Historic rally in Tasmania’s Upper Florentine Valley, Tasmania, Sunday 20140427

Photo © Matthew Newton

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Almost 2000 people have rallied today in the Upper Florentine Valley to defend World Heritage listed forests.

The Bob Brown Foundation’s Campaign Manager Jenny Weber stated, “Today’s outstanding turn out in the Upper Florentine forests clearly shows that Australians are very proud of their World Heritage forests. We are sending a strong message to UNESCO that we love our spectacular forests of outstanding universal value, and the Australian community will stand up to defend them.”

“The Australian community strongly opposes the government’s proposal to the World Heritage Committee to remove 74 000 hectares of World Heritage listed forests from the Tasmanian World Heritage Area,” Jenny Weber said.

Speakers included Australian Greens Leader Senator Christine Milne, Markets for Change CEO Peg Putt, Still Wild Still Threatened’s Miranda Gibson and Home and Away actor Lisa Gormley.

 

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Further Reading:

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[1]  ^http://www.bobbrown.org.au/

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For the cause and their honour

Camp Flozza remembered

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New Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman believes in a headline sense of “economic renewal” somehow and that his vote to power provides a Viking Mandate for him to ecologically ‘rape pillage and plunder’ Tasmania’s natural resources.

With the business community on side, the minerals council, the housing industry association, the developers, the loggers, everything is up for grabs, especially Tasmania’s old growth forests.

Logging trucks are already crossing back over Bass Strait from exile in parochial log state Queensland.

Here we go again…

Tasmanian police escort a log truck out of the Upper Florentine Valley after a week of protests, January 2009.

[Source: ‘Protests have failed to stop the log trucks’, 20090121, ABC News,

^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-21/tasmanian-police-escort-a-log-truck-out-of-the/273180]

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“We are going to embrace a new way of doing things in this state,” Mr Hodgman said.

Scary.  What does he mean by that?

Not one for mature mediation, ham-fisted Hodgman is determined to tear up the $273 million ‘Tasmanian Forest Agreement‘ in what he has off-handedly vilified as a “job-destroying forest deal.”   “It only threatened to lock away forever future productive forest.”

But how many Tasmanian loggers got paid out by Canberra’s $273 million Will?  How much of that $273 million is left?  Are you endorsing two-timing loggers – those paid out and now in for second crack?

So the hated 19th Century wood chip pulp mill is back on the table, with no prospect of profit, just a ‘work-for-the-dole’ scheme for crusted-on loggers.

But Hodgman, like Groom and Rundle before him, is sure short-term market conditions for woodchips will improve.   Six hundred year old forests are renewable anyway Will reckons.  Will says he has a mandate to follow through on the divisive election promise. “More wood equals more jobs” and “our plan focuses on growing the industry … not appeasing environmentalists.”

Dem’s fightin’ words indeed!

“I can’t do this on my own with these. . . people.”

Hodgman’s heavies are regrouping and more police are being recruited and resourced.  Hodgman is prepared for Forest War on the belief he has the endorsement of high-T Tasmanians.

“We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move.”     ~ Vladimir Putin.

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[Sources:  ‘Premier claims Tasmania in period of economic renewal since Liberals seize power’, by Lucy Shannon, 20140407, ABC News, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-06/premier-claims-tasmania-has-entered-a-period-of-economic-renewa/5370640;  ‘Tasmania’s forest agreement to be ‘torn-up’’, 20140410, ^http://www.enviroinfo.com.au/tasmanias-forest-agreement-to-be-torn-up/]

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Does young Will mean blood?

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Rally to Defend Tasmania’s World Heritage in the Upper Florentine!

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When:    Sunday, 27 April 2014
Time:     12 noon for 12:30pm start
Where:  Camp Flozza, In Tasmania’s magnificent Florentine Valley World Heritage Area, Gordon River Road, 21 km east of Maydena

(From Maydena drive along Gordon River Road, heading towards Lake Pedder. On the right, 3.3 km from the Thumbs Lookout, there will be signs for rally).

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Tasmanians and Australians this is your time!

The Bob Brown Foundation is hosting a rally in World Heritage listed forests of the Upper Florentine, Tasmania, in response to the Australian Government’s intention to remove 74,000 ha from the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area.

Speakers include Senator Christine Milne – Leader of the Australian Greens, Peg Putt – CEO of Markets for Change and Miranda Gibson – spokesperson for Still Wild Still Threatened.

Bob Brown Foundation Campaign Manager Jenny Weber said, “Tasmania’s globally significant World Heritage Area is gravely threatened by the Australian Government’s request to the World Heritage Committee to remove 74,000ha of forests from World Heritage listing. We are receiving huge support from members of the public who are coming along to this rally, people who love these forests and don’t want to see the listing stripped from forests which have outstanding universal values.”

“We will stand together in the magnificent World Heritage listed Upper Florentine forests to support the world heritage convention and call for protection of Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area and the maintenance of the current boundary.  Standing together among the ancient tall eucalyptus forests, we will prove that the Australian Government is wrong in claiming that it is logged and degraded,” Jenny Weber said.

“The Upper Florentine is pristine.  This entire region is proposed for removal from the World Heritage Area, though it is a perfect contradiction of the Liberal Government’s claims that these 74,000 ha are logged or degraded.  The Upper Florentine is an extensive area of pristine tall eucalypt forest, part of a corridor of tall eucalyptus forests from the far south to the central west of Tasmania, recognised as World Heritage in 2013. This intact region of ancient forest is again under threat by the Australian Government’s proposal to remove these magnificent intact forests for logging,” Jenny Weber said.

World Heritage Campaign Manager
The Bob Brown Foundation

[Source:  ^http://www.bobbrown.org.au/rally_to_defend_world_heritage]

 

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Sacred Upper Florentine Valley being logged only a few years ago

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For Tasmanians, Tasmania is all we’ve got.

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Sydney Water reservoir half-painted

Narrow Neck Road, Katoomba 

[Photo by Editor, 20131213, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

This water reservoir tank is one of two on the ridgetop at Narrow Neck Road, Katoomba (Central Blue Mountains, New South Wales) which supplies drinking water to the immediate and surrounding residents of Katoomba.

Previously, in May 2013 we took a photo of both tanks showing the white chlorine salt efflorescence stains and we published an article later in August that year.  Why then should someone wish to paint over the stains with green paint?  Do they think it will make the water cleaner and more appealing to be drunk?

In our previous article on this topic we asked:  “Are we to now expect fresh green paint over the chlorine salt efflorescent tanks to hide the problem?” It seems Sydney Water has done just that.  Who else would spend their own money to paint over a government water tank? Why is it that Sydney Water’s water quality analysis measured at the upstream Cascade Reservoir and not from these tanks before it flows to residents?

This is the analysis:

>‘Typical drinking water analysis’, Cascade Water Supply System’ (66kb, PDF)

[Source:  ‘Typical drinking water analysis’, Cascade Water Supply System, Sydney Water,  undated (so supposedly indicative),  ^http://www.sydneywater.com.au/web/groups/publicwebcontent/documents/document/zgrf/mdq0/~edisp/dd_044721.pdf]

This is the same tank previously in May 2013:

Blue Mountains drinking water tank with chlorine salt stains

Mineral salt efflorescence

Narrow Neck Road, Katoomba

[Photo by Editor, 20130507, Photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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This is our previous article:

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Blue Mountains tap water not worth drinking

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A rare and perhaps 150 year old and healthy endemic Eucalpytus Oreades tree

Land buyer:  “Hey Asplundh, it’s in the way of where I want to build a house to sell for profit.”

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Our Investigative Journalist:    “I think the E.Oreades was chopped down today (20131125) , as I heard a chainsaw coming from Loftus St.”

When 17 year olds were cut down in the prime of their life during The Great War for no reason or for someone else’s evil ends, all involved governments just sent in more to top up the slaughter with the stroke of a polly pen.

When it comes to preservating ecological life worth living, Blue Mountains Council in 2013 belongs to that same callous mindset.  They continue to proclaim being a City within a World Heritage Area.

God knows why.

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A healthy specimen of an Oreades with no signs of disease or rot.

We consider that what took place in Loftus Street Katoomba, Blue Mountains on Monday 25th November 2013, was an act of callous ecological murder

by Asplundh for one property developer’s personal greed.

 

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“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

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~ Edmund Burke PC (b.1729)  an  Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher.

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Abject failure by emergency MANAGEMENT

Buena Vista Road, Winmalee, Blue Mountains, 18th October 2013

In anyone’s assessment, except for those in charge, 193 homes lost with 109 damaged is not a firefighting success for the unlucky Blue Mountains communities of Springwood/Winmalee, Yellow Rock and Mount Victoria.

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How often do bushfire fighters have to watch on in frustration from their fire trucks on a road towards a bushfire, knowing they are helpless with the tools they have to extinguish it?

In the case of a single house fire in an urban setting, the fire truck is the tried and tested appropriate appliance to respond. Fire fighters can readily drive up to and park right out the front and hose down a house fire.  But applying this classic firefighting method to wildfires in expansive and rugged bushland with steep and often inaccessible terrain is all but useless, like  square peg in round hole thinking.

Yet whenever government announces pre-election funding to bushfire fighting it is kneejerk unimaginatively more fire trucks, costing millions and fixing nothing.

It comes down to political value judgment.

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Water, water, in fire trucks everywhere, nor any drop to douse the fires

with apologies to English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 1798 poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’.

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Many wildfires spark from lightning strikes in remote terrain and spread into hilly bushland with few access roads.  More so these days, the disturbing arson fetish has become more deadly.

The consequential wildfires in inaccessible bushland country logistically render the fire truck ineffectual as the prime bushfire fighting response.  Fire trucks despatched down along fire trails that are surrounded by bushland on RFS maps provide a false sense of access and ability, but they are death traps for firefighters in fire trucks during a wildfire in extreme conditions.

Just last September during the Londonderry grassfire in outer western Sydney, a fire truck along an outer urban road was overcome by flames and destroyed.  It wasn’t even a fire trail.

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Wildfire beyond the reach of fire trucks through Windsor Downs Nature Reserve, western Sydney, September 2013

[Source: ^http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/one-hell-of-a-start-to-an-early-summer-as-firestorms-sweep-across-nsw/story-fni0cx4q-1226716072987 ]

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This is where fast targeted airborne response within the first hour of ignition is more effective.  The application of large quantities water bombing of a fire front is surely the preferred lead bushfire fighting response strategy.  This is not to say that ground support is not needed, but the evidence is that traditional truck based ground support as the lead response strategy is simply not cutting the mustard.

But such strategy requires considerable investment and planning and requires expertise.  It demands a military standard realignment of the emergency response co-ordination end-to-end from early warning systems monitoring, to ignition detection, to fast airborne response with all the latest communications technology available.    Clearly this is well beyond the volunteer business-as-usual bush firefighting model that governments have lackadaisically drip fed since colonial times.

On Thursday 17th October 2013, at around 2pm, a bushfire started upwind in Springwood in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.  The fire was purportedly ignited by arcing of touching residential overhead powerlines in strong wind conditions.  The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story a few days later on Sunday 20th October, that preliminary investigations had found that a tree with cables running through its branches is believed to be the seat of the fire that jumped a road then engulfed houses in Springwood, spotting over to Winmalee and Yellow Rock.

Coincidentally, a few days prior to the wildfire tragedies of Thursday 17th that separately impacted Winmalee, Yellow Rock and Mount Victoria, on 15th October New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell had publicly announced the arrival of an additional large firefighting Air-Crane helicopter to be leased from of all places, impoverished Greece.

Nicknamed the ‘Gypsy Lady‘, this lifesaving Erickson S-64 Air-Crane has deserved fame for its massive water bombing ability beyond any Dad’s Army Isuzu truck.

O’Farrell apparently immediately deployed it to fight bush fires according to government propaganda and photos are offered of it in action at Winmalee.  But did it?    So where was it and a second leased Air-Crane, ‘Elvis’, deployed on the critical multiple wildfire afternoon of Thursday 17th October?

Such government performance facts are kept secret from the public.  The government’s promotional photo below of an Air-Crane water bombing bushland over Winmalee was dated Wednesday 23rd October, extinguishing left over spot fires a week later.  So where is the smoke?    Where there is no smoke there is probably no fire.  Was this photo for the media’s benefit?   The caption for this photograph reads verbatim as follows:

“A firefighter looks on as Air-Crane Elvis drops water at the Linksview Road fire near Faulconbridge, in the Blue Mountains (sic) 23/10/2103 (AAP: Lukas Coch).”

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Game Changer

We can save you, if we are called in early enough.

The ‘Elvis’ Air-Crane over Winmalee, except the NSW Government’s promotional photo is dated 23rd October 2103?

[Source: ‘NSW bushfires: Crews battle to contain destructive blazes in Lithgow and Springwood’, 20131020, ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-19/fire-crews-battle-blazes-in-lithgow-and-springwood/5033558]

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It was reported two days after Blue Mountains residents tragically lost over 200 family homes to the bushfires, that a crucial water bombing Erickson S-64 Air-Crane had been grounded at Bankstown Airport during the two day bushfire crisis, because authorities claimed they needed an American engineering and flight crew to operate it.

But then still without such American crews on Saturday 19th October, the Air-Crane was authorised to fly to Springwood, despite the absence of the US crew.

While it will now be used to assist in combatting ongoing fire hazards, the water dumper was forced to sit idle while bushfires ravaged the state on Thursday, Friday and most of  yesterday.  The craft is believed to be the same chopper, nicknamed ‘Ichabod‘, which was flown over on a cargo plane with the previously mentioned helicopter, ‘Gypsy Lady‘ since has been put to use – from Greece to Sydney Airport.

Previously, a qualified American team arrives with the helicopter, enabling it to operate, however the team for the Ichabod were only due to fly to Australia at a later date.   As bushfires started earlier than expected, authorities were caught off-guard and forced to scramble without the use of the second craft.

The Erickson S-64 Air-Crane helicopters are able to waterbomb a fire with 10,000 litres of water and are frequently brought to Australia from the United States for the bushfire season and hot weather.  But due to the Erickson Air-Crane’s absence from the fire front, ordinary choppers used by the RFS were mobilised.  However it’s understand those replacement craft can only dump 300 litres of water, just 3% of that of the Erickson Air-Crane.

[Source:  ‘Critical US water bomber grounded during NSW bushfire crisis’, by Yoni Bashan, State Political Reporter, The Sunday Telegraph, 20131019, ^http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/critical-us-water-bomber-grounded-during-nsw-bushfire-crisis/story-fni0cx12-1226743108424]

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Springwood, 17th October 2013

Evacuate to where?  We’re at work in the city so how can we save our valuables in time? 

We have no alternate accommodation as the bloody government presumes.

We can’t afford insurance.

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So on the 17th October the Blue Mountains bushfires escaped ground control, leading to at least 193 homes lost and at least another 109 damaged and 3,500 hectares of bushland burnt with uncounted wildlife incinerated.  The wildlife cost is always ignored.

No facts are forthcoming from the New South Wales Government about the performance of the firefighting.   Why not?

1. What was the estimated time of ignitions respectively at Winmalee and Yellow Rock?
2. How was each wildfire reported and detected by the authorities?
3. What was the elapsed time from the estimated ignition times and the respective times the RFS became alerted?
4. What was the elapsed time from the estimated ignition times and the RFS response being despatched (leaving the depots)?
5. What was the elapsed time from the estimated ignition times and the RFS  response arriving on site to suppress the respective wildfires?
6. What time was the first house impacted by wildfire?
7. What time did airborne water bombing on the wildfires commence?
8. What time did aircrane water bombing on the wildfires commence?

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Such facts are not in the government’s interest to publish because it well knows that its gross under-resourcing of bushfire emergency management exposes it to negligence and cost  demands.

It comes down to political value judgment.

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3% water capacity airborne response simply too little too late

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Year on year wildfire and deliberately lit hazard reductions escape control and cause the incineration of vast swathes of  the remaining natural landscape. Some years people and their homes are lucky, moreso a factor of mild weather than emergency management performance.  In 2009 it was Victoria’s unlucky turn.

Across Australia, bushfire detection, response and suppression is repeatedly shown to be so woeful as to be incompetent.

Government avoidance of seriously effective investment into emergency management, sees it instead resort to credibility damage control propaganda and to playing politics.  It hides behind the goodwill of the volunteers, since anyone who dares criticise the performance of noble volunteers can only be publicly vilified.   The government resorts to defeatist attribution of the bushfire emergency to uncontrollable Acts of God – catastrophic weather conditions in which nothing we can do would make any difference.  It runs public announcements of impending Armageddon, Declares a State of Emergency as if it were 1939 Black Friday every summer and its emergency services head are instructed to do supportive drama queen performances.

Now around where the fires started there is little bushland left and little reason to stay.  House values are down and people are selling up and moving off Mountains.

Government’s think their shit never stinks.  Paid ambulance emergency response have a service charter to arrive on site after a 000 call within 20 minutes.  But bushfire fighting has no such accountable charter.   Rather the government’s emergency response duty is delegated to local volunteers charged to do their best with what they’ve got.

Typically, Rural Fire Service bushfire fighters, except for a few government paid white shirts in Homebush, are invariably unpaid volunteer members of the local community.  When an emergency 000 call from a member of the public is despatched to the local brigades, the volunteers pre-occupied with their paid day jobs and have to drop everything.  They are not paid to be on standby at fire brigade depots like the NSW Fire Brigades, irrespective of heightened times of high bushfire risk.  The volunteers are not paid by government at all, and have to rely upon local charities for food and even for bottled water.

The last resort of the under-resourced bushfire brigades is to fight fire with fire.

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Scorched Earthing has become the last sad firefighting bastion of second class firefighters denied effective resources.  Forced to fight slaughter with slaughter, or cruelty with hate.

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The Greater Blue Mountains continues to be torched and scarred by its own custodian the National Parks and Wildlife Service.  Its habitat and wildlife are being incinerated without measure or care.

Just like the mining and farming pollution impacts upon the integrity of the once Great Barrier Reef, the Greater Blue Mountains natural values are been irreversibly altered.   Both the Great Barrier Reef and the Greater Blue Mountains need a cry for help and be added to UNESCO’s endangered list.

But putting Australia on an international ‘list of shame’ is but a small price.  It comes down to political value judgment.

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[The author is a licensed commercial helicopter pilot]

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Australian roadkill on the Jenolan Caves Road to Oberon

west of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

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Taking the tourist drive out to Oberon last weekend, we must have counted two dozen dead, mangled and fly blown Australian animals along the roadside.  Kangaroos and wombats mainly; and a few feral cats and foxes.

It was a bizarre ‘Welcome to Oberon’ along the Jenolan Caves Road and then along the Duckmaloi Road into the logging and quarry town of Oberon.

We first passed by Hytec’s Austen Quarry outside Hartley which carves into the hillside to produce road making aggregate crushed rock.

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Hytec’s Austen Quarry

Jenolan Caves Road

[Source:  ^http://www.hy-tec.com.au/products/Aggregates/austen.aspx]

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We passed by this fly-blown wombat grossly mangled by the massive B-double sand trucks.

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What’s left of a Wombat

Jenolan Caves Road

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

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The B-doubles hoon along as if racing motorbikes.  We were tailgate bullied by one on the road out to Oberon.  The B-double sand trucks travel through the night at speed and so the wildlife has no chance.

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Duckmaloi Road to Oberon

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

 

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Kangaroo sign more of a token gesture

Situated on the Jenolan Caves Road opposite clearfell native forest.

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

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Less kangaroos next 20km

Jenolan Caves Road

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

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B-Double Logging Truck

Loaded up from Jenolan State Forest, along the Duckmaloi Road to Oberon’s Timber Mill

[Photo by Editor 20131109, © under  ^Creative Commons]

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One Oberon based tourism operator promotes things to do around Oberon thus:

“Explore the spectacular Blue Mountains High Country on horseback and quad bikes, ride beneath a canopy of pine forests, marvel at the unspoiled bushland, gaze into a crystal clear creek, breathe the clean mountain air.”

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Our home’s lucky John Clew heart bricks, today full of drenching rain water

[Photo by Editor, 20131110, photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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It’s very wet.  It’s actually soaking wet up here in the Blue Mountains.  How welcoming are the rains?  They took long enough. Poor bloody bush has been long parched out there; too parched, too tinder dry.  Now the rains are over us and they are staying for while, and they can stay as long as they like.

Some dates stick in one’s mind.  Friday 12th October 2012 is a date that I have personally etched into my memory.  It was the day that constant snow suddenly blanketed the Upper Blue Mountains out of nowhere.   The snow on the ground was a foot thick and we lost tree branches to the weight of it.  It was a memorable Friday, as it no longer snows up here.

Apparently, it used to snow most winters in the Upper Blue Mountains.  Living memory recalls that a few opportunistic locals even once skiied down Katoomba Street during Winter Magic.

Residents of the townships of Winmalee and Mount Victoria in the Blue Mountains will now remember Thursday 17th October 2013, but not for happy times.    It was an awful day. For those affected and involved likely the worst ever.  Out of nowhere separate wildfires suddenly ravaged through their communities and took away many homes and memories.

I have happened to drive past Linksview Road involuntary over recent days.  Passing by incinerated homes just off the side of the road feels voyeuristic and so immoral. Luck is perhaps a curse, like pretending routine life-as-usual between others’ total loss. No way.

None of it’s fair to anyone affected or not affected but no less it about Mountains folk not knowing what to say or do for the blackened ruins down the street.  Nothing wrong with outpouring and I think it is a right.

Only the firies know it could have been worse.

And I shouldn’t have driven down St Georges Parade yesterday on the way home, but I wanted to just to know the trauma hidden off limits by the authorities.  Now its incinerated street and homes haunt me.  I walked this street just after the 2006 Grose Fires, observing the hazard reduction above Lawsons Long Alley. Many new homes on a no through road ridge nestled above Blue Mountains bush.  Bloody lucky then.

I awoke very early this morning realising how lucky I am as one of the 99.9% of Blue Mountains residents with a home, just as per usual.  For us it is life as usual and we have rain on our roof.  It is because we have a roof and a house.

Over three hundred residents this time on the morning of the 17th October did too like me, but since then they no longer do.  I can’t imagine the ravage and the total loss.  But I write this because catastrophe needs to be said because it is just that.  All Blue Mountains people need to be affected by the incinerated homes down sealed off crime scene streets that could have been theirs.

If I had lost my home, I expect that I would not be in a state to write coherently, but I am so I choose to because I take an active interest.  I witnessed wildfire threaten my home in 2001, seeing my garden hose drizzle to a horrifying dribble rendering me castratingly helpless and useless.  I have taken an empathetic very personal interest in bushfire threats ever since.

My father lost his entire family records in a garage fire when I was 18.  He was probably devastated at the time, but I don’t recall him expressing or showing grief because he was probably brave facing to us kids and probably because of my immature age.  Over time he realised that the now and family are most important to one’s life.  He has re-affirmed this over the subsequent years, with time and with a strength of family to move on.  Sounds easy and simple in hindsight, but hindsight is what the memories are about, and as part of our survival instinct we tend to recall in most detail the good times, and confine the bad times to snippets.

Now that today, three week’s hence the rains are over us, I can happily stand under them and get happily soaked quite eccentrically for all it matters.  So what matters at the end of the day when the sympathy has packed up and move on?

It is about why we made the choice and it was a soul thing.  We live for hope and so we should.  We live in the Blue Mountains because we choose because the Mountains are a special place for reasons us here know.

Bless you.

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A memorable sunny day at a Blue Mountains Winter Magic

[Photo by Editor, 20080621, photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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It is 2013 and we are to become wise, in our own time.

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“This will be as bad as it gets”

So we kicked ass better than the Victorians in 2009,

we only had two deaths

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The State Mine Bushfire

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On Wednesday afternoon 16 October 2013, government Defence Force recklessly over-indulged in a live munitions exercise at the Marrangaroo army range.  The range is situated on the outskirts of  the town of Lithgow, New South Wales, upwind of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.   The exercised directly sparked a fire in dry grass on the range.  Fanned by strong, hot, westerly winds it rapidly moved eastwards to the forested hillside on the northern side of Lithgow.

The fire spread into bushland and over the following week extended out of control burning out most of the northern region of the Blue Mountains National Park, parts of Wollemi National Park, and triggered the evacuation of most of the Lithgow region. The communities affected included Bell, Berambing, Bilpin, Clarence, Dargan, Hartley Vale, Lithgow, McKellars Park, Mount Irvine, and Mount Wilson. The fire burnt out more than 55,000 hectares (140,000 acres) between Lithgow and Bilpin.

Rural Fire Service Dad’s Army suppression delays meant that instead of waterbombing a small grassfire on the 16th, what was allowed to grow into a massive wildfire front saw fire bombing of vast hillsides in a multi-flank head burning response.  Many more thousands of hectares of bushland habitat in and around the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area were incinerated.  But the total area of fire impact has not been made public by the RFS.

During that week fighting fires across New South Wales, two men tragically died.   A 63-year-old man suffered a heart attack while fighting a fire at his home at Lake Munmorah on the Central Coast.   Agricultural Pilot David Black, 43, from Trangie in the Central NSW died when his Dromader aircraft crashed while contracted to the RFS to waterbomb the Wirritin Ridge Bushfire in the Budawang National Park.

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<< ”This will be as bad as it gets,” Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said.  ”On days like [this], there’s a very real potential for more loss of homes and life. There’s is real potential for more homes and lives lost on Wednesday, says the NSW Rural Fire Commissioner.

RFS Armageddon

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Weather worse than the extremes already predicted, combined with large bushfires burning out of control, and the real potential for others to spark up, have prompted a very grim warning.   The RFS had warned since the weekend about the potential devastation Wednesday’s weather could cause but the revised forecast on Tuesday was even more worrying, Mr Fitzsimmons said.

Wednesday would be hotter, drier and windier than the dire predictions previously forecast, posing a grave challenge to one of the largest firefighting contingents assembled in NSW history. They would have to battle an active 1500-kilometre fire edge in the Blue Mountains where three major fires, one at Bilpin now linked to the second at Mount Victoria and a third at Springwood, burned out of control.    ”It’s a difficult, dynamic, dangerous fire-ground situation,” Mr Fitzsimmons said.  >>

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[Source:  ‘This will be as bad as it gets’: Blue Mountains fire crews prepare for the worst‘, 20131022, by Nick Ralston, Emma Partridge, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/this-will-be-as-bad-as-it-gets-blue-mountains-fire-crews-prepare-for-the-worst-20131022-2vz3h.html]

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RFS Homebush doing staged PR shoot…when?

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<< Two weeks after the worst of NSW’s bushfire emergency, the O’Farrell Government is refusing to say whether it will consider burying power lines in fire-prone areas or buy back properties razed in risky locations – key responses to the Black Saturday fires.

The Rural Fire Service says a power line started a blaze that jumped a road and then engulfed almost 200 houses at Springwood, Winmalee and Yellow Rock in the Blue Mountains on October 17.

Fallen or damaged power lines caused most of the 173 deaths in Victoria’s Black Saturday disaster of 2009. After the royal commission on those fires recommended action to address overhead power lines, the state government announced a $1 billion plan to replace them with underground cables.

That royal commission also recommended the government buy back houses in areas at extreme fire risk, and Victoria has spent $25.6 million on 116 properties. Some of the land will be sold to surrounding neighbours, who will use it as a buffer between the bush and their homes.

On Tuesday, Fairfax Media sent specific questions about power lines and property buy-backs to Emergency Services Minister Mike Gallacher. The Planning Department responded but did not address the questions, instead saying NSW had the toughest bushfire planning approvals regime in Australia.

When pressed on the need for a ministerial response, his spokesman said: ”The priority of this government at this point in time is responding to both the uncontained fires still burning across the state and the high winds this afternoon.”

When the same questions were put to Mr O’Farrell’s office on Thursday, it responded with a statement the Premier made that day in Parliament. “After events such as these there are always lessons that can be learned and applied to the future and we are determined to do so,” Mr O’Farrell had said.

”There are several investigations under way into the fires. The government will closely examine the work of those investigations.”

The statement made no mention of the lessons of Black Saturday. >>

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Kilmore East Fire Victoria

Started by Government neglect on 7th February 2009

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Comparative scale of the State Mine Fire (Lithgow, NSW)

Started by Government neglect on 16th October 2013

..that diverted critical firefighting resources from Winmalee

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[Source:  ‘O’Farrell fans flames of frustration as experts warn it is time to act‘, 20131103, by Rick Feneley, News and features writer, Sydney Morning Herald, ^http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ofarrell-fans-flames-of-frustration-as-experts-warn-it-is-time-to-act-20131102-2wtdq.html]

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