Dunalley Wharf, Tasmania ~ idyllic serenityNow with far greater meaning
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On that blistering hot Friday 4th January 2013…this same wharf became a life saving critical refuge. Desperately trapped residents fled their homes from a raging inferno bearing down upon them and clung below the wharf for dear life, immersed in the cool salt water.
Dunalley’s Wharf became a final refuge for people of Dunalley to survive what would otherwise have been certain death by bushfire. It’s unassuming but vital human value is now etched in local memory, which must now already be legend.
Such horrific memories are destined to endure local lifetimes.
What let the firestorm descend upon Dunalley was negligently and morally wrong. It was stoppable on the 3rd and the escalated firestorm should never have come to this.
No-one deserves this, ever!
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Dunalley Wharf, a special place.
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Dunalley: a bushfire-vulnerable community
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The small rural fishing village of Dunalley is situated along on a sheltered coastline in south eastern Tasmania adjacent to established grazing country and immediately surrounded by hilly bushland.
Tourists drive through Dunalley from Hobart enroute down to the popular Tasman Peninsula where historic Port Arthur is situated. A smaller coastal village of Boomer Bay lies 1km to the north of Dunalley.
Zooming in, Dunalley is positioned on a narrow 700 metre wide isthmus of land between Dunalley Bay and Blackman Bay that connects the main island of Tasmania to the Tasman Peninsula – ‘East Bay Neck‘.
The Denison Canal cuts this isthmus and the town in two providing a boating shortcut transit between the two bays (like a micro version of the Panama Canal) . The Arthur Highway crosses over the canal at the Denison Canal Bridge.
“..Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
~ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Dunalley is surrounded by water on both sides
(Denison Canal not shown)
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Dunalley has for over a century been a sawmilling and fishing town, but over recent decades has seen growth as retirees and holiday makers buy up and extend the population to just under 400 with new housing development communities like adjacent Primrose Sands sprouting up.
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QUESTION 1:
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What contribution and culpability have (1) housing planning approvals by local Sorell Council and (2) Sorell Council enforcement and compliance monitoring of Australian building standards in bushfire prone areas, played in susceptibilty of properties in Dunalley and Boomer Bay to bushfire damage? What role and approval if any has the Tasmanian Fire Service had in these housing planning approvals?
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Like so many rural communities across Tasmania and indeed south eastern Australia, the rural lifestyle appeal of coastal villages like Dunalley is the traditional timbered cottage amenity and the rustic bushland setting. Dunally also has the sheltered bays to complement its appeal.
Dunalley Wharf and Fish Market looking north from Dunalley Bay, with steep Township Hill in the background (long before the 2013 bushfire).
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However, the geographic restrictions of Dunalley being:
Surrounded by coastal waterways
Close proximity to bushland (a substantial ‘urban bushland interface‘)
Dunalley’s juxtaposition downwind of the prevailing north-west wind from extensive bushland vegetation
..all combined make Dunalley an inherently bushfire vulnerable community. In the event of a bushfire, normal expected evacuation by road would be restricted.
Indeed, evacuation from the dependengt Forestier Peninsula and sub-dependent Tasman Peninsula had to be both effected by sea, since the logistically vital Denison Canal bridge became impassable due to the bushfire emergency.
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QUESTION 2:
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What bushfire risk assessment, community education, community bushfire preparation and bushfire evacuation procedures had the Tasmanian Fire Service provided to the communities of Dunalley and Boomer Bay in the years, months, days ahead of the January 2013 bushfire?
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QUESTION 3:
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Did most residents of Dunalley and Boomer Bay consider their individual properties and their communities in general particularly vulnerable to bushfire? If so, what bushfire mitigation measures had been previously discussed and actually implemented. If not, why not?
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Following Victoria’s tragic Black Saturday bushfires of 7th February 2009, in addition to the subsequent Royal Commission, a study by a team of scientists from Australia and America examined 500 of the homes that were affected by the bushfires.
The study sought to learn from effects of land management on house loss to identify how houses could be better protected in future bushfires. The study compared the impacts of bushfire preparation measures like prescribed burning, grazing, logging of native forests, and the clearing if immediate bush on the survivability of houses in a bushfire.
The key result was that getting rid of vegetation ( trees and shrubs) within 40m of a house was by the most effective property preparation measure. Whereas measures such as logging native forests and prescribed burning had minimal impact on reducing house loss. The results of the study were published a year ago on 19th January 2012 in the online scientific journal ‘PLoS ONE‘.
Professor David Bowman, an expert in forest ecology and bushfire management at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, says this research is useful because it confirms scientifically what we already know.
“It’s really important that we get more effective at mitigating the effects of bushfires,” says Philip. “It does open up some pretty intense political issues,” he says. “You’ve got to ask the question: why are people living in these areas if these disasters are only going to keep happening? Why do peri-urban communities exist?”
Population growth in bushland areas and more frequent bushfire weather predicted with climate change are expected to create major challenges for protecting homes in the future.
What if any vegetation clearing buffer was conducted by the TFS immediately between Dunalley and the bushland recently and when was this done?
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QUESTION 5:
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What if any vegetation clearing buffer was conducted by property occupiers of Dunalley immediately around their properties recently and when was this done?
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QUESTION 6 :
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What if any bushfire preparation was conducted by property occupiers of Dunalley immediately around their properties recently and when was this done?
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Another Odd Hot Summer
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Historically, Tasmania’s southern latitude, and the fact that it is surrounded by sea, has generally meant that summer temperatures across Tasmania have been fairly mild in comparision to the increasingly scorching heatwaves that have beset mainland states over recent decades.
But Tasmania, on occasions does get summer heatwaves into the high 30s Celsius and hotter, notably on record during the summers of:
1895-96
1907-08
1939-40
1945-46
1967-77
1976-77
2008-09
2012-13 (just gone)
And so it was that at the start of summer on November 30, 2012, the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meterology forecast another unseasonally very hot summer for Tasmania and a media report ran thus:
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<<Today marks the beginning of the bushfire danger season in Tasmania — with temperatures forecast to soar. The mercury is tipped to go over 30C in the South today, prompting the Tasmania Fire Service to declare the season’s first total fire ban.
Hobart is forecast to reach 32C, while Campania and Richmond can expect 33C. Yesterday was also a hot one, with Hobart recording a maximum of 30C – 11 degrees above the November average.
The state’s top temperatures yesterday were recorded in Ouse, 32.6C, and Strahan, 32.5C.
TFS chief officer Mike Brown urged everyone living in and around bushland to review their bushfire plans. He said today’s fire ban was in response to the high temperatures and dry conditions.
“The vegetation across the state has dried out measurably despite recent scattered light rain.. today’s high temperatures meant fires could “develop in size very quickly and be difficult to control”. “There are a number of fires across the state that have been difficult to control and extinguish,” Mr Brown said.
Last night fire crews were at six vegetation fires across the state, the largest burning out of control around Poatina Rd, Central Plateau.
Southern Water has also introduced water restrictions today in response to the dangerous conditions. People should avoid all non-essential water use to leave enough for fire fighting.
Weather bureau senior forecaster Malcolm Downing said it was the first “very high danger” rating for the fire season. Mr Downing said there had been little rain over the past two weeks, which had significantly dried out vegetation. He said tomorrow should be cooler, with temperatures forecast to be in the low 20s.
Today’s total fire ban means that no fires can be started out of doors in the southern region, which includes the municipalities of Brighton, Central Highlands, Clarence, Derwent Valley, Glamorgan/Spring Bay, Glenorchy, Hobart, Huon Valley, Kingborough, Sorell, Southern Midlands and Tasman.
The ban started at midnight last night and remains in place until midnight tonight. Mr Brown said today’s fire ban also meant people could not use cutting, welding or other similar equipment in the open.
“Although the use of agricultural machinery, for the purpose of harvesting crops or slashing grass, is not included in this ban operators are requested to take particular care when using this type of machinery,” he said. Fires should be reported by dialling 000.
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Total Fire Ban Rules
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No fires may be lit or be allowed to remain alight in the open air until midnight tonight.
Tools and equipment that use a naked flame or generate sparks must not be used in the open air.
Barbecues that use wood, charcoal or solid fuel banned.
Gas and electric barbecues are permitted if the barbecue is a fixed permanent structure.>>
The following day, December 1, media reports alerted Tasmanians to several active bushfires across the state, and significantly one in Forcett.
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<<The Tasmanian Fire Service says the threat from fires across the state has reduced, but has urged residents to continue monitoring conditions.
Containment lines have been set around the fires at Glen Huon, Bruny Island, Forcett and Geeveston. The largest blaze was located at Poatina on the Central Plateau.
The 6,000 hectare Poatina Fire is burning in bushland located near high transmission powerlines, that connect the state’s north and south.
Tasmania Fire Service spokesman Andrew McGuiness told ABC News the fire will probably destroy caravans at Jonah Bay tonight, saying “it’s a big fire and it’s likely to get significantly bigger before they can put containment lines into control it.”
Another fire at Glenlusk, north of Hobart, also continues to challenge firefighters as they try to bring it under control.
Milder temperatures have helped firefighters gain the upper hand today, however windy conditions prevailed. People who aren’t residents are urged to stay away from the fire zones, while communities near the fires are urged to be alert for any changes in the fire conditions. They should also continue looking at the Tasmanian Fire Service website for the latest updates.>>
The ‘Precedent Excuse‘ that this latest bushfire could be ‘the worst ever‘, or ‘the worst in 100 years‘, or in 200 years – simply doesn’t wash.
It’s like telling the low lying folk of Queensland’s Lockyer Valley in 2011 that they had experienced the worst in a hundred year flood event; only two years later in January 2013 to experience the worst in a hundred year flood, again.
The risk of ‘Force Majeur‘ is not a factor of time, but of fickle Nature – basically a factor of luck.
Such is a convenient myth perpetuated by the accountable Tasmanian Government to try to shun its planning responsibility that Dunalley’s bushfire disaster was somehow unforseeable, and to try to excuse its emergency response failure that the disaster and its impact were somehow unavoidable.
Pull the other one, its got bells on it. These days, both floods and bushfires in Australia are a consequence of both Nature, and the actions and inactions of Man.
Government bureaucrats and politicians may think the people are silly, like believing the old saying that ‘lightning never strikes the same place twice‘. The factors that cause lightning to strike once don’t disappear between storms or even within the same storm.
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QUESTION 7:
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Since Tasmania’s infamous 1967 fires when the Tasmanian Government forewent any plausible excuse it may have had of ‘bushfire innocence’, what subsequent measures and investment have been taken by the Tasmanian Govermment in (1) bushfire emergency planning and (2) bushfire emergency response – to mitigate the spread and impact of wildfire? Given that the Dunalley Bushfire Disaster occurred have these measure and investment been adequate in meeting community expectations of government responsibility in 2013?
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QUESTION 8:
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What specific extra-ordinary bushfire fighting resourcing and strategies did the Tasmanian Fire Service seek and have implemented once it became aware of the forecast extreme bushfire weather conditions, and given that multiple uncontrolled bushfires, including the 6,000ha Poatina Fire, were demonstrating the extreme nature of the fire behaviour and already commanding TFS fire-fighting resources?
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Dec 2012 Two Air Tractor 802 Fire Bombers secured
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Air Tractor 802 fixed wing dedicated water bomber
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Just two weeks ahead of the Forcett Fire, the Tasmanian Government’s corporatised forestry department, Forestry Tasmania, announced that it has secured two dedicated waterbombing aircraft from Victoria to be based at Hobart Airport (Cambridge).
Significantly, Forestry Tasmania holds the State’s monopoly delegated management responsibility for Tasmania’s native forest reserves, in which it exploits for commercial timber logging.
Two large native forest reserves were ultimately impacted by the Forcett Fire – one south of the Arthur Highway in the Sorell local government area that includes ‘Big Blue Hill‘ which appears to have no identifiable name, and the other on the Forestier Peninsula – ‘Yellow Bluff Creek Forest Reserve‘.
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What does ‘managed’ mean?
[Photo by Editor, 20110926, free in public domain]
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<<Forestry Tasmania unveiled its latest weapon in the fight against forest fires at Cambridge Airport earlier this month. The two Air Tractor 802 fixed wing fire bombers were brought to Hobart from Ballarat (regional Victoria) for a week and were immediately put into action, fighting a bushfire at Musselroe Bay in the far North-East (Tasmania).
A private airstrip nearby enabled them to fill up with a mixture of water and foam from temporary inflatable tanks and be over the fire in minutes.
With a capacity of more than 3000 litres and taking just four minutes to fill up, the two Air Tractors, valued at $1.5 million each, dumped 40,000 litres in an hour and more than 150,000 litres on the Musselroe Bay bushfire.
Forestry Tasmania hired the planes and pilots from Field Air with the help of the National Aerial Firefighting Centre. Forestry Tasmania fire management head Tony Blanks said it was the first time the Fire Tractors had operated “in earnest” in Tasmania, where helicopters were more commonly used.”
Problem was that although one Air Tractor was vitally needed to fight the Forcett Fire, the second aircraft was previously returned back to Victoria at a time when dozens of fires were burning across Tasmania and with forecast extreme bushfire weather.
Madness. Why?
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QUESTION 9:
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In the wake of the Dunalley Bushfire Disaster what subsequent measures and investment is the Tasmanian Govermment to implement in (1) bushfire emergency planning and (2) bushfire emergency response to mitigate the spread and impact of future wildfire across the State?
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Preparation for an Extreme Forest Fire Danger Index?
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So by early December 2012 unusually extreme bushfire weather conditions were forecast for Tasmania. But this was what Tasmania had experienced previously, albeit occassionally, but not as unique as some sensationalists in the media would have us believe.
Significantly, from a bushfire management operational perspective, numerous bushfires were already active and occupying the Tasmanian Fire Service and its related agencies, the Parks and Wildlife Service and Forestry Tasmania, reducing resource capacity to respond to new and escalating bushfire emergencies.
Was the Tasmanian Fire Service by 3rd January already overwhelmed?
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QUESTION 10:
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Why did the Tasmanian Fire Service, well aware of the looming extreme forecast bushfire weather, not request special additional resources, such as from Victoria, including prudent preparatory delivery of the dedicated and proven effective waterbombing heli-tanker, then parked and idle in a hangar at Essendon Airport Melbourne?
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‘Elvis’, the celebrated Erickson Heli-tanker, with specialist bushfire-fighting pilot
A converted Sikorsky S-64E Skycrane, with a special “sea snorkel” and water tank
It is manufactured in Oregon, USA, dedicated to waterbombing bushfires and based at Essendon Airport Melbourne since December 2001.
Australia’s mainland states now have invested in at least four of them for standby bushfire application.
^http://www.ericksonaircrane.com/full_story/fullstory_firefighting.html
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Yet Tasmanian fire authorities defended their choice of aircraft to fight the state’s catastrophic south-east bushfire, while a much bigger helicopter stood idle on the mainland.
As the fires still burnt through the Tasman Peninsula on Sunday night, authorities warned that they held fears for a handful of people unaccounted for after the main fire passed.
The Tasmanian Fire Service’s chief officer, Mike Brown, said it had been an option to use the heavy-lift Erickson Air-crane against the blaze that devastated Dunalley and nearby coastal hamlets on Friday.
Under national aerial fire-fighting arrangements, five of the Air-cranes are positioned on the mainland, each of them able to suck up nine tonnes of water in 40 seconds, and fly at 200 km/h.
The aircraft, such as Victoria’s ”Elvis” and ”Gypsy”, have become part of bushfire folklore.
The Victorian CFA confirmed that in Melbourne on Friday, a day when the south-east fires were already burning in Tasmania in what were officially described as catastrophic conditions, one Air-crane went unused in its Essendon hangar.
Mr Brown said the Air-Cranes, which were heavily funded by the Commonwealth, still required a contribution from Tasmania.
”So we’ve got to have here what’s available in terms of being able to support as well,” he said.
”The support we can provide to the medium helicopters gives us, we think, the best outcome.”
A spokeswoman for the federal Attorney-General’s Department said moving the Air-crane also depended on moving refuelling capability.
Due to the nature of the aircraft, this was slower than moving smaller helicopters such as the Bell 212, she said.
More than 100 structures, many of them homes, have been lost in small communities, mainly around the Tasman Peninsula, but also near Bicheno on the east coast.
Acting Police Commissioner Scott Tilyard said searchers had scoured the burnt-out homes in the worst-hit towns of Dunalley, Boomer Bay and Bream Creek without finding any bodies, but the community still needed to brace for possible deaths.>>
<<As a result of the ongoing fire situation across the state, Tasmania Fire Service has welcomed and accepted offers of firefighting assistance from interstate authorities.
This will be in the form of personnel and will give some Firefighters and Incident Management Teams (IMT) the chance to have a break, as well as boosting firefighting numbers where needed.
TFS Chief Officer, Mike Brown
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TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown said:
“Tasmanian Firefighters have had a long record of providing assistance interstate and internationally over the years and our peoples skills and capabilities are highly regarded. I have been contacted by many of my counterparts from Western Australia through to New Zealand and many jurisdictions in between with messages of encouragement and offers for assistance.
Yesterday I spoke with the NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner and the Victorian Fire Commissioner and arranged for Firefighters and Fire Specialists to provide some much needed relief for our people. I’m very grateful that they have been able to respond so quickly”.
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The following are confirmed interstate deployment numbers coming to Tasmania:
7 x Rapid impact assessment officers from NSW Rural Fire Service (6 arrived yesterday, 1 today)
4 x liaison officers arrive today
17 x IMT personnel from Country Fire Authority Victoria, Department of Sustainability and Environment Victoria, & MFB arrive Sunday for Hobart
4 xIMT personnel arrive Sunday for Launceston
7 x Air operations arrive Sunday for Hobart
33 x Strike team firefighters arrive Sunday for Hobart (using TFS vehicles)
All personnel are due to return home on Friday.
“The potential for further requests for assistance will be considered later this week” TFS Chief Officer Mike Brown added.
[Ed: Better late than never, but tell that to the folk of Dunalley, Boomer Bay, Connelly’s Marsh and Copping!]
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Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Dawson in Gippsand, Victoria this month.
Same landscape, different State.
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Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Alpine Fire near Harrietville in Victoria this month.
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When bushfire weather conditions become extreme – tinder dry bush and long grass, low humidity, temperature in the high 30 degree Celsius or hotter and strong winds – then the bushfire risk is exponentially heightened.
Bushfire risk is measured by the McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI), which was developed in the 1960s by CSIRO scientist A.G. McArthur to measure the degree of danger of fire in Australian forests.
This Forest Fire Danger Index combines a record of:
Vegetation Dryness (based upon rainfall and evaporation)
Windspeed
Temperature
Humidity
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A fire danger rating of between 12 and 25 on the index is considered a “high” degree of danger, while a day having a danger rating of over 50 is considered an “Severe” fire danger rating. Above this level in 2010 a distinction was made between Forest and Grassland fuels.
For Forest fuels, an FDI over 75 is categorised as “Extreme” and over 100 as “Catastrophic”. In Victoria, the alternate rating name adopted for Catastrophic is “Code Red”.
For Grassland fuels the threshold FDI values for the Extreme and Catastrophic Ratings was increased to 100 and 150 respectively. However,in Western Australia, which currently only uses the Grassland FDI, the values of 75 and 100 were being used as thresholds during 2012.
Fire Danger Ratings (from 0 to 100+) ‘Catastropic’ is a new category introduced across Australia since the Victorian ‘Black Saturday’ tragedy of February 2009
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McArthur used the conditions of the Black Friday fires of 1939 as his example of a 100 rating. The FFDI on Black Saturday, 7 February 2009, reached more than 200.
However, grassfires present a higher risk than forests under the same bushfire weather conditions, simply because grass is more flammable than timber.
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National Framework for (bushfire) Scaled Advice and Warnings
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In Victoria, in the months following the devastating Black Saturday bushfire disaster of February 2009, in which 173 people perished under catastrophic bushfire conditions ( a FFDI of over 200), new fire danger ratings were formulated based upon this fire danger index.
The ‘Low’ rating was merged with ‘Moderate’ and a new ‘Catastrophic’ rating was introdiuced over and above what had long been the top rating of ‘Extreme’.
The new Catastrophic (Code Red) rating involves a fire danger index above 100. Under these types of weather conditions fires will be unpredictable, uncontrollable and fast moving. The fires in Victoria on 7th February 2009 provide an example of the types of fires that may be experienced under a ‘Catastrophic’ rating.
Standard advice to communities under these conditions will be that leaving is the safest option for survival.
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Australia’s National Fire Danger Ratingssince Sep 2009
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Australia’s new ‘National Framework for Scaled Advice and Warnings‘ were agreed and adopted by all Australian States and Territories at the Australian Emergency Management Committee meeting on 3rd and 4th September 2009. One would presume that this included Tasmania.
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The national framework includes:
The new Fire Danger Ratings (see above coloured table)
The vague bushfire management slogan ‘Stay or Go’ replaced by similarly vague slogan: ‘Prepare, Act, Survive‘. *
An agreed format for scaled warnings.
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Other agreed bushfire management emergency protocols also include:
Forecast fire danger advice will be issued throughout the media and will be aligned to the new fire danger ratings (which is based on the fire danger index)
Key messages have been designed to clearly communicate what is likely to occur if and when a fire starts for each of the fire danger ratings. Messages will include specific actions for the community to take during this outlook period.
The CFA Chief Officer will have responsibility for issuing warnings to the community during fires; delegated to local Incident Controllers with a backup in the State Duty Officer in the iECC.
Information units will have operational guidelines and the technological capability in place to enable them to quickly issue accurate warnings. Approval will occur at local incident level by the IC or deputy IC.
Where an ICC has not yet been established, warnings can be issued on behalf of the IC by information units in the RECC or iECC.
Warnings will be disseminated throughout a variety of media, for example websites, local radio and VBIL simultaneously via a single entry tool known as One Source One Message (OSOM). This will ensure that warnings are provided to all sources at the same time, will appear in the same format and contain the same language.
The iECC (or SECC) Information Unit will play a monitoring and auditing role in relation to community warnings, as well as a pro-active role when a warning hasn’t been issued or released.
All areas will have access to OSOM* (warning system). It can be issued at a very local level (for example at a regional office before an ICC has been set up) or in the iECC which will be manned throughout high fire danger rating or fire danger indicator days
In accordance with Royal Commission recommendations, there will be two warning categories, and three levels of information:
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‘ADVICE‘: This will advise you that a fire has started but there is no immediate danger, and includes general information to keep you up to date with developments.
‘WATCH AND ACT‘: This is a heightened level of threat. Conditions are changing and you need to start taking action now to protect you and your family.
‘EMERGENCY‘: This will indicate that people in specific locations are in danger and need to take action immediately to protect life, as they will be impacted by fire.
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* NB. The One Source One Message (OSOM) tool is a system with a single, multi-agency web-based portal to publish real time messages using standard incident management templates.
A clearer, unambiguous bushfire response slogan to replace ‘Prepare, Act, Survive‘ could be:
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‘No Bushfire Defence Certificate?
Self-evacuate now to your nearest registered Emergency Evacation Centre!‘
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It is high time that under bushfire rated conditions that are ‘Severe’ or ‘Extreme’ and when a wildfire is within a given risk range, that governments legally compel all residents situated in high bushfire-prone areas to compulsorily self-evacuate to a registered Evacation Centre unless they hold a current Bushfire Defence Certificate.
Such a certificate would at a minimum require:
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(1) Meeting minimum standards of building construction in compliance with the Australian Standard for construction of buildings in bushfire prone areas (AS 3959-2009)
(2) Preparation of property bushfire defence inspected and certificied by a bushfire delegated authority for the current season
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Under bushfire rated conditions that are ‘Catastrophic’ and when a wildfire is within a larger given range, ALL bushfire-prone residents, ought to be legally compelled to compulsorily self-evacuate to a registered Evacation Centre, irrespective of whether they hold a current Bushfire Defence Certificate or not.
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No Fire Danger Index used by TFS in the Forcett Fire
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Although, this bushfire danger rating system was officially in place across Tasmania since late 2009, the Tasmanian Fire Service chose not to include fire danger indices on its website or via the Tasmanian media. Why not?
The following remains the format of the TFS public notice of active bushfires; in this case the ‘Forcett Fire’:
FORCETT FIRE:
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<<Alert Level: [Going] Advice
Type: VEGETATION FIRE
Last Updated: 13-Jan-2013 8:18 AM
First Reported: 03-Jan-2013 2:13 PM
Location: Inala Road, FORCETT
Status: Going
Agency: Tasmania Fire Service
Incident Number: 201651
Size: 24,040 Ha
Details: Bushfire Advice Message FORCETT FIRE 201651 Current from:13/01/2013 08:12 AM until: 13/01/2013 11:00 AM or further notice There is a large bushfire at between Forcett and the Tasman Peninsula . The fire danger rating in this area is forecast to be high for today. Fire under these conditions can be difficult to control . There is no immediate threat to communities. This bus …
More Info | Current Incident List>>
How effectively then, does the above bushfire information by the TFS assist potentially impacted people to be appropriately informed about the fire risk category of danger, the spatial fire threat (where it currenty is, which direction the fire front(s) is/are currenty headed, how fast it is moving, forecast changes), the timing of the threat to various ‘at-risk’ people? How effectively does the above bushfire information assist these people to appropriately prepare to either defend their properties or else to self-evacuate? Where are the registered evacuation centres for people?
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QUESTION 12:
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In Tasmania, does the Tasmanian Fire Service measure, use and publish a specific forecast and actual Fire Danger Index based upon weather information received from the Bureau of Meteorology? Does the TFS use the Forest and/or Grassland index? Why were such indicators not provided on the TFS website or via the Tasmanian media in relation to the current 2012-13 summer season ahead of and during the recent bushfire emergencies across the State? Is the publicised TFS bushfire emergency information adequate?
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3 Jan 2013: Forcett Fire Reported
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It is not officially publicly reported how the Forcett Fire was first detected by the responsible bushfire fighting authority, the Tasmanian Fire Service on the 3rd January 2013, except that the Tasmanian Fire Service website states consistently in successive daily updates that the “First Reported time was “03-Jan-2013 2:13 PM” at Location “Inala Road, FORCETT“.
After the disaster impacting Dunalley, Boomer Bay, Copping and other communities, on Tuesday 8th January, as the result of detailed investigations jointly conducted between Tasmania Police and the Tasmania Fire Service, the cause of the fire commonly referred to as the Forcett Fire had been officially determined.
<<The cause has been determined as of an accidental nature with the fire emanating from an old fire in a burnt out tree stump at Forcett. This fire has smouldered through the root system and ignited in the weather conditions of Thursday 3 January.
Detectives and Fire Scene Examiners from the Tasmania Fire Service have interviewed all available witnesses and people with information thereby assisting in their determination on the fire.>>
But this ‘determined cause’ was the consequence of a prior fire that has not been publicly reported. The reason for the relatively prompt cause being determined and officially declared by the Tasmanian Police was to legally trigger insurance claim processing to the insured victims, which is understandable.
However, the original cause of the “old fire in a burnt out tree stump at Forcett” remains publicly undetermined.
The Tasmanian Fire Service website states that the fire ignited near Inala Road, Forcett on 3rd January 2013. Inala Road is situated about 2km east of the rural village of Forcett along the Arthur Highway. It is a one kilometre long gravel No Through Road that connects half a dozen farm properties to the Arthur Highway. See map below.
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Inala Road Forcett Satellite Map, 2011
Click image to enlarge (Inala Road is top right)
[Source: Google Maps]
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Inala Road near the intersection of the Arthur Highway in 2010
Photo looks south, with the hills toward Dunalley on the left.
Inala Road is characterised by farmland interspersed with partially deforested native bushland, and patchy regrowth.
Click image to enlarge.
[Source: Google Maps, March 2010]
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Inala Road is easily accessible by fire trucks, so with a small fire and with low wind conditions, the prospect of suppressing the fire early on the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January would have been greater than at any subsequent time before it impacted Dunalley 24 hours later.
The exact location of the ignition along Inala Road has not been reported by the Tasmanian Fire Service on its website. Like most fore agencies, the Tasmanian Fire Service chooses to delete (censor) operational fire records after a few days.
However, a Forcett Fire Map provided on the ABC News website dated 4th January 2013 was obviously obtained by the ABC from the Tasmanian Fire Service, shown below:
1. The ignition source of the fire was north of the Arthur Highway along Inala Road (top left of above map). This places the TFS confirmed ‘burning stump’ midway along Inala Road, per juxtaposed mapping below.
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Deduced Ignition Location of the Forcett Fire
In the absence of TFS publicly confirming the exact location of the ‘burnt stump’ ignition source,
by deduction from the Forcett Fire Map above, the Inala Road ignition source appears midway along Inala Road, Forcett.
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Inala Road
Where along Inala Road was the burning stump that re-ignited the Forcett Fire?
Ask the TFS.
It is incumbent upon the Tasmanian Fire Service to be transparent about the exact source loation of this fire so that the truth be known.
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2. Consistent with the prevailing north-westerly windwind, the direction of this fire was that it initially headed easterly after re-igniting from the declared ‘burning stump‘ in the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January. Sometime in the evening of the 3rd January the wind reverted to the prevailing direction from the north-west and thereafter continued consistently from this direction through the couyrse of the following two weeks into the Forestier Peninsula.
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Open farmland along Arthur Highway, near the Inala Road intersection looking south east toward Dunalley
Click image to enlarge
[Source: Google Maps, March 2010]
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3. The separate strip of fire burnt south along the Sugarloaf Road would appear to be specifically contained and so likely to be a deliberately lit control line/fire break defensively intended to prevent the main wildfire crossing the road in the event of a wind change to the east. This is conjecture in the absence of TFS public explanation on its website.
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QUESTION 13:
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What was the cause of the “old fire in a burnt out tree stump”. Lightning doesn’t usually light tree stumps; trees on ridges yes. But Inala Road is not on a ridge, so the lightning excuse is a convenient furphy. Was the fire a consequence of a farmer’s ‘pile burn’ or ‘burn off’? Who lit the fire? Was the burn off authorised by the Tasmanian Fire Service? If so why, when it is summer and at a time of high bushfire risk? What investigations are being conducted by the TFS and/or Tasmanian Police into the original cause of the fire?
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Jan 2013: Bushfire Conditions around Dunalley
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Prevailing Wind
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As the crow flies, Hobart Airport is about 12km from the ignition source that purportedly started the Forcett Fire near Inala Road, and Hobart Airport is about 25km from Dunalley.
The following wind rose chart of the Bureau of Meteorology shows that over the past half century, the prevailing wind for Hobart Airport is predominantly from the north-west. This may be generally extrapolated for the surrounding Sorrell local government area, including Forcett and Dunalley.
Significantly, the prevailing wind is a most relevant environmental factor in the Forcett Fire, because of the juxtaposition of Forcett to Dunalley.
The ignition source at Inala Road Forcett was north west of Dunalley, the same as the prevailing wind.
Wind typically increases in the early afternoon as the temperature differential between the hotter land mass and the nearby cooler sea strong maximises. This is referred to as a diurnal wind pattern. On Friday 4th January as temperatures soared, this wind was predictably due to increase and at around 2pm it did. The 15 km/h breeze increased to a recorded peak of 52km/h at 1.57pm.
So the Forcett Fire on 3rd January was predictably and reliably going to burn toward Dunalley. The diurnal wind pattern at the time was nothing extra-ordinary, and therefore would have been predictable.
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Ignition source at Inala Road, Forcett was 17km North West of DunalleyClick image to enlarge
[Source: Google Earth]
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QUESTION 14:
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Given that a light north west prevailing breeze was predictably fanning the Forcett Bushfire toward Dunalley in the afternoon and evening of 3rd January, what firefighting response including backburning was undertaken to prevent the Forcett Bushfire’s spread south east toward Dunalley?
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All Thursday afternoon, through Thursday night and all Friday morning the observed wind was relatively light. The following account is poignant:
“A couple of kilometres just off the Arthur Highway at Fazackerlys Rd, a small group of farm workers, some locals and a police officer watched from a safe distance the fire which had burned slowly all morning in the wooded hillsides to the north. The smoke rose straight up from several large and small outbreaks burning around farmland.”
The Forcett Fire on the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January 2013Burning out of control south of the Arthur Highway heading right (south east)Low winds meant it was not a fast moving firestorm at this stage.
View across Frederick Henry Bay looking north-east, perhaps Bally Park/Carlton settlement in the foreground.
(Photo by Ian Stewart, 20130103, click image to enlarge)
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So, the Forcett Fire on the morning of Friday 4th January was still slowing burning through relatively accessible farmland under light wind conditions. Why wasn’t it extinguished?
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Forcett Bushfire
(Photo by Moemahfoudh, 20130104)
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QUESTION 15:
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Given that the Forcett Fire was still declared uncontained by the Tasmanian Fire Service in the morning of Friday 4th Jaunary, what addition emergency bushfire response measures were implemented by the TFS to prevent the fire impacting Dunalley?
Did the Bureau of Meteorology publicise forecast increased wind speed and the extreme temperature for 4th January on the 3rd January? What Fire Danger Index was forecast by the TFS for 4th January for the ongoing Forcett Fire and was it not clear to the TFS that the risk to Dunalley and Boomer Bay from the Forcett Fire was catastrophic?
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The2pm Diurnal Wind
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…and then the wind came up…at Fazackerlys Rd just after 2pm, all hell broke loose. The fire had taken a run.
As the Forcett Bushfire impacted Dunalley at around 2pm on 4th January, recorded wind gust reached 80km/h, driving the fire south into Dunalley at unstoppable speed.
Bushfires are known to fan their own wind. According to the CSIRO, bushfires can generate their own wind. “Strong convection set up by the heat of the fire creates an in-draw wind that can interact with the prevailing wind. Depending on the direction of the prevailing wind and the location of the fire, this in-draw wind may increase or decrease the strength of the prevailing wind.”
On 4th January 2013, maximum temperature records were broken at eight weather stations across Tasmania. Hobart reached 41.8°C, breaking the previous temperature record by 1°C.
However, as explained above, these extreme temperatures although technically breaking records, were only doing so by marginal degrees on the 3rd January. Tasmania had recorded similar extreme hot summer temperatures on at least seven previously documented occasions. So, despite media sensationalism and the vested interest of the Australian Government’s climate change commission to claim justification for its government-dependent revenue, by no means were the temperatures of January 2013 unprecedented, or ‘off the scale‘.
Yes, it was forecast to be an unusually very hot dry summer for Tasmania, no more no less.
Significantly, Thursday 3rd January 2013 peaked at a very high 34.4 Celsius. The maximum on the following critical day Friday 4th January is not recorded. This is likely due to the Dunalley gauge reader being otherwise pre-occupied escaping from the impacting bushfire.
Anecdotally the mid afternoon temperature spiked at 40.2 Celsius at around 2pm that day, and about a kilometre south-west the Stroud Point weather station registered 54.9 Celsius at a time not disclosed – perhaps between 2:30pm and 3pm that day.
[Source: ‘From spark to raging inferno’, 20130113, by David Killick in The Sunday Tasmanian. See extract below]
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QUESTION 16:
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Given the pre-existing bushfires across the State causing concern, the forecast bushfire conditions, the known prevailing NW wind across the Sorrell Council area (Forcett – Dunalley) what special bushfire emergency response measures did the Tasmanian Fire Service take critically on 3rd January 2013, on being alerted to the Inala Road ignition to prevent the fire spreading? Why was the fire not contained on the 3rd January, while it was in accessible farmland, before it advanced slowly into hilly less accessible timbered State reserves toward Dunalley?
So the following article extract provides the best light on what happened on the Friday, 4th January 2013 at Forcett:
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‘From spark to raging inferno’
by David Killick
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<<IT only takes a spark to start a fire.
At Inala Rd near the south- eastern Tasmanian town of Forcett, that spark is believed to have been struck some time before Christmas.
A landowner was clearing a tree stump the old fashioned way by burning it out. They thought the fire was out, but it smouldered unchecked in the root system for two weeks, before flaring and dooming a town.
The morning of Friday January 4, 2013, was unremarkable in Dunalley.
It was warm and still.
If anything it was perhaps a little quieter than normal.
The heat and the fire risk warning encouraged some people to leave and traffic through the town was light despite the school holidays.
Inside the weather station by the water at Stroud Point, the temperature ticked over the 30C mark just before midday.
At the Dunalley Fish Market in Fulham Rd, tourists and families stopped to eat their lunches.
Along Marion Bay Rd at nearby Copping, many residents seemed to have taken the advice of fire authorities and left.
Local shopkeeper Kate North was concerned, but not overly so.
“If the wind doesn’t come up we should be OK,’’ she said. “The problem will be if it gets into the bush and heads towards Dunalley.’’
A couple of kilometres just off the Arthur Highway at Fazackerlys Rd, a small group of farm workers, some locals and a police officer watched from a safe distance the fire which had burned slowly all morning in the wooded hillsides to the north.
The smoke rose straight up from several large and small outbreaks burning around farmland.
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And then the wind came up
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And then the wind came up. At 1.43pm, give or take a minute either side, a wall of flame suddenly emerged above the treetops, leaping into the air, 20 or 30 metres high.
Burning embers began to rain down. The south-easterly wind had swung west. The gust that fanned the fire hit Dunalley 8km away at 1.57pm at 52km/h. The temperature spiked 5C in six minutes to 40.2C.
There is an unholy trinity that keeps bushfire fighters awake at night. High temperatures, strong winds and low humidity.
Add heavy fuel loads and a source of ignition, and there is no force of man that can stop a bushfire.
The 2009 Victorian fires which killed 173 people have seared the word “catastrophic’’ into the popular lexicon the fire danger beyond “extreme’‘.
These were the conditions that existed in the hills north of Dunalley.
As one man put it, conditions on January 4 were unlike anything Tasmania has seen since 1967.
“I’ve been a firefighter for 35 years. I have never seen a fire so destructive as that was on Friday,” he said.
“On a day like that you cannot fight a fire. It doesn’t matter how much water or how many helicopters you have.’”
AT Fazackerlys Rd just after 2pm, all hell broke loose. The fire had taken a run. All of a sudden four houses and their outbuildings were surrounded by the flames.
The Tasmania Fire Service crews raced from outbreak to outbreak, saving what they could.
Local Todd Hildyard had been on a bulldozer several hundred metres away.
He raced the flames to his back steps and with a hose and the help of his teenage son somehow stopped the home going up.
“We were bloody lucky – she was awful close to getting in here,” Mr Hildyard said.
Another group fought a desperate battle just up the road.
Although a house near the highway was saved, one by one the flames claimed sheds and outbuildings.
The beautiful old hay shed by the highway went up.
Less than a kilometre away at the top of a hill above Copping, John Yaxley was fighting an astonishing battle to save his place surrounded by bush, most of it ablaze.
Somehow he saved his home and a shed with $60,000 worth of wine inside, but his parents’ grand pentagon-shaped hilltop house was lost, as was the caretaker’s home.
Locals watched helpless from the shade outside Kate North’s shop at Copping.
Amid the light grey smoke of burning bush could be seen the terrible dark smoke of people’s homes going up in flames.
One older man watched his home burn.
“I saw it catch fire, I knew where to look and I thought `any moment now’ and it went up. There’s a lot of nice things gone but that is the way of the world. It’s a devil of a thing.”
The fire rolled down the ridgetops to Marshton Lane.
In a hurried roadside conference as the flames raged around, the firefighters knew the task was already too great.
Getting in front of this fire would be an act of suicide.
“Guys, it’s all turned to shit,” said one.
Those there say that just after 3pm the hellfire rolled over the hill behind the golf course like a storm.
A terrifying black, red and purple wall of flames.
Smoke darkened the sky.
Helicopter pilot Ben Brolewicz watched from above.
“It was probably as bad as it gets. With all of the heat that it generated it created a sort of a vortex that picked stuff up and flung it through the air,’’ he said in an interview with the ABC.
Bryan Webster called it a “tsunami of fire”.
With his partner Fiona Hills and her 11-year-old son Darcy Scott, Mr Webster fled to the water’s edge as the fire roared into town.
The family sheltered in the water for two hours with a mob of terrified wallabies for company.
At another jetty, another miraculous escape.
The Holmes family, grandma, grandpa and five grandchildren in their care fled the flames and sought shelter.
A haunting snapshot taken of them sheltering in the water has become the iconic image of these fires worldwide.
The family were calm, but huddled and prayed. Not one was harmed.
Josh Clements’ home was saved. His parents weren’t so lucky. He and his family pushed a boat out into the canal as the front hit and floated in the bay for several hours.
Hundreds of metres from the burning town, the Stroud Point weather station registered 54.9C.
The wind by now was gusting to 80km/h, driving the fire to the south.
The school went up, as did the police station, the bakery and many homes.
But somehow not a single life was lost.
Those who were not in the water were shepherded by police to the local pub to shelter – a move that saved scores of lives.
AS Dunalley burned, the fire spread left and right, from its formerly narrow front.
The eastern edge moved into Boomer Bay – a pretty community of waterfront shacks.
Just after 4pm, Steve Fisher and several dozen other locals watched as the fire approached steadily through knee-high grass.
“We’ll stick with it as long as we can,” he said calmly.
At that moment, just a few hundred metres away to the south, dozens of people were fighting for their homes and their lives.
Simon and Tully Brooks tried to fight the grassfire as it approached.
The father and son attacked with buckets and hoses, but their house went up.
They knew it was hopeless. They grabbed what valuables they could and fled.
Lex Johnson saw his neighbours run for their lives. “I was up at the corner when it circled around the back and through the trees behind our property,” he said.
“And then we saw the people from down the road running to get away from the fire . . . and it was catching up to them.”
Those cut off by the fires fled to the jetty where many were saved by the bravery of a helicopter crew.
The crew of paramedics returned over and over in thick smoke and plucked people from the water including a pregnant woman and five dogs.
On a point just east of Dunalley, not far from the weather station, it was helicopters too that saved the Jenkins family.
Ten members of the family had moved their caravans and cars to the water’s edge as the fire burst over the nearby hills.
As the flames drew close, a helicopter appeared and doused the family again and again until the threat had passed by.
Further north, at Connellys Marsh the battle would rage through the night.
Cut off from all outside help, neighbours banded together to keep each other safe.
A flotilla of small boats ferried away those who wanted to leave and then those who stayed faced the flames.
Martin Thorpe returned to watch the shack his family had cherished for 30 years, razed by the fire.
GRAEME Grundy dragged a neighbour to safety then fought with Mr Thorpe to save his own place – in part thanks to a water pipe that burst at just the right moment, showering the place with the remaining water from his 1000-gallon tank.
When the sun rose, the seaside hamlet was dotted with small clearings filled with smouldering ruins.
Somehow, more homes were saved than lost.
As the survivors contemplated their extraordinary night, the fires delivered one last cruel blow. The last home to be lost at Connellys Marsh went up around 8am.
The Inala Rd fire caused more havoc and destroyed more homes and continues to burn in spots south of Eaglehawk Neck, but most of the damage took place in about three hectic hours.
An inquiry will determine how – against all odds – not a single human life was lost or a serious injury sustained that Friday. Fire chiefs say there has been much planning and many lessons learnt from Black Saturday in Victoria in 2009. After such horrific losses as Victoria’s, people are far more aware of the risk of fire.
And communications have improved since then too. The hundreds of broadcast alerts, website updates and urgent text messages played their part.
And there was some luck. The area was surrounded by water which gave so many a place to run to when it all became too much.
But summer is not over yet. After a long dry spell, huge tracts of the Tasmanian bush are loaded with fuel.
The peak of our fire season is still weeks away. As hard as it is to believe, the worst may not yet have passed.>>
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[Source: ‘From spark to raging inferno’, 20130113, by David Killick, in The Sunday Tasmanian (not published on the Internet), but reproduced in the Tasmanian Times; additional reporting by Zara Dawtrey, Matt Smith, Bruce Mounster, Blair Richards, Linda Smith, and Tim Martain, posted by PB 20130115, ^http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/the-new-normal/show_comments]
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Hindsight Local Reflections
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Most of the bushland that the bushfire burnt through before impacting Dunalley was privately owned.
Locals in the Tasmanian fishing village of Dunalley say the fire which ravaged their community would not have been so ferocious if hazard reduction burns had been carried out before the summer.
A massive fireball bears down on Dunalley on Friday. The Dunalley Primary School in the foreground would be soon destroyed.
[Source: Photo by Michael Goldsmith, Tasmania Fire Service,
^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-10/fireball-2jpg/4459102]
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A total of 126 properties were destroyed or damaged in the Dunalley fire, and a photo (above) given to the ABC yesterday and taken from a fire-fighting helicopter shows a giant fireball bearing down on the town at the height of the inferno.
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The following audio is hindsight feedback from local residents of Dunalley and the immediate surrounding area, about their citizen lay views about what could have been done to prevent Dunalley burning.
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Audio: Listen to Felicity Ogilvie’s report (ABC Radio News, AM Programme, 20130110):
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One resident who still has a home is oyster farmer Justin Gock.
“I believe that if you’ve got people living in areas where there’s substantial forests, there should be significant management plans in place to control situations like this,” he said.
“Because if these areas were back-burned like they used to and the infrastructure was in place, fair chance it might not have happened.”
Tony Disipio, who lost his house in the blaze, is critical about the lack of preventative burns around Dunalley.
“Well 25 years ago they used to burn off regularly around the hills, it was like a winter thing, a winter exercise,” he said.
“And I noticed over the years that there was just less and less of it.”
Homes damaged by bushfire seen from above between Dunalley and Boomer Bay, Tasmania Photo: A total of 126 properties were destroyed or damaged in the Dunalley fire. (AAP
Farmer Sandy Gray has also noticed that preventative burns have been declining in recent times.
“In the old days, they used to go around and just quietly do a few, especially on the northern, north-western sides of the townships like Dunalley. It’s a pity they don’t still do it,” he said.
The State Government and Fire Service are promising to review their policies on controlled burns, but with fire warnings still current for parts of the state, they say they will wait until the current crisis is over.
The Tasmanian Fire Service’s Deputy Chief Officer, Gavin Freeman, says there has been no reduction in preventative burn-offs near Dunalley.
“I don’t believe there has been less done. You can always look back with a bit of hindsight and say yes, we could do more perhaps,” he said.
“But until we get these fires under control and are able to look back and do a proper analysis of where the fires have burnt to and what they burnt through – and bear in mind, under catastrophic conditions – we don’t really know whether that field reduction burning would be a benefit or not.”
The fire service may do some burn-offs, but the responsibility for preparing for a bushfire lies with the land owner.
At Dunalley it appears most of the bushland the fire tore through is privately owned.
The Tasmanian Minister for Emergency Management, David O’Byrne, says public land accounts for 20 per cent of the area affected by the fire.
“Fuel reduction and that sort of management is a joint responsibility between government, in terms of our land and in the parks land, but also in the private land that is around Tasmania,” he said.
“It’s important we have a community conversation around this. Now is not the time for that conversation, we need to get these fires under control.
“Once we can assess the impact of the fuel loads around… we can have a discussion on the basis of fact and reality as opposed to people’s pretty raw emotions at the moment.”
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.
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‘]
McIntyres Hut Bushfire in Brindabella National Park, New South Wales, 8th January 2003It was manageable then, but negligently left to burn for days by the Rural Fire Service
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On 8th January 2003, reported lightning strikes had ignited remote fires in the Brindabella National Park inside New South Wales and in Namadgi National Park in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).
Ten days later, the McIntyres Hut Bushfire along with the Bendora Bushfire, the Stockyard Spur Bushfire and the Mount Gingera Bushfire, coalesced and burnt out of control into the south-western suburbs of Canberra.
It tragically became The 2003 Canberra Firestorm.
Four people perished
435 people were injured, many suffering horrific burns
487 homes and 23 commercial and government premises were destroyed
215 homes, commercial premises, government premises and outbuildings were damaged
Mount Stromlo observatory (an institution of international renown) was destroyed
An inestimatable number of animals (livestock and wildlife) were killed
Almost 70% of the ACT, some 157,170 hectares were burnt
The ACT Coroner Maria Doogan conducted an inquiry into the cause, origin and circumstances of the bushfires and inquests into the four deaths associated with those fires. On December 2006, her findings: ‘The Canberra Firestorm‘ concluded that “failure to aggressively attack the fires in the first few days after they ignited” was a key factor that led to the firestorm.
Coroner Doogan was also scathing of the ACT’s Emergency Services Bureau (ESB) for:
Failing to attack the fires that had been burning for 10 days before they reached the capital.
Failing to warn residents of the danger early enough, saying this exacerbated the property losses and caused panic and confusion on the day of the firestorm.
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But responsibility for fire suppression inside the Brindabella National Park also lay with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Today ACT Supreme Court Chief Justice Terence Higgins has found that the New South Wales Government (Rural Fire Service) was negligent in the way it tackled the January 2003 blaze.
One of the plaintiffs suing the NSW Government, Brindabella landowner Wayne West said today “We have won the case on negligence, the judge has made a decision the fire should have been fought and could have been fought in a different manner, and we win the case at common law.’’
Mr West, along with plaintiffs represented by insurance giant QBE Insurance, have been suing the NSW Government for gross negligence.
But the NSW Rural Fires Act 1997 confers immunity from liability if the Rural Fire Service acted “in good faith”. This means that even though the Rural Fire Service is guilty of gross negligence, it and its members are immune from prosecution for negligence, becase they can hide behind the NSW Rural Fires Act.
So Chief Justice Higgins has ruled in favour of the NSW Government.
“The result I have reached is that the plaintiffs’ claim must, as a matter of law, be denied,” Chief Justice Terence Higgins said today in an 86-page judgment.
“However, but for the express limitations on the liability which otherwise would attach at common law, those plaintiffs who suffered loss or damage would have been entitled to compensation for their losses. Effectively, they are deprived by statute of what would, under the general law, be regarded as just compensation.”
“The legislature has, however, spoken so as to exempt NSW from such liability, and the courts must apply the law as parliament has decreed it.”
The judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the NSW Rural Fire Service embraced an “inadequate and defective strategy. “The question is, however, whether the adoption of that strategy, albeit negligent, was ‘so unreasonable that no authority could properly consider the act of omission to be a reasonable exercise of its functions’.”
The judge identified failures in strategic planning, but made no criticism of the front-line firefighters “at any level”.
Mr West said while the ultimate decision was “devastating” the case was never about the money.
“That fire was allowed to burn, there could have been action taken to prevent the fire escaping or being enticed to escape. The fires shouldn’t have burnt the houses and [caused] the injuries and the four lives in Canberra, that’s what we were here for from day one.’’
When asked what lessons should be taken from the firefighting response Mr West replied:
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“Get in the fire immediately and look at the fire – don’t look at it 50 kilometres away.”
Bushfire Progress – click on image
(The top red patch is the McInture Bushfire inside NSW)
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Alan Conolly, representing the QBE clients, said they would read the judgment and consider their options.
“There’s always, in a case as big as this, there’ll be issues we have to look at, and at the moment we first have to read the judgment and advise our clients,” he said.
West has immediately flagged a decision to challenge this decision and to take that fight to the ACT Court of Appeal.
“We have only fallen over in the courtroom today on an Act the [NSW] government put in place…the state doesn’t have a duty of care to an individual, and that’s where we fell over today”, West said.
The general community has right to expect that government, as the public authority, must be at all times properly diligent in performing its duty it owes to its dependent community. This is perhaps no more so than its implied fiduciary duty to protect the community from harm. Outside the military, the emergency services duty of government – be it police, ambulance, fire, disasterresponse – stands at the forefront of this fiduciary duty because this is where the risk and consequence of harm to thecommunity is greatest. This is the basis of community trust in government and the rule of law, otherwise as a society we resort to ‘every man for himself’ chaos.
Under Division 1, Section 63 of the Rural Fire Act 1997, there is a prescribed duty of the public authority (the Rural Fire Service) to prevent bush fires, and this necessarily includes taking:
“any other practicable steps to prevent the occurrence of bush fires on, and to minimise the danger of the spread of a bush fire on or from any land vested in or under its control or management.“
Allowing the known McIntyre Fire to burn for multiple days without diligent suppression response has been found by the ACT Coroner and the ACT Supreme Court to have been negligent. Since this fire was situated on Crown Land in New South Wales, the New South Wales Rural Fire Service owed a fidicuary duty of care to the community to ensure resource capability, to diligently suppress and properly extinguish the fire, which it fundamentally failed to do.
The Rural Fire Service owed a higher duty of care to the community to properly extinguish the fire, than with other concerns such as cost mitigation by avoiding the cost of aerial suppression. It is a breach of that duty of care when a public authority under-resources and under-performs emergency management response. It is shameful that governments continue to hide behind legislation and volunteers when the risk and consequences of bushfire and wind changes are known. The community has a right to entrust government capability and to trust legislation to serve the bests interests of the community, not the convenience of government bureaucracy.
The McIntyre Fire started off some distance from human settlement and would have been operationally treated as a defacto hazard reduction. It is past time that the high duty of fire fighting to protect life and property extends to protecting the valuable ecological integrity of the community’s national parks. The interface between life, property and national parks has become intertwined and all it takes is a change of wind for bushfire risk to morph from being ‘contained’ to being ‘catastrophic’.
Location of Oxley Wild Rivers National ParkClick image to enlarge – note the patchy dark green of remnant forests
[Source: Satellite Map – Google Maps]
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The ‘Macleay River’ Bushfire (Oct 2012)
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Macleay River Bushfire October 2012
– left to burn for a week from 12th Oct 2012 because not a threat to private property
..then the wind picked up…unbelievable!
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Over the past month, a single contiguous area covering some 60,000 hectares of vegetation has been left to burn by bushfire. That equates to 600 km2 or roughly 25km x 25km.
Much of what has been burned is/was of World Heritage values within the included Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. This is unacceptable custodial neglect.
If this was Sydney, this is the black boxed area that would have been incinerated:Putting this 60,000ha bushfire into a Sydney urban perspective
Professional urban fire fighting would not allow 60,000 hectares of private property and human lives to burn
– such would historically dwarf the Great Fire of London.
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The Rural Fire Service has labelled the bushfire the ‘Macleay River Fire‘. But it began as two separate bushfires on or before 12 October, nearly a month prior. One was then labelled ‘Georges Junction Fire‘ and the other ‘Freds Creek Fire‘, both purportedly ignited by bush arsonist(s). Seven days later, the Georges Junction Fire has burnt an estimated 8,931 ha, while the then much smaller Freds Creek Fire had burnt 1,688 ha. By the time the combined bushfire was extinguished 60,000 hectares had been burned, much within the World Heritage Area..
This is yet another classic case of bushfire neglect primarily by the delegated custodians of the National Park and World Heritage Area – the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. Is this due to chronic lack of resourcing; and/or symptomatic of a disturbing rationalist culture that believes that burning Australian vegetation, even ancient rainforest, could be somehow beneficial to biodiversity.
Remote ignitions go undetected, then unsuppressed, until many days later, bushfire weather conditions worsen and the fires get out of control, combine and destroy vast areas of important Nationl Park and World Heritage.
This 2012 Macleay River Fire is like the ‘2006 Grose Valley Fires‘ of the Blue Mountains repeated to script.
The Australian Government continues to be ultimately culpable for gross neglect in failing to protect its custodial listed natural heritage.
The Rural Fire Service has learnt to avoid accusatioins of incompetence by routinely removing timely records on its websites about the operational response in the days at the start of the ignitions. Details about the timings of ignition detection and initial suppression are deliberately withheld from the public.
The following bushfire updates are mainly from second-hand news media. A notable recurring theme across these news reports is that the media interest and the target of the fire fighting effort, just like in urban fire fighting, is to save humans lives and property. This is not a bad thing, but the glaring omission is the lack of interest in suppressing the bushfire in the National Park and World Heritage.
The Rural Fire Service policy and operational strategy is such that if human lives and properrty are not directly threatened by bushfire, then a bushfire is allowed to continue burning, irrespective of whether it is burning through National Park or World Heritage. Since the Rural Fire Service has the same terms of reference as the professionaly paid New South Wales Fire Brigade, then they are essentially doing the same urban job.
The only reason the Rural Fire Service exists in less populated rural areas instead of the professionaly paid New South Wales Fire Brigade, is traditionally so that the Australian Government and New South Wales Government can save money by relying on unpaid, under-resourced volunteers. Yet the environment in rural fire fighters work in is inherently more dangerous, demanding and in need of sophisticated resources for military-speed detection and suppressions of bushfires.
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21 Oct: Bushfire Update
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‘Blazes burn out of control: Permits suspended as hot, dry weather hits North West’
Satellite infrared image of the fire called Georges Junction inside the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park
Having already burnt out a massive 14,000 hectares and is likely to join up with the Freds Creek fire.
The active edge of the fire shows up bright yellow; the red areas are the burnt areas.
(Photo by New England RFS)
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<<Two massive bushfires in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park were basically running unchecked yesterday because of adverse firefighting conditions, incident controller for the New England bushfire emergency, Allyn Purkiss, said.
Mr Purkiss said the two Section 44-declared fires one named Freds Creek and the other Georges Junction were likely to join up yesterday and burn out a total of 30,000 hectares in the coming weeks.
“They took a big run under strong winds (on Saturday)..The fires had started after landholder burns had got away”, Mr Purkiss said.
..The fire named Freds Creek, which started on October 12, had burnt out 3,189 hectares and was crowning at 4am yesterday, with flames jumping from treetop to treetop.
“It means it’s very uncontrollable very dangerous conditions,” Mr Purkiss said yesterday.
The RFS had been unable to aerial-bomb the fires because of gusty winds. Mr Purkiss described it as “nigh-on impossible” to water-bomb in those conditions.
Instead, RFS volunteers had concentrated on saving property. He said it was hard to tell how many homes and remote-area shacks might be affected.
“We’re still trying to come to terms with that. We could have up to 50 in the area: there are shacks all through this country,” he said.
Mr Purkiss said the other fire, Georges Junction, had already burnt out 14,000 hectares. (Ed: Same as the 2006 Grose Valley Fires).
He said conditions in the New England RFS zone were “fairly similar” to strong, gusty winds on Saturday. “The forecast is for 50km/h winds by late afternoon,” Mr Purkiss said.
No homes had been lost in either fire yet. “None that we know of,” he said. The RFS was doing a “fairly extensive reconnaissance of the area”, he said.
Three other fires one about 40km east of Guyra, one near Walcha and one near Ebor had also started since Friday.
The Guyra fire, which started on Saturday, was located in the Mt Mulligan/Wards Mistake area.
Locals had alerted the RFS to the fire, which was in “very remote country … it’s difficult to get to no roads, no trails”, Mr Purkiss said.
“I’ve tasked an aircraft to get out there today and map it and give us some intel (intelligence),” he said..
“No properties were under threat: it was burning in scrub.“
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Mr Purkiss said he was “not sure” how much land had been burnt out he would have to wait for information provided by the aircraft crew.
The Walcha fire, called Panhandle and in the Enfield State Forest, had burnt out five hectares by the time it was contained by mid-afternoon on Saturday.
The Ebor-area fire was located “in an area we can’t get to”, Mr Purkiss said. “We’re flying to map it today,” he said yesterday.
It had also burnt out five hectares.
“Local landholders and Ebor RFS assisted in containing it,” he said.
Mr Purkiss said the New England RFS zone was unlikely to lift its suspension of fire permits today.
“While ever we have a bushfire emergency like this going, all permits are suspended we’re already dealing with enough fires, so we don’t need any more mistakes giving us grief than we already have,” he said.
Mr Purkiss said this season had already started to play out differently compared to the past three years.
In the past three fire seasons, rain had usually come along and helped extinguish any fires but this season was different, with many more periods of extended dry weather.
“In talking to the local staff, they say that this (Georges Junction) is the largest fire they have had since 2009,” Mr Purkiss said. “We’re working hard to get it done. We thank the volunteers and employers for allowing us to fight these very large fires.”>>
<<Fire continues to threaten properties near Oxley Wild Rivers National Park after two blazes combined yesterday.
The Macleay River bushfire had already burnt about 20,000 hectares early yesterday afternoon as more than 30 firefighters battled the out of control blaze, NSW Rural Fire Service spokeswoman Bridie O’Connor said.
The inferno may have posed a threat to properties between Georges Junction and Five Day Creek, particularly on the Carrai and Fitzroy Tablelands and on the Macleay River in the vicinity of Lower Creek and Comara, Ms O’Connor said early yesterday afternoon.
“We’re looking at a minimum of six hours before some properties might be affected,” she said. “People should expect to see smoke and fire and be alert.”
Hot and windy conditions over the weekend (20th and 21st) saw the fires at Georges Junction and Freds Creek combine.
The Georges Junction fire, near Cochrane State Forest, which started on October 12 had burnt more than 14,859 hectares and was still burning out of control when it met with the Freds Creek fire early yesterday afternoon. The fire at Freds Creek was being controlled yesterday afternoon after three State Forest groups joined the NSW Rural Fire Service to use bulldozers to create fire breaks earlier in the week.
Meanwhile, the Armidale to Kempsey Road between Waterfall Way and Bellbrook was closed on Saturday and Sunday because of the fires.
The Rural Fire Service was concentrating its efforts on establishing containment lines.
People on properties near Georges Junction and on the Macleay were urged to be alert for fire warnings.>>
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23 Oct: Bushfire Update
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‘Total fire bans expected back in place by Thursday’
<<…Adverse weather conditions on Sunday hindered attempts to subdue two massive bushfires in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. Fire crews were reduced to protecting property on the ground and the two fires merged late on Sunday as fire crews battled from the ground to protect property, unable to water bomb due to gusty winds across the region.
The fire, now named the Macleay River Fire had burnt out 28,733 hectares as of last night, Inspector Brett Loughlin, public liaison officer for Armidale Section 44 with the NSW Rural Fire Service, said.
Mr Loughlin was expecting the fire to burn out more land.
“We’re doing some mapping now and expect it to be around that 30,000-hectare mark,” he said. He said 52 firefighters were on the ground creating firebreaks, doing backburning and helping protect the property of landholders living within a few kilometres of the fire front.
“There are properties in close proximity,” Mr Loughlin said. “The fire has flared up a little this afternoon and some embers are falling around properties in the Lower Creek area.
“No property is under threat at the moment … the fire’s not doing anything like it was doing on Saturday (when it was out of control – a day of hot, gusty westerly winds).”
Five helicopters are currently tasked to water bombing the Macleay River Fire.
Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is still shut to the public…>>
<<Rural Fire Service forensic investigators have interviewed a ‘person of interest’ as the battle to contain the Macleay River fire enters its 15th day.
RFS investigators from Kempsey and Coffs Harbour arrived yesterday to investigate the possible cause of the blaze in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park which has since burnt out 33,160 hectares of bush and pasture land.
RFS Public Liason Officer Inspector Brett Loughlin said all major fires were investigated as a matter of cause and investigations were ongoing.
Around 80 firefighters from the NSW RFS, FRNSW and NPWS, supported by five aircraft and four bulldozers are fighting the fire, which has a 247 kilometre perimeter.
Ember attack on properties around the Lower Creek area were reported yesterday but Inspector Loughlin said that firefighters were working with local landholders to protect at-risk homes.
Inspector Loughlin said that good containment lines had been established by fire crews in the last 24 hours and today “aerial incendiary” work by helicopter would be carried out on the south western side of the blaze. “It’s still an active fire but we’re starting to get a handle on it,” Inspector Loughlin said.
The Macleay River Fire is the culmination of the ‘Freds Creek Bushfire‘ and ‘Georges Junction Bushfire‘ that had merged last weekend. The fire is burning in the vicinity of the Comara, Georges Junction, Five Day Creek, Lower Creek, Blanches Creek and Smith Creek areas.
Another fire burning near Guyra, has been contained. The ‘Mulligans Bushfire‘, which has burnt out 3207 hectares near the Guy Fawkes National Park has been burning since Saturday.>>
Macleay River Bushfire
(Photo by Sean Bremmer)
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1 Nov: Bushfire Update
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Rural Fire Service Reported Operational Statistics:
‘MACLEAY RIVER FIRE‘
ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: 50 kms east of Armidale, 75 kms west of Kempsey, 65kms east of Walcha
COUNCIL AREA: Armidale Dumaresq
STATUS: Being Controlled (Ed: glass half-full spin)
TYPE: Bush fire
FIRE: Yes
SIZE: 51,405 ha
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 1 Nov 2012 15:25
<<Three local government areas have been declared natural disaster zones in the wake of a major fire that has been raging in northern NSW for two weeks.
The massive front formed on October 21 when the Freds Creek and Georges Junction fires combined at the Macleay River. It has damaged over 51,000 hectares of:
National Parks
State Forests
Private Land
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across three shires:
Armidale Dumaresq shire‘
Walcha shire
Kempsey shire
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“These fires have been burning in the area for a number of days and due to the conditions, they merged into one large fire, jumped containment lines and threatened numerous properties,” Emergency Services Minister Michael Gallacher said in a statement on Monday.
“This declaration triggers a number of disaster assistance schemes to assist with the cost of disaster relief and recovery.”
Over the last two weeks, bushfires have raged across the New England and Mid North Coast regions. Other fires under this declaration include the Clay fire in Armidale Dumaresq, the Panhandle fire in Walcha and the Mulligans fire in Guyra on the western side of Guy Fawkes National Park, which has burnt over 3,400 hectares of National Park and private land.
Mr Gallacher said the Macleay River fire had damaged significant portions of the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, which is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, a series of protected areas which were first inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986 and extended in 1994.
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5 Nov: Bushfire Update
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<<Three separate fires burning out of control south-west of Casino since the weekend have been contained, the Clarence Valley Rural Fire District reports.
The ‘Dubadar Creek Bushfire‘, which was believed to have been started by arsonists before blowing out from 50ha to 300ha on Saturday, was contained on Sunday and was extinguished at midday today, the district’s incident controller Stuart Watts said.
Two separate blazes, also deliberately lit, at Mt Pickabooba 4km from the Dubadar Creek fire were expected to be contained by this afternoon following back-burning, Mr Watts said. The Rural Fire Service had 10 fire trucks, 19 personnel and two bulldozers working to bring the fires under control on the weekend. The Northern Star has approached the police for comment.
The battle with the blazes come as NSW Police and Emergency Services Minister Michael Gallacher declared natural disasters for the Mid North Coast – parts of which only a year ago were receiving the same declaration for floods – and New England areas.
“The main focus of this declaration is the Macleay River Fire, which developed on 21 October 2012 as the culmination of the Fred’s Creek and Georges Junction Fires,” Mr Gallacher said in a written statement.
“These fires have been burning in the area for a number of days and due to the conditions, they merged into one large fire, jumped containment lines and threatened numerous properties…Firefighters have been working hard to create containment lines around the Macleay River Fire to protect properties as the fire approaches.
“As of 1 November 2012, the Macleay River Fire continues to burn and is estimated to have damaged over 51,000 hectares of National Parks, State Forests and private land across the three LGA’s of Armidale Dumaresq, Walcha and Kempsey.
“The Macleay River Fire has damaged significant portions of the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, which is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, a series of protected areas which were first inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986 and extended in 1994.“>>
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Reader Comment:
by ‘coco50’ from Ballina 20111105:
<<When is our judicial system going to get serious about arsonists? It is difficult enough to catch them. Think about what they do. They destroy natural bushland and animal habitat. They put the lives of people at risk or even cause deaths. They destroy property which causes hardship and suffering and years to rebuild. This pushes up everyone’s insurance premiums. They out emergency services personnel at risk.
But when we get an arsonist in court, the defence counsel makes an argument like: “My client had a difficult childhood – his parents and peers didn’t understand him. He is remorseful”
The Judge almost cries while handing out a “slap on the wrist” sentence. It is much harder to start a fire in jail while you are doing 20 years time. Lock them up!>>
‘MACLEAY RIVER BUSHFIRE’
ALERT LEVEL: Advice
LOCATION: 65km East of Walcha
COUNCIL AREA: Armidale Dumaresq
STATUS: Being Controlled
TYPE: Bush fire
FIRE: Yes
SIZE: 59, 663 ha
RESPONSIBLE AGENCY: Rural Fire Service
UPDATED: 6 Nov 2012 09:10
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Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is World Heritage‘protected‘
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1986: Gondwana Rainforests of Australia inscribed on the World Heritage List.
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World Heritage Listing because local people thought it was so important to save before it was gone
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Over twenty-five years ago, in 1986 the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia, then called the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves of Australia (CERRA), were inscribed on the World Heritage List for their outstanding natural universal values.
Theses rainforest comprise the Great Escarpment of eastern New South Wales, then known as the Australian East Coast Sub-tropical and Temperate Rainforest Parks, were inscribed on the World Heritage list meeting the following three World Heritage Natural Criteria:
Outstanding example representing significant ongoing geological processes and biological evolution (World Heritage Natural Criterion viii)
Outstanding example representing major stages of the earth’s evolutionary history (World Heritage Natural Criterion ix)
Containing important and significant habitats for the in situ conservation of biological diversity (World Heritage Natural Criterion x)
The Gondwana Rainforests contains the largest and most significant remaining stands of subtropical rainforest and Antarctic Beech (Nothofagus moorei) cool temperate rainforests in the world, the largest and most significant areas of warm temperate rainforest and one of only two remaining large areas of Araucarian rainforest in Australia.
Enormous Antarctic Beech (Nothofagus moorei)
At Cobark Park, Barrington Tops, 50 metres tall
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The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia is a serial property comprising the major remaining areas of rainforest in southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales. They include the most extensive areas of subtropical rainforest in the world, large areas of warm temperate rainforest and nearly all of the Antarctic beech cool temperate rainforest. Some of the oldest elements of the world’s ferns and conifers are found here and there is a concentration of primitive plant families that are direct links with the birth and spread of flowering plants over 100 million years ago.
A wide range of plant and animal lineages and communities with ancient origins in Gondwana, many of which are restricted largely or entirely to the Gondwana Rainforests, survive in this collection of reserves. The Gondwana Rainforests also provides the principal habitat for many threatened species of plants and animals.
The area is one of the best places on earth to see ancient ferns and Araucaria such as Hoop Pines.
Hoop Pine
(Araucaria cunninghamii)
Found naturally in the dry rainforests of New South Wales and Queensland and in Papua New Guinea.
The trees can live up to 450 years and grow to a height of 60 m.
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Rainforest once covered most of the ancient southern supercontinent Gondwana and remains the most ancient type of vegetation in Australia. The Gondwana Rainforests provide an interesting living link with the evolution of Australia. Few places on earth contain so many plants and animals which remain relatively unchanged from their ancestors in the fossil record.
Due to two centuries of colonial deforestation across New South Wales and Queensland – timbergetting, ‘land clearing’ for agriculture and housing – the reserves of rainforest that comprise The Gondwana Rainforests in discontinuous patches, surrounded by fireprone eucalypt forest and cleared agricultural lands.
These patches range in size from tiny gully stands to lush forests covering large valleys and ranges. Collectively, these ‘serial sites’ despite their small size and scattered fragments, provide proximity and interconnection by corridors of semi-natural habitats and buffers. Their natural asset value is fragile and demands intensive management and protection in order to preserve their ecological integrity.
The ecosystems of the Gondwana Rainforests contain significant and important natural habitats for species of conservation significance (World Heritage Natural Criterion x).
The Gondwana Rainforests provides the principal habitat for many species of plants and animals of outstanding universal value, including more than 270 threatened species as well as relict and primitive taxa. Many of the rare and threatened flora and fauna species are rainforest specialists, and their vulnerability to extinction is due to a variety of factors including the rarity of their rainforest habitat.
The Gondwana Rainforests also protects large areas of other vegetation including a diverse range of heaths, rocky outcrop communities, forests and woodlands. These communities have a high diversity of plants and animals that add greatly to the value of the Gondwana Rainforests as habitat for rare, threatened and endemic species. The complex dynamics between rainforests and tall open forest particularly demonstrates the close evolutionary and ecological links between these communities.
Species continue to be discovered in the property including the re-discovery of two mammal species previously thought to have been extinct:
The Hastings River Mouse (Pseudomys oralis)
Parma Wallaby (Macropus parma)
Parma Wallaby (Macropus parma)
Endemic to rainforests and sclerophyll forests in New South Wales from the Watagan Mountains in the South to the Gibraltar Range in the North.
Parma wallabies were thought to have become extinct a century ago until being discovered again in the 1970s.
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1994: Oxley Wild Rivers NP added to World Heritage
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In 1994, large extensions of rainforests across south-east Queensland and New South Wales including the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park were added to the World Heritage listed Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves of Australia (CERRA), now entitled The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia (since 2007).
OxleyWild Rivers National Park – location map
[Source: Google Maps]
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These reserves comprise almost 50 separate remnant reserves of unspoilt rainforest wilderness stretching from north-east New South Wales (the Oxley Rivers region) up through south-east Queensland. Each of these reserves contains important nature conservation values in its own right, however the full significance of the property becomes evident only when viewed as a whole, and collectively CERRA provides a significant network of habitats for many of Australia’s rare and endangered species.
Since 1994, the Australian Government in co-operation with both the New South Wales and Queensland Governments have recognised the need for coordinated, consistent and cooperative management, to ensure that the integrity of CERRA‘s values is protected. At the time, the World Heritage Committee requested the Australian Government complete management plans of individual sites. Six years later in 2000, the Australian Government published its ‘Strategic Overview for Management for the Central Eastern Rainforest Reserves of Australia to guide co-operative management by the three Governments in relation to the identification, protection, conservation, rehabilitation and presentation of the Gondwana Rainforests. In 2002, a Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee and a Community Advisory Committee were established.
The Gondwana Rainforests of Australia are managed principally by the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service (part of the New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change) and the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency.
Later 1,850 ha of Winterbourne State Forest, also known at the Big Lease, was added to the reserves wilderness. Currently (2012), the remaining 1,560 ha of Winterbourne and 1,075 ha of Enmore State Forests are to be added to the National Park. Further inclusions include Green Gully headwaters and 1,439 ha of leasehold land in the lower Chandlers River gorge.
The Macleay Gorges Wilderness Area, covering 50,000 hectares, was declared World Heritage in 1996 and further extended in 1997.
In 2007, Macleay Gorges Wilderness Area and Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, along with the 50 separate Crown Land reserves of remnant ancient rainforest were collectively renamed under the umbrella term Gondwana Rainforests of Australia to better reflect their World Heritage values. These include important rainforested areas between Newcastle and Brisbane from Mount Royal National Park and Banrrington Tops National Park to Lamington National Park inland of Queensland’s Gold Coast.
Aspley Falls in flood
Oxley Wild Rivers National Park
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High waterfalls crashing into steep gorges are spectacular examples of an important ongoing natural process – erosion. Erosion by coastal rivers created the Great Escarpment and the steep-sided caldera of the Tweed Valley surrounding Mount Warning. This towering mountain was once the buried plug of an ancient vast volcano. Today, rainforest grows on the fertile, well watered soils that remain.
The Macleay River on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, has the world’s second-fastest flowing currents during flooding, when it can hold over 200,000 gigalitres.
Its headwaters flows from the Gara River on the eastern side of the Northern Tablelands near the tonwships of Armidale and Walcha. Key tributaries are the Chandler River, Styx River and Apsley River as well as the Tia River, Dyke River and Yarrowitch River, which pass through a number of spectacular gorges and waterfalls in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.
The Macleay River flows 400km south-east through Kempsey and into the Pacific Ocean at South West Rocks. Upon colonial discovery in the 1820s; the ancient, tall native Red Cedar (Toona ciliata) forests were completely deforested.
Australian Red Cedar Forest
Tamborine National Park, Gold Coast Hinterland, Queensland
(such trees have long been logged through the Oxley Rivers region)
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In 1976, the Apsley Macleay Gorges were identified as being of ‘true wilderness quality‘.
At that stage the public protection offered to the area was limited to two small reserves in the south, and a few local council run recreation areas at popular sites such as Wollomombi Falls, Dangars and Apsley Falls. With future land-use undecided, the NSW Electricity Commission began surveying the Apsley Valley for a hydro-electric scheme in the late 1970s. The Apsley Gorge National Park of 6,718 hectares was gazetted followed by the 3,456 hectare Yarrowitch Gorge National Park soon after.
In 1989 East Kunderang Station of 30,400 hectares passed to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and was proclaimed the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.
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Rich Wildlife through Oxley Wild Rivers National Park
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Oxley Wild Rivers National Park is rich in fauna, with over 350 species recorded, including 55 mammals.
It is a major refuge for the Brush-tailed Rock-wallaby (Petrogale pencillata), with the largest confirmed population in the Green Gully area of Yarrowitch.
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Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park
This species is listed in New South Wales as ‘Vulnerable to extinction’, but that was by the NSW Scientific Committee in 2003, nine years ago
There have been two major bushfires through since then – one in 2009 and now in 2012
How many viable individuals have been lost to the Macleay River Bushfire – does the NSW NPWS know or care?
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<<Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, including Green Gully Track, is closed until further notice due to wildfire.>>
Over 173 bird species, 38 reptile and 19 amphibian species have been recorded in Oxley Wild Rivers National Park.
Skinks, goannas, tortoises, lizards, snakes, frogs and fish occur in the park, particularly on the river flats. A number of fish species have been recorded. Notable, is the speckled longfin eel (Anguilla reinhardtii), which breeds in the ocean with the juveniles eventually returning to the Apsley–Macleay River system.
There are fourteen known threatened species within the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park:
All these wildlife were previously widespread, but now are vulnerable to extinction or worse; which has become an Australian cliché, but at the same time an indictment on Australians.
But how much of this protected wilderness region is left after last fortnight’s bushfire catastrophe?
How can it be deemed to be protected, when bushfire is allowed to ravage it and its vitally recognised flora and fauna? Was the World Heritage Area allowed to burn as a convenient bushfire management operational defacto Hazard Reduction? There were no human assets at risk. It was wilderness and so out of sight out of mind…such is the dominant bushphobic culture of the Australian and State Governments, so accused of neglect and incompetence after the 2009 Victorian Bushfires that killed 173 people.
To current anthropocentric (20th C babyboomer) governments, this ‘Macleay River Fire’, irrespective of its World Heritage ecological protection, is blanketly and culturally dismissed as just another hazardous fuel region to target within Australia’s continent-wide Government Arson strategy. Successive generations will revisit this prevailing cultural mindset of ‘hazard reduction‘ and cast it alongside 19th C ‘timbergetting‘ and 20th C ‘clearfelling‘.
In the Blue Mountains, some 40,000 hectares of native vegetation is currently approved by the same Australian and New South Wales Governments for deliberate burning.
If deliberately setting fire to the native vegetation is committed privately it is deemed bush arson and so attracts a poultry 14 years gaol or less even less, despite people having been burned to death as a direct consequence.
But if deliberately setting fire to the native vegetation is previously prescribed by Government, then participants are artificially deemed legally immune and impune from criminal liability, even if the prescribed bushfires they light get out of control, which is all too frequently.
The Australian Government’s official public relations message reads:
Institutional arrangements for the protection and management of Gondwana Rainforests are strong. The property is made up of 41 reserves, almost all of which are within the protected area estate, and primarily managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service and the New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service. Both States have legislation relating to protected areas and native flora and fauna that provide protection for the values of the Gondwana Rainforests.
All World Heritage properties in Australia are ‘matters of national environmental significance’ protected and managed under national legislation, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. This Act is the statutory instrument for implementing Australia’s obligations under a number of multilateral environmental agreements including the World Heritage Convention. By law, any action that has, will have or is likely to have a significant impact on the World Heritage values of a World Heritage property must be referred to the responsible Minister for consideration. Substantial penalties apply for taking such an action without approval. Once a heritage place is listed, the Act provides for the preparation of management plans which set out the significant heritage aspects of the place and how the values of the site will be managed.
National Heritage is also a matter of national environmental significance under the EPBC Act.
Importantly, this Act also aims to protect matters of national environmental significance, such as World Heritage properties, from impacts even if they originate outside the property or if the values of the property are mobile (as in fauna). It thus forms an additional layer of protection designed to protect values of World Heritage properties from external impacts.
The impacts of climate change and high levels of visitation, undertaking effective fire management, and mitigating the effects of invasion by pest species and pathogens present the greatest challenges for the protection and management of Gondwana Rainforests.
Climate change will impact particularly on those relict species in restricted habitats at higher altitudes, where particular microclimatic conditions have enabled these species to survive.
Management responses include improving the resilience of the property by addressing other threats such as inappropriate fire regimes and invasion by pest species, and trying to increase habitat connectivity across the landscape.
[Source: Australian Government, ^http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/world/gondwana/values.html]
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Recall 2009: 9,500 hectares of Oxley Wild Rivers left to burn
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In December 2009, a lightning strike started a bushfire in the Youdales Hut area of the Oxley Wild Rivers region. The hut was unaffected (human property?), but 1,500 hectares of inaccessible steep country was burnt out before it was brought under control.
Another lightning strike started a large bushfire in the Reedy Creek region of the park. This fire has burnt out over 8,000 hectares of rough country.
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[Ed: Yes, steep wilderness terrain without convenient fire trails carved through it, is naturally inaccessible to lumbering urban fire trucks – so RFS/NPWS where were the waterbombing aircraft on 12th Oct 2012, when the fires were tiny and manageable?]
Tasman Flax-lily(Dianella tasmanica) (blue berry) in a Blue Mountains Swamp
At the headwaters of Katoomba Creek, Katoomba
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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Q: When is a protected swamp not deemed a swamp and so not worthy of protection?
Closed sedgeland dominated by Soft Twig Rush (Baumea rubiginosa)across a Blue Mountains Swampalong the headwaters of Yosemite Creek, Katoomba
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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A: When unqualified local Council development planning staff are selectively blind to allow for housing development.
Colorbond fence encroaching into the above Blue Mountains SwampAlong the headwaters of Yosemite Creek, Katoomba
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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Q: When is a protected swamp deemed a swamp worthy of protection?
A:When quasi-qualified local Council environmental staff are selectively seeking public relations kudos and grant funding.
The Save Our Swamps (SOS) Project
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The Save Our Swamps (SOS) Project is a recent joint project between Blue Mountains City Council, Gosford City Council, Lithgow City Council and Wingecarribee Shire Council to protect and restore the federally listed Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone endangered ecological community.
It is funded through a 12 month $400,000 federal Caring for Country grant operating across all four LGAs as well as a 3 year $250,000 NSW Environmental Trust grant focused on the Blue Mountains City Council and Lithgow City Council Local Government Areas. [Source: Blue Mountains Council, ^http://saveourswamps.com.au/index.php]
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Blue Mountains SwampA ‘hanging swamp‘ – hanging on a steep slope
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The Blue Mountains National Park is one of seven national parks which collectively comprise a million hectares of the Greater Blue Mountains Area, which since 2000 has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. This area is protected internationally for (1) its outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals and (2) contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation. [Read More about ^The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage values]
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Since 12th May 2005, ‘Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone‘ have been recognised as an important and rare ecological community listed as Endangered under the Australian Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, as well as within New South Wales under the Threatened Species Conservation Act 1995 (NSW) (TSC Act).
So naturally, one would expect such swamps to be identified, mapped and ecologically protected – one would expect. .
These swamps occur naturally in very few places on the planet, as shown (in red) in the following distribution map within south eastern Australia:
Blue Mountains Swamps are included as part of the Temperate Highland Peat Swamps on Sandstone. These are the top two red areas in the above map.
The Blue Mountains west of Sydney are Triassic sandstone plateaux. Blue Mountain Swamps occur in shallow, low-sloping, often narrow headwater valleys (Keith and Benson 1988; Benson and Keith 1990), on long gentle open drainage lines in the lowest foot slopes, low-lying broad valley floors and alluvial flats (Department of Environment and Conservation 2006), and in gully heads, open depressions on ridgetops and steep valley sides associated with semi-permanent water seepage (Holland et al. 1992; Blue Mountains City Council 2005; Department of Environment and Conservation 2006).
Farmers Creek Swamp
Newnes Plateau, Blue Mountains – is it protected? Or just not targeted for development yet?
Grevillea acanthifolia (pink flower) in the foreground
[Source: Lithgow Environment Group, ^http://www.lithgowenvironment.org/swamp_watch2.shtml]
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Most of these swamps are situated within the Greater Blue Mountains Area and so are ecologically protected, but many are not. Many Blue Mountains Swamps are situated just outside on the fringe lands. Those fringe lands lie on the bush interface with human residential settlement and despite their environmental protection on paper are at risk of being bulldozed for housing development. Such threats from development are referred to as ‘edge effects‘. These swamps are on the edge of housing development, or put the more chronological way, housing development is being allowed to encroach upon the edge of these swamps that were there first. Other Blue Mountains Swamps such as those up on Newnes Plateau are at risk of being bulldozed and drained for mining.
According to the Blue Mountains Council, there are less than 3,000 hectares of Blue Mountains Swamp in existence. As they predominantly comprise many small areas, they are very susceptible to edge effects. As the urban footprint expands to the edges of the plateau, the swamps are coming under ever increasing pressure.
The predominant threats to Blue Mountains Swamps are:
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Clearing for urban development
Urban runoff – sediment deposition, tunnelling and channelisation from stormwater discharges
Bushfire (both ‘wild’ and ‘hazard’ reduction)
Weed invasion
Nutrient enrichment (urban runoff)
Mowing
Grazing
Water extraction (bores, tapping natural springs and building dams)
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[Source: ‘Blue Mountains Swamps’, Blue Mountains Council, ^http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/sustainableliving/environmentalinformation/livingcatchments/bluemountainsswamps/]
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Blue Mountains Swamp
Here an acre of pristine Coral Fern (Gleicheniadicarpa) burned at Devil’s Hole, Katoomba
It was set fire to (‘hazard reduced’) by National Parks and Wildlife (NSW) on 20120911
Photo by Editor 20120922, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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Blue Mountains Swamps – substrate characteristics
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Blue Mountains Swamps are characterised by the constant presence of groundwater seeping along the top of impermeable claystone layers in the sandstone and reaches the surface where the claystone protrudes (Keith and Benson 1988; Holland et al. 1992; Blue Mountains City Council 2005).
The substrate tends to be a shallow black to grey coloured acid, peaty, loamy sandy soil with organic matter and are poorly drained and so tend to be either constantly or intermittently water logged (Hope and Southern 1983; Keith and Benson 1988; Benson and Keith 1990; Stricker and Brown 1994; Stricker and Wall 1994; Winning and Brown 1994; Stricker and Stroinovsky 1995; Benson and McDougall 1997; Whinam and Chilcott 2002; Department of Environment and Conservation 2006).
Blue Mountains Swamp on Newnes Plateau
The swamps naturally trap sediment and disperse rain water over a wide area and protect floors of headwater valleys from erosion. They vary in structure and species composition according to geology, topographic location, depth of the water table, extent and duration of water logging and bushfire frequency.
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Blue Mountains Swamps – vegetation variation
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The structure of Blue Mountains Swamp vegetation varies from open shrubland to closed heath or open heath (dominated by shrub species but with a sedge and graminoid understorey and occasionally with scattered low trees) to sedgeland and closed sedgeland. The Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area ids listed for its outstanding natural values, a major component of which is the high number of eucalypt species and eucalypt-dominated communities. These can be found in a great variety of plant communities including within and upslope of Blue Mountains Swamps.
Topographic location, hydrology and soils significantly influence the dominant species composition. Structure of the vegetation varies from closed heath or scrub to open heath to closed sedgeland or fernland. The common cross-feature with all types is the presence of frequently waterlogged soil.
The Gully Swamp
Dominant tree canopy is Eucalyptus oreades
This one’s ‘protected’ as an Aboriginal Place under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (NSW), Part 6
Yet it is infested with environmental and noxious weeds – so what does ‘protected’ mean?
(Photo by Editor 20110502, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge)
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Blue Mountains Swamps – Known Tree Species
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Eucalyptus mannifera subsp. gullickii
Mountain Swamp Gum (Eucalyptus aquatica)
Eucalyptus copulans
Ed: Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades), only at creek headwaters around Katoomba
Eucalyptus mannifera (subspecies ‘gullickii’)
Found naturally in a Blue Mountains Swamp
Flax-leaf Heath Myrtle (Baeckea linifolia)
In a Blue Mountains Swamp, flowering in late summer
(Photo by Editor 20080128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge)
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Blue Mountains Swamps – Known Fern Species
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Water ferns (Blechnum nudum)
Pouched Coral ferns Gleichenia spp (G. dicarpa and G. microphylla)
Umbrella ferns Sticherus spp
King Fern (Todea barbara)
Drosera binata
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Blue Mountains Swamp – is this one protected?
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Blue Mountains Swamps – Known Sedge Species
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Large tussock sedge, Gymnoschoenus sphaerocephalus
Rhizomatous sedges and cord rushes:
Soft Twig Rush (Baumea rubiginosa)
Lepidosperma limicola
Ptilothrix deusta
Lepyrodia scariosa
Leptocarpus tenax
Cord-rush (Baloskion longipes)
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‘Edge Effects’ – when housing development is allowed to encroach upon Blue Mountains Swamps
(Where Fifth Avenue Katoomba has priority over the headwaters of Yosemite Creek, before it enters the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area)
Tree species here is Eucalyptus mannifera subsp. gullickii
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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Blue Mountains Swamps – Known Grasses and Herbs Species
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Deyeuxia spp (D. gunniana, D. quadriseta),
Swamp Millet (sachne globosa )
Lachnogrostis filiformis
Poa spp (P. labillardierei var. labillardierei, P. sieberiana)
What is common across the above varying substrate and vegetation characteristics, that differentiates a Blue Mountains Swamp from other vegetation communities are the following attributes:
Situated on the Narrabeen Sandstone plateaux across the Blue Mountains region
Underlying sandstone, ironstone and claystone bedrock forming a horizontal impermeable layer
Ancient peaty sandy soil with organic matter that is poorly drained
Presence of groundwater
Constantly or intermediately waterlogged soil
Locally native vegetation that thrives in such waterlogged soils
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Q: But where do the spatial limits of a Blue Mountains Swamp begin and end? Are Blue Mountains Swamps dependent upon the health of adjoining vegetation communities, particularly of those upstream.
A: Probably, but who knows and who is researching Blue Mountains Swamps?
Q: Is it the physical characteristics that differentiate a Blue Mountains Swamp from other less significant vegetation communities or is it our selective attitudes that decide whether to protect it or condemn it?
God Government Death Lever
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A Save or Bulldoze Case Study:
‘Katoomba Creek Swamp at Twynam Street’
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Katoomba Creek Swamp
With a cluster of magnificent King Ferns (Todea barbara) up the back, which are dependent upon constant ground water seepage
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
Katoomba Creek in the Upper Central Blue Mountains flows northward from a central plateau into the Grose Valley within the Blue Mountains National Park.
Katoomba Creek Swamp
Dominated by Pouched Coral Ferns (Gleichenia dicarpa), which are dependent upon constant ground water seepage
Tree canopy is Blue Mountains Ash (Eucalyptus oreades), which is rare and in the Blue Mountains found only around Katoomba
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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The headwaters of Katoomba Creek are forked from four upland gullies, one which has been dammed for water reservoir (Cascade Reservoir), and another starts near Twynam Street which forms the outer settlement area of Katoomba. It is just three kilometres upstream from the World Heritage Area – the boundary of which is rather arbitrary and should be here at the precious headwaters.
Yet despite the substrate and vegetation characteristics of the creek headwaters suiting those of a Blue Mountains Swamp, Blue Mountains Council’s chief housing development manager, Paul Weston, Executive Principal, Building & Construction Services on 13th February 2012 deemed that “the vegetation community across the site is consistent with the Eucalyptus oreades Open Forest community, and known variations of that community, and is not a hanging swamp.”
“The inspections confirmed that some basic features common to hanging swamps are present on the land, such as steep slopes and groundwater seepage which supports the occurrence of the fern species Pouched Coral Fern (Gleichenia dicarpa), which is also found in swamps. However, the absence of many typical Blue Mountains Swamp species, the presence of a prominent tree canopy, the absence of peat formation and the co-existence of the ferns with established and emerging sclerophyll shrub species, make this community inconsistent with that of the Blue Mountains Swamp Community.”
Furthermore, while the sheltered south easterly aspect, steep slope, the underlying geology and locally moist conditions provide a niche within the forested E. oreades- E. radiata – E. piperita community for ferns and other species to flourish in the wet conditions, the area does not support the usual suite of Blue Mountains swamp sedges, ground layer and shrub vegetation, nor the development of peat, nor is it wet enough to prevent the co-existence of other drier sclerophyll forest understory and canopy species in this vicinity.
The Proposed Housing Development Site at 121 Twynam Street Katoomba
The same Katoomba Creek Swamp – Tasman Flax-lily (Dianella tasmanica) in foreground
Photo by Editor 20120128, licensed under ^Creative Commons, click image to enlarge
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Blue Mountains Council’s Environmental Scientist and Environmental/Landscape Assessment Officer have inspected and assessed this swamp and deemed it not a swamp but a ‘wet forest‘.
Ed: What puritanical pretense!
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This pristine vegetation community lies wholly within the riparian zone of the headwaters of Katoomba Creek (just metres away from the above photo). The underlying substrate is sandstone, ironstone and claystone bedrock forming a horizontal impermeable layer. The soil is ancient peaty sandy soil with organic matter that is poorly drained. It has constant groundwater causing waterlogged soil. The vegetation is a carpet of Pouched Coral Ferns, with a large cluster of King Ferns. It has Soft Twig Rush (Baumea rubiginosa), its Lepidosperma limicola (sedge grass in foreground). The tree canopy is Eucalyptus oreades which is common across Blue Mountains Swamps found at creek headwaters, but endemic only around Katoomba.
Is this more Swamp Selective Bias?
Indeed, the Blue Mountains Council ecological mapping assigned this site as a dry sclerophyll Eucalyptus piperita/ Eucalyptus sieberi forest. Woops.
The Council judgment letter stated that this site is zoned under Local Environmental Plan (LEP) 1991 as Residential Bushland Conservation. But in fact, 80% of the site is zoned as a ‘Protected Area – Environmental Constraint‘ (see below extract). Woops.
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The ‘Environmental Constraint Area‘ zoning under Local Enviropnment Plan 1991 for 121 Twynam Street (perimeter highlighted)
covers 80% of the site from the street frontage.
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LEP 1991 Protected Areas Objectives: Clause 7.2 Environmental Constraint Area
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(a) To protect environmentally sensitive land and areas of high scenic value in the City (Ed: not that any reasonable person could possibly deem the Blue Mountains to be a ‘city’). (b) To provide a buffer around areas of ecological significance.(Ed: Such as a pristine Blue Mountains Swamp) (c) To restrict development on land that is inappropriate by reason of its physical characteristics or bushfire risk. (Ed: the site is Bushfire Risk Category 1)
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121 Twynam Street is zoned a Category 1 Bushfire Risk
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The Slope of the site exceeds 33% grade, which exceeds the limits for the Council’s development criteria
“The Council shall not consent to development in a Protected Area – Environmental Constraint Area, unless it is satisfied, by means of a detailed environmental assessment, that the development complies with the objectives of the Protected Area that are relevant to the development and will comply with the Development Criteria in clause 10 that are relevant to the development.”
Council Judgment:
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“In conclusion it is considered that the proposed dwelling and driveway have been designed and located to ensure that the development will not have a significant adverse environmental impact and is suitable for the site.”
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[Sources: ‘Proposed dwelling at 121 Twynam Street, Katoomba” letter by Paul Weston, Executive Principal, Building & Construction Services, Blue Mountains Council’s Development, Health & Customer Services Department, 20120213, Ref: X/69/2010; Blue Mountains Council website – ‘Interactive Maps’, ^http://www.bmcc.nsw.gov.au/bmccmap/index.cfm]
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Ed: So is this judgment and the process one of selective blindness, ignoring rules, hypocrisy, incompetence, or worse? In the case of Katoomba Creek Swamp, the decision is not to save this particular Blue Mountains Swamp, but to bulldoze it.
In Berridale, New South Wales, in the north-west foothills of the Australian Alps, there are hardly any trees left now. Generations of colonists have clearfelled forests of Australian Snow Gums en mass for ‘high country’ beef pasture.
Each Autumn when the bored local Rural Fire Service (RFS) is searching for something to justify its funding, it sets fire to the natural landscape on the basis of doing so being a bushfire ‘mitigation strategy‘. ‘Burn the forest before it burns’. Last month the Berridale RFS burned grasslands and the few surviving isolated old snow gums, and even the odd homestead by accident.
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“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo – men, women and children. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?”
~ Robert McNamara (Architect of the US War Against the Vietnamese’)
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‘Berridale is a small country town in the famed Snowy Mountains ‘high country‘ of Australia, just a short trip from Australia’s highest peaks (Australian Alps) – about 60km from Mount Kosciuszko.
Vast grassy slopes and pastoral plains surround Berridale these days, all cleared by our forebears. Yet one can still find traces of the old country, dotted by ancient magnificent granite boulders holding old fella wisdom of the original people of this land. It was for eons blanketed by wild twisted Snow Gum forests and grand and rugged rivers coursed through this area giving vital sustenance to the diverse species of this place. Traditional Aboriginal people hold insight to the links between plants, animals and their surroundings.
Bucolic British..’Berridale’
..replicated in New South Wales
Australia (other side of planet)
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The Northern Corroboree Frog and Lesueur’s Tree Frog are long gone away from long-clearfelled Berridale.
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‘When one can no longer hear the frogs,
Nature has stopped breathing and has passed away.’
( Ed. – a metaphor to my aunt who passed away this morning)
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So once again, the Rural Fire Service has lit fires around Berridale, lighting fires so that they may save the town from bushfires…“We had to destroy the village in order to save it”
Over recent weeks the Rural Fire Service across New South Wales has lit multiple fires it euphemistically labels as ‘hazard reduction‘ – any rich ground cover that may provide habitat foir groudn dwelling mammals is deemed a fuel and therefore a hazard. It must be therefore burned before it burns. The fires the RFS light are ‘prescribed burns‘, they precribe that a bushfire must be started so they start one.
It is like an arsonist deciding it is a good idea to light a bushfire and so lights one, like Brendan Sokaluk did at Churchill in Victoria on 7th Febuary 2009. The only difference is that because the RFS is a government funded agency it has legal immunity – read ‘impunity‘.
On 5th September, it was reported that ‘about 50 grass, scrub and bushfires have burned across NSW during a tough start to the bushfire season.’
Included was a scub fire in Budderoo National Park, near Kiama, burning out of control. It was one of those prescribed burns that had escaped.
So the reports read that crews from the NSWRFS and National Parks and Wildlife Service were using waterbombing aircraft to contain the fire, which was burning in inaccessible terrain, as if it was a wildfire that had started by lightning, not deliberately. It is almost like they light fires to create work for themselves, and destroy vast areas of bushland in the process.
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Snow Gums do not enjoy being burned to death
So then the RFS declares a Total Fire Ban across most of New South Wales, so that residents don’t their barbeques in case they start a bushfire.
The hazard reduction burn at Berridale, burned out 200 hectares of largely grassly scrubland, taking with it old snow gums that must have been a few hundred years old in come cases.
A historic homestead was destroyed in the blaze. It was a lucky escape for Brian Woodhouse’s elderly mother, who was in the Myack homestead as the fire approached.
“She’s 86 years old and suffers dementia,” Mr Woodhouse said.
“This has been her home for all her life and this is the only place that she has got a touch of reality. Here at her home she knows where everything is.”
Mr Woodhouse said passers-by saved his mother’s life.
“One of the carers came around that day to have lunch with her and had just left after lunch,” he said. “She only travelled about 2 kilometres and she could see the fire, so she did a U-turn and raced back and got her out, with the help of a couple of the young Snowy River Shire Council guys.”
This immorality of setting fires seems extracted straight out of Robert McNamara’s military operating and debrief manual.
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Snow Gums in their natural alpine environment
[Source: vjmite, TrekEarth.com]
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Footnote
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“We had to destroy the village in order to save it” is an infamous quote by US Army Major Booris in 1968 in the immediate aftermath of the Tet Offensive by North Vietnam forces.
It has come to symbolise the absurdity of war and the United States immoral prosecution of the Vietnam War. The quote was made famous by its reporting by a young Associated Press reporter, Peter Arnettwho had been assigned to report on the battle of Ben Tre during the Tet Offensive. For two days, a small American unit had battled the Vietcong, who in turn had killed many villagers. Arnett entered Ben Tre after it had finally been secured and interviewed a number of Army officers.
The following is believed to be the true account:
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Saving Ben Tre: About the famous quote of the Vietnamese 1968 Tet Offensive: “We Had To Destroy Ben Tre In Order To Save It”
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‘I was the Commanding Officer of Task Force Builder, an Army engineer group of 60 soldiers that was stationed in the small rural village of Rach Kein, Vietnam in 1968. Rach Kein was approximately 20 miles SW of Saigon, located in Long An Province. Our base camp was next to the base camp of the 3/39 Infantry Battalion of the 9th Infantry Division.
Ben Tre, Vietnam, is a moderately size town that is located on the Mekong River about 25 miles SE of Rach Kein. It was much bigger than Rach Kein, probably even bigger than the town of Long An.
During the first week of the Tet Offensive the VC made their big move of attacking Saigon. The 3/39 Inf. was initially sent to fight in the big battle for Saigon. This left us alone to face an NVA regiment of 5,000 men that surrounded us on January 29. We survived that. And we remained surrounded and cut off for several weeks. As best I recall, the 3/39 Inf. was in Saigon for about two weeks. I certainly remember this, because while they were gone from Rach Kein we were on our own as far as defending against ground attacks. These must have been likely, for at one point, the 9th Inf. Div. sent in several companies of the 2/39 Inf. to bolster the town defenses and to conduct sweeps around Rach Kein while the 3/39 was away.
I especially remember that one platoon of infantry was wiped out in a well laid ambush in an open rice paddy. It was just a few hundred yards from where we eventually built a school near the first village North of Rach Kein (can’t remember its name). The VC had cleverly built machinegun bunkers into the rice paddy dikes (it was the dry season), and the infantry walked right up to them before the VC opened fire.
Then the 3/39 returned. Or I should say that 75 percent of them returned. The fighting in Saigon had been intense. After only a few days rest, they were air-lifted by chopper to retake the town of Ben Tre. Ben Tre had been occupied by the VC during Tet. The VC had dug in heavily, and were not ready to retreat without a big fight. So the still exhausted and depleted infantry troops of the 3/39 were thrown into another vicious fight. I cannot tell you how much respect that I have for those guys. True heroes, every one of them. Tough, plucky, and mostly draftees. I still remember my wonder at the ability of America’s youth to endure.
I sometimes wonder if I am the only one who remembers them. So I willingly tell this story, so you can help me to remember. Their deeds should not be forgotten. The 3/39 Inf. Bn. suffered 100% casualties during the year 1968. I watched it. It is something that still haunts me. Eight hundred young men gone, dying bravely to serve the country they so loved.
Anyway, the fighting in Ben Tre went badly for the Americans. House-to-house all the way. The VC were so well dug in and barricaded that progress got stalled. So, in desperation, artillery and air strikes were called in on the town. Much of the town was heavily damaged in the resulting melee, but the town was retaken.
Several days later, Major Robert Black (the Rach Kein U.S. Army Advisor) invited me to attend with him an evening briefing that the 3/39 was going to give for a group of journalists and Saigon army brass. I had never before been invited to attend an infantry battalion briefing. I accepted the invitation. The briefing was held in a Vietnamese house that served as the S-3 office. It was about 7 houses East of where the VC barbershop was at one time set up. The house was on the left side of the road as you drove through the infantry compound, just about across from the infantry mess hall.
Anyway, the living room of the house was packed, mostly with civilians. The purpose of the briefing was to explain the battle of Ben Tre. Such briefings are usually conducted by the S-3, in this case, Major Booris. He was a heavy-set fellow.
He was also not my favorite officer. This was because he was the guy who told the infantry on guard to open fire on us the morning when we were walking back to Rach Kein across the rice paddies. This was when we had chased the VC who had ambushed the infantry Road Runners that one infamous and well-remembered morning (but that is another story). Fortunately for us, the infantry sergeant (an E-5) on duty had ignored the major’s orders. I’ll never forget his grin as he told me that he had saved our bacon by ignoring the S-3’s orders. He could clearly see that we were friendlies, so he withheld his fire.
Anyway, at one point the journalists were pressing Major Booris to explain why it had been necessary to wipe out the town. They were definitely pressing the point that perhaps too much force had been applied by the US forces. Major Booris was trying his best to put a good face on the situation. But at one point he got flustered, and blurted out, “We had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it.” I have to admit that I almost laughed when he said that. It was a really unfortunate comment. But Major Booris, in his defense, was trying his best to defend his battalion’s honor. His CO, Lt. Colonel Anthony P. Deluca, deftly jumped to his feet and interceded to rescue Major Booris from this difficult moment. He smoothly carried the rest of the conversation. I really liked LTC Deluca. He was a good combat leader, and he was always fair to Task Force Builder.
Anyway, that was the only briefing of the infantry that I ever attended. But it turned out to be the most famous. Some of the journalists present at that briefing seized Major Booris’ comment, and they really publicized it. As I recall, it appeared on the cover of Newsweek or Time magazine within the month. And it has gone down in history as an example of the some of the insanity that was Vietnam.
Last year I was reading an historical assessment of the Vietnam War. The famous historian who wrote it actually challenged whether or not that Ben Tre statement was ever made. Well I know, because I witnessed it being made. I wrote to the historian, explaining this. I hope that he got my message.’
Regards,
Michael D. Miller
Former Captain, US Army Corps of Engineers
Commander, Task Force Builder, 1968
46th Engineer Battalion
159th Engineer Group
Dunalley Wharf, Tasmania ~ idyllic serenity
Now with far greater meaning
Dunalley Wharf, a special place.
“..Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”
~ The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Dunalley is surrounded by water on both sides
(Denison Canal not shown)
Dunalley Wharf and Fish Market looking north from Dunalley Bay,
with steep Township Hill in the background (long before the 2013 bushfire).
Air Tractor 802 fixed wing dedicated water bomber
What does ‘managed’ mean?
[Photo by Editor, 20110926, free in public domain]
‘Elvis’, the celebrated Erickson Heli-tanker, with specialist bushfire-fighting pilot
TFS Chief Officer, Mike Brown
Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Dawson in Gippsand, Victoria this month.
Same landscape, different State.
Erikson Aircrane deployed to the Forcett Fire on 3rd January? If only!
Sorry, this machine was deployed in Alpine Fire near Harrietville in Victoria this month.
Fire Danger Ratings (from 0 to 100+)
Australia’s National Fire Danger Ratings
since Sep 2009
Inala Road Forcett Satellite Map, 2011
Click image to enlarge (Inala Road is top right)
[Source: Google Maps]
Inala Road near the intersection of the Arthur Highway in 2010
Photo looks south, with the hills toward Dunalley on the left.
Inala Road is characterised by farmland interspersed with partially deforested native bushland, and patchy regrowth.
Click image to enlarge.
[Source: Google Maps, March 2010]
Forcett Fire Map (Friday, 4th January 2013)
[Source: ABC News website, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-04/forcett-fire-places-homes-at-risk/4453038]
Deduced Ignition Location of the Forcett Fire
In the absence of TFS publicly confirming the exact location of the ‘burnt stump’ ignition source,
by deduction from the Forcett Fire Map above, the Inala Road ignition source appears midway along Inala Road, Forcett.
Inala Road
Where along Inala Road was the burning stump that re-ignited the Forcett Fire?
Ask the TFS.
It is incumbent upon the Tasmanian Fire Service to be transparent about the exact source loation of this fire so that the truth be known.
Open farmland along Arthur Highway, near the Inala Road intersection
looking south east toward Dunalley
Average Wind at Hobart Airport (1958-2004)
This Wind Rose chart shows the prevailing wind predominantly being from the north-west at typically 10-20kph.
This was the wind at Forcett and Dunalley on 3 and 4 January 2013 – significantly nothing surprising!
Ignition source at Inala Road, Forcett was 17km North West of Dunalley
Click image to enlarge
[Source: Google Earth]
The Forcett Fire on the afternoon of Thursday 3rd January 2013
Burning out of control south of the Arthur Highway heading right (south east)
Low winds meant it was not a fast moving firestorm at this stage.
View across Frederick Henry Bay looking north-east, perhaps Bally Park/Carlton settlement in the foreground.
(Photo by Ian Stewart, 20130103, click image to enlarge)
Forcett Bushfire
(Photo by Moemahfoudh, 20130104)
Australia’s maximum temperature mapping through January 2013
Click image to show dynamic progress
Note Tasmania on 3rd January was still in the 30s.
[Source: Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
^http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/temperature/maxave/daily/colour/latest.loop.gif]
[Source: ^http://weather.ninemsn.com.au/station.jsp?lt=site&lc=94254&list=ds]
Forcett Fire approaching Dunalley and Boomer Bay
[© Photo by Michael Gay Photography, 20130103]
A massive fireball bears down on Dunalley on Friday.
The Dunalley Primary School in the foreground would be soon destroyed.
[Source: Photo by Michael Goldsmith, Tasmania Fire Service,
^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-10/fireball-2jpg/4459102]
Video: Dunalley family’s amazing story of survival (ABC 7.30 Report)
(Click image to replay ABC News report)
65 homes lost in Dunalley, and others lost in nearby Boomer Bay and Copping
Snow Gums do not enjoy being burned to death
Captain Michael D. Miller in 1968
[New life amongst so much death]
