property loss. At the early morning of Saturday 5th January the respective areas burned were Bicheno (2100 ha), Lake Repulse (450 ha) and Forcett (“not reported”). The television coverage of the Forcett Bushfire suggests that many thousands of hectares of vegetation have already been burned.
Forcett Bushfire – impacting the coastal village of Dunalley – 65 properties razed
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<<Homes have been destroyed and police are investigating reports of at least one death following the devastating bushfires that raged in Tasmania yesterday.
On a day of record heat and catastrophic bushfire conditions, up to 40 bushfires blazed across the state — destroying more than 80 properties and leaving hundreds of people cut off from their homes as they took refuge in shelters last night.
The hardest-hit community Dunalley, in the south-east, where 65 properties were lost.
Police are investigating a report that a man died as he fought to protect his Dunalley home. (Ed: Subsequently checked and confirmed 20130110 as untrue)
Police said 15 properties were lost at nearby Boomer Bay, where about 50 people stranded at the beach were being evacuated by boat.
A number of properties were also destroyed at Connelly’s Marsh, west of Dunalley.
Fire raged out of control in Carlton River last night, threatening the popular coastal community of Dodges Ferry.
Just before 11pm, residents of Dodges Ferry were warned it was too dangerous to leave and advised to take shelter at the local primary school only if the path was clear.
It was also too late to leave Primose Sands, Connelly’s Marsh and Susans Bay because Carlton River Rd was impassable and not safe.
The second biggest fire raged out of control at Lake Repulse, in the Upper Derwent Valley affecting communities including Broad River, Jones River and Ellendale.
Lake Repulse Bushfire, Friday 20130104
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And a blaze near Bicheno, on the East Coast, destroyed at least one property.
A large grass fire at Epping Forest in the state’s North was also causing concern last night.
Hundreds of evacuated and homeless residents were seeking refuge in emergency shelters. The most crowded catered for 600 people at the Nubeena District High School.
Another group of people is sheltering at the Dunalley Hotel.
About 40 people were taking shelter at Sorell refuge last night and a further 40 at New Norfolk.
Bushfire conditions reached “catastrophic” yesterday, with temperatures soaring to ajl record 41.8C in Hobart. Acting Premier Bryan Green said the day was “devastating”.
He said an emergency relief fund had been set up to which would provide $750 to people to help with their initial displacement.
An emergency crew of police, ambulance and fire officers flew into Dunalley last night to investigate the reported death.
Acting Police Commissioner Scott Tilyard said conditions were so severe that it would be difficult to confirm the report until either later today or early tomorrow.
He said: “We can’t rule out that there has been a loss of life, potentially one but at this stage there could be (others).”
He said the reported death came from a fire crew at Dunalley, who saw the man defending his home.
Tasmania Fire Service Chief Officer Mike Brown said 100 fire crews had been fighting fires around the state.
He said the fire at Lake Repulse appeared to have been started by an abandoned camp fire.
Other fires on the Freycinet Peninsula had been started by lightning, while the cause of the fire that swept through Dunalley was unknown.
Mr Brown said the Dunalley fire had started on Thursday at Forcett.
The fire had isolated the Tasman Peninsula as police set up a road block on the Arthur Highway.
Last night, police vessels were ferrying fuel, generators, medical supplies and other items to Dunalley and to the refuge centres at Nubeena.
Police were also working with Telstra to transport generators and other equipment to start restoration of communication where possible.
There were fears Eaglehawk Neck could be damaged by ember attack from the Dunalley fire but it was hoped conditions would ease today.
However, Mr Brown warned an expected southerly change could also spread the danger.
“As we get the change, the flank of the fire could become the front of the fire,” he said.
The Bicheno fire led to road closures at Friendly Beaches Rd, Courland Bay Rd, Tar Hill Fire Trail and Harvey’s Farm Rd.
Butlers Point campers were evacuated late yesterday, while Courland Bay shack owners were told to implement their bushfire protection plan.
Emergency alert status remained in place last night for the Forcett and Lake Repulse blazes, with residents told not to return to their homes until the danger passes.
Fires are also burning at Nubeena, Four Mile Creek, Steppes and Whitemark.>>
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‘Man feared dead, at least 80 properties lost in Tasmanian bushfires’
<<At least 80 homes have been lost and one man is feared killed by a bushfire that swept down onto the Tasmanian town of Dunalley, less than 60 kilometres from Hobart, in catastrophic conditions. (Ed: Subsequently the feared death was confirmed 20130110 as untrue)
The bushfire sent hundreds fleeing and was on Friday night still burning down the Tasman Peninsula, taking more properties as it went.
The Tasmania Fire Service acting district officer, Andrew McGuinness, said people should prepare for the worst. ”We’ve lost a lot of property down there.”
A fire at Bicheno burns out of control just 2km a residential town in Tasmania.
(A) local resident, was last seen by a fire crew attempting to save his house as they were forced to shelter in their vehicle when the fire burnt over them, the acting Police Commissioner, Scott Tilyard, said.
Police crews were checking the smouldering town, which is believed to have lost about 65 properties, including many of its houses, as well as shops and the local primary school.
A few kilometres away at the beachside town of Boomer Bay, another 15 properties were gone, Mr Tilyard said.
Many people were forced to shelter on beaches and in shallow water near Boomer Bay, with some evacuated by small boat owners and the police.
Meanwhile, west of Hobart in the Derwent Valley, a separate fire was threatening more houses at Ellendale and Karanja.
Tasmania suffered its most severe fire day in years, with a record 41.8 degrees in Hobart, the highest temperature since 1881. Higher temperatures were observed ahead of the fire front in Dunalley.
Tasmania’s chief fire officer, Mike Brown, said conditions reached the catastrophic level several times during the afternoon, and 100 crews were battling about 25 fires in the state.
The Dunalley fire began on Thursday in bushland about 20 kilometres to the north-west of the town, and swept out of containment lines on Friday afternoon fanned by strong winds.
It was burning to the sea at several points, and had taken properties at Connelly’s Marsh and Murdunna, local reports said.
A bushfire smoke plume visible from Park Beach in Forcett, south-east of Hobart, Tasmania.
A fire at Forcett, 30km from Hobart, sends smoke over Park Beach. At nearby Carlton River residents were being told to evacuate. Photo: Twitter/SiroccoSouth
The acting Premier, Bryan Green, said the government was preparing emergency accommodation, with a report that 600 people were sheltering at one refuge.
”This has been an extraordinary day,” Mr Green said…>>
Smoke climbs from a fire burning just kilometres from homes at Bicheno, Tasmania’s east coastPhoto: Hannah Woolley
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<<At least 80 properties have been destroyed and there are fears one person has been killed as out of control bushfires rage in parts of Tasmania.
Hundreds of residents have been forced to take shelter on beaches and in boats on the water overnight in the state’s south-east as fire crews worked through the night to control the blazes.
On the Tasman Peninsular, a massive sea rescue operation has moved more than 1,000 people trapped by fire to safety, 50 kilometres away to Hobart.
Rescue volunteers in boats, plucked people trapped by the fires off beaches overnight, with more sea rescues planned this morning. Tasmania’s Fire Service (TFS) no longer has any active emergency warnings, but several fires in the state’s centre and south-east are still burning out of control, forcing evacuations and the closure of many roads.
The TFS advise there is a watch and act alert for a large bushfire burning out of control along the Tasman Highway, near Bicheno, which may affect the communities of Butlers Point, Courland Bay, Friendly Beaches and Harvey’s Farm Road around 9:00am (AEDT).
In the state’s south-east, residents near Eaglehawk Neck should maintain their bushfire plans as a large bushfire continues to burn at White Hills Road, Forcett, Copping and Dunalley.
The TFS says residents at Bream Creek, Copping and Boomer Bay should evacuate to the safer place in their bushfire plans, or to the Falls Festival site at Marion Bay, but only if the path is clear.
An out of control fire at Lake Repulse is also continuing to impact Ellendale and Karanja in the Upper Derwent Valley.>>
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[Ed: Does this have the same cause as the Meadowbank Bushfire around this time last year]
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<<A watch and act alert is active for the area and residents should maintain their bushfire plans.
The Lake Repulse fire is expected to impact the communities of Lawrenny and Hamilton around 6:00am (AEDT).
There are still around 40 fires burning across Tasmania, with crews still monitoring blazes at Epping Forest, Nubeena and Southwest.
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Homes destroyed
A triage team has now reached one of the worst hit towns, Dunalley, where at least 65 properties were destroyed.
Police say there have been no confirmed reports of death or injuries there at this stage, however a team will be investigating reports a fire crew was unable to reach a man who was defending his home when the fire passed over.
Acting Police Commissioner Scott Tilyard says a crew at Dunalley was trapped when the bushfire passed.
“They had to take shelter in their vehicle as the fire burned over their vehicle and they were, from that location as I understand it, able to see a gentlemen who was trying to protect his property and they couldn’t get to him, it was too unsafe,” he said.
Dunalley resident Tony Young says he realised the town was in danger when he noticed clouds of smoke and a helicopter.
“I’d no sooner said that than the embers came straight into the garage where I was standing and ignited the ceiling in the shed and just engulfed it,” he said. “So all I could do was drive the car out of the shed, drive across the other side of the road and stand back and look at the whole place just being engulfed in flames, just like a movie.”
There are reports at least 15 properties have been destroyed at Boomer Bay, near Dunalley.
In the Upper Derwent Valley, another three homes as well as farming equipment and livestock have been destroyed.>>
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Ed. It is tragic that in 2013, Australian Governments still allow bushfires to kill and maim people and to destroy property and lives – human, livestock and untold numbers of wildlife and important ecology.
Another Tasmanian Burn Off, unsupervised, happily burning away…
off the west side of the Tasman Highway a few kilometres south of Swansea
[Photo by Editor late afternoon, 20110926, photo free in public domain]
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Footnote
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‘Australia: Government culpability in 2009 Victorian bushfires’
<<It is almost 18 months since catastrophic bushfires, the worst in Australian history, swept through the state of Victoria on February 7, 2009, killing 173 people, including 23 children, and incinerating 300,000 hectares and 200 homes. Over the past five weeks the ongoing royal commission into the catastrophe has focused on two key issues—the part played by senior emergency services personnel on “Black Saturday” and the role of the state’s “stay or go” policy in the high death toll. In both areas, evidence has emerged of government negligence and culpability.
Testimony and evidence heard by the royal commission has revealed an effective breakdown within Victoria’s senior emergency services leadership on the day of the bushfires.
Three of the state’s most senior police officers and Minister for Police and Emergency Services Bob Cameron were absent from the Integrated Emergency Co-ordination Centre (IECC) during key periods on Black Saturday. The uncoordinated and chaotic division of responsibilities and functions of senior police and emergency services leadership points to the negligence of the state Labor government of Premier John Brumby. It made no serious attempt to establish clear lines of command and communication inside the IECC prior to the devastating fires.
Most of those who died on February 7, 2009 perished in their homes after receiving no warnings from emergency authorities about the approaching fires. Prior to Black Saturday there was neither a national uniform bushfire warning system nor consistent national standards for message warnings. Triple-0 emergency services were grossly understaffed, resulting in more than 10,000 calls being left unanswered on the day of the bushfires, along with 80 percent of calls to the state’s bushfire information line. Householders in many fire risk areas had to contact the local ABC radio service for emergency warnings and updates on the fires. Others were totally isolated—before and after the fires.
While all this was occurring Christine Nixon, then the Victorian police chief and head of emergency services, left the IECC at 6 pm to have dinner with friends, despite knowing that people had been killed by major fires which were engulfing communities. Nixon also kept a string of personal appointments earlier that day. She initially told the commission that she had been in constant contact with other senior officials, but subsequent testimony revealed that she had not spoken with her deputy officers or anybody else at the IECC between 6 pm and 9 pm.
Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin told the commission that Nixon was “in charge” on Black Saturday but didn’t know why she was not at the IECC on Saturday night.
Deputy Police Commissioner Kieran Walshe claimed that he had been in regular contact with Nixon throughout the day, but later admitted that he hadn’t spoken to the police commissioner until 9.45 pm that night. Neither Walshe nor assistant commissioner Stephen Fontana, both delegated by Nixon, was at the IECC when Victorian Police and Emergency Services Minister John Cameron finally arrived there just before 9 pm on Saturday night. Cameron testified at the royal commission on May 7, the first state government minister to do so since hearings began in early 2009. He said that he had spent much of Black Saturday protecting his own rural property.
Questioned by counsel assisting the commission, Jack Rush QC, Cameron was unable to explain exactly who was in charge of the state’s emergency response to the fires. He was unaware that under Victorian law the minister is the coordinator-in-chief of emergency management and the chief commissioner of police his deputy.
Rush asked Cameron whether there was “any structure in place that you understood to be in place where Ms Nixon, Ms Walshe, or Mr Fontana would be on duty in an active position to make active decisions between 6 pm and 9 pm.” The minister answered “no”.
These latest revelations follow the testimony last year of Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief Russell Rees who was at the control centre on Black Saturday. Rees did not become actively involved in operational issues at the centre, and was unaware of maps that had been produced by Melbourne University forestry and fire modelling scientist Dr Kevin Tolhurst and two other mapping experts working at the IECC on the day of the fires. The maps predicted the paths of the Kilmore East and Murrundindi fires, which killed over 100 people. Rees did not find out about the maps or act on their predictions because, he told the commission, no one had a statutory responsibility to warn the threatened towns.
Rees had been previously praised by Victorian premier John Brumby and reappointed as CFA chief in 2009 for another two years, but resigned his position late last month, just before making a final appearance at the commission.
The disorganised and complacent responses of Cameron, Nixon and Rees to the Black Saturday fires did not merely reflect individual negligence. The absence of any functioning emergency response leadership was another expression of the failure of successive Labor and Liberal governments to establish a planned, coordinated, and properly resourced series of bushfire emergency preparation and response measures.
Victoria is one the most bushfire-prone regions in the world, but there was no effective collective evacuation plan, funding for adequate road and transport systems was grossly inadequate, and communications technology and other emergency infrastructure proved absent or ineffective. All this was the direct outcome of the pro-market program developed over the last two decades; funding for social infrastructure and public services has been gutted across the board, while privatisation and the imposition of the “user pays” principle have seen almost every aspect of social life opened up to the dictates of the profit system.
The official “stay or go” emergency bushfire policy developed seamlessly in this context. Under the policy, individuals are left to determine their own response to approaching bushfires: they are supposed to either evacuate the area well before the fires arrive, or stay and execute their own fire-fighting plans. “Stay or go” effectively absolved government authorities of any responsibility for evacuating threatened residents.
Evidence presented to the commission by emergency response experts over the past month has exposed the tragic consequences of this policy.
Professor John Handmer, a disaster management expert from RMIT’s Centre for Risk and Community Safety, has made a detailed investigation into the Black Saturday fatalities. He told the hearing that 58 percent of those who died had not made any preparations to defend their homes. But more than 20 percent of those killed had followed CFA policy and were “well prepared”. The definition of “well prepared”, however, consisted of having a water supply and mops and buckets to use as firefighting equipment. Handmer admitted that the policy relied on ordinary citizens being mentally and physically equipped to handle situations that even experienced firefighters may not be able to deal with.
Harvard University emergency management specialist, Professor Dutch Leonard, told the royal commission that “stay or go” could not be judged on what inexperienced citizens “should do” and was an “invitation to a potential disaster”. He said that he taught his students at Harvard that hoping people might do something “does not amount to a policy”.
University of Utah wildfire evacuation expert Tom Cova testified that “stay or go” had “multiple flaws”, and that in most cases evacuation was “far superior” to people staying in threatened homes. Cova said that residents who lacked experience and adequate information should not be placed in a position of determining whether to stay or go.
Professor Paul ‘t Hart from the Australian National University told the hearing that the Victorian government should introduce mandatory evacuations as part of its response to bushfires and similar emergencies. He said while there would always be lingering doubts about whether authorities had over-reacted if people were ordered out pre-emptively, this was far better than if evacuations did not take place and scores were killed.
Despite such testimony the Labor government continues to strenuously defend “stay or go”, albeit with minor modifications. Brumby has insisted, moreover, that he has no intention of establishing emergency evacuation systems. The premier claimed in the immediate aftermath of Black Saturday that this was “logistically impossible”. Demands for placing electricity powerlines underground in national parks and other bushland areas have been rejected out of hand by the government as “too expensive”, as have calls for significant increases in the number of fire-fighting personnel and the construction of genuine fire safety refuges to protect people in fire-prone areas.
Since Black Saturday, only 45 additional project fire-fighters have been hired while a recently introduced national bushfire-warning system that includes “code red (catastrophic)” warnings has been denounced by bushfire scientists as a knee jerk response, with little scientific input.
Last month it was also revealed that the CFA’s emergency paging system for firefighters was substandard and only running at 20 percent capacity. This was due to the state government’s refusal to fund the construction of transmitters necessary to eliminate black spots across the state. The result was a huge backlog on Black Saturday, with many messages delivered hours late, in some cases 12 hours after they were sent.
The commission is due to release its final report on July 31. No indication has been given that the state premier will be summoned to give evidence about the state government’s catastrophic policies. Whatever the final recommendations, the essential issue raised by the bushfire disaster—the incompatibility of the profit system with the provision of the emergency services and social infrastructure necessary to prevent needless loss of life—will remain unaddressed. >>
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‘Class action launched by Australian bushfire survivors against SP AusNet’
<<The largest class action in Victorian history was commenced at the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday the 13th by Slidders Lawyers against electricity distribution company SP AusNet and the Brumby Government in relation to the Kilmore East fire that became part of the Kinglake complex.
Because of the lawsuit, SP AusNet SPN.AX’s shares on Monday have dropped more than 13.36 per cent or 14.5 cents, to an intra-day low of 94 cents, was at 98.5 cents at 10:38 a.m. local time, before recovering slightly to be 7.5 cents lower at A$1.01 by 1144 AEDT (0003 GMT) or 6.9 percent in Sydney trading. Shares in SP AusNet closed 3.7 percent lower at A$1.045 on Monday.
Power supplier SP AusNet said it has asked the Victoria Court regarding the status of the class action proceedings saying the firm had insurance policies in place consistent with industry standards. “SP AusNet will continue to update the market as further information becomes available,” the company said.
The claim has focused on alleged negligence by SP AusNet in its management of electricity infrastructure. It maintains most of the power lines in eastern Victoria. Its fallen power line is believed to have sparked the blaze that tore through Kinglake, Steels Creek, Strathewen, Humevale, and St Andrews. The plaintiffs include thousands of angry Kinglake farmers, small business owners, tourist operators and residents who lost homes.
Leo Keane, the lead plaintiff in the class action has alleged “SP AusNet owed a duty of care to landowners to operate and manage power lines in a way that limited the risk of damage from bushfires.”
On Thursday Phoenix Taskforce had taken away a section of power line as well as a power pole from near Kilmore East, part of a two-kilometre section of line in Kilmore East that fell during strong winds and record heat about 11am last Saturday. It was believed to have started the fire there, since within minutes a nearby pine forest was ablaze, and within six hours the bushfire had almost obliterated nearly every building in the towns in its path.
“It is believed that the claim will be made on the basis of negligent management of power lines and infrastructure,” Slidders Lawyers partner Daniel Oldham said. The law firm has announced it was helping landowners and leaseholders get compensation for the 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009 bushfires. “If you have been burnt by the recent bushfires, please register your interest using the form below as soon as possible,” the law firm’s website stated.
The Insurance Council of Australia has placed the cost of the bushfires at about $500 million. “That means keeping electricity lines clear of trees and in a condition that won’t cause fires. They must also have systems in place to identify and prevent risks occurring,” Melbourne barrister Tim Tobin, QC, said. According to the 2006 census, Kinglake had a population of almost 1,500 people.
But SP AusNet’s legal liability has been limited at $100 million under an agreement inked by the former Kennett government with private utility operators, when the former State Electricity Commission was privatized in 1995. Accordingly, the Brumby Government could be legally obliged to pay damages of the differences amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
SP AusNet Ltd said some of its electricity assets have been damaged by the Victoria bushfire. “As a preliminary estimate, it is thought that damage has been sustained to approximately one per cent of SP AusNet’s electricity distribution network, mainly distribution poles, associated conductors and pole top transformers,” SP AusNet said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). It explained that up to 6,000 homes and businesses on its network were without power due to bushfires, including the Kinglake complex fire, Beechworth fire, and fires across Gippsland including Churchill and Bunyip.
SP AusNet said the firm will cooperate fully and will assist in any fire probe. “We stand ready to assist the relevant authorities with their inquiries if it is necessary for us to do so now and in the coming months,” SP Ausnet spokeswoman Louisa Graham said in a statement.
“Our priority is to restore power to fire-affected areas as quickly as possible. We believe the claim is premature and inappropriate … SP AusNet will vigorously defend the claim. If the claim is pursued, SP AusNet advises that it has liability insurance which provides cover for bushfire liability. The company’s bushfire mitigation and vegetation management programmes comply with state regulations and were audited annually by state agencies,” Grahams explained.
Victorian Auditor-General Rob Hulls said “there was an ‘unseemly rush’ by some lawyers to sue before the cause of the fires had been fully investigated.”
“The government body had audited the network’s bushfire risk to make sure required distances between power lines and vegetation were maintained. Power companies had been given a clean bill of health, and electricity firms were judged to be ‘well prepared for the 2008-09 bushfire season.’ There were no regulations applying to the distances between poles supporting electricity lines and spans of one kilometre were not unusual,” a spokesman for Energy Safe Victoria explained.
Christine Nixon, the 19th and current Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police said investigations into the cause of the bushfires were ongoing. “I know people are angry, and so are all of us in this community. But we need to kind of have a sense that the proper processes are in place and we need to go through the investigation and through the court case,” Nixon said. “At this stage we are not able to confirm how it started. I understand there is some legal action that people are taking, but at this stage we’re still investigating its cause. But the whole circumstances of that fire are part of our Taskforce Phoenix, and as we move through that we’ll be able to tell the community more once we’re able to confirm or deny what we think is the cause of these fires,” Nixon added.
A house damaged by bushfires in the Kinglake complex, in Steels Creek.
Image: Nick Carson.
On Thursday, two people were arrested in connection with the fires, having been observed by members of the public acting suspiciously in areas between Yea and Seymour; although they were both released without charges laid.
Brendan Sokaluk, age 39, from Churchill in the Gippsland region, was arrested by police at 4pm on Thursday, in relation to the Churchill fires, and was questioned at the Morwell police station. He was charged on Friday with one count each of arson, intentionally lighting a bushfire and possession of child pornography. The arson case relates to 11 of the 21 deaths in the dire Gippsland fire, which devastated 39,000 hectares in the Latrobe Valley, Calignee, Hazelwood Koornalla and Jeeralang. Two teams of Churchill firefighters were almost lost in the inferno that remains out of control.
Mr Sokaluk joined the CFA Churchill brigade in the late 1980s as a volunteer fire fighter, left in the 1990s and attempted to rejoin twice, but was rejected. He failed to appear in Melbourne Magistrate’s Court Monday for a scheduled hearing, since the court reset the committal hearing on May 25. He is represented by lawyer Julian McMahon.
Magistrate John Klestadt has lifted the suppression order which kept the suspect’s identity a secret but identifying photographs were barred from being released. Mr Sokaluk was remanded in protective custody from Morwell to a cell in Melbourne for his own safety amid fears angry prisoners will target him and real risk of vigilante attacks. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years imprisonment if convicted on the arson charge.
“This is an extraordinary case. The level of emotion and anger and disgust that the alleged offenses have aroused in the community is unprecedented.” Mr Sokaluk’s defense lawyer Helen Spowart argued. The prosecution has moved the Court for more time to prepare its case, saying there would be up to 200 witnesses to interview.
Slater & Gordon has indicated that they were awaiting the report of the to-be-established Royal Commission, expected in late 2010, before initiating any claims.
Armed with a $40 million budget, the Royal Commission’s Chair Justice Bernard Teague will be assisted by former Commonwealth ombudsman Ron McLeod, who led the inquiry into the 2003 Canberra bushfires, and State Services Authority Commissioner Susan Pascoe. The Commission has said its interim report is due on August 17 while the final report will be submitted by July 31, 2010.
John Mansfield Brumby, an Australian Labor Party politician, is the 45th Premier of Victoria, assuming office on 30 July 2007 after the resignation of Steve Bracks.
Image: Another melbournite.
Judge Bernard Teague has announced Tuesday he will meet with fire victims and fire authorities within the next two weeks. “We want to do that as soon as possible – probably not next week but starting to have these discussions the week after,” he said.
Julia Eileen Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister of Australia and deputy leader of the federal Australian Labor Party (ALP) said the federal and Victorian governments would respond quickly to the royal commission’s report. “Everybody who has lived through this experience in Victoria and around the nation has asked the question: ‘Why? What can we do better?’. No one wanted to see the report “as a book on a shelf gathering dust,” she said.
Victoria bushfire experts, led by Forest Fire Victoria – a group of scientists and forestry experts – have condemned the government’s “Living with Fire” policy and the state’s failure to initiate serious fuel-reduction programs. The Victoria government had failed to seriously act on bushfire safety recommendations submitted last June by the Victorian Parliamentary Environment and Natural Resources Committee.
As death toll rises, evidence mounts of lack of planning prior to Australia’s worst bushfire. “Living with Fire” policy means Kinglake fire trucks were dispatched to an earlier fire in Kilmore, leaving Kinglake undefended. “Kinglake was left with no fire brigade and no police. The trucks had been sent to Kilmore. I’ve been in the fire brigade for 10 years. There was always a law—the trucks had to be on the hill. Because of the government we got gutted at Kinglake. They should have been getting generators ahead of the fire—so people would have had a chance of fighting it. As soon as the power went, I couldn’t keep fighting the fire at my place,” Rick and Lauren Watts, and their friend Neil Rao, spoke to the WSWS.
Rick has also criticized the lack of early warning communications systems, since emergency siren warnings in the town had been stopped some years earlier. Humevale resident Sina Imbriano who has six children was angry about the failure of state and federal governments to set up a recommended telephone warning system amid its “stay and defend or go” policy. Bald Spur Road residents Greg Jackson and his wife Fotini said the government’s “stay and defend or go” policy was “fruitless” since the critical issue was early warnings, but “they [the government] just won’t spend the money.”
Also on Friday, five law firms from Victoria’s Western Districts, including Warrnambool-based Maddens Lawyers and Brown & Proudfoot, held a meeting to discuss a potential class action in relation to the Horsham fire, which was also thought to have been started by fallen power pole that burnt vast swathes of land in Mudgegonga and Dederang, Victoria. The lawsuit will also focus on the fire that blackened about 1750 hectares at Coleraine.
Maddens senior attorney Brendan Pendergast said: “We don’t know who the defendant is at this stage. We are unsure who the electrical supplier is for that area but we should know in a few days. There were people who had their homes burnt to the ground and they will need to reconstruct, replace their contents,” he said. Maddens has initiated a register of affected landowners for the recent bushfires, saying the firm has included victims of the Pomborneit fire that burnt almost 1300 hectares in the proposed class action amid the CFA’s statement the blaze could have been deliberately lit.
Frances Esther “Fran” Bailey, Liberal member of the Australian House of Representatives (1990-93 and 1996-present), representing the electorate of McEwen in Victoria said the Country Fire Authority (CFA) had told her one of the power lines had broken before the fire.
“The local CFA [Country Fire Authority] told me on that Saturday, with those very high winds, one of the lines had broken and was whipping against the ground and sparked,” she said. “Whether or not that is the cause of that terrible fire that actually took out Kinglake and maybe Marysville, the investigations will prove that, but we’ve got to do better,” she added.
The Supreme Court of Victoria is located on the corner of Lonsdale and William Streets, Melbourne – the same intersection as the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court and the County Court of Victoria.
Victorian Premier John Brumby said the power line claim would be examined as part of the Royal Commission into the bushfire. “No stone will be left unturned. So, I think it’s important the Royal Commission does its work. And, the Royal Commission will, of course, look at all of the factors with the fires,” Mr Brumby said. At least 550 houses were incinerated and 100 people have been killed, leaving more than 1,000 homeless in the Kinglake bushfire and surrounding areas.
SP AusNet – Singapore Power International Pte Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore Power Limited (51% interest in SP AusNet). SP AusNet’s electricity transmission and distribution networks, along with the gas distribution assets, enable it to deliver a full range of energy-related products and services to industrial and domestic customers in Victoria, Australia.
Singapore Power is a company which provides electricity and gas transmission, distribution services, and market support services to more than a million customers in Singapore. As the only electricity company in Singapore, and also one of its largest corporation, SP was incorporated as a commercial entity in October 1995 to take over the electricity and gas businesses of the state provider, the Public Utilities Board. Since 1995, Temasek Holdings controls the entire company with a 100% stake. SP is involved in a major investment in Australia’s Alinta in partnership with Babcock & Brown, after putting up a bid of A$13.9 billion (S$17 billion), beating out a rival bid by Macquarie Bank.
The devastating 2009 Victorian Black Saturday bushfires, a series of more than 400 bushfires across Victoria on February 7 2009, is Australia’s worst-ever bushfire disaster, claiming at least 200 deaths, including many young children, and is expected to pass 300. 100 victims have been admitted to hospitals across Victoria with burns, at least 20 in a critical condition, and 9 on life support or in intensive care. The fires have destroyed at least 1,834 homes and damaged many thousands more. Many towns north-east of Melbourne have been badly damaged or almost completely destroyed, including Kinglake, Marysville, Narbethong, Strathewen and Flowerdale. Over 500 people suffered fire-related injuries and more than 7,000 are homeless. It has scorched more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) of farms, forests and towns.
The Supreme Court of Victoria is the superior court for the State of Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1852, it is a superior court of common law and equity, with unlimited jurisdiction within the state. Those courts lying below it include the County Court of Victoria, the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (which is technically not a court, but serves a judicial function). Above it lays the High Court of Australia. This places it around the middle of the Australian court hierarchy.>>
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‘Victorian Bushfires: CFA ill-prepared and reliant on obsolete firefighting technologies’
[Source: ‘‘Victorian Bushfires: CFA ill-prepared and reliant on obsolete firefighting technologies’, 20090703, by Tigerquoll, CanDoBetter.net, ^http://candobetter.net/node/1375]
Ed: The charred shell of a $350,000 CFA truck near Belgrave Heights during the 2009 Victorian Bushfires.
The tanker was able to protect three firefighters from an out-of-control bushfire as it burnt over them.
But a decade before in 1998, a burn-over incident during a bushfire at Linton, near Ballarat, saw five CFA volunteers burned to death.
Unacceptable – volunteers, professional, completely unacceptable and unforgiveable.
[Photo: Craig Abraham [courtesy: The Age 25-Feb-09]]
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A report by ABC journalist, Jane Cowan, 1-Jul-09, ‘Bushfire lawyers blast CFA’s Rees’ states that lawyers assisting Brumby’s Royal Commission into the 2009 Victorian Bushfires have in an interim report concluded that the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) was ill-prepared for Black Saturday.
The lawyers have criticised CFA chief fire officer, Russell Rees, as having been “divorced from fundamental aspects of the responsibilities” as chief officer, ‘including the provision of public warnings and the protection of life and assert that Mr Rees “should have made himself aware of predictions forecasting the path of the fires.”
Criticism has also been made about the reliance by the CFA on obsolete fire fighting technologies. Bushfire consultant assisting the Commission, Tony Cutcliffe, has stated “We still have people running these organisations who are predominantly devoted to a firefighting technology that is no longer in vogue let alone being attuned to the needs of behavioural management and leadership.”
What is most disturbing of all is that the CFA looks to continue business as usual. The CFA says it has full confidence in Mr Rees and expects him to be at the helm again this summer. Mr Cutcliffe has expressed his concerns that ‘whatever changes are made, as it stands now the same management team that presided over the system which failed to cope on Black Saturday will be required to implement the new regime.’
If the calamity of what happened to Victoria last summer won’t force an overhaul of firefighting in Australia, what will?
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The CFA’s old-school firefighting culture dies hard:
The CFA remains an emergency response organisation almost totally dependent on a disparate weekend volunteer base (not the fault of the volunteers who are effectively unpaid public servants)
The CFA’s bushfire notification system is wholly reliant on public calls to 000
The CFA’s fire fighting response system is centred around urban fire trucks that cannot access remote ignitions and so must wait until accessible from a roadside, when the fire is by then often out of control. Taking fire trucks into the bush to fight fires is deadly as the above photo shows
The CFA remains a public authority with carte blanche to allow and deliberately cause immense irreversible damage to Victoria’s remaining ecolgical habitat, yet with no ecological expertise in its management or ranks
The CFA is grossly underfunded by state and federal governments.
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Timeless Systemic Questions:
1. Given that unprecedented extreme weather was forecast and known to the CFA, what commensurate planning, preparation and response did the CFA deploy and when?
2. What improvements in fire fighting practices have been implemented by the CFA since the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires to avoid a repeat?
3. Where are the statistics showing the fire fighting performance in respect to each reported ignition, namely:
a. Elapsed time from estimated ignition time to detection time (CFA becoming aware of ignition)
b. Elapsed time from detection time and on site response time (CFA arriving at the fire site/front with fire fighting equipment)
c. Elapsed time from response time to suppression time (fire extinguished by CFA)
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These are the three core fire fighting performance metrics.
The Bushfire Royal Commission is following its terms of reference in assessing the specific facts and specific causes of the fires and logically as expected is starting to lay blame.
What’s the bet many findings are similar to those of previous bushfire investigations? If the Royal Commission finds that the current system and structure of Victoria’s (read Australia’s) volunteer firefighting organisation was at fault, then this is a constructive outcome.
Only at such a legal level will change be forced on the system and culture. Previous internal debrief meetings and investigations (e.g. the 2003 Esplin Enquiry) have managed to have lessons from bushfire disasters ignored and fire fighting practices remain relatively unchanged.
If fire fighting is becoming more effective then how can such tragedies be continuing and growing in scale? How much more 20-20 hindsight is needed by the so-called ‘experienced’ fire fighting leadership before we can observe tangible improvements in fire fighting performance?
Same old same old. Given the dire inadequacies of this organisation, the culture has forced to become one of absolute defeatism – the only way it believes it can deal with bushfires is to slash and burn as much of the natural burnable landscape as possible, so that there is nothing left to burn.
It’s as crackbrained as backburning through Belgrave Heights in order to save Belgrave.
Change cannot be brought to the CFA within the CFA. Change must come from Brumby and Rudd.>>
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[Ed. It’s called political leadership, and it is based upon political values and priorities. All Australian governments have long lost their innocence to bushfire, so have no valid claimable defence of ‘^Force Majeure‘]
“Now Lizzy… A rifle in the wrong hands can be you know, really dangerous.“
[Character, Mick Taylor, in the 2005 Australian film, Wolf Creek, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean]
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“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures“
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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Strange Truths of the NSW Game Council
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Established in 2002 under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 introduced by the Carr Labor Government
Annual budget of $3.8 million, of which $2.5 million comes directly from New South Wales taxpayers
Received more than $12 million in NSW Government funding since 2002, including $2.7 million in 2011, despite NSW Government promises that it would become self-funded
16,000 recreational amateur hunters are registered with the Game Council of NSW
Licenses amateur hunters to use firearms, dogs, and bows to hunt in 400 State forests and Crown land areas
In the 12 months to 30 April 2012 the Council estimated licensed hunters took 15,663 animals, mostly rabbits, from public land. This represents a public expenditure of $159 per feral animal killed on public lands. [Ed: Imported Gourmet Farmed Cervena New Zealand Red Venison Striploin retails for a premium of AUD$108 per kilo, so $159 for a feral rabbit is far from ‘economical hunting’]
Since being established there has not been any assessment of the effectiveness of recreational hunting in controlling feral animals in a single State Forest.
It head Daniel Boon man has been found to have trophy hunted an endangered African elephant for sport and personal gratification
The NSW Game Council is a political minority interest group that has become a law unto itself
The political wing of the NSW Game Council is the NSW State Shooters and Fishers Party (perhaps as Sinn Fein is to the IRA).
In May 2009, Robert Brown MP of the Shooters Party lobbies for the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009 to be passed into legislation in New South Wales, so that many of Australia’s native fauna across NSW (including National Parks) would be condemned as ‘game animals’ just like in colonial times. The Bill is rejected.
In June 2010, NSW State Shooters and Fishers Party MP Roy Smith, dies suddenly aged 56, and is replaced by wildlife trophy hunter, Robert Borsak, holding the balance of power in the NSW Upper House.
In April 2011, The Shooters and Fishers Party presents its “shopping list” of ‘game demands’ to the freshly elected O’Farrell NSW Liberal Coalition Government, in return for the Party’s legislative support in the Upper House. Demands include introducing recreational shooting in NSW national parks and for shooting to be encouraged as a school sport (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Dunblane and Sandy Hook aside).
In June 2011, sure enough, with the Shooters Party’s supporting O’Farrell’s public sector wages cuts, the government has opened up more than 140 State Forests for recreational hunting for an unprecedented 10 years.
In July 2011 Shooters’ Party proposes its Firearms Amendment Bill 2011 to allow firearms and ammunition in National Parks, children to have ready access to air rifles without a need for a permit, allows a person to own purchase air rifles without restrictions, and to ease safety regulations on shooting clubs and firearms sellers. The Bill is rejected.
In June 2012, the O’Farrell Government does another deal with the Shooters Party allow shooting in national parks and other reserves, in exchange for support for State energy privatisation support. Amendments are made to the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002.
In November 2012, the O’Farrell Government does another deal with the Shooters Party to allow duck shooting licences in return for their support to privatise two major ports. Now the power over issuing duck shooting licences shifts from the National Parks and Wildlife Service to the pro-hunting Games Council. Amendments are made to the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. This is one step short of reintroducing Open Season Duck Hunting in NSW, long banned by the Carr Government in 1995.
In September 2012, illegal shooting of kangaroos in the Deua National Park camp is reported, which was subsequently verified by the Office of Environment and Heritage which reported: “After it was reported to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the investigating park Ranger sighted two kangaroos that had been shot. One animal was euthanised. The matter is under investigation by NPWS and NSW Police.”
Recently, the Shooters and Fishers Party announced that they plan to introduce legislation to repeal the Native Vegetation Act 2003, the law that controls broadscale land clearing and regulates logging activities on private land.
Robert Borsak, NSW Shooters & Fishers Party
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“Hunting is ingrained in human consciousness and genetics by at least 1.5 million years of evolution, according to the latest scientific evidence, and in the modern perspective, fishing is one of the nation’s most popular pursuits.” ~ Robert Borsak – NSW Shooters & Fishers Party, 2012.
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“I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”
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~ Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
<<We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm.
There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember… I… I… I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn’t know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it… I never want to forget. And then I realized… like I was shot… like I was shot with a diamond… a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God… the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that!
Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men… trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love… but they had the strength… the strength… to do that.
If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral… and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling… without passion… without judgment… without judgment! Because it’s judgment that defeats us.>>
[Quote from character Colonel Walter E. Kurtz out of the epic Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now of 1979, directed by Frances Ford Coppola. Watch extract: ^http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxLFdJLSho8]
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“The joy of killing! The joy of seeing killing done – these are traits of the human race at large.”
~ Mark Twain, ‘Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World’ (1897), American Publishing Co., Hartford.
"We're coming to you from the custodial lands of the Hairygowogulator and Tarantulawollygong, and pay respects to uncle and grandaddy elders past, present and emerging from their burrows. So wise to keep a distance out bush."
Warrumbungle National Park up in smoke
Warrumbungle National Park bushfire map
Labelled by the New South Wales Rural Fire Service (RFS) as the ‘Wambelong Fire‘,
since the ignition occurred in the vicinity of the Wambelong Creek inside the national park.
Warrumbungle National Park circa 1992
[Source: ^http://las.new-england.net.au/2010/02/08/from-the-archive-warrumbungle-national-park/]
The devastation seen at the Warrumbungle National Park
[Source: Photo: Jacky Ghossein, credit of the Sydney Morning Herald,
^http://www.smh.com.au/photogallery/nsw/warrumbungle-national-park-aftermath-20130119-2d0c5.html]
Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata)
(An endangered native of the Warrumbungles)
An aerial photo of the Wambelong Fire (Warrumbungle NP) smoke plume travelling 14km up into the atmosphere.
(Photo by a commercial airline pilot)
