It’s Autumn in the Greater Blue Mountains, and the New South Wales Government’s bush arsonists are out in full swing deliberately setting fire to native habitat at every opportunity. Governmental ‘Habitat Reduction Season‘!
Is this pastime not comparable with the antiquated British imported tradition of the ‘Duck Season‘ – killing NATIVE ducks that is – just for sport. It’s the very same time of year!
“Capital climes for rough shooting old sport, what! Live on peg, we ought to bag a few dozen before tea.”
On Monday 25th March 2024, the NSW Government’s National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) published a media release about its continuing “hazard” reduction burns across the Blue Mountains National Park. It read as follows (main extracts):
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) has announced plans for an 850-hectare hazard reduction burn in the Glenbrook area of Blue Mountains National Park, set to commence on 26 March, weather conditions permitting. This preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires and protect surrounding communities.
Scheduled to unfold over consecutive days, the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park. The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.
…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW. These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.
The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.”
Our comments to this bush arson justification spin doctoring:
The above is bush arson propaganda by contracted consultants with Communications Degrees, justifying the perpetual decimation of Australia’s native habitat since the first day of colonisation and usurpation of the continent since 1788. Nothing has changed or is likely to. Surviving intact wilderness has become reduced to mere islands. Just go to Google Maps [See our extract map below]
“850 hectares” is an area equivalent to about 30km x 30km (√ 850ha). In relative terms, that’s three times the size of Sydney’s CBD, a native habitat area capacity for many fauna;
“preventive measure is part of a strategic effort to reduce the risk of wildfires” – this is because when wildfires do occur the NSW Government invariably fails to (A) detect, (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions promptly whilst small and controllable. It has an attitude that native habitat has a lower value than human habitat. In contrast, the urban Fire and Rescue Service is tasked to (B) respond and (C) extinguish the ignitions involving human property immediately, and unlike their unpaid volunteer Rural Fire Service (RFS) counterparts, they get paid to do it;
“protect surrounding communities” – this means human communities that have been built encroaching more and more into and usurping native habitat. These human “communities” are the only focus of the NPWS and its support RFS. Under this culture, wildlife communities matter not, irrespective of any threatened species impacted/killed. This attitude belies an antiquated anthropocentric mentality. Neither the NPWS nor the RFS employ an Ecologist. They just don’t care about protecting Ecology – in this case forest ecology;
“the operation targets the reduction of naturally accumulated fuel loads in the park“. That’s right, the NPWS as delegated custodial organisation ‘manager’ of the Blue Mountains National Park treats native habitat and its dependent fauna within such national parks in NSW (one of some 800) instead as “fuel loads” to be reduced to sterile urban park status. NPWS should be relegated to managing urban parks like Hyde Park in Sydney’s CBD;
“The primary aim is to provide strategic protection for the residential areas of Glenbrook, Lapstone, and Mulgoa against potential future wildfires.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“…This burn is a component of the comprehensive hazard reduction program carried out by NPWS each year, often in collaboration with the Rural Fire Service and Fire and Rescue NSW.” – this is a reinforcement approach of our Point 3;
“These operations are crucial for managing vegetation fuel loads and reducing the intensity and spread of potential wildfires.” – “crucial” for whom? An expanding Sydney human housing sprawl? So the NSW Government’s volunteer and under-resourced RFS has less forested native habitat risk and so less work to do in the event of wildfires because year-on-year there is less forested native habitat left. Perpetuation that long term strategy, there will eventually be little or no native habitat left across NSW. So down the track a future NSW Government may well decide that the RFS is therefore no longer needed and so make the organisation redundant. Sydney that has been deliberately morphed by successive governments (state and federal) into the ‘Greater Sydney Region‘ has, on paper, swallowed whole the ‘Blue Mountains Region‘ (see NSW Planning map below) , presuming its world heritage status is now just outer-upper western Sydney parkland for the rezoning offing. Allowing the 2019 megafires to incinerate 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, clearly has achieved the NSW Government’s intended devaluation of the UNESCO recognised “Outstanding Universal Value” of all the Eucalypts, and is wholly consistent with a usurpation agenda for an even Greater Sydney megalopolis.
“The planned hazard reduction burns in Blue Mountains National Park underscore the ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety. By taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads, the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires, ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” The spin doctoring clearly by outsourced consultants with Communication Degrees is palpable here. It’s more repetition of contrived persuasive terms: “planned hazard reduction burns”, underscore the “ongoing commitment of NSW authorities to wildfire risk management and community safety”. Ask the residents of Mount Wilson who lost their homes by RFS reckless arson in 2019 on this point! “taking proactive measures to manage fuel loads”, “the NPWS aims to mitigate the impact of wildfires”, “ensuring the protection of both natural landscapes and residential communities.” What so burning the natural landscapes to protect them? Seriously? In truth it is all about avoiding bad publicity when the RFS lights a high risk fire on 14th December 2014 causing homes to be incinerated like at Mount Wilson. “The state coroner has confirmed that a bushfire that destroyed homes in Mt Wilson, Mt Tomah, Berambing and Bilpin in December 2019 was caused after a planned RFS backburn jumped Mt Wilson Road.” [SOURCE: ‘Bushfire inquiry: Mt Wilson backburn to blame‘, BMG, 2nd April 2024]
RFS MOUNT WILSON ARSON: Sam Ramaci, like several of his neighbours, claims a back-burn lit by the RFS on December 14, 2019, was responsible for the destruction of his cool room, tractor and the property that was to fund his retirement. “If they hadn’t started the back-burn, my house would be still standing,” he said. (The NSW Government has refused to compensate him and others (nor even apologise) for the reckless misjudgment of its RFS – a NSW Government agency. Who can afford a class action? [Go to Video Link]
The Mount Wilson fire was the sixth backburn to escape along the southern containment line that was intended to protect the upper Blue Mountains from the Gospers Mountain Fire.
What sane person would join the Rural Fire Starters?
Bush arsonists have a psychological compulsion to set fire to see fire . It’s a ritual – they’re eyes light up. “Behold, The Fiery Cross !...”
NPWS is beholden to NSW Planning
A headline environmental protection agency that is supposed to be caring for national parks reporting to a state land use planning authority (aka Development). Is this a warped governmental portfolio conflict of interest of what? Liberal-Labor-Liberal…? Same Same.
The Regional Map of NSW according to the NSW Government’s Department of Planning and Environment fiefdom in 2024. Note that the Blue Mountains Region no longer exists, but has become annexed by the ever expanding ‘Greater Sydney Region’ in the mindset of Macquarie Street’s urban expansionism campaign. Mount Victoria a Sydney suburb now? Lookout Broken Hill!
Deforestation of Australia since colonisation and its usurpation from 1788. Remnant native forests and their native habitat have been decimated to ecologically unsustainable islands. The entire pre-colonial eastern seaboard of the continent was originally blanketed by native forests unbroken, extending about 600km inland. [SOURCE Google Maps – satellite view, April 2024]
It’s no wonder that Australia continues its record of perpetuating the world’s worst rate of wildlife extinctions. It’s akin to countries like Madagascar. It’s all hell bent on serving the Human Plague Order, currently 8.1 Billion! and in 2024 growing (and demanding more) by $75 million p.a. The current population of Australia is 26,654,200 as of Monday, April 29, 2024. Compare Australia’s Federation census of 1901 counted 3,773,801 people across Australia. [Check: Census Bureau Projects U.S. and World Populations on New Year’s Day; and ^https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/]
But wait there’s more bush arson planned…
An update last Friday, 26th April 2024 (just days ago), the NSW Government’s environmental department website again posted a media release advising of its further planned “Hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park” for the weekend.
It read as follows:
“The NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) with assistance from the NSW Rural Fire Service is conducting a hazard reduction burn in Blue Mountains National Park starting Sunday 28 April, weather permitting.
Staff from Metro South West and Blue Mountains regions undertaking the Pisgah Ridge hazard reduction burn near Glenbrook in the Blue Mountains National Park The hazard reduction burn will focus on an area south of Woodford, in the mid-mountains, and cover a total area of about 400 hectares. The burn aims to reduce fuel hazards and assist in the protection of property in the surrounding Woodford, Hazelbrook and Linden areas.
Fire trails around the burn area, including Bedford Creek, will be closed to the public, along with the Murphy’s Glen camping and day use area. The campground will be reopen when it is safe to do so.
Smoke may be seen in the area for up to a week after the initial operation.
The burn is one of many hazard reduction operations undertaken by NPWS each year, many with the assistance of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) and Fire and Rescue NSW.
All burns around the state are coordinated with the NSW RFS to ensure the impact on the community is assessed at a regional level.
People with known health conditions can sign up to receive air quality reports, forecasts and alerts via email or SMS from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. For health information relating to smoke from bushfires and hazard reduction burns, visit NSW Health or Asthma Australia.
More information on hazard reduction activities is available at NSW Rural Fire Service and the NSW Government’s Hazards Near Me website and app.”
Asthma sufferers? – NSW Government care factor?
Carbon emissions? – NSW Government care factor?
10th December 2019: NPWS world heritage Eucalyptus woodsmoke enveloping Sydney from what started as an abandoned pile burn off Army Road near Gospers Mountain in the distant Wollemi NP two months prior on 26th October 2019. She’ll be right, eh NPWS boss David Crust?
The RFS is one of the planet’s highest emitters of airborne carbon particulates by way of causing mass wood-smoke by repeatedly lighting bushfires and ignoring wildfires. Wood smoke we feel is a tad more polluting than humans exhaling carbon dioxide. But then how many humans on the planet?
Yet the climate change cult remains quiet on this more serious global problem. Why so selective about a lesser pollutant in the hysterical ideology that has morphed from ‘Global Warming‘ (Wallace Smith Broecker’s term of 1975) to ‘The Greenhouse Effect‘ (Mike Hulme’s term in 1994) to ‘Climate Change Scientology‘ (U.S. National Academies of 2014) to currently ‘Climate Crisis‘ actually predating the former (U.S Vice President Al Gore of 2007).
The RFS and NPWS press on regardless – as it’s not carbon dioxide, so all good!
Here’s the latest bush arson schedule to further set fire to the still unburnt native habitat of the Blue Mountains:
RFS:“It’s ok love, it’s good for the bush. She’ll be right.”
It’s an age old mentality of the fox charged to look after the chickens. Both the NPWS and RFS have a cultural attitude that the national parks are NOT to be protected, despite the NPWS delegated to so-called manage NATIONAL parks across New South Wales (NSW). That is despite the Rural Fire Service (RFS) charged with putting out wildfires.
That perverted culture is conditioned to regard native habitat only as a ‘fuel’ that burns and so NOT habitat but a ‘hazard’ to be controlled and burned to prevent it burning. If there is no habitat left, then the meathead rationale, no hazard, so job done! Of recent times the spin doctors in government seconded as contractors with Communications Degrees (aka the art of spin) have softened the community sell of these ‘hazard reductions’ to ‘prescribed burns” to justify and take some noble authority from on high that the BUSH WAS ORDERED TO BE BURNED, WE HAVE NO CHOICE !
All their fire trucks are filled with more flammable liquids light a bushfire than water to put it out. ‘RFS’ should stand for for Rural Fire Starters.
Blue Mountains World Heritage?
Eventually the bush grows back but with a vastly different flora community make up. The biodiversity is gone. The wildlife don’t come back from the dead.
One of countless Koalas tragically burned to death in her native habitat during the Blue Mountains megafires of 2019. They won’t come back. [This website is not suitable for children to view]
This native Koala would have looked something like this:
National parks throughout Australia over the 236 years since colonisation and its continent-wide deforestation, land use destruction and introduced bushfires, have consistently and hatefully made Australia’s ecological landscape very very quiet and devoid of wildlife.
The 2019 mega bushfires of NSW that the NPWS and RFS let get out of control over months, wiped out 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including rare remnant koala communities and hosts of other at-risk wildlife and their special native habitat that NPWS has no clue of the statistical losses. NPWS does not manage, it mismanages, else just oversees politically drive projects like multi-million dollar tourists track upgrades to benefit humans. The NSW State Government tasked to look after UNESCO world heritage on behalf of the Australia Government?
This habitat reduction regime is to burn the remaining 20% that didn’t cop the 2019 wildfire megablaze. They call this “stewardship”? All trust in the NSW Government to protect world heritage has long gone out the window.
The ‘NPWS’ is a misnomer
‘NPWS” is an abbreviation for the National Parks and Wildlife Service in the state of New South Wales.
Logo of the NPWS
The problem is that this government bureaucracy is supposed to be the governmental (public) custodian for national parks is misleading:
NPWS is not national, rather it is only a NSW governmental sub-department. Governmental ‘management’ of national parks is not national, rather each state and territory has its own national parks, and the Australian Government is not involved – so a bizarre and misleading naming tradition;
NPWS does NOT look after wildlife. Native habitat in these ‘national parks’ is supposed to be protected. Yet every year vast selected areas are burnt deliberately else left to burn on a grand scale, so killing wildlife and destroying their habitat.
As a consequence, the NPWS deserves to be more appropriately renamed as ‘NSW Parks Service‘ just like in Victoria, the Victorian Government calls its equivalent ‘Parks Victoria‘.
On the relevant NSW Government’s website pertaining to its NPWS, it explains that the NPWS is part of a sub-department called ‘Environment and Heritage, which in turn:
“Environment and Heritage is part of the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
Our vision is for a thriving, sustainable and resilient New South Wales.Environment and Heritage works with communities, businesses and governments to protect, preserve and strengthen the quality of our natural environment and heritage. We do this through active stewardship that supports a healthy New South Wales.We are committed to creating thriving environments, communities and economies that benefit the people of New South Wales.”
The three most trendy feel-good terms above include: “thriving”, “resilient” , active stewardship”. Pure motherhoodism by the contracted young spin doctors with a Communications Degree. So where are the published wildlife regional extinction stats before and after the Blue Mountains 2019 megablaze?
Recall Tathra Sunday 18 March 2018, the consequence of the RFS deliberately lighting a bushfire on a 38 degree Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) gusty day upwind of this coastal village. [Read Our Article: ‘Bushfire Scenario Was Not Rocket Science‘
[8] ‘Impact of the 2019-20 Mega-Fires on the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, New South Wales‘, 20221129, by P Smith and J Smith, Issue Vol. 144 (2022), Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, ^https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/LIN/article/view/17079
While holidaying in the Megalong on the weekend of 10-11 May 2014 for my 50th, in the late morning of the 10th my wife alerted me to a large bushfire smoke cloud billowing in the Blue Mountains to our east.
Cripes! was my first thought when I looked east seeing smoke plumes billowing beyond the western escarpment in the direction of our upper Blue Mountains family home. I got out my topographic Katoomba map and my Silva compass (being a weekend bushwalker) and aligned the bushfire smoke plume to my map . The billowing smoke was scarily in line with a bearing to the upper Blue Mountains where our house was. Distance was the uncertainty.
So I immediately rang friends to check. They said the smoke was south of Woodford. It was fortunately far away from our house. But how could such a large bushfire start on a still, cold autumn day? My mind clicked – Hazard Reduction!
I recall seeing NPWS bushfire labelled vehicles parked in Katoomba the previous week. I hadn’t seen these specialised vehicles before, so this must be a NSW Government capital investment in ongoing National Park arson. Is it to sadistically drive wildlife extinctions? There has been no public announcement of such, so the sadistic strategy must be pre-conceived and signed off.
So on return to home, our house was fine and no-one was the wiser about any bushfire. The bush arson had been deliberately and “strategically” lit farther east and deep south into the Blue Mountains National Park, many kilometres from housing. The bushfire was lit by the entrusted custodians of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area: NPWS. They call it ecological burning so suggest that burning vegetation habitat is good for it.
Down along the Great Western Highway the scorched canopy blanket become obvious south of Lawson. Unravel the map and the southern ridge is Williams Ridge from Kings Tableland east to Mount Bedford. The access is Ingar Fire Trail. This was the access route for the government bush arsonists. The gate is locked to hide the slaughter.
Is this the new sadistic/fatalist management of National Parks and Wildlife Service? Incinerate forest habitat in Blue Mountains World in case in burns? Spend millions in exploitative tourism cost recovery? As for wildlife, what wildlife. Is this NPWS new sadistic motto for the Blue Mountains World Heritage, following the demise and exploitaton of of the Barrier Reef and Kakadu?
Burns to humans do recover in time despite the short term pain. Humans do recover from trauma in time. If trauma goes unpublished, few in the community know about what happened anyway. So it is morally acceptable then to inflict burn trauma upon ecological communities because no-one knows the wiser? Yet week after week, ecological massacre repeats like the Australian Frontier Wars. Read More: ^Aboriginal Massacres,^Australian Frontier Wars.
All the government website media release 8 May 2014 can say is a dismissive massacre as usual:.
“Smoky weekend for the Blue Mountains as 5,500 hectares of hazard reduction burning gets underway”
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[Source: “Smoky weekend for the Blue Mountains as 5,500 hectares of hazard reduction burning gets underway”, official government media release by Susie Summers, NPWS (Environment Department so-called), 20140508, ^http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/media/OEHMedia14050801.htm]
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<<NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) plans to take advantage of a window of favourable weather to get two major hazard reduction (HR) burns completed in the Blue Mountains this weekend. Following a wet start to the season, it has been very difficult to complete burning operations, NPWS Regional Manager Alan Henderson said.
Weather permitting the following HRs will go ahead: • Friday, 9 May – 3,000 hectare Little Crater burn, south of Glenbrook and west of the Warragamba Dam; • Saturday, 10 May – 2,500 hectare Mt Bedford burn, 3km south east of Wentworth Falls, Bullaburra and 2km south of Lawson, Hazelbrook and Woodford.
“For the safety of crews and neighbours, and to the ensure these burns are effective, they can only be undertaken when the weather is right – it cannot be too wet, cold or windy – making scheduling them very tricky,” Mr Henderson said. “The proposed burn area for the Little Crater burn is remote and bounded by the Warragamba and Nepean River to the east, Erskine Creek to the north, Big Crater Creek to the west and Erskine Range (W5 management trail) to the south.
“It will protect private property to the east of Warragamba River by reducing fuel loads to minimize the risk of wildfire spreading from Blue Mountains National Park into Warragamba and Silverdale townships.
“This is a joint operation with the Rural Fire Service (RFS) which will also help to protect Sydney Catchment Authority assets to the south east of the burn including the Warragamba dam wall and its associated structures. “There is the potential for smoke from this burn to drift towards the western and southwestern suburbs of Sydney. “Meanwhile, the 2,500 hectare Mt Bedford HR is planned to begin on Saturday (May 10) and will also be conducted in partnership with RFS. “In the interests of visitor safety, Ingar Road, Andersons Trail and Bedford Creek trail will be closed for the duration of the burn, which is designed to limit the potential for wildfire to spread west to east and impact on life and property throughout the Blue Mountains.
“Smoke will be visible between Katoomba and Springwood and smoke drift may impact the Great Western Highway, the Oaks Fire Trail and lower mountains townships. Both operations and associated closures are likely to continue for a number of days. Updates regarding National Park closures may be found on the national parks website:http://www.nationalparks.nsw.gov.au/safety/fires-and-park-closures “People with asthma or those susceptible to respiratory problems are also advised to keep clear of the immediate area or stay indoors.” You can subscribe to air quality alerts from the Office of Environment and Heritage here ^http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/aqms/aqialerts.htm.
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‘The NPWS has undertaken 895 hazard reduction activities covering 70,000 hectares in total,
including 160 hazard reduction burn operations for 2013-14.’
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In 2012-13 the NPWS achieved a record 208,000 hectares in 1300 separate fuel reduction activities. This was 83% of the total hazard reduction effort for NSW, demonstrating a clear commitment by NPWS to manage fire in accordance with its Living with Fire 2012-21 strategy. [They must be proud custodians of World Heritage.]
Under the Enhanced Bushfire Management Program (Strategic Broadacre Incineration), NPWS will pursue its plan to treat an average of over 135,000 hectares per year in 800 or more planned hazard reduction activities. Achieving this will be highly dependent on the suitability of weather conditions given the narrow window of opportunity that exists in NSW for burning safely and effectively.>> .
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[ ‘If wildlife isn’t exterminated and made locally extinct, then we have failed our purpose.’ ]
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Eco Hazard Reduction now means starting a bushfire so hot and fierce that the entire tree crown is incinerated so that nothing can live and so that it causes a smoke plume that puts the pollution effort of industrial Sydney and its traffic to shame.
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Prevent Prepare Protect what?
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Incinerate disappearing World Heritage habitat so that timber bush properties approved for build in dumb indefensive slopes can have hope in bushfire hell? Or to hell with it, just burn the lot, like the old Blue Mountains bush firie adage: “Hazard reduce Katoomba to save Leura.” Sounds like what Queensland is doing to the Great Barrier Reef.
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What wildlife? What habitat? What World Heritage? .
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Prevent Prepare Protect what?When a wildfire starts, they have no idea anyway.
Partners in crime: big ego Blue Mountains National Parks with even bigger ego Blue Mountains RFS, have jointly stuffed up big this time.
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A hazard reduction north of the Hawkesbury Road from the previous weekend was left abandoned. A few days later the forecast wind picked up and voila: HR come wildfire. Woops.Sound familiar? Warrumbungles (2013), Macleay River (2012), Grose Valley (2006), Canberra Firestorm (2003)
[Source: Fairfax, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/hazard-reduction-burn-started-major-sydney-bushfire-20130913-2tois.html]
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Hawkesbury Heights residents will recall last year’s escaped hazard reduction along the Springwood Ridge inside the Blue Mountains National Park. It was left for few days, then the forecast prevailing sou’wester picked up on 30th August 2012. The fire jumped containment lines then threatened the Bowen Mountain community to the nor’ east.
<<More than 30 firefighters from the NSW Rural Fire Service and National Parks and Wildlife Service have worked behind homes in the community of Bowen Mountain to contain this fire. Crews backburned to establish containment lines around the fire with the assistance of helicopters and earth moving machinery.>>
How much did that stuff up cost? This is where donations to the RFS are going.
The Habitat Advocate reconstructs that the HR folly at Hawkesbury Heights two weeks ago probably unfolded as follows:
Blue Mountains National Parks decides that its a good idea to set fire to the Blue Mountains National Park along Shaws Ridge. Shaws Ridge is over two kilometres from the Hawkesbury Road. It has nothing to do with ‘asset protection’ to private properties. So the Parks Service just calls it ‘strategic’ or an ‘ecological burn’ – good for the bush.
“Generally over an 8-12 year cycle it [vegetation] needs to be burnt, which allows it to regenerate.” ~ Blue Mountains RFS district manager David Jones, 20130918.
The bush and its wildlife likes being burnt. Parks Service’s gospel Fire Maps shows in bright red that this part of the protected Blue Mountains National Park (World Heritage Area) hasn’t been burnt for 8 years, so it must to be burned, just in case it burns!
So the fire cult’s mindset is fixated. Parks Service includes the area to its annual hazard reduction burning programme and checks the weather forecast. The Bureau of Meteorology forecasts low winds but with expected changes later in the week. She’ll be right. The job will be over in a day. Parks Service sees the low wind HR window and goes for it.
Parks Service musters up their fire friendly mates at the RFS down at Winmalee and Hawkesbury Heights and complicitous stations. The HR is on! So all the cracks had gathered to the fray. All the tried and noted firies from the stations near and far mustered along Shaws Ridge fire trails. For the firies love the smell of wood smoke along the fire trails and the old red Isuzu’s snuff the battle with delight.
Hazard Reduction: Reducing the World Heritage Hazard‘Cos see when there’s a real wildfire, Dad’s Army can’t cut the mustard
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The hazard reduction proceeds on the Sunday 8th September with hardly a breeze in hilly timbered terrain, using trucks only along ‘fire’ trails. We won’t need choppers. They’ll only blow the budget. Sunday night falls, job done and the vols go home. Monday a bit windy, then Tuesday really warm and the wind picks up, gusty to blazes.
The media reports as follows:
<<A hazard-reduction burn that got out of control sparked one of four major bushfires that ravaged western Sydney and the Blue Mountains this week, fire authorities have revealed.
NSW Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said the National Parks and Wildlife Service had been conducting a hazard-reduction burn near Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee last weekend, which flared up in Tuesday’s soaring temperatures and high winds. [Ed: Winmalee? Close, but try Hawkesbury Heights further north.]
Rob Rogers:
“Basically it was burnt on the weekend, it was patrolled on Monday, there was smouldering activity. That fire then jumped containment lines [on Tuesday].”
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The Parks Service and RFS secretively keep fire operational matters behind closed doors for fear of embarrassment and of being sued.So our research investigator conducted a post-fire inspection on Saturday 20130921 and has estimated the above impact and scenario. Perhaps those in charge can prove us wrong? We invited them to.
[Source: The Habitat Advocate, assisted with Google Maps]
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<<Just 10 minutes earlier the family had been told by firefighters to remain calm before a freak wind change sent the blaze roaring uphill towards their house. “Evacuate” was the order.>>
Tackling the Winmalee Hazard Reduction come Wildfire on Hawkesbury Road. Heroes extinguishing the neglect of their Parks Service cousins.
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<<A fire burning in the area of Hawkesbury Road at Winmalee has already claimed one property, with more than 100 firefighters working to contain the blaze. Five firefighters have suffered from smoke inhalation and two received minor burns battling the fire in Winmalee.>>
<< Firefighters have contained a blaze that has burnt through more than 1000 hectares of bushland west of Sydney. The fire, at Winmalee in the Blue Mountains, has been burning since Tuesday fanned by high temperatures and strong winds, plunging the region into emergency. Firefighters were still water bombing the burning bushland on Thursday.
The Rural Fire Service on Friday said the fire had been contained.
RFS spokeswoman Laura Ryan:
“It was brought fully under control last night just before a community meeting at Winmalee High School. Firefighters (unpaid) would today work to extinguish the blaze, but said it was too early to say how long that would take. Firefighters will be working hard to get every bit of that fire out.”
The RFS and NSW Police say they have launched investigations into the cause of the bushfire, with some locals raising concerns that recent hazard reduction burns in the area may be responsible. [Ed: NSW Police need not investigate far beyond the operational records of the Blue Mountains National Parks and Wildlife Service, with internal documents circulated to the RFS]
<< A Rural Fire Service organised community meeting held last week at Winmalee to discuss the fire situation in Winmalee and Yellow Rock was well attended.
Winmalee and Yellow Rock residents aired their bushfire concerns at a community meeting organised by the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) at Winmalee High School last Thursday night.
Despite the meeting only being publicised that day, the school hall was nearly full with 350 residents. At least 10 people in the room did not receive an RFS emergency safety warning text message to take shelter.
Blue Mountains RFS district manager David Jones said he would, “feed that back up the line … it may be a service provider issue, I’m not sure, that may be part of it” and that he would look further into the issue.
A Yellow Rock resident asked what hazard reduction burns would take place in Yellow Rock in the near future.
Supt Jones said the weather conditions last week hadn’t been suitable to maintain control of a backburn.
“It’s a one-way, one-road in and its never received the recognition it deserves on that basis in terms of protection,” the Yellow Rock resident said. “I would hate to see a real emergency situation develop here at Yellow Rock.”
Supt Jones said he’d look at the RFS organising a meeting with Yellow Rock residents in the near future to address these issues. Supt Jones said residents could have a fire mitigation officer assess if hazard reduction was needed in their area by lodging a hazard complaint with the RFS.
“Generally over an 8-12 year cycle it [vegetation] needs to be burnt, which allows it to regenerate,” he said.
National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) Upper Mountains area manager Richard Kingswood said there weren’t many days a year suitable for conducting hazard reduction burns — only 10 days in the Upper Mountains and a few more in the Lower Mountains, although last autumn and spring had provided more opportunities. He said in the last financial year NPWS had initiated 38 burning operations over 50,000 hectares, which was more than usually occurred.
Another resident asked why, with safety concerns with overhead powerlines, they couldn’t go underground, especially as the highway was being widened. An Endeavour Energy spokesman said cost was an issue. “It costs about 10 times more to put mains underground.”
Others were concerned about issues around road blocks, where children as well as adults were allowed to walk past roadblocks to return home, yet people couldn’t get their vehicles through. It didn’t make sense from a safety perspective, the resident said.>>
<< More than 1200 firefighters were involved in battling the four major fires on Tuesday along Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee; in Marsden Park in the Blacktown area; near Tickner Road in Castlereagh; and Richmond Road at Windsor. Fourteen helicopters and 350 trucks from the Rural Fire Service, Fire and Rescue NSW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service were involved in the firefight.
Just before 1.30pm on Tuesday, the temperature in Sydney was 31.6 degrees. Mr Rogers said strong wind also made fire conditions worse, with gusts reaching 90 kilometres an hour, which was much higher than forecast.
He said RFS firefighters helped in the hazard-reduction operation in Winmalee, which was under the supervision of the NPWS, and he apologised to anyone who experienced property damage.
“Combined with the winds, how dry it is, the temperature and the steep terrain, fire takes hold very, very quickly.”
He said the RFS also was investigating whether a hazard-reduction burn escaped and forced the closure of the M1 (formerly the F3) Motorway on Thursday.
“You would have to obviously be suspicious that it did come from a hazard-reduction, given that it was in a very close proximity to it. That’s something that we’re going to be looking at very, very closely,” he said.>>
<<Fire authorities have issued an emergency warning for a bushfire threatening homes in Castlereagh in Sydney’s west, and alerts for other out of control bushfires in Blacktown and Hawkesbury.
NSW Rural Fire Service Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers said National Parks and Wildlife Service had been conducting a hazard reduction burn near Hawkesbury Road in Winmalee last weekend. The fire flared with Tuesday’s soaring temperatures and high winds.
..He apologised to anyone who experienced property damage from the Winmalee fire. ”..It appears on first look that it’s a case of the weather was worse than was predicted, the fire jumped out, it took hold really..quickly.” >>
Even though the fire ripped through Hawkesbury Heights, the National Parks and Wildlife Services has released a public notice asking any Winmalee residents who experienced property damage or loss have been urged to contact NPWS on 1300 361 967 for sympathy and counselling.
New South Wales Rural Fire Service (paid) Deputy Commissioner Rob Rogers has said that his (unpaid) RFS firefighters helped in the hazard-reduction operation in Winmalee, which was under the supervision of the NPWS, and he apologised to anyone who experienced property damage.
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RFS: Sorry about thatProperty loss at Hawkesbury Heights (Wheatley Road?) but who pays?
Owner: “we won’t need hazard reduction for a while.”
[Source: ‘Bushfire wake-up call’, 20130918, by Shane Desiatnik,
^http://www.theleader.com.au/story/1782048/bushfire-wake-up-call/]
In New South Wales the National Parks and Wildlife Act became law on 1 October 1967. The legislation created a single agency, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, to care for, control and manage the original nineteen parks and any new ones created in the future.
..the evening news media dramatises a forthcoming government declaration of a‘Total Fire Ban’. Next day yep, dry and hot, then early afternoon wind picks up. Yep, having mapped target, and with no-one around, opportunity to be ‘Bushfire Hero’…
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7th Feb 2009, 1:30pm – a pine plantation near Churchill, West Gippsland:
Of the thousands of bushfires that burn Australia’s natural landscape each year, humans cause the vast majority, with somewhere around half of these being deliberately lit, that is, not by accident.
Bush Arson is a serious and heinous crime now systemic in bushfire-prone Australia, California and southern forested regions of Europe. It is committed usually by misfit serial offenders, yet despite the statistics, across all states in Australia from Tasmania to the Top End, the crime remains largely given lip service by governments.
Researchers at the Australian Institute of Criminology have assessed that there are many reasons why people light fires. While some want to relieve boredom by creating havoc and excitement, other arsonists crave recognition or attention. Some light fires out of anger or protest while others believe they are being altruistic by clearing what they see as dangerous fuel-loads. Sometimes there are multiple motives.
People who light fires for excitement will often stay around after the fire to view their handiwork, which suggests that fire crews should look around and talk to the people who are there watching. Knowing that some people light fires just so they can treated as a hero if they report the fire or put it out is also useful, especially for fire services screening new members.
Some of those people who light those fires do become members of fire services, and this needs to be a consideration in the firefighting recruitment process.
The 2009 Victorian Bushfires, collectively branded by the media as ‘Black Saturday’, involved far many more bushfires that the ones that ignited and reported by the media on Saturday 7th February 2009.
‘The number of fires that had not been extinguished rose from seven on New Year’s Day to 29 on 14 January. Then it doubled to 58 by 25 January and continued to steadily increase to 125 in the week before 7 February. By this time firefighting resources had been committed for a fortnight responding to new fires and attending to fires already contained or controlled.’
[Source: ‘The Number of Fires’ in Overview, Part One: ‘The January-February 2009 Fires’, Vol I: ‘The Fires and the Fire-Related Deaths’ p.4 citing the Department of Sustainability and Environment – Annual Report 2009 (TEN.201.001.0001) at 0047, in Final Report, July 2010, Vol. 1, p.20, by 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, State Government of Victoria ]
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According to the Victoria Country Fire Authority, of the fires that were not readily contained on or before 7 February, 14 of those 47 became ‘major fires’. On 7th February alone however, the CFA indicated there were a total of 1386 incidents reported on 7 February — 592 grass and bushfires, 263 structure fires and 156 reported incidents that were false alarms.
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[Ed: Clearly the bushfire conditions were extreme (beyond the usual ‘Total Fire Ban’ severity), the number and distribution of bushfires were considerable and emergency resources were overwhelmed. So for bush arson to be committed on such a declared day was beyond arson; it was ‘pyroterrorism’. But the crime does not yet feature in the Crimes Act. It needs to be. The penalty needs to be equated to that which would be imposed upon a terrorist attempting or actually causing mass murder. It is past time that Australia’s lackadaisical and euphemistic term ‘fire bug‘ is cast to history. We owe this to the memory and respect of 173 people lost. What is significant is that of the 173 who died, most were due to either arson or powerline spark – both human caused].
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The bushfires associated with Black Saturday that were selected to be investigated by the Victorian Royal Commission were on the basis of fires having caused the death of the 173 people and/or where significant damage had occurred.
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2009 Bushfires investigated by the Royal Commission
The investigated bushfires numbered twelve and they were:
Kilmore East Bushfire
Murrindindi Bushfire
Churchill Bushfire
Delburn Bushfire
Bunyip Bushfire
Narre Warren Bushfire
Beechworth-Mudgegonga Bushfire
Bendigo Bushfire
Redesdale Bushfire
Coleraine Bushfire
Horsham Bushfire
Pomborneit–Weerite Bushfire
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[Ed: NOTE: We include the suffix ‘bushfire’ above, unlike the Royal Commission in its literature which abbreviates ‘bushfire’ just to ‘fire’, or even drops the reference to fire completely, bless their imported cotton socks].
2009 Victorian Bushfires – Overview Map
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It is instructive to emphasise that the eventual naming of these fires was based on the point of origin, however on the day it had proven problematic during the overwhelming speed and complexity of the multiple simultaneous bushfire emergencies.
The lead item in the Terms of Reference for the Victorian Royal Commission was sensibly to inquire into ‘the causes and circumstances of these bushfires‘.
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The Bushfires Deliberately Lit *
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Of the above 12 bushfires investigated, those known or suspected to have been caused by arson or otherwise in obscure firefighting-speak ‘undetermined‘ or ‘unknown‘ were:
Murrundindi Bushfire
Delburn Bushfire
Redesdale Bushfire
Upper Ferntree Gully Bushfire
Bendigo Bushfire
Churchill Bushfire
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*Various vague assessments as to cause included ‘suspicious’, ‘unknown’, ‘undetermined’, which in 2012 is unacceptable. Compare the term ‘undetermined‘ to any police investigation into an urban fire causing significant damage; such a vague dismissal would be publicly unacceptable. So in the absence of competent investigation, we shall presume bush arson. So half were caused by arson, which is in line with the Australian Institute of Criminology’s conclusions, above.
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The Murrindindi Bushfire
With bushfire conditions extreme (temperature 44.6°C, humidity 8%, wind 46kph, Bushfire Index 110 – off the scale), the bushfire started about 14:55 on 7 February 2009, to the north of a sawmill in Wilhelmina Falls Road, Murrindindi. The cause was assessed as ‘suspicious’.
After the bushfire had merged with the Kilmore East Bushfire some 168,542 hectares had been burnt. Forty people were killed, another 73 people were injured, 538 houses were destroyed or damaged, mainly in and around Marysville, Narbethong and Buxton. The commercial centre of Marysville was razed to the ground. Firefighting resources involved 195 CFA and 311 NEO personnel, supported by 45 CFA appliances, 22 Networked Emergency Organisation (NEO)* appliances and 3 aircraft.
* [Ed: Networked Emergency Organisation? – a rather new convoluted bureaucratic term given to the Royal Commission to collectively represent a mix of disparate government agencies quickly cobbled together to deal with an emergency outside the control of the Country Fire Authority volunteer base].
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The Delburn Bushfire
With bushfire conditions similarly extreme, albeit with a lower Fire Index of 52, this bushfire started as three separate ignitions in the Strzelecki Ranges on 28 and 29 January 2009:
The Ashfords Road Bushfire – discovered on 28 January at about 4.00 pm, 2.5 kilometres north-north-west of Boolarra.
The Creamery Road Bushfire – discovered at about 1.00 pm on 29 January, 2.5 kilometres east of Delburn.
The Lyrebird Walk–Darlimurla Bushfire – discovered at about 3.30 pm on 29 January, 4 kilometres north of Mirboo North near Darlimurla.
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[Ed: So each started under extreme bushfire conditions in the early afternoon]
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The causes of both the above Creamery Road Bushfire and the Lyrebird Walk–Darlimurla Bushfire were assessed as ‘suspicious’ and the Victorian Police have since laid criminal charges against the suspected arsonist.
The three separate bushfires were not contained and ultimately merged. Increasing wind and changes in wind direction caused spotting and resulted in the bushfire spreading quickly east towards the outskirts of the townships of Boolarra and Yinnar. The surrounding townships included Mirboo North (population 1,300), Boolarra (pop. 600), Yinnar (pop. 600) and Churchill (pop. 5,000). Fortunately there were no fatalities or casualties, but 44 houses were destroyed maily on the outskirts of Boolarra, and some 6,534 hectares burnt out. Firefighting resources involved 597 CFA and 699 NEO personnel, supported by 112 CFA appliances, 103 NEO appliances and 14 aircraft.
Delburn Bushfire 30th January 2009 from NASA satellite
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There had been a further three ignitions around the time (1) at the Delburn–Yinnar refuse transfer station, (2) at Ten Mile Creek Rd in a Hancock Victoria Plantation and (3) at Brewsters Rd, Yinnar. Each was either contained or burnt out without fire-fighting intervention.
.The 2009 Delburn Bushfire
A CFA firefighter runs out hose on Piggery Road at Boolarra 2nd February 2009.
(Photo by Greg Cahir)
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The Redesdale Bushfire
The Redesdale Bushfire started with similar bushfire conditions (temperatures reaching 44.7°C, humidity 7%, winds up to 50kph, Bushfire Index 87.2). The bushfire was reported at 3:11 pm on 7 February 2009.
According to the CFA, the ignition started in a creek bed on open farmland between the eastern bank of the Coliban River and the northern end of Summerhill Road, about two kilometres to the west of the township of Redesdale, about 95 kilometres north-west of Melbourne and 35 kilometres south-east of Bendigo. There were more than 100 houses in the bushfire area.
The cause of ignition of the Redesdale fire has been investigated but ‘not determined‘. Possible sources of ignition that have not been excluded are:
(a) ignition by a spark or hot exhaust system
(b) deliberate ignition
(c) ignition by farm operations
(d) ignition by a carelessly discarded cigarette butt
There was no evidence that any of these sources ignited the fire.
The bushfire burned towards the south-east for about 19 kilometres. It was the first of two bushfires in the region on that day, the second originating
in Maiden Gully, 8 kilometres north-west of Bendigo, around 4:20pm. Fortunately again there were no fatalities, but one reported casualty, 14 houses destroyed as well as more than 50 farm sheds and outbuildings, the Baynton church and a bridge, two olive oil plantations, a vineyard and two blue gum plantations, and 7,086 hectares were burned.
Firefighting resources required were 536 CFA and 127 NEO personnel, supported by 103 CFA appliances, 21 NEO dozers and 1 aircraft. Two CFA forward control vehicles were damaged in the course of the fire fight.
The Upper Ferntree Gully fire started on Saturday 7th February 2009 at about 3:40 pm in a suburban railway corridor through bushland between the Burwood Highway and Quarry Road. The bushfire conditions were extreme as with the entire State. By mid afternoon the wind had picked up and was gusting to 90kph, exacerbating the conditions.
The cause of the fire was not known. The fire initially spread by spotting south-east through scrubland between the Burwood Highway and Quarry Road near houses. By 4:30pm an air crane was requested and just after 5pm the Erikson Aircrane nicknamed ‘Elvis’ had made a number of rapid water drops on the fire, obtaining water from a nearby disused quarry, critically preventing the loss of houses and finally contained by 6pm. There were no fatalities or casualties and no houses were lost, but 4 hectares of regenerated scrubland was burnt.
Erickson S-64 Air-Crane Helitanker (N179AC)
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[To stop video and continue, click the pause button bottom left]
Repeat Offenders? – same place lit again in January 2012: a hot, dry, windy afternoon, familiar turf
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‘Members of the Upper Ferntree Gully cricket team were quick to report a grass fire that started near Quarry Rd. Firefighters from Ferntree Gully and Upper Ferntree Gully attended the blaze, which was reported about 7.15pm on Friday. Upper Ferntree Gully CFA captain Peter Smith said the fire started in vegetation-regeneration area near Quarry Rd.
“It was a grass and scrub fire at the old quarry of probably about a third of a hectare,” Mr Smith said. “Conditions were on our side but we wouldn’t have wanted it any hotter or windier.”
About five trucks responded to the blaze and Mr Smith praised the efforts of those who called 000.
“The people that spotted it were fantastic,” Mr Smith said. “They were local guys from the Upper Ferntree Gully Cricket Club I think, that helped us get in and assisted police.”
The cause of the fire is unknown and being investigated.‘
The Bendigo Bushfire started shortly after 4pm on Saturday 7th February 2009 in the tinder dry hilly bushland of Maiden Gully, 8 km north-west of central Bendigo. Bushfire conditions were extreme (temperatures up to 45.4°C, humidity 6%, winds up to 41kph and the Bushfire Index off the scale at 129). The ignition cause was assessed as ‘suspicious’ – the arsonist was classically upwind of the outskirts of targeted western Bendigo.
The bushfire burned through gently rolling country bordering the city’s western suburbs, where there are numerous former gold diggings that are now public open space interspersed between suburban blocks. One person died as a result, plus there were 41 reported casualties. Some 58 homes were destroyed and 341 hectares burned out.
Firefighting resources required were 152 CFA and 111 NEO personnel, which were supported by 30 CFA appliances, 31 NEO appliances and 3 aircraft.
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The Churchill Bushfire
2009 Churchill Fire Map Overview
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The Churchill Bushfire started at 1:30pm on Saturday 7th February 2009, 3km south-east of the Churchill fire station, from two separate ignitions respectively one at the intersection of Glendonald Road and the other at Jelleffs Outlet. The recorded ‘000’ call received from the public, not coincidently, at 13:32, two minutes later.
Like the other bushfires on that day, the climate background was characterised by a decade long El Niño drought, making the native vegetation tinder dry and so extremely flammable. It was a declared Total Fire Ban across Victoria. The Forest Fire Danger index was off the scale recorded at 103 at Latrobe Valley AWS at 4pm, the temperature reached 46.1°C an humidity at just 8% at the Latrobe Valley automatic weather station around 4pm, the humidity just 8%. The maximum winds recorded before the wind change were north-north-westerly
at 44 kilometres an hour at Latrobe Valley Automatic Weather Station at 15:43, before a south-westerly wind change came through.
Before 7th February, the Country Fire Authority and the Department of Sustainability and Environment had already been providing support in response to three separate bushfires which had started on 28th and 29th January and which had coalesced into one and became the Delburn Bushfire. It had been contained by 3rd February. Like the Delburn Bushfire, thge Churchill Bushfire was started on the one day by two separate ignitions by an arsonist. So then was the Churchill Bushfire a copy cat arson episode? Were the two somehow connected? Did both arsonists know each other?
At the time, the cause of the Churchill Bushfire was recorded as ‘suspicious’. It was in fact deliberately lit in two locations, outside the township of Churchill along a roadside next to and upwind of a pine plantation owned by Hancock Plantations Victoria at the foot of Walkers Hill. The tinder dry conditions fanned by a steady breeze meant the ignitions took hold quickly.
The recorded 000 call received from the arsonist himself at 13:32, two minutes later. Actual fire-fighting response was not documented in the Royal Commission report. It could well have been some hours before the blaze was fought. The following photos of the Churchill Fire are purportedly from the nearby township of Morwell looking south. They show the early minutes after the ignitions.
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The very start of Churchill Bushfire
Photo taken looking south from Hunt Street, Morwell
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‘Composition: vertical-panorama of the smoke from the Churchill Fires that have jumped containment lines near me’
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[Source of photos: ‘Nchalada’s Photostream’, Flickr, ^http://www.flickr.com/photos/nchalada/page2/, accessed 20120827, Ed: Due to their controversial nature, the many photos on this Flickr website may not be accessible for long.]
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During the afternoon and early evening the fire travelled rapidly, affecting Jeeralang North, Balook, Le Roy, Koornalla, Callignee, Callignee North, Callignee South, Hazelwood South, Hazelwood North, Traralgon South, Devon, Yarram and Carrajung South. The final statistics confirm that firefighting resources deployed involved 409 CFA, 167 NEO personnel and 33 Hancock Victorian Plantations firefighters, supported by 76 CFA appliances, 29 NEO appliances and 4 waterbombing aircraft.
Although the fire was at its most destructive on 7th February, it was not reported as controlled until 19th February. Eleven people died as a result of the fire, plus an additional 35 casualties, 156 houses were destroyed, and more than 36,000 hectares were burnt.
About 1000 hectares of Bluegum plantations and 1700 hectares of Radiata Pine plantations owned Hancock Victorian Plantations by were burnt in the fires. An untold number of livestock and wildlife were also burned to death. In the nearby Delburn Fire, an arrest has been made but the outcome of that trial is not yet known at the time of publishing this article.
‘Residents of fire ravaged Gippsland towns have been warned to remain alert despite cooler temperatures today. So far 27 homes around Boolarra and Mirboo North have been lost in the fires. (Ed: The Delburn Bushfire)
More than 400 firefighters from as far as Mildura are currently battling the 6300 hectare blaze with 113 fire trucks, 14 helicopters and 12 bulldozers. About 40 Boolarra and Mirboo North residents have spent the past two nights in emergency accommodation at Monash University in Churchill, after fire swept through their town on Friday.
More than 100 residents attended a community meeting in Churchill this morning to discover whether their properties had survived the weekend.
CFA spokeswoman Rachel Allen warned locals the blaze was far from being classified as safe, despite drizzle predicted and a top temperature of only 29 degrees. “Obviously the threat has diminished somewhat because of the cooler temperatures, but it as important now as it was a few days ago to keep yourselves aware,” Ms Allen said.
Peter McHugh from the Department of Sustainability and Environment agreed, saying the fire threat “was far from over,” and that residents need to remain vigilant for flying embers.
Mr McHugh said possible electrical storms predicted to hit the area later today are a cause of concern for emergency services.
The Delburn fires have claimed 27 homes, 59 sheds, 5 cars and a piggery since they began on Wednesday. Another home is also believed to have been lost yesterday, but fire crews have so far been unable to access the property, just outside Mirboo North. Almost 40 homes are still left without power, while water supply has been restored to Boolarra.
Department of Primary Industries staff are now counting livestock losses around the Boolarra area, and the number is believed to be substantial.
Latrobe City CEO Paul Buckley said it would take at least a year to rebuild Mirboo North and Boolarra.
“When the fires hit Toongabbie about three years ago that took six months to rebuild, and this one is much, much worse,” Mr Buckley said.
Boolarra evacuees housed in Monash University student accommodation units have shared their horror stories of the blaze that engulfed their town.
Tania Martin, 35, praised the efforts of her partner Dave Caldwell, 40, for saving both theirs and their neighbours’ house.
Ms Martin and her son Storm, 10, left their Boolarra home late Friday while Mr Caldwell stayed behind to defend the properties.
“I think he is an absolute hero,” Ms Martin said. Mr Caldwell worked for hours pumping water on both houses as flying embers showered all around him from the fire less than 100 metres away. But Mr Caldwell said the real heroes are the firefighters who have been working around the clock.
“Those guys and girls, you should watch them heading over the hill straight for the fire. It’s unbelievable,” Mr Caldwell said. “They are made of the right stuff, they are.”
Val Kingston, 68, and her husband recently moved to Boolarra from Melbourne for a “tree change.” “And now all the trees are gone,” Ms Kingston said.
Ms Kingston said leaving Boolarra lat Friday had been difficult. “It was the saddest sight I have ever seen looking over my shoulder as I drove away. I just thought “there goes my town.”
Ms Kingston praised the efforts of Monash University residential staff. The University purchased fans for the units where evacuees have set up makeshift homes. They have also provided tea and coffee and icy poles for the kids. “We can’t thank them enough,” Ms Kingston said.
A further 20 firefighters from Mildura and 18 firefighters from Ballarat arrived in Churchill this morning to relieve exhausted colleagues who have been stationed on the fire front for the past two days.
The Churchill fire was threatening communities in south Gippsland late on Monday, fire authorities said. The 33,000 hectare blaze was threatening the community of Won Wron just north of Yarram, in south Gippsland at 5.30pm (AEDT) on Monday.
Residents of nearby Carrajung on the east side of Carrajung-Woodside Road were also expected to be impacted directly.
The Country Fire Authority also issued an urgent threat message at 4.15pm (AEDT) to residents near the Thomson Road area, Churchill, who were being directly hit by the fire. A CFA spokesman said the fire threat had increased as freshening winds picked up.
The death toll from the fires, which police believe were deliberately lit, in the area continued to rise. Nineteen people have now been confirmed dead in the region after the Churchill fires devastated the towns of Callignee, Hazelwood, Jeeralang and Koornalla in southwest Gippsland.
Nine people died in Callignee, one person was killed in Upper Callignee, four people died at Hazelwood, one at Jeeralang and four at Koornalla.
The Churchill fires south of the Princes Highway have so far burnt about 33,000 hectares, while the Bunyip Ridge fire, north of the highway, has razed 25,000 hectares.
Containment lines are also being established on the western and eastern flanks of the Bunyip blaze. Residents of Gembrook have also been warned to be vigilant, although the town is not currently under threat.
In the north of the state, fire around Dederang escalated significantly late on Monday afternoon, also threatening the towns of Beechworth and Yackandandah. The fire was spotting ahead of the main fire and ash and embers were threatening communities in Gundowring, Gundowring Upper, Glen Creek, Kergunyah South, Mudgeegonga and Running Creek. Authorities said some fires could take weeks to contain.
At least 750 homes have been destroyed and more than 330,000 hectares burnt out. The latest death toll is 131, which surpasses the toll from the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires, in which 75 people died in Victoria and South Australia, and the Black Friday bushfires of 1939, which killed 71.’
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Misfit Profile of a Bush Arsonist
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Brendan James Sokaluk, was in April 2012 found guilty of all 10 counts of arson causing death by the Victorian Supreme Court in Melbourne for deliberately lighting the Churchill Bushfire on 7th February, 2009. Sokaluk was an ex-volunteer firefighter with a local brigade of the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) from 1987 to 1988, some twenty years prior.
Brendan SokalukNot the smartest bush arsonist, but then could he be?
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Sokaluk, then aged 39, claimed that his old sky blue Holden HJ sedan had apparently broken down on the road near where the fire started, next to a pine plantation where the Churchill Black Saturday fire had begun just minutes earlier.
He was the only outsider on the road. To the residents of Glendonald Road busily packing up their possessions and preparing to flee the raging fire, Brendan Sokaluk stood out. Dressed in shorts and sandals, he was frantically trying to restart his broken-down Holden, which was partially blocking the gravel road.
Once home, Sokaluk climbed on to the roof of his house so he could look back towards Glendonald Road and watch the fire burn.
Sokaluk told several lies to cover his tracks. He told one person he was on his way to a wedding, while to others he said he was visiting a friend in the area. As he was driven back to Churchill by a resident, Sokaluk was overheard telling his father on the phone that he had been in the area to visit a friend to get his chisel set back.
Days later Sokaluk was arrested on the following Friday 12th February on a local street while working delivering the local Latrobe Valley Express newspaper. Sokaluk was interviewed by police for about three hours both at the scene of the fire and in an interview room at a local police station. Police interviewed him and on the following day, Saturday 13th February, they returned him to Glendonald Road and to nearby Jelleff’s Outlet, where the fire had started and where the landscape was now blackened and burnt out.
What emerged was that on the morning of 7th February, Sokaluk had picked up his father Kazimir in his distinctive sky blue Holden HJ and the pair drove to Morwell and Traralgon, visited auto and hardware stores, had lunch at KFC and bought lottery tickets. Kazimir Sokaluk said Brendan’s car was playing up and “running rough” but against his advice his son said he was “going up into the trees” because it was cooler there. Sokaluk also said he wanted to get a chisel set back from a friend named Dave who lived in that area. Another excuse was to access his apparent junk metal collection along Glendonald Road.
The police attempted a re-enactment and the field interview was recorded by video. Sokaluk admitted to police that he had started the blaze, but declared it had been an accident after he dropped cigarette ash out of his car window. He explained that the previous Saturday he had been driving slow, dawdling along in his car. “Looking for animals and stuff,” he said. Asked if he is familiar with the area, he replies: “It’s different `cause it’s not green no more. It’s all burnt out.” The detective asks “How do you know this area?” Sokaluk replied it was where he threw his piece of paper out the window.
“Part of my cigarette thing fell on the floor, so I got a bit of paper out to grab it and stuff… I thought it was dead and I’ve chucked it out the window, but I didn’t know it had lit up. I thought it was out when I threw the paper out the window.” Sokaluk told them. “I had no intention of this all to happen. Now I have to put up [with it] for the rest of my life and it makes me sad.”
The cigarette ash explanation was pivotal in what was a largely circumstantial case. But Sokaluk strenuously denied deliberately starting the fire. But then Sokaluk had told several lies to cover his tracks. He was a serial liar. Yet, without witnesses, evidence, a confession, proving bush arson is inherently difficult.
Prosecutor Ray Elston Senior Counsel argued that Sokaluk deliberately drove to bushland and started a fire on a day that had temperatures that reached nearly 45C. He was calculating enough to lie about his reasons for being in the area, to try to cover his tracks and to point the finger at others. Sokaluk tried to disguise his crime by claiming to police that it was an accident, lying about his reasons for being in the area and trying to point the finger at others, including making a false anonymous report to Crime Stoppers from his home computer blaming a Department of Sustainability and Environment worker for the fire.
Police managed to piece together Sokaluk’s movements on Black Saturday almost to the minute from phone records, witness accounts, shop receipts and CCTV footage. At 1.16 pm Sokaluk was in the IGA store in Churchill where he bought cigarettes before heading off into the Jeeralang Hills. Within 15 minutes a fire erupted in the hills and witnesses said that in tinder dry conditions the inferno tore through the bush seawards towards Yarram.
The Crown called 80 witnesses and its case was a mosaic of evidence that pointed to the guilt of Sokaluk. Mr Elston told the jury the accused had no reason to be in the area that day and if he was going to see Dave, who was home, he never got there.
“Why did he travel on a dirt road to get out there?” Mr Elston said to the jury in his summing up. “Why did he drive off that dirt road on to a graded track on the south side of Glendonald Road? A short distance from where the fire started Sokaluk’s car broke down and he was spotted at the side of the road by a Churchill CFA truck and then later picked up by a couple who drove him back to town.
Mr Elston told the jury:
”When the accused man arrives at that intersection there is no fire. ‘No one else is suggested to be present. When he leaves it’s ablaze. All causes save for deliberate ignition of this fire have been eliminated. ‘There is only therefore one irresistible conclusion to draw from the totality of the material, with respect, we suggest, and that is the accused man set those fires at two points.”
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Neighbours saw Sokaluk on his roof watching the progress of the fire and for some never explained reason he later walked back into the fire area. A resident found him in his back yard and told him to shelter in his house a few minutes before the returning fire storm passed. The jury saw a pathetic picture of Sokaluk with a garden hose in his hand taken by the resident.
It was not until after he was charged with 10 counts of arson causing death that experts diagnosed him with autism spectrum disorder. Until then his family had believed his disability was result of a difficult birth. People in the Churchill area thought Sokaluk was a weirdo and called him” beanie boy” and other names and as soon as locals learned he was in the area where the bushfire erupted he became the prime suspect.
Sokaluk’s barrister Jane Dixon SC during the trial painted a picture of a harmless individual, a “simpleton” whose autism set him apart from others in the community – a “lights out and no-one home” type of personality. “He’s a bit of a misfit really, but nevertheless he muddled along in his own way, muddled along OK with a bit of help from his mum and dad, comfortable enough with his own company, his dog, his hobbies, his obsessions.”
After leaving school, where he had been bullied, Sokaluk worked in a series of jobs before becoming a gardener at Monash University. He did that job for nearly 18 years. Sokaluk spent his days watching kids TV and collecting scrap metal with his dog. Neighbours would hear Sokaluk playing Bob the Builder and Thomas the Tank Engine tapes as he worked in his shed, where he liked to tinker with scrap metal and other junk he had found dumped in the area. Sokaluk’s neighbour Patricia Hammond would sometimes talk to him over the back fence. He would talk to his dog as if he was talking to a child, she said during the trial.
Justice Paul Coghlan of the Victorian Supreme Court sentenced Sokaluk stated in his summing up: “The event was terrifying for all involved in the fires, whether directly or otherwise,” he said. “For the victims, these were and are life-changing events and no sentence that I impose can compensate for their loss.”
Yet Justice Paul Coghlan of the Victorian Supreme Court sentenced Sokaluk to a non-parole custodial sentence of just 14 years. That is one and half years for each human death, excluding the millions of dollars in property damage and the horrific cruel burning to death of all people and animals, the other irreversible damage and tragedy – 156 homes with their personal possessions and memories, the livestock, 36,000 hectares of land, all the agricultural equipment and infrastructure, the forgotten wildlife.
Sokaluk is one of Australia’s worst mass killers as Justice Coghlan concluded. Sokaluk should never be released. Yet his lawyers have already said they are likely to appeal. So who are the real villians? Sokaluk’s barrister Jane Dixon, SC, argued her client had autism and was a simple man and a misfit who was incapable of concocting a web of lies or deceit. Cold comfort to the victims. It was early afternoon on an extreme bushfire day. Sokaluk was upwind of and next to a pine plantation. Sokaluk knew what he was doing.
Had he done it before but not been caught?
Why did he leave the CFA?
Had he been dismissed?
In the CFA one is taught how to light fires for prescribed burning. What triggered his arson?
Was it the devastation and attention that the Delburn Bushfire had created? It too was the cause of local arson.
What was the news reporting like at the time?
Did the media sensationalising serve to encourage Sokaluk as a dormant arsonist to copycat?
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As aptly described by the Herald Sun’ Norrie Ross:
“He was a killer who brought death and devastation to his own community and left a vile legacy for LaTrobe Valley that will never be forgotten or erased.”
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Royal Commission’s Findings into Bush Arson
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One of the Royal Commission’s identified research gaps and priorities emanating out of its analysis was the extent of ‘Deliberately Lit Bushfires‘ and the ‘Causes of Fire-setting Behaviour‘. [Source: ‘Final Report – Summary’, July 2010, Vol. 1, p.20, by 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, State Government of Victoria ]
Following from this, the Royal Commission made two specific recommendations to address what it terms ‘Deliberately lit Fires’. Those two recommendations read as follows:
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ROYAL COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION 35
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Victoria Police continue to pursue a coordinated statewide approach to arson prevention and regularly review its approach to ensure that it contains the following elements:
High-level commitment from senior police
A research program aimed at refining arson prevention and detection strategies
Centralised coordination that includes comprehensive training, periodic evaluation of arson prevention strategies and programs, and promotion of best-practice prevention approaches
A requirement that all fire-prone police service areas have arson prevention plans and programs, according to their level of risk.
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ROYAL COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION 36
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The Commonwealth, states and territories continue to pursue the National Action Plan to Reduce Bushfire Arson in Australia, giving priority to producing a nationally consistent framework for data collection and evaluating current and proposed programs in order to identify and share best-practice approaches.
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[Source: ‘Final Report – Summary’, July 2010, Vol. 1, pp.30-31, by 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, State Government of Victoria ]
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Misfits in Fire Fighting
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It is disturbing that Sokaluk’s lawyer went to considerable effort and persuasion to try to have Sokaluk acquitted on mental illness grounds. Despite the adversarial nature of our legal system, the ego and public profile of lawyers should not be encouraged in spite of justice. Why was Sokaluk entitled to be represented by expensive and exclusive Senior Counsel? The bastard was at best entitled to Legal Aid. What was the total cost to Victorian taxpayers for his legal defence case? Why was the cost not made public?
Sokaluk was not just an arsonist. The scale and impact of his crime escalates him to being a pyroterrorist. But in Australia, the law lags reality. The maximum penalty for arson is 25 years custodial sentence, yet bushfire arson carries a maximum penalty of just 14 or 15 years. Sokaluk received just 14 years – the maximum penalty for arsonists are charged with criminal damage by fire or similar offences under the Bushfire Act or a manslaughter charge if someone dies as a result of the fire.
What is the rationale behind that discrepancy? It is archaic colonial legislation that sends a message that the value of Australia’s natural environment matters not. But when the bush burns, sometimes it lead to 173 human lives destroyed, as well as widespread calamity and wildlife extinctions.
Sokaluk’s 14 years custodial sentence translates to just 15 months in prison for each human he killed by fire. His sentence ignores his inflicting 35 human casualties, 156 houses destroyed, and more than 36,000 hectares of native forest and plantation forest burnt. Solaluk’s penalty is a judicial disgrace. The slap on the wrist penalty sends an sick and enticing message to dormant serial arsonists, that no matter how bad the fire you may light, at worst you get just 14 years. Solaluk should rot in prison. Yet legally technically, Sokaluk could have received the maximum penalty under the Victorian Forests Act of 1958 for ‘Lighting – intentionally or negligently and where authority should have been obtained – or maintaining a fire in the open air in a state forest or national park; failing to prevent the spread of a fire; leaving a fire without taking reasonable precautions to prevent it spreading or causing injury’.
The maximum penalty? 2 years
Australia’s arson laws and penalties are obscenely excusing of mass murder by being burned alive, horrific burn injuries, considerable and absolute property loss, large scale livestock loss by being burned alive, widespread wildlife habitat killing by being burned alive, livelong trauma, ruination of families and communities, immense suffering, widespread habitat destruction, and the irreversible destruction of a region in every sence of the meaning.
Yet Australian backward politicians dismissively treat bush arson akin to the playing with matches of a fire bug.
In the United States, ‘pyroterrorism’ is becoming seriously recognised. It is deemed to be the willful destruction of a Nation’s forests, farms and cities, through the use of fire. On 28th March 2005 the US Homeland Security held a press conference and revealed that they now had an anti-pyroterrorist taskforce. On April 1st, George W. Bush announced that “Anyone caught deliberately setting forest fires as an act of pyroterrorism will be dealt with the same way we treat other terrorists. Pyroterrorists are getting smarter and learning how to create bigger, more unstoppable forest fires… or there are copycats who want to do the same thing.
The Australian Institute of Criminology has concluded that half of Australia’s 20,000 to 30,000 vegetation fires each year are deliberately lit, costing the community $1.6 billion per year. So what is the Australian Government doing about this home grown terrorism? Nothing!
Many bushfire arsonist are disturbingly drawn from the very agencies entrusted to fight fires. But where are the statistics and what is being done about it?
How many misfits serve in volunteer fire fighting across Australia? How many have been psychologically tested as suitable? How many are subject to IQ tests before joining? None? How many dormant Sokaluks does Australian rural fire-fighting have in its ranks?
The Australian Government at federal and delegated state level neglectfully relies upon a low-cost volunteer base that is drawn from a goodwilling Australian culture, but which is dangerously under-resourced, underfunded and recipient of propaganda that perpetuates this.
Consequently, Australia’s non urban fire-fighting is so desperate for volunteers that dormant Sokaluks are unscrutinised, undetected and yet with their bushfire fighting training are trained to become the most deadly bush arsonists of all.
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Armageddon aftermath of Sokaluk’s 2009 Churchill Bushfire Arson– he’ll be out in just 14 years
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‘Police in Victoria are refusing to confirm reports that the major suspect in their investigation into the marysville bushfire is a member of the Country Fire Authority. Earlier this month detectives said they were closing in on the arsonist responsible. The Marysville fire claimed more than 30 lives. Fairfax Media has reported that the CFA fire-fighter is now considered the major suspect and has been questioned and released with investigations continuing. The CFA won’t comment except to say it’s working closely with the Phoenix Taskforce investigating the fires.’
‘A CFA volunteer was jailed for 22 months today for starting a series of bushfires that had to be fought by his comrades in the local brigade. Justice Michael Tinney told Damian Lisle, 36, that any of the fires had the potential to cause catastrophic loss of life and property in one of Victoria’s highest bushfire danger areas, the Herald Sun reports.
Lisle drove around Mt Evelyn throwing lit pieces of paper from his car just days after the first anniversary of Black Saturday in which 173 Victorians lost their lives. Judge Tinney said Lisle started fires in dead-end streets near houses and in bushland and he did not hang around to see what happened. “You lit these fires and you left. Thereafter it was in the lap of the gods,” Judge Tinney said in his County Court sentence.
Lisle pleaded guilty to nine charges that on February 17, 2010, he intentionally caused a bushfire, and to counts of attempting to escape from custody and drink driving. Judge Tinney said Lisle had a history of mental and alcohol problems and at the time of his offending he was suspended from the Mt Evelyn CFA and facing the sack from his job as an assistant supermarket manager. After he was caught, Lisle told police he had drunk eight stubbies and added: “I remember being angry. I don’t know what about.”
Each of the arson counts faced by Lisle carries a maximum of 15 years jail. Judge Tinney said members of the Mt Evelyn brigade told the court that his crimes had a significant impact on CFA morale. The judge said the fact that Lisle was a CFA volunteer and had fought bushfires made him more aware of the danger to life and limb and both general and specific deterrence were important factors in sentencing.
During a court appearance at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court Lisle jumped the dock and tried to escape and the judge said two people were injured trying to restrain him. He set a maximum term of three years and 10 months.’
‘A CFA volunteer has been charged over a series of fires north of Melbourne, including one on Christmas Day. A man will appear in court today charged with lighting a series of bushfires north of Melbourne.
Jarred Brewer, 19, of Darraweit Guim, near Wallan, has been charged with five counts of intentionally starting a bushfire and 16 counts of improper use of emergency services.Brewer was arrested yesterday following a joint operation between Seymour detectives and the arson squad that began in May last year. The charges relate to fires in bush at Wallan and at nearby Mount Disappointment.
Mr Brewer faced Broadmeadows Magistrates’ Court briefly yesterday afternoon before he was remanded until today. Police prosecutor Sen-Constable Renee Azzopardi told the court Mr Brewer had been charged over fires at Mt Disappointment on November 12 and Christmas Day and two fires at Wallan on January 15.
Sen-Constable Azzopardi said he is also alleged to have made 16 calls to 000 reporting fires. At the Christmas Day fire a 20L fuel container and matches were allegedly found.At one of the fires at Wallan investigators believe the fire was started using fire starters. Mr Brewer was allegedly captured on CCTV footage at Safeway in Wallan shortly before the fire with a shopping bag. The court was told that store records showed a BBQ gas lighter and a bag of fire starters were purchased at that time.
Sen-Constable Azzopardi said local emergency services believed their resources were deliberately stretched so that Darraweit Guim fire brigade could be turned out to fires. The court heard that Mr Brewer attended a fire station at one point and became abusive to fire fighters when they wouldn’t allow him on a truck. Court documents reveal that Mr Brewer has also been charged with lighting fires at Wallan on October 10 and November 16.’
The following article is from the Tasmanian Times entitled ‘This is just plain wrong. Why is it allowed to continue?‘ contributed by Tasmanian resident Prue Barratt 20120614. Tigerquoll has contributed to the debate condemning prescribed burning. Further investigation has revealed the extent of the bush arson culture on the Island and is included below.
What’s left of Tombstone Creek old growth rainforest in Tasmania after a ‘Planned Burn’This wet forest was dominated by sassafras, myrtle, tree-ferns and tall Eucalyptus after logging and subsequent regeneration burn, 2006. It is situated at the headwaters of the South Esk River catchment water supply for the town of Launceston.
(Photo by Rob Blakers, 2006)
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‘My name is Prue Barratt and I live in Maydena in the Derwent Valley (Tasmania). I’m writing this to highlight what small towns around this state have to deal with in Autumn and Winter.
Today (Wednesday) started off as a spectacular crisp winter’s day; one of a few really beautiful days we get through our colder months. So I was excited to get outside for the day to enjoy the sun. But by the time I organised myself to venture out it was too late … as I opened my front door I was confronted by smoke … it was literally blowing in my door.
I covered my nose and stepped out to see what was going on and realised there were fires right around our little town; not one fire but a two or maybe three, I couldn’t actually see how many because I couldn’t see and I could hardly breath, I stepped back inside, grabbed the camera, and took the pictures above; this was the view from my roof … 360 degrees surrounded by smoke.
It was one of the worst smoke-outs I had experienced whilst living here and by the time I got back inside I reeked of smoke.
This is just plain wrong. It is the 21st Century on a planet that is worried about carbon pollution! Our leaders need to put an end to these archaic practices now. There is no need to subject communities or the environment in general to this kind off filthy practice.
Tasmania already has one of the country’s highest rates of asthma allergies and lung problems. Why is this allowed to continue? Tassie is supposed to be the “Clean Green State”.
I’m pretty sure the tourist bus loaded with people which crawled through town didn’t think it was a clean green state. I’m pretty sure they were horrified that this happens in a supposed developed country every year.
When your eyes are stinging and you are too scared to open the doors of your home because your house will become unbearably flooded with smoke; when you are concerned for the wellbeing of old and frail family members because you just can’t get away from it unless you completely pack up and leave for the night …
You feel like a prisoner in your own home … in country in this day and age.. There is a serious problem!
Postscript: I just needed to add to my article that three Norske Skog (Boyer pulp mill) employees just turned up on my doorstep and apologised for all the smoke. They weren’t burning coupes but were asked by a couple of locals to burn piles close to their houses; most of the coupes were already burnt earlier in the season, so I need to acknowledge that … but the whole burning off thing needs to stop regardless. They said they were looking into alternatives but it needs to stop now; not later. They have had long enough to change the way they do things … at our expense.’
[end of article]
.Smoke-filled atmosphere engulfing Maydena, South West Tasmania
(Photo by Prue Barratt, April 2012)
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In 2009 paper maker, Norske Skog, with its pulp mill plant situated at Boyer on Tasmania’s Derwent River, axed 50 jobs as a combined consequence of its automation upgrade to its pulp mill plant and due to the structural downturn in paper sales by its newspaper clients.
Ed: Newspapers are losing advertising revenue to Internet based businesses like Seek.com, CarSales.com.au, and HomeSales.com.au and so selling less newspapers and so buying less paper from the likes of Norske Skog.
Pile burning and forest (coupe) burning by Norske Skog is typical business-as-usual deforestation across Tasmania, not only by the forestry industry but by National Parks, the Tasmanian Fire Service and by rural landholders. It is all part of an inherited colonial cult of bush arson that is a key threatening process driving habitat extinctions across the island. Prescribed burning, aka ‘hazard reduction’, is a euphemism for State-sanctioned bush arson which is endemic practice not only across Tasmania’s remanining wild forests, but throughout Australia. It is a major contributor to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are what many scientists argue are Man’s cause of global warming and climate change.
The Gillard Labor Government is about to introduce a Carbon Tax on 1st July 2012, whereby Australia’s major industrial polluters must pay a Carbon Tax of $23 per tonne. Yet the many hundreds of thousands of tonnes of timber that are burnt by bushfires is somehow excluded – whether it be lightning ignitions allowed to get out of control, or deliberate State-sanctioned bush arson. This makes the Carbon Tax nothing but discriminating political greenwashing, with minimal climate impact. Meanwhile, and more critically, Australia’s ecology, regions by regions, is being driven closer to extinction by destructive bushfire management.
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Comments to Prue’s article by Tigerquoll
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‘CEO Bob Gordon and his Forestry Tasmania (FT) forest marauders along with his partners in eco-crime Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) Chief Officer Mike Brown need to be paying Julia’s Carbon Tax. But instead of $23 per tonne, it ought be $23 per cubic metre.
Send the two organisations broke. Do not donate to the TFS bastards. They light more fires than they put out. ‘Fuel’ Reduction is a euphemism for bush arson. It gives ‘em somthing to do in the off season. It reflects the helpless defeatism of Tasmania’s non urban fire emergency service denied proper and effective government resources to put out serious wildfires when they occur.’
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TFS bastards setting fire to native forests is defeatism, knowing that unless native vegetation is converted to sterile parkland that in a real wildlife it is every man for himself.
They even have removed the ‘Low Fire Risk’ category and added a ‘CatastrophicFire Risk’ category. They may as well add an ‘Armageddon’ category and be done with it! It is defeatism at its worst.
Local case in point – look recent Meadowbank Fire near Maydena in February this year east of Karanja. It started on Saturday, reportedly by “accident” at the Meadowbank Dam and burnt out 5000 hectares. Two days later was still officially ‘out of control’. The meaningless and flawed motto of ‘Stay or Go’ was supplanted by the false sense of security of ‘Prepare, Act, Survive’. In reality the pragmatic community message ought to be ‘You’re On Your Own’.
This Tassie Dad’s Army fire agency is more adept at starting bushfires than putting them out.
The under-resourced, raffle funded volunteer dependent model is abject Government neglect of emergency management. Every time someone criticises the non-urban fire fighting performance, the government bureaucracy and politicans hide behinds the nobleness of community volunteers.
Imagine if URBAN fire fighting was volunteer dependent on someone’s pager going off? Goodbye house.
I feel for the volunteers, but have no respect for the policy or organisation.’
Here’s a question..what is the impact on Tasmanian fauna?
Here’s some research…
“It’s spring, and soon we’ll start to get sensationalist stories predicting a horrendous bushfire season ahead. They will carry attacks on agencies for not doing enough to reduce fuel loads in forests close to homes, for unless those living on the urban fringe see their skies filled with smoke in winter they panic about losing their homes in January.
Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn-offs?
…A new scientific paper published in the CSIRO journal Wildlife Research by Michael Clarke, an associate professor in the department of zoology at La Trobe University, suggests the answer to both questions is: we do not know.
Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown.’
State-sanctioned bush arson in Tasmania
[Source: http://www.forestrytasmania.com/fire/fire1.html]
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Bushfires, their smoke and heat, contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. So Bushfire Management has an obligation to reduce bushfires, not create them. Bushfire Management needs to pay a Carbon Tax just like any other industrial polluter.
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‘Forestry tries to spin results of CSIRO Emissions Study’
..more smoke and mirrors from an out-of-touch agency.
‘The Tasmanian Greens today said that a CSIRO study comparing smoke emissions from wood-heaters with forestry burn-offs did nothing to justify Forestry Tasmania’s outdated and unsustainable management practices. The study, commissioned by Forestry Tasmania, found that the majority of smoke pollution in specific parts of the Huon Valley during 2009 and 2010 was caused by wood-heater emissions.
Greens Forestry spokesperson Kim Booth MP said that these results aren’t surprising, particularly in the more densely populated areas such as Geeveston and Grove where the study was conducted.
“This is not a case of one type of smoke pollution being better than another. All smoke emissions are an unwanted nuisance for the community, particularly for those with pre-existing respiratory problems such as asthma.”
“The commissioning and release of this study by Forestry Tasmania is another obvious attempt to justify their so-called regeneration burns. That’s despite the Environment Protection Authority identifying numerous breaches of guideline safety levels for particle emissions caused by burn-offs.”
“We need to be working as a community to reduce all smoke emissions and improve air quality. This means that we must work to educate people on the importance of installing heaters that burn efficiently, and comply with Australian standards.”
“Forestry can’t play down the negative impact of its burn-offs. The Greens receive many complaints from people suffering from respiratory problems, such as asthma, who have no option in some cases but to pack up and leave home during the forest burns season.”
“Proper systems need to be put in place, or its time these burns were stopped once and for all.”
2010: Escaped Controlled Burn at Ansons Bay in mid-Summer
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‘The derived fire location..corresponds to a wildfire at Ansons Bay(north-east Tasmania, near Bay of Fires) , listed on the Tasmanian Fire Service (TFS) webpage on the 23rd of January.
This fire had burnt out 100 ha on 23rd January 2010, and had burnt a total of 200 hectares when reported as extinguished on the 26th.
The fire was reported as an escaped permit burn. The permit burn was ignited on the 22nd of January 2010. The local TFS brigade responded to the wildfire at 14:00 EDT on the 23rd. The wildfire burnt mainly in grassland.
Smoke from a bushfire at Ansons Bay on the 23rd of January 2010 moved westwards towards the Tamar River. The BLANkET air stations at Derby, Scottsdale and Lilydale each detected the smoke as it moved. Ti Tree Bend station(Launceston) and the Rowella station in the lower Tamar also detected the smoke. Derby is approximately 35 km from the fire location, while Ti Tree Bend and the Rowella stations are approximately 100 km from the burn. The peak 10–minute PM2.5 concentrations at these stations were of order 10 to 15 μg m−3.
At Rowella the hourly–averaged PM2.5 reached to near 20 μg m−3 near 21:00 AEST.
[Source: ‘Blanket Brief Report 7: ‘Smoke from a bushfire at Ansons Bay, north–east Tasmania moving into to the Tamar Valley 23rd January 2010’, Air Section, Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), Tasmanian Government, February 2011, ^http://epa.tas.gov.au/Documents/BLANkET_Brief_Report_07.pdf, Read Report]
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Tasmanian Forest Industry – its case for burning native forests every year
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‘The Tasmanian forest industry planned burning program, which includes both burning for forest regeneration, and burning for property protection generally commences in mid-March if conditions are suitable.
.. The Coordinated Smoke Management Strategy developed by the Forest Practices Authority is being used by the Tasmanian forest industry.
As of 2011, all smoke complaints are being received and investigated by the Environment Protection Authority, a Division of the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment. [Ed. But the EPA has no watchdog besides the community, so it can be as incompetent, as negligent, as complicit, as dismissive, as colluding with its sister Tasmanian Government agencies all it likes. The EPA does not have any law that requires it to be publicly transparent. The photos in this article evidence the Tasmanian EPA as an ineffectual and spurious organisation.]
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Forest Regeneration
Fire is an important part of the life cycle of Eucalypts. In nature most eucalypt species require the disturbance provided by fire to regenerate. Eucalypt seeds and seedlings need a mineral soil seedbed, abundant sunlight and reduced competition from other plants to establish and grow. In nature this situation is provided by a major wildfire. Tasmanian forest managers mimic nature by using fire in a planned and controlled way to re-establish healthy fast growing trees after harvesting.
Planned burns are part of an industry-wide programme by :
Forestry Tasmania (FT)
The Forest Industries Asssociation of Tasmania (FIAT).
Tasmania Fire Service
Parks & Wildlife Service, Tasmania.
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Forests & Timber
Forests managed for timber production take more carbon out of the atmosphere over time than unmanaged forests locked up in reserves. Tasmania currently has 47% of forests locked up and unmanaged.
Timber from managed forests is used to build an array of structures from houses to multi-level buildings, sports arenas to architecturally designed public spaces. Timber is light and easy to work with and allows for flexibility and efficiency in design. Timber is warm, aesthetically pleasing and most importantly, renewable. Environments rich in timber have a kinship with nature and make people living and working in them feel at one with the outdoors.
It is so important, in these tough economic times, to use local products. Tasmanian timber produced in the state comes from sustainably managed forests, administered under processes established by Government. In addition, all public and most private forests in Tasmania are third party certified as being sustainably managed by the Australian Forestry Standard. Tasmanian timber is a particularly environmentally friendly choice and we should be using more wood to help combat climate change.
Wood is stored greenhouse gas – held together with stored sunlight. If we are serious about trying to address greenhouse and climate change problems, we should be growing and using more forests, for sustainable energy-efficient products that store carbon and for sustainable biomass-based energy systems.
Harvesting a forest results in the release of some carbon dioxide back into the air from which it came however a considerable portion remains stored in resulting forest products such as furniture, timber for housing and a myriad of paper products.
Ed: Fire is unnatural in old growth wet Eucalypt forests. Many forest plant species are fire sensitive so will not recover in teh evnt of a fire. No fauna are fire tolerant – they either burn to death or die after fire from starvation, exposure or predation. Those who burn forests have no idea of the impacts upon fauna populations, nor the impacts of fire upon biodiversity. Their lay observation upon seeing regrowth of some species is that setting fire to forest habitat must be ok.
Those who perpetuate and extend this myth, fabruicate the notion that fire is healthy and indeed essential for forest regeneration and survival. All new recruits of the Tasmanian Forest Industry, Tasmania Fire Service and Parks & Wildlife Service are duly indoctrinated to this dogma. Of course it is unsubstantiated crap. Al one needs do is walk through an ancient Styx forest that has not been burnt for hundreds of years to disprove the myth.
Those vested interests who stand to profit from deforestation and exploitation of native forests, brandish all protected forest habitat as being ‘locked up’ and ‘unmanaged’. The ecological values of the forests are dismissed as worthless. It is no different to 17th Century traders denied access to Africans for the slave trade.
Timber that is from native old growth forests is not “renewable” unless the industrial logger is prepared to wait 500 plus years to harvest. Logging old growth is eco-theft and irreversibly ecologically destructive.
Tough economic times means that the smart investment is into sustainable industries where there is strong market demand and growth for products not vulnerable to buyer rejection on the basis of immoral sourcing or production.
Biomass-based energy is a technical euphemism for burning forests, which is unacceptable because is causes green house gas emissions. Buring natiuve forests also drive local habitat extinctions.
Use LESS wood NOT more!
2010: Smoke rises into the sky above the Huon Valley in southern Tasmania as the state’s Forestry Department (Forestry Tasmania) conducts fuel-reduction burns on April 18, 2010
[Source: ‘Anger over smoke haze prompts review’ , ABC Northern Tasmania, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/04/19/2877011.htm?site=northtas]
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Parks & Wildlife Service – its case for burning native forests every year
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‘Planned burning is an important part of fire management designed to maintain biodiversity and to reduce the risk posed by bushfires to people, houses, other property and the natural environment. Fire plays a major role in the ecology of the Tasmanian natural environment. Fire can be a vital force in maintaining healthy bush. But in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can also lead to the destruction of unique vegetation communities, human life and property.
Our diverse vegetation communities have differing responses to fire, from potentially devastating impacts in alpine areas and conifer forests, to ecologically sustainable effects in buttongrass moorlands and dry scelerophyll forest. Tasmania’s unique fauna has some interesting adaptations to fire. For some species, it is essential for their habitat requirements.
‘The Parks and Wildlife Service is responsible for the management of bushfires on all reserved land in Tasmania.
This management includes:
control of unplanned bushfires
planned burning to reduce fuel loads and make fire control easier and safer
planned burning to help maintain biodiversity, promote regeneration of plants that depend on fire and to maintain suitable habitat for animals
maintaining assets that assist with bushfire control, for example, fire trails, firebreaks and waterholes.
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Planned Burning of Tasmania’s National Parks (to date) for 2012
The first planned burn area in the table above labelled as ‘Narawntapu‘ applied to Narawntapu National Park, specifically at Cosy Corner, Bay of Fires Conservation Area, in north-east Tasmania. The ecology is renowned for its Wombats and Tasmanian Devils. Where do they go when Parks Service starts fires?
Tasmania’s famous ‘Bay of Fires’
(Narawntapu National Park)
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The posted notice read:
‘Parks and Wildlife Service is today (Tuesday 8 May) conducting a fuel reduction burn in the Bay of Fires Conservation Area south of St Helens at the Cosy Corner North campground. The burn is about 20 hectares. The objective is to reduce fuel loads to provide protection for the campground in the event of a wildfire.’
So somehow the planned burn of 20 hectares extended to nearly 800 hectares inside the protected National Park! Was this yet another escaped burn? Where is the ecological report of damage to flora and fauna? So much for the National Parks motto ‘leave no trace’. How hypocritical!
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“How can walkers help keep Tasmania wild and beautiful?
Leave No Trace is an internationally accepted way of minimising impacts on the places we visit.”
~ Parks and Wildlife Service, Tasmania
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The National Park before the burn
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A wombat in Narawntapu National Park cannot run from fire
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The Burn Area of nearly 2800 hectares of Tasmania’s National for 2012, translates to 28 square kilometres.This is that aggregate area relative to Hobart – the entire map above!It’s like Hobart’s 1967 Black Tuesday every year in Tasmania’s National Parks
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Forest Smoke across southern Tasmania, from planned burning, April 2008
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Tasmania Fire Service – its case for burning native forests every year
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Ed: It doesn’t just have one programme, but two. One programme to burn native forests every year, the other to slash and bulldoze access to get good access to burn the native forests.
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Fuel Reduction Programme
‘Each summer, bushfires in our forests pose a significant threat to communities in rural areas, and on the rural-urban interface. Large, uncontrollable bushfires can have serious consequences for Tasmanians. The Tasmanian Government has committed funds towards a program of planned fuel reduction burns to help protect Tasmanians from the threat of wildfires. The program will see the State’s three firefighting agencies, Forestry Tasmania, the Tasmania Fire Service and the Parks and Wildlife Service combine their expertise in a concerted program aimed at reducing fuel loads around the state.
The objective of the inter-agency Fuel Reduction Burning Program is to create corridors of low fuel loads to help prevent large wildfires. The program complements but does not replace fuel reduction burning and other means of fuel reduction close to houses and other assets.’
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Bushfire Mitigation Programme
‘The Bushfire Mitigation Programme provides funds for construction and maintenance of fire trails and associated access measures that contribute to safer sustainable communities better able to prepare, respond to and withstand the effects of bushfires.
The program is administered by Australian Emergency Management (AEM) within the Australian Government Attorney-General’s Department. Tasmania Fire Service is the lead agency in Tasmania for the Bushfire Mitigation Program.
In the 2009 Budget the Australian Government announced funding of $79.3m over four years for a new Disaster Resilience Program (DRP).
The DRP will consolidate the existing Bushfire Mitigation Program (BMP), the Natural Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) and the National Emergency Volunteer Support Fund (NEVSF) in an effort to increase flexibility for the jurisdictions and streamline the associated administration for both the Commonwealth and the States and Territories.
The Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department is currently working with representatives from each jurisdiction to ensure that the transition to the new DRP is as smooth as possible.
The DRP will commence in 2009-10 and details of the funding arrangements, program guidelines and implementation plans will be announced by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s department and disseminated to the relevant agencies and stakeholders in each jurisdiction in due course.’
Smoke haze from burnoffs pushed Tasmania close to breaching air safety standards last week.
In one 24-hour period, emission levels from the forestry regeneration and fuel-reduction burns “were approaching the standard”, state environmental management director Warren Jones told the Sunday Tasmanian.
Elevated particle levels had been detected in Launceston and Hobart on several days during the week.
A Sunday Tasmanian investigation into the smoke haze has revealed:
Between 5000ha and 7000ha is earmarked for forestry regeneration burns this season.
About 70,000ha of the state’s forest was razed by wildfire in the past summer.
The smoke contains a mix of carbon monoxide, tar, ash, ammonia and known carcinogens such as formaldehyde and benzene.’
The Tasmanian Greens today said that the Parliament needs to commission an independent study into the total social, environmental and economic costs of forestry burns, as they continue to emit pollutants into the air causing distress to the many Tasmanians suffering from respiratory complaints, and also impacting on Tasmania’s clean, green and clever brand.
Greens Health spokesperson Paul ‘Basil’ O’Halloran MP burn-off practice as outdated, old-school and not in line with appropriate practice today, especially when it continues to put thousands of Tasmanians with respiratory complaints in distressing situations. These airborne emissions impact disproportionately on children.
“Once again Tasmania’s beautiful autumn days are blighted by the dense smoke plumes blocking out the sun and choking our air,” Mr O’Halloran said.
“This is an unacceptable situation. It compromises Tasmanians’ health, our environment, and is an insult to common-sense.”
“The Greens are calling for the Minister to commission independent social, environmental and economic impact study of these burns.”
“Tasmania’s tourism industry also has reason for concern over this due to the plumes of smoke that choke up the air sheds and appear as a horrible blight on the Tasmanian Landscape.”
“We also want to see an end to these burns, and are calling on the Minister to consult with the community to establish a date by which this polluting practice will end once and for all.”
“It is also concerning at the impact these burns have on Tasmania’s biodiversity and threatened species such as the Tasmanian Devil, burrowing and freshwater crayfish, and a myriad of other plant and animal species.”
“The annual so-called forest regeneration burns have just commenced with Forestry Tasmania alone intends to conduct 300 coupe burns over five districts, and this will emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, not to mention the risk this poses for the many Tasmanians who suffer from respiratory complaints such as Asthma,” Mr O’Halloran said.
The Killing of Wild Tasmania – Extinction by a Thousand Fires
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These photographs provide an illustration of current Tasmanian forestry practices. The photos are from Coupe RS142E, in the upper valley of Tombstone Creek, one kilometer upstream from the Tombstone Creek Forest Reserve in the northeast highlands of Tasmania. Tombstone Creek is a tributary of the upper South Esk River, the headwaters of the water supply for Launceston.
Majestic ancient Rainforest in Tombstone Creek (c.1000 AD to 2006)BEFORE the Tasmanian Government’s State-sanctioned arson
(Photo taken in 2003)
.
AFTER
(Photo taken in October 2006)
‘I first came upon this forest in May 2003, and was so struck by it’s beauty that I made several return visits during the following 12 months. This steep valley-side supported a wet and mossy forest characterized by myrtles, blackwood, tall eucalypt emergents, groves of tree-ferns up to eight meters high and some of the largest sassafras that I have seen anywhere in Tasmania. Many of the sassafras trees had trunk diameters of one meter or more at chest height.
This forest was clear-felled by cable-logging in the summer of 2005 and burnt in an exceedingly hot fire in April 2006. All of the rainforest trees were killed outright. The site is steep and soils are sandy and the valley side was left in a condition which was highly vulnerable to severe soil erosion. This coupe is bordered by some areas that were logged within the last 10 years or so, and the regrowth in these adjacent coupes is a mix of wattle and eucalypt. A narrow strip of rainforest remains at the new coupe’s lowest edge, along Tombstone Creek, but recolonization by the rainforest trees cannot occur, due to the competitive advantage of the eucalyptus and wattles in a full sunlight situation. This is especially so in the context of a drying climate. Simply put, the process enacted here is conversion, in this case from a mature mixed rainforest dominated by myrtle and sassafras, with eucalypt emergents, to an uncultivated crop of wattle and, presumably, the aerially sown eucalypt species.
In this process of conversion, which is far from being confined to this particular coupe, two options are precluded. Firstly, the option for the natural forest to continue to exist for it’s own sake and to develop towards rainforest, a point from which, given the age of the eucalypts, it was not far removed. The second opportunity forgone is for the possibility of alternative uses of species other than wattle and eucalypt, including wood uses, for future generations of people.
Other negative and significant ecological impacts have occurred here, including devastating effects on wildlife, altered hydrology, atmospheric pollution, weed invasion and not least, the release of massive amounts of carbon, previously sequestered within the soil and the living vegetation, into the atmosphere.
The scenes depicted here are all within 100 meters of each other. The forest scenes were photographed in 2003, the other scenes in October 2006.
‘It’s spring, and soon we’ll start to get sensationalist stories predicting a horrendous bushfire season ahead. They will carry attacks on agencies for not doing enough to reduce fuel loads in forests close to homes, for unless those living on the urban fringe see their skies filled with smoke in winter they panic about losing their homes in January.
Fighting fires with fear is a depressing annual event and easy sport on slow news days. Usually the debate fails to ask two crucial questions: does hazard reduction really do anything to save homes, and what’s the cost to native plants and animals caught in burn-offs?
A new scientific paper published in the CSIRO journal Wildlife Research by Michael Clarke, an associate professor in the department of zoology at La Trobe University, suggests the answer to both questions is: we do not know.
What we do know is a lot of precious wild places are set on fire, in large part to keep happy those householders whose kitchen windows look out on gum trees.
Clarke says it is reasonable for land management agencies to try to limit the negative effects of large fires, but we need to be confident our fire prevention methods work. And just as importantly, we need to be sure they do not lead to irreversible damage to native wildlife and habitat.
He argues we need to show some humility, and writes: “The capacity of management agencies to control widespread wildfires ignited by multiple lightning strikes in drought conditions on days of extreme fire danger is going to be similar to their capacity to control cyclones.” In other words, sometimes we can do zip.
Much hazard reduction is performed to create a false sense of security rather than to reduce fire risks, and the effect on wildlife is virtually unknown.
The sooner we acknowledge this the sooner we can get on with the job of working out whether there is anything we can do to manage fires better. We need to know whether hazard reduction can be done without sending our wildlife down a path of firestick extinctions.
An annual burn conducted each year on Montague Island, near Narooma on the NSW far South Coast, highlights the absurdity of the current public policy free-for-all, much of which is extraordinarily primitive. In 2001 park rangers burnt a patch of the devastating weed kikuyu on the island. The following night a southerly blew up, the fire reignited and a few penguins were incinerated. It was a stuff-up that caused a media outcry: because cute penguins were burnt, the National Parks and Wildlife Service was also charcoaled.
Every year since there has been a deliberate burn on Montague, part of a program to return the island to native vegetation. Each one has been a circus – with teams of staff, vets, the RSPCA, ambulances, boats and helicopters – all because no one wants any more dead penguins.
Meanwhile every year on the mainland, park rangers and state forests staff fly in helicopters tossing out incendiary devices over wilderness forests, the way the UN tosses out food packages. Thousands of hectares are burnt, perhaps unnecessarily, too often, and worse, thousands of animals that are not penguins (so do not matter) are roasted. All to make people feel safe. Does the burning protect nearby towns? On even a moderately bad day, probably not. Does it make people feel better? Yes.
Clarke’s paper calls for the massive burn-offs to be scrutinised much more closely. “In this age of global warming, governments and the public need to be engaged in a more sophisticated discussion about the complexities of coping with fire in Australian landscapes,” he writes.
He wants ecological data about burns collected as routinely as rainfall data is gathered by the agricultural industry. Without it, hazard reduction burning is flying scientifically blind and poses a dangerous threat to wildlife.
“To attempt to operate without … [proper data on the effect of bushfires] should be as unthinkable as a farmer planting a crop without reference to the rain gauge,” he writes.
In the coming decades, native plants and animals will face enough problems – most significantly from human-induced climate chaos – without having to dodge armies of public servants armed with lighters. Guesswork and winter smoke are not enough to protect our towns and assets now, and the risk of bushfires increases with the rise in carbon dioxide.
James Woodford is the editor of www.realdirt.com.au.
This article was initially written by this editor and published in the Blue Mountains Gazette newspaper on 20051005 as a letter to the editor, entitled ‘RFS strategy misguided‘.
.19th Century heritage-listed ‘Six Foot Track’
..bulldozed by the Rural Fire Service in July 2005, widened into a convenient Fire Trail for its fire truck crews.
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It has been revealed that the June bulldozing or grading of the Six Foot Track near Megalong Creek (Blue Mountains, New South Wales) was a mere drop in the Rural Fire Service (RFS) Bushfire Mitigation Programme.
Across the Blue Mountains, some twenty natural reserves including the Six Foot Track were targeted under the RFS 2004-05 Fire Trail Strategy:
Edith Falls
McMahons Point
Back Creek
Cripple Creek
Plus some 95 hectares inside the Blue Mountains National Park.
According to the Australian Government’s (then) Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS) website, some $151,195 was granted to the RFS in the Blue Mountains alone, for it to bulldoze and burn 144 hectares of native bushland under the euphemism of “addressing bushfire mitigation risk priorities” (Ed: Read ‘bush arson‘)
‘The Six Foot Track Conservation and Management Plan 1997, Vol II’ lists numerous vulnerable species of fauna recorded near Megalong Creek – the Glossy Black-Cockatoo (Clyptorhynchus lathami), Giant Burrowing Frog (Heleioporus australiacus), Spotted-tailed Quoll (Dasyurus maculatus).
Spotted-tailed Quoll
(Dasyurus maculatus)
Blue Mountains top order predator, competing with the Dingo
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The RFS contractors wouldn’t have had a clue if they were within 100 metres or 1 metre of rare, vulnerable or threatened species.
The RFS is not exempt from destroying important ecological habitat; rather it is required to have regard to the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD).
The ‘Rationale‘ of this RFS ESD policy states at Clause 1.2:
‘The Bush Fire Coordinating Committee, under the Rural Fires Act 1997 Sec 3 (d), is required to have regard to ESD as outlined in the Protection of the Environment Administration Act 1991, which sets out the following principles:
a) The precautionary principle namely, that if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. In the application of the precautionary principle, public and private decisions should be guided by:
i. careful evaluation to avoid, wherever practicable, serious or irreversible damage to the environment, and ii. an assessment of the risk-weighted consequences of various options.
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b) Inter-generational equity namely, that the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment are maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations
.
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c) Conservation of biological diversity and ecological integrity should be a fundamental consideration in all decisions.
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d) Recognising the economic values that the natural environment provides. The natural environment has values that are often hard to quantify but provide a benefit to the entire community. By recognising that the natural environment does have significant economic and social values we can improve decision making for the present and future generations.’
.
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Yet the RFS policy on hazard reduction is woefully loose in the ‘Bushfire Co-ordinating Committee Policy 2 /03 on ESD‘ – which (on paper) advocates protecting environmental values and ensuring that ESD commitments are adopted and adhered to by contractors.
Experience now confirms this policy is nothing more than ‘greenwashing’. The RFS wouldn’t know what environmental values were if they drove their fire truck into a Blkue Mountains upland swamp. There is not one ecologist among them.
While the critical value of dedicated RFS volunteer fire-fighters fighting fires is without question, what deserves questioning is the unsustainable response of the RFS ‘old guard’ to fire trails and hazard reduction with token regard for sensitive habitat. Repeated bushfire research confirms that bushfires are mostly now caused by:
Bush arson (hazard reduction included, escaped or otherwise)
More residential communities encroaching upon bushland.
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Under the ‘Blue Mountains Bushfire Management Committee Bushfire Risk Management Plan’(Ed: their bureaucratic name), key objectives are patently ignored:
‘Ensure that public and private land owners and occupiers understand their bushfire management responsibilities’
‘Ensure that the community is well informed about bushfire protection measures and prepared for bushfire events through Community Fireguard programs’
‘Manage bushfires for the protection and conservation of the natural, cultural, scenic and recreational features , including tourism values, of the area’.
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Instead, the Rural Fire Service is content to look busy by burning and bulldozing native bushland. The RFS actively demonises native vegetation as a ‘fuel hazard‘, in the much the same way that ignorant colonists of the 18th and 19th centuries demonised Australia’s unique wildlife as ‘vermin‘ and ‘game‘.
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Further Reading:
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[1] Previous article on The Habitat Advocate: ‘RFS Bulldozes Six Foot Track‘ (published 20101220): [>Read Article]
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[2] Tip of the Bush-Arson Iceberg
What these government funded and State-sanctioned bush-arsonists get up to, deliberately setting fire to wildlife habitat, is an ecological disgrace.
The following list is from just 2005 of the vast areas of native vegetation deliberately burnt across New South Wales in just this one year. [Source: DOTARS].
Not surprisingly, this State-sanctioned bush-arson information is no longer published by government each year for obvious clandestine reasons, as the bush-arson continues out of the public eye.
The hazard reduction cult is similarly perpetuated across other Australian states – Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, West Australia as well as Northern Territory and the ACT. No wonder Australia’s record of wildlife extinctions tragically leads the world! There is little precious rich wildlife habitat left.
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National Park and Wildlife Service (NSW) Bush Arson:
(Note: ‘NR’ = Nature Reserve, ‘NP’ = National Park, ‘SCA’ = State Conservation Area… as if these bastards care)
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Baalingen NR
5
Baalingen NR
6
Bald Rock NP
7
Banyabba NR
0.5
BANYABBA NR
3
BANYABBA NR
24
BANYABBA NR
8
Barakee NP
6
Barool NP
20
Barool NP
6
Barool NP
5
Barool NP
4
Barool NP
2
Barool NP
5
Barrington Tops NP
2.5
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
18
Barrington Tops NP
6
Barrington Tops NP
16
Barrington Tops NP
11
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
4
Barrington Tops NP
2
Barrington Tops NP
1
Barrington Tops NP
3
Basket Swamp NP
1
Basket Swamp NP
12
Basket Swamp NP
2
Basket Swamp NP
4
Bellinger River NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
0.8
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
0.9
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
13
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
0.4
Ben Boyd NP
1
Ben Boyd NP
2
Ben Boyd NP
3
Ben Boyd NP
5
Ben Boyd NP
3.6
Ben Boyd NP
1.9
Ben Boyd NP
1.6
Ben Halls Gap NP
3
Bindarri NP
2
Black Bulga SCA
8
Black Bulga SCA
12
Black Bulga SCA
21
Blue Mountains NP
42
Blue Mountains NP
8.3
Blue Mountains NP
23
Blue Mountains NP
10
Blue Mountains NP
12
Bogendyra NR
Bolivia NR
1
BOLLONOLLA NR
2
Bondi Gulf NR
8
Bondi Gulf NR
6
Bondi Gulf NR
10
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.3
BONGIL BONGIL NP
0.5
Boonoo Boonoo NP
9
Boonoo Boonoo NP
10
Booti Booti NP
0.5
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Booti Booti NP
0.3
Booti Booti NP
3
Border Range NP
6
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
3
Border Ranges NP
4
Border Ranges NP
2.8
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
0.3
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.9
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.5
Bouddi NP
1.9
Bouddi NP
1.1
Bouddi NP
0.6
Bouddi NP
2.3
Bournda NR
10
Bournda NR
5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Bournda NR
0.5
Brindabella NP
20
Brisbane Water NP
4.4
Brisbane Water NP
2.4
Brisbane Water NP
3.7
Brisbane Water NP
3.6
Brisbane Water NP
0.3
Brisbane Water NP
3.1
Brisbane Water NP
0.6
Budawang NP
4.8
Budderoo NP
10
Bugong NP
3.1
Bundgalung NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
7
BUNDJALUNG NP
4.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
8
BUNDJALUNG NP
1.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
0.5
BUNDJALUNG NP
6
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
3
BUNDJALUNG NP
4
BUNDJALUNG NP
2
BUNDJALUNG NP
1
Bundundah Reserve
1.94
Bundundah Reserve/Morton NP
4.7
Bungawalbyn NP
2
Bungawalbyn NP
2.25
Bungawalbyn NP
4
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
3
Bungawalbyn NP
4.5
Bungawalbyn NP
6.5
Bungawalbyn NP
5
Bungawalbyn NP
1.65
Bungawalbyn NP
1.5
Burnt Down Scrub NR
2
Burnt School NR
2
Burrinjuck NR
8
Burrinjuck NR
15
Burrinjuck NR
3
Butterleaf NP
Butterleaf NP
3
Butterleaf NP
3.2
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
1.6
Butterleaf NP
1.2
Butterleaf NP
2
Butterleaf NP
1.8
Butterleaf NP
1.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
2.3
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
0.4
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
2.9
Butterleaf NP
5.3
Butterleaf NP
4
Butterleaf NP
3.3
Butterleaf NP
3.6
Butterleaf NP
1.5
Butterleaf NP
8.8
Butterleaf NP
0.5
Capoompeta NP
10
Cataract NP
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1.5
Cataract NP
2
Cataract NP
1
Clayton Chase
5
Clayton Chase
10
Clayton Chase
3.5
Clayton Chase
4
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
3
Clayton Chase
4
Conjola NP
5.7
Conjola NP
1.8
Conjola NP
8.3
Conjola NP
4.8
Conjola NP
2.9
Conjola NP
4.5
Conjola NP
6.5
Coolah Tops NR
28
Coolah Tops NR
1
Coolah Tops NR
6
Copeland Tops SCA
3
Copeland Tops SCA
3.5
Corramy SCA
0.7
Cottan-bimbang NP
6
Cottan-bimbang NP
16
Cottan-bimbang NP
15
Culgoa NP
30
Curramore NP
Curramore NP
8
Curramore NP
8.9
Curramore NP
11
Curramore NP
5.5
Dapper NR
10
Deua NP
15.2
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
1
Deua NP
4
Deua NP
21.5
Deua NP
2.1
Deua NP
1.4
Deua NP
3.3
Deua NP
8.5
Deua NP
20.8
Deua NP
5.3
Deua NP
6.6
Deua NP
28.2
Deua NP
5.65
DUNGGIR NP
4
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.5
Eurobodalla NP
0.8
Eurobodalla NP
2.4
Eurobodalla NP
2
Flaggy creekNR
3
Flaggy creekNR
1.8
GANAY NR
2
GANAY NR
2
Garawarra SCA
Garby NR
2
Gardens of Stone NP
18
Gibraltar NP
14
Goobang NP
5
Goobang NP
25
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
12
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
7
GUMBAYNGIR SCA
6
Ironbark NR
13.5
Jerrawangala NP
6.83
Jervis Bay NP
2.37
Jervis Bay NP
5.42
Jervis Bay NP
0.56
Jervis Bay NP
0.82
Jervis Bay NP
1.45
Jervis Bay NP
1.72
Jervis Bay NP
0.21
Jervis Bay NP
0.32
Jervis Bay NP
0.7
Jervis Bay NP
0.4
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.35
Jervis Bay NP
0.48
Jervis Bay NP
1.03
Jervis Bay NP
0.65
Jervis Bay NP
1.91
Jervis Bay NP
0.34
Jervis Bay NP
0.95
Jervis Bay NP
1.46
Jervis Bay NP
0.71
Jervis Bay NP
1.07
Jingellic NR
20
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
28
Karuah NR
10
Karuah NR
12
Karuah NR
1
Kings Plains NP
7
Kings Plains NP
0
Kings Plains NP
4
Koreelah NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
30
Kosciuszko NP
9.5
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
22
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kosciuszko NP
17
Kosciuszko NP
5
Kosciuszko NP
28
Kosciuszko NP
9
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
6
Kosciuszko NP
26
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
2.5
Kosciuszko NP
8.9
Kosciuszko NP
10
Kosciuszko NP
11
Kosciuszko NP
4.8
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
19
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
7.2
Kosciuszko NP
13
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
33
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
18
Kosciuszko NP
15
Kosciuszko NP
12
Kwiambal NP
7
Kwiambal NP
3
Kwiambal NP
2
Kwiambal NP
2.25
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.3
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Lake Macquarie SCA
0.4
Ledknapper NR
15
Linton NR
12.5
Meroo NP
2.4
Meroo NP
0.9
Meroo NP
0.6
Meroo NP
3.3
Meroo NP
3.9
Meroo NP
3.5
Meroo NP
0.5
Morton NP
5.9
Morton NP
8.3
Morton NP
3.8
Morton NP
6
Morton NP
13
Morton NP
0.4
Morton NP
4.5
Morton NP
5
Morton NP
2.7
Morton NP
0.7
Morton NP
2.1
Morton NP
1
Morton NP
6
Mt Canobolas SCA
1
Mt Clunnie NP
6.5
Mt Dowling NR
2
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
11
MT NEVILLE NR
1.5
MT NEVILLE NR
3.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
4
MT PIKAPENE NP
7
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
3
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
0.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
6
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1
MT PIKAPENE NP
2.5
MT PIKAPENE NP
2
MT PIKAPENE NP
1.5
Mummell Gulf NP
3
Mummell Gulf NP
7
Mummell Gulf NP
5
Munmorah SRA
0.7
Munmorah SRA
0.8
Munmorah SRA
0.45
Munmorah SRA
1
Munmorah SRA
2
Munmorah SRA
0.9
Munmorah SRA
1.6
Muogamarra NR
1
Murramarang NP
0.9
Murramarang NP
8
Murramarang NP
1
Murramarang NP
5.1
Murramarang NP
8.2
Murramarang NP
3.1
Murramarang NP
6.8
Murramarang NP
16
Murramarang NP
4.3
Murramarang NP
4
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
5
Myall Lakes NP
1.5
Myall Lakes NP
2
Myall Lakes NP
1
Myall Lakes NP
5
NGAMBAA NR
2
NGAMBAA NR
5
Nombinnie NR
10
Nymboida NP
6
Nymboida NP
12
Nymboida NP
3
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
1
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
3.2
Nymboida NP
4.5
Nymboida NP
2
Nymboida NP
4
Nymboida NP
2.8
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
4.2
Nymboida NP
7
Nymboida NP
6
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
10.7
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
19.1
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
13.4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
18
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
15
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
33
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
5
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
4
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
3
Oxley Wild Rivers NP
7
Parma Creek NR
0.21
Parma Creek NR
0.07
Parma Creek NR
0.3
Parma Creek NR
0.01
Parma Creek NR
0.29
Parma Creek NR
5
Paroo Darling NP
60
Policemans Cap
10
Razorback NR
17
Richmond Range NP
3.9
Richmond Range NP
6.5
Richmond Range NP
3.8
Richmond Range NP
4.5
Richmond Range NP
5.5
Richmond Range NP
9
Royal NP
1
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.09
Seven Mile Beach NP
1.79
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.24
Seven Mile Beach NP
0.74
Seven Mile Beach NP
2.03
Severn River NR
6
Single NP
21
South East Forest NP
5
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
10.9
South East Forest NP
1.3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2.8
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
1.2
South East Forest NP
2
South East Forest NP
5.1
South East Forest NP
3.5
South East Forest NP
0.5
South East Forest NP
6
South East Forest NP
3
South East Forest NP
1
South East Forest NP
5.5
South East Forest NP
0.8
Stoney Batter NR
6
Tapitallee NR
0.52
Tapitallee NR
0.33
Tapitallee NR
0.36
Tapitallee NR
0.32
Tarlo River NP
3.8
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
2.9
Tarlo River NP
5.9
Tarlo River NP
6.5
Tarlo River NP
2.7
Tarlo River NP
2.1
Tarlo River NP
6
Tollingo NR
150
Tomaree NP
1.8
Tooloom NP
3
Toonumbar NP
31.9
Toonumbar NP
8.5
Toonumbar NP
17
Toonumbar NP
21.5
Triplarina NR
0.71
Triplarina NR
0.32
Triplarina NR
0.66
Triplarina NR
0.75
Triplarina NR
1.34
Triplarina NR
0.31
Triplarina NR
1.24
Triplarina NR
1.35
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
48
Ungazetted (Kalyarr NP)
26
Unknown
7
Wa Hou NR
10
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
11
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
7
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wa Hou NR
1
Wallaroo NR
3
Wallaroo NR
1.5
Wallaroo NR
8
Wallaroo NR
5
Wallaroo NR
11
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
7
Wallaroo NR
16
Wallaroo NR
6
Wallingat NP
2
Wallingat NP
1.3
Wallingat NP
3.6
Wallingat NP
3.3
Washpool Np
18
Washpool NP
5.3
Washpool NP
5.6
Washpool NP
7.1
Washpool NP
6.4
Washpool NP
1.6
Washpool NP
7
Washpool NP
2.8
Watson’s Creek NR
5
Wereboldera SCA
9
Woggoon NR
144
Wollemi NP
21
Wollemi NP
12
Wollemi NP
10
Wollemi NP
30
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
11
Wollemi NP
7
Wollemi NP
16
Wollemi NP
2
Wollemi NP
8
Wollemi NP
5
Woodford Island NR
1.5
Woodford Island NR
2
Woodford Island NR
3
Woodford Island NR
3
Woollamia NR
1.51
Woollamia NR
0.77
Woollamia NR
1.95
Woollamia NR
1.88
Woollamia NR
0.74
Woomargama NP
15
Yabbra NP
8
Yabbra NP
45
Yango NP
0.45
Yanununbeyan NP
11
YARRIABINNI NP
2
YARRIABINNI NP
3
YARRIABINNI NP
5
YARRIABINNI NP
6
YARRIABINNI NP
4
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
YURAYGIR NP
0.03
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
3.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
1.5
Yuraygir NP
28
Yuraygir NP
10
Yuraygir NP
12
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
1
Yuraygir NP
4
Yuraygir NP
3.5
3,785.10 Ha
i.e. An area 6km x 6km
.
NSW Local Government Areas (LGAs)
Bush Fire Management Committee / LGA
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area (km2)
Blue Mountains
Northern Strategic Line -Primary
8
Blue Mountains
De Faurs Trail – Mt Wilson -Primary
2.8
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.5
Blue Mountains
Nellies Glen Fire Trail
2.8
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail – Primary
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mt Piddington Trail – Hornes Point
N/A
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
20
Bombala
Mt Rixs Fire Trail (PT)
6
Bombala
Roaring Camp Fire Trail (PT)
12
Cooma-Monaro
Brest Fire Trail (2) (PT)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Calabash Fire Trail (2) (PT)
22
Cooma-Monaro
Murrumbucca Fire Trail (2) (ST)
15
Cooma-Monaro
Bridge Fire Trail (2) (PT)
6
Cooma-Monaro
Log In Hole Fire Trail (2) (PT)
5
Gloucester
Upper Avon Fire Trail
11
Greater Argyle
Mountain Ash Fire Trail
10
Greater Argyle
Mootwingee Fire Trail
6
Greater Hume
Murphy’s Fire Trail
0.2
Greater Hume
Mandaring Fire Trail
1
Greater Queanbeyan City
Queanbeyan River Fire Trail
5.5
Greater Queanbeyan City
Gourock Fire Trail
5.8
Hawkesbury District
Jacks Trail
1.6
Hawkesbury District
Duffys Trail (2) ?tenure
3
Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
Mallee
No 21 Fire Trail
20
Namoi/Gwydir
Warialda State Forest
6.5
Namoi/Gwydir
Zaba-Kaiwarra-Kiora Fire Trail (check)
10
Namoi/Gwydr
Blue Nobby Fire Trail (check)
8
Namoi/Gwydr
Araluen Fire Trail (check)
6
Snowy River
Snowy Plain Fire Trail (2) (PT)
18
Snowy River
Crackenback Fire Trail (PT)
10
Snowy River
Devils Hole Fire Trail (PT)
18
Snowy River
Golden Age Fire Trail (2) (PT)
8
Sutherland
Sabugal Pass Fire Trail
N/A
SW Mallee
Various Fire Trails
N/A
SW Mallee
Oberwells Fire Trail
28
SW Mallee
Mandleman Fire Trail
40
Upper Lachlan
Johnsons Creek Fire Trail
15
Warringah/Pittwater
Lovett Bay Trail (2)
2.5
Warringah/Pittwater
Elvina Bay Trail (2)
1.5
Yass Valley
Nelanglo Fire Trail
21
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 1
7
Yass Valley
Hayshed Fire Trail 2
7
391.90 km2
i.e. An area 20km x 20km
.
Forests NSW (government’s industrial logger of NSW remnant forests).
(Forests NSW did not publish the area burnt, only the cost. As a rule of thumb use $3000/square km)
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
NSW Allocation
Clarence Zone
Dalmorton SF
$30,000
Future Forests
Swan
$20,050
Future Forests
Tindall
$10,680
Future Forests
Tooloom
$10,425
Future Forests
Mazzer
$7,341
Future Forests
Kungurrabah
$4,435
Future Forests
Morpeth Park
$3,773
Future Forests
Loughnan
$3,155
Future Forests
Inglebar
$3,000
Future Forests
Lattimore
$2,604
Future Forests
Byrne
$1,755
Future Forests
Ziull 4
$1,677
Future Forests
Lejag
$1,670
Future Forests
Ziull 2
$1,600
Future Forests
Bates
$1,563
Future Forests
Ziull 3
$1,454
Future Forests
Envirocom
$1,410
Future Forests
Morgan
$1,361
Future Forests
McNamara
$1,279
Future Forests
Neaves
$967
Future Forests
Zuill
$872
Future Forests
Boyle
$807
Future Forests
Fitzpatrick
$791
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Morrow
$785
Future Forests
Wallwork
$665
Future Forests
Smith
$665
Future Forests
Wilson
$622
Future Forests
Jarramarumba
$600
Future Forests
Hession
$597
Future Forests
Edwards
$563
Future Forests
Maunder
$558
Future Forests
Kuantan
$515
Future Forests
Billins
$484
Future Forests
Cox
$475
Future Forests
Paterson
$461
Future Forests
Gladys
$415
Future Forests
O’Keefe
$371
Future Forests
Woodcock
$369
Future Forests
Pratten
$346
Future Forests
Truswell
$323
Future Forests
Divine
$323
Future Forests
Hastings
$323
Future Forests
White
$300
Future Forests
Miller
$300
Future Forests
Koop
$300
Future Forests
Lacy
$277
Future Forests
Nosrac
$277
Future Forests
Tully
$277
Future Forests
Baker
$277
Future Forests
Yaganegi
$277
Future Forests
Siezowski
$254
Future Forests
Zuill
$254
Future Forests
Atcheson
$254
Future Forests
Dissevelt
$254
Future Forests
Hoy
$254
Future Forests
Woods
$254
Future Forests
Dawson
$254
Future Forests
Hagan
$254
Future Forests
Skelly
$231
Future Forests
Robards
$231
Future Forests
Maunder
$231
Future Forests
Day
$231
Future Forests
O’Connell
$231
Future Forests
Kompara
$231
Future Forests
Carmen
$231
Future Forests
Maurer
$231
Future Forests
Cunin
$208
Future Forests
GCC
$208
Future Forests
White
$208
Future Forests
Hayer
$208
Future Forests
Southgate
$208
Future Forests
Peck
$208
Greater Taree
Kiwarrak SF
$40,000
Hastings
Cowarra SF
$30,000
Hastings
Caincross SF
$4,000
Hume
Clearing fire trails
$100,000
Hume
New FT
$6,000
Hunter
Pokolbin SF
$13,600
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Myall River SF
$12,800
Hunter
Heaton SF
$12,400
Hunter
Bulahdelah SF
$6,100
Hunter
Watagan SF
$3,200
Hunter
Awaba SF
$3,200
Hunter
Myall River SF
$3,100
Macquarie
Warrengong
$16,250
Macquarie
Vulcan & Gurnang
$11,519
Macquarie
Kinross SF
$8,800
Macquarie
Mount David
$6,101
Macquarie
Newnes SF
$5,199
Macquarie
Printing 25 fire atlas’
$2,048
Macquarie
Black Rock Ridge
$447
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Knorrit SF
$36,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Taree
Yarratt SF
$16,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Boonanghi SF
$37,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Northern Break
$9,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Caincross SF
$3,000
Mid-Nth Coast – Wauchope
Western Break
$2,000
Monaro
Clearing fire trails
$114,685
North East
Thumb Creek SF
$46,000
North East
Candole SF
$29,535
North East
Various State Forests
$20,000
North East
Mt Belmore SF
$12,115
North East
Candole SF
$8,900
North East
Lower Bucca SF
$5,500
North East
All North Region
$3,300
North East
Wild Cattle SF
$3,000
North East
Orara East SF
$1,900
Northern -Casino
Barragunda
$11,522
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2003
$8,847
Northern -Casino
Yaraldi 2004
$3,207
Richmond Valley
Bates
$20,000
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$13,154
Richmond Valley
Swanson
$12,000
Richmond Valley
McNamara
$10,180
Richmond Valley
Whiporie SF
$9,582
Southern
Pollwombra FT
$6,360
Southern-Eden
Various – whole district
$112,019
Tamworth
Nundle SF
$40,000
Walcha
Nowendoc SF
$30,000
Walcha
Styx River SF
$20,000
$1,073,482
i.e. Approximately an area 20km x 20km
.
NSW Department of Lands (what native vegetation’s left).
Bush Fire Management Committee
Reserve / Activity Name
Treatment Area Ha / Other
Treatment Area (km2)
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd
5
Baulkham Hills
Porters Rd / Cranstons Rd (2)
4
Baulkham Hills
Pauls Road Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Mount View Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Idlewild
2
Baulkham Hills
Maroota Tracks Trail
7
Baulkham Hills
Yoothamurra Trail
1
Baulkham Hills
Kellys Arm Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Ridge Trail
5
Baulkham Hills
Dargle Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Days Road Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Dickinsons Trail
6
Baulkham Hills
Fingerboard Trail
3
Baulkham Hills
Floyds Road Trail
8
Baulkham Hills
Neichs Road Trail
4
Bega
Eden Strategic Fire Trail
3
Bega
Illawambera Fire Trail
1
Bega
Merimbula/Turu Beach Strategic Protection
2
Bega
Yankees Gap
2
Bega
Millingandi Special Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Wallagoot Strategic Protection (Trail)
1.2
Bega
South Eden Strategic Protection (Trail)
1
Bega
Merimbula/Pambula Strategic Protection (APZ)
1
Bega
Pacific St Tathra
0.5
Bland
Bland Villages (FTM)
2
Bland
Water Tower Reserve FTM
3
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Stage 2
5
Blue Mountains
Cripple Creek Fire Trail Complex
5
Blue Mountains
Caves Creek Trail
0.4
Blue Mountains
Edith Falls Trail
2
Blue Mountains
Boronia Rd – Albert Rd Trails
1
Blue Mountains
Perimeter Trail – North Hazelbrook
1.5
Blue Mountains
McMahons Point Trail – Kings Tableland
7
Blue Mountains
Back Creek Fire Trail
3.2
Blue Mountains
Mitchell’s Creek Fire Trail
3.5
Bombala
Gibraltar Ridge Fire Trail
11
Bombala
Burnt Hut Fire Trail
5
Bombala
Merriangah East Fire Trail
12
Bombala
Bombala Towns & Villages (Trails)
10
Campbelltown
St Helens Park – Wedderburn Rd (Barriers)
0.3
Campbelltown
Barrier / Gate
Campbelltown
Riverview Rd Fire Trail
0.65
Canobolas
Calula Range FTM
Canobolas
Spring Glen Estate FTM
Cessnock
Neath South West Fire Trail
2
Cessnock
Neath South East Fire Trail
1.5
Cessnock
Neath North Fire Trail (2)
1
Cessnock
Gates – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Asset Protection Zones
Cessnock
Signs – Fire Trails
Cessnock
Kearsley Fire Trail
0.5
Cessnock
Neath – South (Trail)
4
Cessnock
Neath – North (Trail)
2
Clarence Valley
Bowling Club Fire Trail
1
Clarence Valley
Brooms Head Fire Trail
0.2
Clarence Valley
Ilarwill Village
0.3
Cooma-Monaro
Chakola Fire Trail
21
Cooma-Monaro
Good Good Fire Trail
12
Cooma-Monaro
Inaloy Fire Trail
19
Cooma-Monaro
Cowra Creek Fire Trail
4
Cooma-Monaro
David’s Fire Trail
2.1
Cooma-Monaro
Clear Hills Fire Trail
5
Cooma-Monaro
Mt Dowling Fire Trail
16
Cooma-Monaro
Towneys Ridge Fire Trail
6
Cunningham
Warialda Periphery 2
20
Cunningham
Upper Bingara Fire Trail
Dungog
Dungog Fire Trail Signs
Far North Coast
Byrangary Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Main Arm Fire Trail (NC67)
2
Far North Coast
Burringbar Fire Trail (NC69)
1
Far North Coast
Mill Rd Fire Trail (NC95)
1
Far North Coast
Broken Head Fire Trail (NC68)
0.5
Far North Coast
New Brighton Fire Trail (NC44)
0.5
Far North Coast
Mooball Spur Fire Trail
1
Far North Coast
Palmwoods Fire Trail (NC06)
0.5
Gloucester
Coneac Trail
6
Gloucester
Moores Trail
6
Gloucester
Mt Mooney Fire Trail
6
Gosford District
Signs – Fire Trails
Great Lakes
Ebsworth Fire Trail
1
Great Lakes
Tuncurry High Fire Trail
0.6
Great Lakes
Monterra Ave Trail – Hawks Nest
0.7
Greater Argyle
Browns Rd Komungla
12
Greater Argyle
Greater Argyle Fire Trail Maintenance
Greater Argyle
Cookbundoon Fire Trail
2
Greater Taree District
Tinonee St Road Reserve
0.25
Greater Taree District
Beach St SFAZ – Wallabi Point
0.35
Greater Taree District
Sth Woodlands Dr – SFAZ
1.3
Greater Taree District
Cedar Party Rd – Taree
2
Hawkesbury District
Sargents Road (2)?tenure
0.75
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (2)
2.5
Hawkesbury District
Parallel Trail (1)
1.1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Tunks Ridge, Dural
1
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Radnor & Cairnes Fire Trail
0.5
Hornsby/Ku-ring-gai
Binya Cl, Hornsby Heights
1.5
Shellharbour District
Saddleback – Hoddles Trail
3
Shellharbour District
Rough Range Trail
1
Lake Macquarie District
Kilaben Bay Fire Trail
1.5
Lake Macquarie District
Gates – Access Management
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – APZ
Lake Macquarie District
Signs – Fire Trails
Lithgow
Wilsons Glen Trail
6.1
Lithgow
Kanimbla Fire Trail No 314
7.8
Lithgow
Camels Back Trail No 312
4.5
Lithgow
Crown Creek Trail No 206
7
Lithgow
Capertee Common Trail No 203
3
Lower Hunter Zone
Access Infrastructure – All Districts
Lower North Coast
Cabbage Tree Lane Fire Trail, Kempsey
1.5
Lower North Coast
Bullocks Quarry Fire Trail
0.66
Lower North Coast
Perimeter Protection, Main St, Eungai Creek, Nambucca
“It will get worse before it gets better...Saturday, Sunday are going to be pretty extreme days once again. Temperatures will be at least in the low 40s.”
.
~ sound byte by Fairfax Media, Journalist Tim Young using a provocative sound byte from Dr Chris Ryan, Australian Bureau of Metereology at a media conference on Friday 6th February 2009.
.
Amongst the tragedies of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires – the catastrophic loss of 173 lives, many more people injured and traumatised, the massive loss of livestock and property, unmeasured fauna killed, and bushfire history repeating itself – was the excited media (and Victorian Premier John Brumby personally) dramatising on State television, newspapers and radio about an impending extreme bushfire risk.
Gippsland was already two weeks into a series of bushfires that were known to have been lit by arsonists – the Bunyip Bushfire and the Delburn Bushfire and these dominated the headlines. The media focus on the bushfires were about ‘scoops’ and sensational journalism. It had grown into a media infatuation. Every new bushfire story attracted headline news. To a dormant arsonist, such messages would have been a red rag to a bull.
Record temperatures publicised with emphasis like never before …on Friday 6th February 2009
.
Victoria was in a severe long drought (like the 1983 Ash Wednesday Bushfires) with tinder dry bushland and extreme hot windy and dry weather conditions that the Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) had acknowledged as causing the forecast bushfire risk index for the coming weekend to fly off the scale.
Yet while the media and the Premier were effectively scaremongering, the CFA publicly stated that it was prepared for the weekend of 7th and 8th February 2009. This public confidence misleadingly lulled Victorians into a false sense of security and confidence in bushfire management business as usual, and contributed to the tragedy of long horrific day’s journey into night that unfolds.
The following media articles dated the morning of Saturday 7th February 2009 are reproduced here, the first a full double page spread in Fairfax’s ‘The Age’ newspaper on pages 4 and 5:
.
‘The sun rises on our ‘worst day in history’
[Source: ‘The sun rises on our ‘worst day in history‘, by Ben Doherty and Erdem Koch, The Age (morning newspaper), 20090207, ^http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-sun-rises-on-our-worst-day-in-history-20090206-7zzf.html]
Grape grower Lou Bennett with some of his crop scorched in the recent hot weather.
He estimates about 30% of his crop has failed, burnt dry by the sun.
(Photo: Glenn Milne)
.
Today is likely to be among the hottest on record in Victoria, and the effects of the heatwave are adding up across the state.
The weather bureau tells Lou Bennett it’s 44 degrees (Celsius). But he trusts better his own thermometer, rigged up on the back verandah. It says 52.
It doesn’t really matter anyway, whatever the number, the sun feels oppressively, infernally hot, and he’ll be out in it.
Warnings from the Premier about today’s heatwave being “the worst day in the state’s history” don’t carry much weight with growers around Red Cliffs, near Mildura in Victoria’s north-west corner. There’s been plenty of tough ones already.
“Out on the farm it’s pretty hot, but whatever it is we’re out there in it,” Mr Bennett said. “Sometimes you’re lucky and you’re in the air-conditioned tractor, but most of the time you’re on the shovel or the motorbike.”
Straitened times have forced Mr Bennett to let his farmhands go. “Now I’ve got my kids coming out in 40-degree heat after school to help.”
By Mr Bennett’s count, today will be the 12th straight over 40 degrees at his place. It has sapped the life from his plants. He lost two complete hectares in one scorching morning, as well as about 30 per cent of his crop overall.
“It’s not just me, it’s everybody. It’s my neighbours, my friends. Your family suffers.”
Farmers across Victoria are suffering similarly. Growers in the Goulburn Valley are writing off crops of pears, apricots and apples ruined by sunburn.
In shearing sheds across the state, sheep have been passing out, overcome by the heat and the heavy fleece they’re carrying (a good rouseabout carries a bottle of water in hot weather to revive them).
Today is set to be the worst of the lot. Across the state, blistering temperatures are predicted, up to 46 degrees in the Mallee, while Melbourne will reach 44.
Northerly winds, gusting up to gale force at 100 km/h, will run across the state, with the potential to fan bushfires across tracts of tinder-dry land.
All sorts of records are being broken. Twelve straight days over 40 in the Mallee smashes the previous state record of nine days. By tonight, Melbourne will have gone 34 days without rain, the third worst dry spell on record.
The heat has also pushed the state’s morgue to its capacity. The Victorian coroner took in 50 bodies a day during last week’s heatwave — more than three times the average rate.
State coroner Jennifer Coate said yesterday that her office had to arrange for hospitals and funeral directors to store the bodies of people whose deaths required further investigation.
Imposing a statewide total fire ban for today, the CFA said the whole state was at extreme risk.
.
Premier John Brumby (on the Friday prior) warned that conditions were comparable to 1983’s deadly Ash Wednesday.
.
“It’s just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry,” he said. “People need to exercise real common sense … If you don’t need to go out, don’t go out, it’s a seriously bad day. If you don’t need to travel, don’t travel. Don’t go on the roads. If you don’t need to use the public transport system, don’t use it. If you can stay at home, stay at home.”
.
V/Line has told people not to travel to Gippsland unless they have to, warning that the Bunyip bushfire would likely disturb coach and train travel.
The Premier urged people to look after the elderly, infirm and vulnerable.
“Ring them … it’s going to be a terrible day for anyone who is ill or who is old,” he said.
Yesterday, the Federal Government issued a directive to nursing homes, requiring them to monitor 170,000 residents across the country. Nursing homes in Victoria and South Australia face spot checks and audits of their air-conditioning systems, following complaints.
Water Minister Tim Holding excused Victorians from their water saving for a day, saying people needed, above all else, to keep cool.
Water consumption peaked at 283 litres per person in Melbourne last Friday, when the temperature hit 45. The average for this summer has been 172 litres per person per day.
Power outages, which wreaked havoc across the state last week, are again a real possibility, with power companies urging people to prepare to do without electricity.
The peak of the extreme heat is likely to push the state’s power capabilities to their limit, while the afternoon change could bring winds that will bring down trees across power lines.
Victoria is preparing for the worst. Sport is being cancelled.
Two and four-legged competitors are heading for the shade. Cricket matches are being moved or called off, while the Classic Dog Show, which was to feature 1200 of Victoria’s most pampered and prize-adorned pups, has been cancelled.
Racing at Caulfield, including the Group 1 Orr Stakes, has been put back to Sunday. The only horses racing today will be at the non-TAB picnic meeting at Buchan in East Gippsland.
But punters with an itch to unload can still have a wager.
Online bookmakers are laying bets on just how hot it will be in Melbourne today.
However, no one’s betting against Lou Bennett summoning the courage to brave the heat, regardless of what the mercury tells him.
“You can’t stay inside, mate, you’ve got to get outside and get it done, because no one else is going to do it for you,” he says.
. ‘Town in fury over bush arsonist’
[Source: ‘Town in fury over bush arsonist’, by Chris Johnston, The Age, p.5, 20090207, ^ http://www.theage.com.au/national/town-in-fury-over-bush-arsonist-20090206-7zzj.html]
Most unnerving of all for Boolarra residents, is that whoever lit the fires may well be one of their own.
At the peak of the devastating Boolarra bushfires eight days ago it was, according to a local, like “a war zone without bullets”. Helicopters in the sky, panic in the streets. Sirens and explosions. The burnt-out shells where houses once stood.
The fires are now contained, but today’s extreme hot and windy conditions — tipped to be the worst in the state’s history — will be terrifying in this pretty village in Gippsland’s foothills.
It could all go up again. But they know that. They are ready. The firefighters have been working towards this day all week.
The deeper problem is something that no one really knows how to handle. The fires were deliberately lit and the close-knit community of 600 is seething. There are whispers of revenge and vigilantes, of bush justice. No one can believe anyone would do such a thing.
The talk is about how whoever did this must be a “sick bastard” and how they should be strapped to a tree in the next firefront and left to burn to “see how they like it”. Someone said that if caught, they would need police protection because the town wants blood.
“People and families here are scared and angry,” said Rob Herni, who grows tree ferns and chairs the local community development group. “And I don’t think there’s any reason for them not to be. Lives have been put at risk, homes destroyed, livelihoods gone.Plenty of people would want an hour or two with the culprits, I can tell you. Normally sane people threatening all kinds of things.”
The fires reached a peak last Friday. That was when they were coming on three fronts, the power was out and the drinking water was contaminated.
Thirty houses, 82 sheds, nine cars and a pig farm were destroyed in 6500 hectares around Boolarra, Mirboo North, Darlimurla and Yinnar, all in the Strzelecki Ranges south of Morwell. That no one died either fighting it or caught in it is seen by the community as a miracle.
Police yesterday announced a new taskforce to investigate the fires and said the driver of a dark silver or grey Toyota Hilux single-cab utility could be the firebug after such a vehicle was seen at the ignition points. Two men were questioned last week but released. The Age believes they were apprehended at the Boolarra CFA staging ground last Thursday, but were not CFA members. A $100,000 reward has been posted.
Boolarra CFA captain Todd Birkbeck believes he knows how it played out. His pager went off at 7.30am last Wednesday; a fire had been lit in the forested hills behind the Boolarra goldfish farm. It was put out but lit again later that day. The next day, he said, another was lit near a track off Creamery Road, near Yinnar, and another at Lyrebird Walk, near Mirboo North.
“By last Thursday night the three had joined up,” he said. “That was the problem. There was no lightning. Fires don’t light up on their own.”
His wife, Michelle, said she and most others were anxious, paranoid and on edge. She heard a motorcycle out in the trees one night, when the fires were out, and feared the worst. It was someone checking fences.
“It’s surreal,” she said. “Nervy. Everyone’s jumping at shadows. You could be talking to them, you don’t know. You see a stranger and you wonder. It’s horrible.”
Mr Herni said he was paranoid about having to drive some mower fuel home to Boolarra from Yinnar today. “Does that make me an arsonist?” he asked. “In the eyes of others?”
The most difficult thing for people to understand is that the arsonist may well be one of their own. Forensic psychologist Rebekah Doley, Australia’s only criminal profiler of bushfire arsonists, said most lived within 10 kilometres of the scene.
“They have knowledge of the landscape and they know where to set the fire best to achieve what they want,” she said.
The culprit was likely to be a male loner with a dysfunctional background who lit the fires to exert power over a community in which he felt powerless. “They need to assert themselves in some way and fire is a very universally powerful tool to do that so it’s about the experience of the fire rather than setting the fire itself,” she said.
She said serial arsonists were common and the Boolarra firebug could strike again.
“They have to demonstrate they still have the power even if they know police are on their tail.”
She said a serial arsonist was someone with a “deep-seated, long-term interest in fire” who used it as coping tool to relieve emotional tension.
A recent Australian Institute of Criminology report into bushfires said they cost the country $1.6 billion a year and half — about “20,000 to 30,0000” — were deliberately lit.
All this is unthinkable to the people of Boolarra. It has happened to them before — and in the towns nearby like Churchill — but it never makes sense. They live in the trees here, in a village, a hidden valley. Why would someone destroy that, why tear the community apart? With fire, of all things.
“I don’t have any of the answers,” said Rob Herni. “All I know is that people are scared. There’s a lot of fear, real fear. Where are they going to light a fire next? And when?”
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Read Reports by the Australian Institute of Criminology
Editor: Early Afternoon of Saturday 7th February 2009 – the reports start coming in…
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‘Fire crews retreat as strong winds fuel flames’
[Source: ‘Fire crews retreat as strong winds fuel flames’, by Robyn Grace, AAP, 20090207, ^http://www.theage.com.au/national/fire-crews-retreat-as-strong-winds-fuel-flames-20090207-806a.html]
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The Country Fire Authority has issued a number of urgent threat messages as fire activity increases throughout the state.
Ground attack firefighters were earlier forced to retreat from a bushfire burning through the Bunyip State Forest east of Melbourne after the blaze broke containment lines.
Emergency authorities were forced to pull their ground crews out of the fire ground in the Bunyip State Forest, near Pakenham, this morning because of the escalating risk as forecast strong winds began blowing through the area.
Authorities have warned power supplies may be at risk as bushfires near power lines.
Officials also warned people to stay away from the forest area after recreational four-wheel drivers and trail bikers were spotted heading into the state parkland.
“We put road closures in place because unfortunately we’ve had people who’ve tried to go out into the bush early this morning,” incident controller David Nugent said.
“We have got some closures in place in areas like Bunyip State Park. We had people go out there this morning, which is really disappointing to us. It’s not a very good idea to be out in the bush today, particularly around the fire area where we are trying to do our work on the fire.”
More than 100 firefighters are desperately working to contain the fire in Bunyip State Park as it nears a number of small townships.
The fire broke through containment lines about 3am today and crews now fear the worst as the humidity drops and winds reach predicted levels.
Victorians were yesterday told to brace for its worst day in history with 44-degree heat, gale-force winds and tinder-dry conditions fuelling the fire threat.
“Everything is going according to predictions unfortunately,” Department of Sustainability and Environment state duty officer Stuart Ord told Sky News about 8am.
Firefighters worked in shifts overnight to try to contain the fire near Pakenham in Melbourne’s east.
After the blaze broke control lines overnight, DSE crews were forced to retreat because of the escalating risk and difficult terrain.
Mr Nugent said the change in tactics meant only aircraft crews were deployed to waterbomb the 165-hectare blaze in an effort to limit its potential, before weather conditions took a forecast turn for the worse.
The communities of Labertouche, Jindivick West and Tonimbuk are now on high alert as winds push the blaze in a south-easterly direction.
The fire is spotting in multiple areas. The Country Fire Authority said the fire was not currently posing a threat but activity had increased and it had the potential to impact on towns directly.
Residents have been warned to expect increased smoke and embers within the next two hours. They have also been told to be prepared to activate their bushfire survival plans if necessary.
Mr Ord said flames were 10 metres tall in some parts of the fire. Dry lightning in other parts of the state were also a concern, he said.
DSE incident controller David Nugent said fire crews had worked tirelessly in an effort to minimise the anticipated spread of the fire.
“Our bulldozer operators have worked non-stop to build control lines around the fire edge and this effort has been greatly enhanced by the work of firefighting aircraft,” Mr Nugent said.
Firefighting aircraft included the Elvis Erikson aircrane, fixed-wing aircraft dropping retardant on the perimeter of the fire and two medium water-bombing helicopters.
Mr Nugent said the power easements supplying Melbourne and other parts of Victoria remained a key issue.
Melbourne Water has released extra water into the Taraoo aqueduct to fight the expected fires.
CFA spokesman Paul Little said a forecast change in wind direction later today could mean the fire front grows from one or two kilometres to several kilometres in width, creating more challenges for fire crews trying to contain the blaze and protect assets.
“Right now, we’ve got crews strategically placed around Labertouche and other areas ready to respond,” Mr Little said. “But what happens later … we’ll have to wait and see. If the wind changes direction, we’ll have a small firefront grow into a massive firefront and that won’t be good.’‘
The rest of south-east Australia is also gearing up for a horror weekend of extreme heat and bushfires.
In Adelaide, the temperature is expected to peak at 41 on Saturday with the mercury in some South Australian country areas tipped to go even higher.
Tomorrow, temperatures are likely to top 47 degrees in parts of NSW.
The CFA advises:
Tourists are advised to avoid the following areas: Bunyip State Park, Kurth Kiln Regional Park, Tarago Forest and surrounding areas.
Road closures currently in place: Intersection of Beenak Road and Launching Place Road, intersection of Princes Freeway and Tynong North Road, intersection of Princes Freeway and Bunyip Road, and intersection of Forest Road and Labertouche North Road.
Emergency relief centres are located at: Warragul Leisure Centre.
For information on fires in Victoria and general fire safety advice, contact the Victorian Bushfire Information Line on 1800 240 667. Callers who are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech/communication impairment may call textphone/ telewriter on 1800 122 969. Information is also available at www.dse.vic.gov.au/fires.’.
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‘Death toll may reach more than 40: police’
[Source: ‘Death toll may reach more than 40: police’, 20090207, AAP, ^http://www.theage.com.au/national/death-toll-may-reach-more-than-40-police-20090207-80ao.html]
“Email your photos to scoop@theage.com.au”
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Fourteen people have been killed in the savage bushfires which set Victoria ablaze today. Victoria police confirmed the deaths tonight and said they fear the figure may be more than 40.
At least 100 homes have been destroyed as nine major blazes burnt out of control across Victoria in the worst fire conditions in the state’s history.
Deputy police commissioner Kieran Walshe said all the deaths were in a massive blaze northwest of Melbourne – six at Kinglake, four at nearby Wandong, three at Strathewen and one in Clonbinane.
Mr Walshe said he believed the Kinglake victims were all in the same car. He believed arsonists were responsible for some of the nine major fires ripping across the state.
“We suspect a number of the fires have been deliberately lit,” Mr Walshe told reporters. “This is an absolute tragedy for the state and we believe the figure may even get worse,” Mr Walshe said. “We base that on the fact we’re only just getting into these areas now … to search buildings and properties these have been very very significant fires … the figure could get into the 40s.’‘
The fire started in East Kilmore, 80km north of Melbourne, and covered a huge area as it pushed 30km east to Kinglake, through the small townships of Wandong, Strathewen and Clonbinane.
Mr Walshe said he could not determine whether the victims were civilians or firefighters. He said identifications could not be carried out until at least Sunday. One man, aged in his 40s, is in critical condition after suffering burns to 50 per cent of his body when he tried to move stock in the Coleraine area in the state’s west.
More than 3,000 firefighters and many more residents battled major fronts at Horsham, Coleraine, Weerite, Kilmore East, Bunyip, Churchill, Dargo, Murrindindi and Redesdale in all corners of the scorched state as the searing heat in the mid 40s and high winds exceeded authorities’ predictions of the worst fire conditions in the state’s history.
The Kilmore region in the north and several areas of Gippsland in the east were on high alert as an uneasy dusk fell on Saturday night, while the Horsham fire was downgraded early in the evening.
Fifty houses were reportedly lost in the Bendigo area in the Redesdale blaze and up to 30 houses went up in the Kilmore fire which pushed across Whittlesea and into the town of Kinglake, northwest of Melbourne, which one resident said had gone up in flames.
“The whole township is pretty much on fire,” Peter Mitchell told ABC Radio.
“There was was no time to do anything … it came through in minutes. There’ll be a massive loss of houses … There’ll be a lot of us homeless. All those who have made it into town will be fine. The others will be sheltering and working on their fire plans, God help them.”
Mr Mitchell said he was with around 200 residents holed up in the local pub and that no fire trucks could get into the town.
Thousands more residents in the region were sheltering wherever they could find cover as they were warned the worst was to come overnight.
A cool change early this evening did not bring any respite but, in fact, was expected to create more volatile conditions.
“It hasn’t helped the firefighters, only presented them with new fronts,” the Country Fire Authority (CFA) spokeswoman said.
The CFA and DSE (Department of Sustainability and Environment) warned Victorians to prepare to be hit by fire late tonight and to be especially prepared for ember attack.
“You should assume that as the wind change comes through, that your property could be impacted,” CFA State Coordinator Geoff Conway said.
La Trobe Valley power stations were under threat as a fire on the eastern fringes of the Strzelecki Ranges spread toward the Gippsland coast, threatening towns such as Yarram, Langsbrough and Manns Beach.
“It is pretty well every part of the state except the far northwest,” CFA Deputy Chief Fire Officer John Haynes said.
The Horsham fire burnt 5700 hectares and claimed at least three homes, the town’s golf club and several sheds.
The Bunyip State Park reached 2400 hectares, and one at Kilmore burned 2000 hectares.
CFA deputy chief fire officer John Haynes said it would be about midnight, after the cool change had swept across the state, before fire fighters knew whether they had got on top of the blazes.
Melbourne: a wealthy growing city, neglecting Regional Victoria
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“Our guys have been flat out trying to fight the fires and trying to pin them down a bit,” Mr Haynes said.
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“The fire weather … was extreme and off the scale.”
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By 6pm, at least one house was destroyed at Coleraine in Victoria’s west, in Melbourne’s southeast three homes were destroyed at Lyndbrook; and north of Melbourne six houses were destroyed at Wandong and one at Whittlesea. Homes were also lost in Labertouche, near the Bunyip State Park east of Melbourne.
“There will be more to come,” Mr Haynes said. Julie Venrooy said from Shady Creek, east of Melbourne, said she had been forced to stay on the Princes Highway south of Tonimbuk by police, unable to return to her home. “I’ve been able to contact my husband once. He’s had ember attack, that was about an hour ago but I don’t know what’s happened since,” Ms Venrooy said.
Victoria Premier John Brumby said one fire threatening his parents’ home in Coleraine was stopped literally on their doorstep.
“I would like to thank DSE, CFA and SES (State Emergency Services) fire fighters and volunteers who have fought tirelessly throughout the day to protect Victorian people and property,” Mr Brumby said.
The fires came as Melbourne reached its hottest ever temperature of 46.4 degrees (Celsius), while nearby Avalon recorded the state’s high of 47.9 (Celsius).
Remembering Marysville and indeed, Regional Victoria
[This article was initially published by Tigerquoll on CanDoBetter.net 20090626, in the aftermath of the Victorian Bushfires which conflagrated on 20090207]
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The Australian Press Council has just dismissed a complaint against Sydney Morning Herald columnist Miranda Devine about her ‘opinion’ article back on 12-Feb-09 ‘Green ideas must take blame for deaths.’
But although provocative, Devine’s ‘opinion‘ article pales in comparison to the social implications of headline media reporting of extreme bushfire risk immediately BEFORE the bushfires! [‘Complaint against Devine dismissed’, SMH, 26-Jun-09, p.5]
Note that the date of the article was made while fires still raged. Also, note that the article was published on the front page of the Herald, indicating that the editor was unusually highly supportive of it. Normally, the Herald’s ‘Opinion and Letter’s‘ articles are printed way back around page 12.
The main inflammatory bits drawing criticism in Devine’s article were:
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“It wasn’t climate change which killed as many as 300 people in Victoria last weekend…it was the power of green ideology over government to oppose attempts to reduce fuel hazards before a megafire erupts.” [and] “If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.”
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Clearly, the article’s emotive tone expresses anger, frustration, retaliation and spiteful provocation. Perhaps this is understandable given the scale of the disaster and public shock, disbelief and for many, the personal loss. People react in their own way to tragedy. Devine’s article upset many and presumably it was intended to in order to unseat entrenched community complacency about Australia’s bushfire management generally.
If so I agree with her motive, but not her method.
The Australian Press Council considered the article’s lead paragraphs as ‘dogmatic’ and ‘confrontational’. But the complainants asserted that the article breached a number of Press Council principles. Yet the Press Council’s principles or journalism are vague and advocate the rights of journalists rather than prescribing responsibilities. The principles include noble motherhood ideals such as being accurate, fair and balanced, not being misleading, acting in the public interest and not being biased against minority groups. So then perhaps the complainants were misguided and it is not surprising that the Press Council found that publicising the article didn’t breach any of these principles.
Devine was accused of incitement in her article, which is a fair interpretation.
On Crikey, Greg Barns questions whether Devine’s article incited violence. He suggests that in “these fraught times, where there is a smell of blood in the air as well as smoke, as communities, individuals and the media look to find someone to blame for the Victorian bushfires, are just the environment where incitement flourishes.” Barns goes on: “To date no one appears to have acted on the inflammatory statements of Ms Devine and her fellow sabre rattlers, but that does not matter, says the law. It is enough that the incitement to commit a offence occurs, it is irrelevant that no one acted on the statement made.”
In the press at the time, local anger in Gippsland was palpable and vigilante feeling clearly was at breaking point. But it was targeted at the arsonists.
No-one rationally can blame the conservation movement and its ecological principles for the Victorian Bushfires. The bush and its creatures were innocent victims of the fires, just like people, livestock and houses. Many tend to forget this in the wake of such enormous tragedy. But one must blame the arsonists.
Yet it wasn’t apparently just arsonists that caused the ignitions and it is the task of Brumby’s Royal Commission to investigate and find out the causes of all the ignitions. However, thereafter, the real problem solving should start, but I doubt Brumby will have the will and instead will want to close the political door on the bushfire tragedy – just like the bushfire investigations of the past and interstate.
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But let’s turn more importantly to the media incitement before the bushfires!
The Age newspaper in Melbourne during the Victorian heatwave through January and early February 2009 immediately preceding the bushfires, ran headlines repeating the extreme bushfire risk. On 6 February 2009, the day before the fires started, indeed the Premier of Victoria John Brumby issued a warning about the extreme weather conditions expected on 7 February:
“It’s just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry.
People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow”.
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Was this wise?
To serial dormant bush arsonists and to would be arsonists, this frenzied media excitement about such pending doom surely would have been been read by arsonists and I suggest directly incited the bush arson. Yet at the time there was no complaining or realisation of this.
If bush arsonists are found to have been the key causes of the ignitons and indeed of the most catestrophic firestorms that burt alive people for instance Marysville and Kinglake, then the investigation must focus on the root cause of the arsonist motivations. I argue that media arousal through its sensationalising of the bushfire risk and its portrayal of the bushfire threat is directly responsible and accountable for actual bush arson. Let’s see what the Royal Commission concludes.
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Compare the Media Restrictions on Reporting of Suicide
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Getting back to the subject of press responsibility, let’s look at where the Press Council actually prescribes reporting restrictions on journalists.
Take the subject of media reporting of suicide.
In the Council’s General Press Release No. 246 (i) (July 2001) on Reporting of Suicide, The Press Council:
“calls upon the press to continue to exercise care and responsibility in reporting matters of suicide consistent with government attempts to curb the suicide rate. Research shows that an association exists between media portrayal of suicide and actual suicide, and that in some cases the link is causal. So the Press Council recommends journalists avoid reporting which might encourage copy-cat suicides and which unnecessary references details of or the place of a suicide, or which uses language which trivialises, romanticises, or glorifies suicide.”
So on the sensitive topic of suicide, the Press Council is quite prescriptive, moreso than in its broader principles for journalists rights.
Serious thought needs to be given by all levels of government and by the Press Council as the media industry’s representative body to the reporting of bushfire risks. Just as links can be drawn between the media portrayal of suicide and actual suicide, causal links can be drawn between the media portrayal of bushfire risk and bush arson arousal.
This is a matter for criminal psychology. Media sensationalising of bushfire risk and of bush arson is known to incite bush arson and copy-cat bush arson. This is a little known and neglected form of social deviant behaviour, yet it has become increasingly prevalent and deadly.
There is an urgent need for national level investment into bush arson criminology research and investigations. Media rights and responsibility for reporting bushfires play a critical role, perhaps more than many of us realise.
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Editor’s submission to ABC Four Corners ahead of its programme ‘Two Days in Hell’ aired 20090216
Thank you for highlighting this perennial problem.
The Australian Institute of Criminology reported last month that half of Australian bushfires are deliberately lit. Bushfire research needs to go further to evaluate whether in fact of the most damaging most are deliberately lit.
Test: If one excluded arson ignitions and their related spotover fires (between 29 Jan at Delburn to 8 Feb) would the firestorms have occurred? Assuming the answer is no, then clearly arson must be Australia’s key focus in combating the impacts of bushfire. Unlike the other two causes of bushfire, (lightning and accident) which are random, bush arson targets the worst conditions, upwind of a specific target and often involving multiple ignitions.
The term ‘fire bug’ is too docile and to start seriously dealing with it, we must change the perception and the language. Bush arson has become so deadly and catastrophic a crime that it warrants the term ‘pyroterrorism’. See the application of this term in the recent California fires. [^http://www.lilith-ezine.com/articles/thepyroterroristsarecoming.html]
The forthcoming Royal Commission into the Victorian Bushfires of 2009 risks concluding similar theme recommendations as the 2004 COAG Enquiry into the 2003 Canberra Firestorm, which itself repeated those of many previous bushfire enquiries. The implementation of any recommendations requires budget, timeframe and an independent federal watchdog accountable to the public. I will be analysing its terms of reference.
Aside from serious resourcing of bush fire fighting (nationalising it, building approvals, building codes, etc), the key systemic problem is the cultural disconnect between bushfire research and fire fighting practice. Criminal arson investigation needs to be a permanent and dedicated arm of bushfire management, properly resourced with primary data collected from all Australia and overseas using the best criminal psychologists and with a proactive mandate.
In NSW, the government set up Strike Force Tronto to investigate serial bush arsonist after the Christmas 2001 bushfires. Then the government got complacent, other priorities emerged and it was disbanded in 2005.
But following a series of arson bushfires in 2006 (with houses lost in (Picton and Cattai) the force was reinstated on 26 Sep 06 (Daily Telegraph p1). Reactive sporadic resourcing of bush arson investigation clearly isn’t effective.
To seriously address the main cause of deadly bushfires, a national organisation needs to be permanently established and perpetually funded to focus on criminal investigation into bush arson/pyroterrorism with a mandate to recommend deterrent policies and practices across Australian bushfire fighting as well as the media.
Media reporting leading up to the 7-Feb-09 firestorms, simply incited dormant serial arsonists. Go back and read The Age and television media in the days before and after 29 Jan when the first bush arsonist struck at Delburn (south wast of Churchill). The front page of The Age on Saturday 7-Feb-09 read: ’44 degree heat “as bad a day as you can imagine”
– which was a quote from of all people the Victorian Premier made to the general public the day prior.
Just like the media policy of not reporting suicides due it being known to encourage copy cats, so too media reporting of heatwaves and of extreme bushfire conditions needs to be tempered to avoid inciting dormant serial arsonists.
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‘The Fire Starters’ – ABC TV Four Corners programme of 2003 about bush arson in NSW, following a spate of bush arson
[Source: “The Fire Starters”, ABC TV Four Corners programme, 20030224, ^http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2003/20030224_fire_starters/default.htm]
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‘It’s a summer ritual: fire fighters across Australia battling hundreds of bushfires, putting themselves at risk to save other people’s lives and property. But these men and women are confronting dangers they should never have to face. While most fires, like the recent Canberra inferno, are ignited by lightning strikes or by stray sparks, investigators say a growing proportion of fires are being deliberately lit – by serial arsonists playing havoc in the bush.
As Australia tallies the cost of one of its worst bushfire seasons, Four Corners looks at the devastation that firebugs wreak on the landscape and the fear they generate in vulnerable communities. Reporter Stephen McDonell focuses on two communities where a firebug has been at work. In one case the arsonist has been caught and jailed; in the other the offender remains at large, apparently still living among anxious neighbours who suspect his every move.
McDonell builds a profile of offenders who typically crave power and status. For all their fundamental inadequacies, arsonists often presents normally enough to other people – even to their fellow volunteers in the local fire service. Authorities are fighting a difficult battle against these elusive, superficially unremarkable people, whose crimes rely on secrecy, solitude and destruction of evidence.’
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Interview by ABC journalis Stephen McDonell with NSW Police Assistant Commissioner John Laycock (edited transcript):
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STEPHEN MCDONELL: It’s been suggested by some people there should be a full time arson squad in NSW, do you think that we’re getting to the stage where that’s what we need?
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER JOHN LAYCOCK: Well there is at the moment. With the establishment of Strike Force Tronto last year, that will be ongoing on a needs basis and we saw very quickly in October this year how quickly that Task Force got up and running.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: You don’t think though there’s a need for developing some expertise in the area, have a team specifically designed just to look at arson?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Well, we have that now with Strike Force Tronto and in addition to the permanent team, we’re also training up investigators right across the state to look at the fire investigations across the board so we’re fairly well on top of that now.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Can you just tell us the thinking that’s led to you having a team that is assembled as the need arises rather than having a full time squad?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look Strike Force Tronto is virtually full time on a needs basis. We started off in 2001 with the large volume of fires in the state. It took a little time to get that up and running but that expertise and the database and the skill they’ve learnt from that has now flowed to, very quickly, starting up (Strike Force) Tronto II. So, whilst ever the actual need is there, the strike force will be there to assist. In addition to that, you’d normally find that between bushfires or wild fires there’s a three or four year gap. We have 94, 97, then 2001, on this occasion we’ve had two years in a row so the need this year is unusual to say the least.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: If you were asked if bushfire arson is getting worse, what would you say to that?
JOHN LAYCOCK: No I don’t think so. I think the reporting of it has improved. All our local area commands now are on the scene as soon as it occurs, they’re investigating the fires straight away. In the past that might not have always been the case. With Strike Force Tronto up and running, all fires are investigated and eliminated: whether it’s accidental or lightning or what have you and others are put aside for further investigation.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: So you don’t think we’re getting more bushfire arson?
JOHN LAYCOCK: I think the community’s become more up to date and aware of arsonists being involved. The majority of our people apprehended are done by information from the public and, in a lot of cases, actually apprehended by people from the community and people are just sick and tired of people being involved lighting fires so they’re doing something about it which is great.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: So, in other words, are you saying that while the statistics might bear out something of an increase, it’s really just that more people are being caught?
JOHN LAYCOCK: That’s one interpretation. In addition to that: our scientific skills, our forensic skills – with both the Rural Fire Service and the NSW Fire Brigade, with our own forensic people – have enhanced tremendously. Technology has increased. There’s a lot more out there that we can use, we can tap into, and plus the skill level of our people on all fronts has also increased.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Just on the question of your ability to investigate bushfires, what would you say is the area that has come on the most, that is changing the fastest and is enabling you to catch people?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look without doubt the technology, our forensics, the scientific people, our research people. We tap into overseas data; we tap into overseas experts. Our own local people here are well down the road to being able to fully investigate a fire, to track it from A to Z, with help from the community. Our crime scene investigation has enhanced tremendously and it’s improving all the time. There’s satellite inventory; there’s aerial photography; there’s video links; there’s a whole raft of things we can tap into now.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: I’ve seen some statistics that show that while the offending appears to be going up, the clear up rate remains static, what would you attribute that to?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Probably wouldn’t agree with that entirely and I think I can play with figures with the best of them. For example, in our 2001 fires, there were 22 people charged straight out with arson. There was another 130, 140 odd processed for various breaches, minor breaches of the Rural Fires Act and other Acts of parliament. None of those persons have re-offended again this year to our knowledge. Now most arsonists I think you’d have to agree are not sort of rocket scientists and one would expect that, if they were continuing to offend, they would be apprehended. That hasn’t occurred. So I don’t think the clear up rate has decreased per se. I think the instance of reporting and investigation activity has increased.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: What do you think that those statistics tell us about the impact that catching people has on their likelihood of them re-offending when it comes to bushfire arson?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look, again, with the number of people we’ve processed – from those that went to gaol, to those who were fined, cautioned or were conferenced – none of those people have re-offended to our knowledge, which indicates whatever process did take place, whether it be gaol or a caution or bond or what have you, has worked in that case. In addition to that, all persons processed have been, their details have been given to our our local area command so at the first sign of an investigation being required, those people would have their names up as a possible suspect to get looked at so the heat is on if I can use that phrase for those people locally in the first instance.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: We’ve spoken to one person who suggested that part of the problem with catching people when it comes to bushfire arson is that crime scene can be totally destroyed, especially if the fire moves over it a couple of times, would you agree with that?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Probably to the contrary and our forensic capacity with the Rural Fire Service, the Fire Brigade, our own forensic people now has increased to the extent that we can get a lot of information from the crime scene long after the fire has gone.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: So, even if a big fire has moved through an area, there’s still a lot there at the crime scene?
JOHN LAYCOCK: There’s a lot of signs, there’s a lot of expertise, and we tap into a lot of stuff still left behind and, as I keep saying, cold fires leave hot trails.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: How sophisticated would you describe the bushfire arsonists as compared to other criminals?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Not very sophisticated: they’re certainly not rocket scientists. Arson is an unusual crime because there’s no financial profit or gain. There’s normally no great planning goes into it: it’s unusual, to say the least. I think that the people involved are possibly not of brilliant intelligence.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Do you think that, across Australia, we’re doing enough to catch bushfire arsonists?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look we can always do more but here in NSW the community is up and running. The number of reports we get through crime stoppers, continually, for the police to act upon is encouraging to say the least. The number of a people apprehended at fire scenes, lighting fires where people got out of their cars and physically grabbed hold of them where they’re capable of doing it and just hand them over to the police just shows a no nonsense approach. The three organisations working together -with the Rural Fire Service and the Fire Brigade – it’s ongoing, I think we’re doing a lot, we can always do more but, as each year goes on, our expertise increases.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Do you ever worry about discussion in the media relating to bushfire arson: that it might encourage copycat behaviour?
JOHN LAYCOCK: And certainly I think that does occur (but) to what extent…? but we have to weigh up the public interest – the need for the public to know what is happening around them. We’ve found, with the community support, with the open campaigns we’ve been running, they’ve been nothing short of outstanding.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: If we could just look at why one of the cases that your team has dealt with, the Burgess case, can you just tell us, from the outset, what the idea was in terms of when you heard that he was hanging around this brigade in the Blue Mountains, what did you intend to do, especially in relation to that brigade?
JOHN LAYCOCK: We first got some information not long after the fire season started in relation to that offender and I can only speak in general terms. Information is fine but we needed sufficient evidence to place him before a court, it was obvious to us that he was a very firm suspect. We then tapped into the support from the Rural Fire Service. We spoke to the executive and we virtually placed him under surveillance. They did report issues to us. We had our surveillance teams actually follow him from site to site. In the meantime, in the background, our forensic people were linking the crime scenes together and, of course, you’re aware he’s virtually working from one part of the state to the other – from the Central Coast down to Albury and then up to the Blue Mountains, so a fairly wide area – but we were able to link him into all those scenes. Our surveillance people tracked him into places where fire had been lit, just a painstaking good thorough investigation by Strike Force Tronto Police.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Now, for people who don’t know much about crime and the detection of crime, can you explain what this linking of the crime scenes was and how significant that was?
JOHN LAYCOCK: It was quite significant because each offender has their own way of doing things or committing a crime – quite, sort of, peculiar to anybody else – so no arsonists would work alike, as a general statement. So the way in which the fires are lit at all locations were almost identical and that gives us a guide only to the fact that he was the person responsible. But it’s not just the crime scene, it’s sightings, information from other people in the community, people from the Rural Fire Service that felt things weren’t quite right, that was all fed into our system to give us enough to get out and charge him.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: So, is this right, it was something like that there was a pattern to his behaviour, is that right, that he was doing similar sorts of things?
JOHN LAYCOCK: There was a pattern to the way he was committing the offences, which showed very promising signs to us.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: What could you say about Burgess’s behaviour that led you to actually apprehend him?
JOHN LAYCOCK: It wasn’t so much his behaviour, I think it was the investigation results from behind the scenes. Evidence from witnesses, admissible evidence we could place before a court, the linkages between the forensics at the crime scenes and the fact that we were able to place him at those particular sites either before, after or during a particular fire breakout. That’s the cold hard evidence that we need.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: I think you were saying something before about his behaviour being consistent and that, because he didn’t vary it so much, you were able to say right, bang, bang that he did all those, lit all those fires. Can you just tell us a bit about that?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Yeah, look we have to prove each individual fire by itself. We just can’t say that we think it’s him because all the fires appear to have lit the same way. We need admissible evidence to place before a court to put him at the scene and, what happens at the crime scene, there’s only a small part of the jigsaw. So each investigation needs to be complete and be able to stand in its own right but the common factor was the linkage between the crime scenes.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Can you tell us a bit about how Cameron Burgess’s behaviour assisted police in catching him?
JOHN LAYCOCK: I think: in the way that he exposed himself to other members of the fire fighting fraternity; that he was always there at the crime scene, he was in the locations at the time when the fires went up; on occasions he actually went to help fight the fire, it didn’t do him any favours when we started putting the brief together.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: So you could see the same sorts of things coming up again and again?
JOHN LAYCOCK: There was a pattern there but there was also admissible evidence that we could use and place before a court.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: What was found out about Cameron Burgess’s mental state?
JOHN LAYCOCK: According to the psychologist’s report that was tended to the court at the time, he had no mental illness or condition, probably can’t comment too much further than that.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Was there anything significant about this Burgess case?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look all police investigations are virtually quite different but the one thing that struck out with him was that he was operating in such vast distances away from each other: the Central Coast, Albury, Wagga and the Blue Mountains, entrenching himself in with the local fire fighting sort of type community and committing offences of that nature. It was quite unusual. Most arsonists tend to work fairly close in one area.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Why do you think he was moving from area to area?
JOHN LAYCOCK: I don’t really know, I never could find that out. I think he had contacts in all those locations and he entrenched himself in with the local community.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Have you ever had a problem with other members of the volunteer brigades being arsonists?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look occasionally with all large organisations you might have one or two, even a handful of people who fall through the cracks and obviously Burgess is one of those but probably no more than any other group from the community. We’ve found offenders from all walks of life so I don’t see that as particularly unusual or significant.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: How important do you think it is for the bushfire brigades to be vigilant in keeping an eye out for arsonists in their midst?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Very important. We work so closely together, we find that most captains of all the outfits, all brigades, do report anything unusual to us through their own chain of command. Obviously, if they’ve got one of their own out lighting fires, it’s a big risk. It does them damage so they are very supportive of the police and, on quite a few occasions, they have been entrusted and vice versa with sensitive details and they don’t breach security so the probability of that sort of continuing can’t be excluded but it’s small on the scale.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: Do you think that the checks are sufficient at the moment: the background checks of people wanting to join volunteer brigades?
JOHN LAYCOCK: Look that’s a question I think for the Rural Fire Commissioner, Mr Koperberg. Whether that would solve all the problems I don’t know. I don’t profess to be an expert. It’s a question of how far you go and what expense and what are the risks involved if you don’t…? There’s the odd one that falls through the crack but whether what you’re going to do is enough to weed them out I don’t know.
STEPHEN MCDONELL: If you could look into your crystal ball – 5, 10 years down the track – paint us a bit of a picture of the likelihood that you’ll be catching more bushfire arsonists.
JOHN LAYCOCK: I think, from what we’ve developed now, is that if you’re going to go out and start lighting fires, the probability of being caught is fairly high. Our forensics, our working with the other agencies, our scientific, our expertise, our skill base, our investigators, the probability of being caught is very high. As the years progress that capacity’s only going to increase and will get better and better. The end result will be that, if you’re going to be an arsonist, you better pack a toothbrush because you’ll be going to gaol.
[Ed: Monday 24th October 2011 was the first hot day for some months in the Blue Mountains and it was a day where winds were forecast to pick up in the afternoon from the west. The bush arsonist must have known this. What were the media reports ahead of this? What language did the media use on Sunday 23rd October to describe the weather forecast?]
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‘Arson may be behind the Mountains’ second major bushfire outbreak in a month that saw hundreds of schoolchildren and residents evacuated, and damaged seven homes.
The blaze broke out shortly before 2pm on Monday, October 24 at Cliff Drive near Echo Point and forced the evacuation of 450 children from Katoomba High School and 25 residents from 12 nearby homes.
Tourists were also warned to stay away from the area and fears were held at the height of the blaze for landmarks including Katoomba’s Scenic Skyway, Lilianfels and Echoes Hotel, with the Skyway’s terminal scorched by the flames.
“During the blaze, seven homes sustained minor damage, and a garden shed was destroyed,” a police statement said.
Local detectives and Strike Force Tronto officers together with Rural Fire Service investigators are looking into the cause of the fire, with initial inquiries suggesting the fire “may have been deliberately lit”, according to a police statement.
Blue Mountains Crime Manager Inspector Mick Bostock told reporters yesterday (Tuesday) while the fire had “two points of origin”, investigators believed it was lit by the one arsonist. He could not say exactly how. Police were interviewing one witness, an overseas tourist living in Bondi, who reported a fire in the area, he said.
Firefighters worked on Monday night to secure the fire edges and by Tuesday morning it had burned out 20 hectares of bushland and was no longer a threat to property. Fire and Rescue NSW sector commander for the incident, Inspector Kernin Lambert, said he was amazed no homes had been lost, with conditions creating “the perfect storm”.
“On this occasion the timely response and some brilliant firefighting from Fire and Rescue NSW and the Rural Fire Service saved the day,” he told the Gazette. “We are told that fire has not burned through that area for 35 years and the high accumulation of bush . . . the angle of the slope, wind direction, the aspect, it was like the perfect storm in terms of potential for fire disaster.
[‘Blue Mountains bushfire: police investigate arson’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20111025, ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/blue-mountains-bushfire-police-investigate-arson-20111025-1mgvj.html]
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‘A bushfire in NSW’s Blue Mountains, which was believed to be deliberately lit, is now under control after firefighters back-burned overnight. Police are investigating if arson is to blame for a bushfire that is burning in the Blue Mountains for a second day. The blaze, which started about 2pm yesterday, has scorched 19 hectares at Katoomba, west of Sydney, and forced the evacuation of a high school.Detectives from the Blue Mountains Local Area Command and Strike Force Tronto and the Rural Fire Service will investigate the circumstances of the fire burning between Cliff Drive and Katoomba Street.’
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‘Arson investigators probe Katoomba blaze’
[Source: ‘Arson investigators probe Katoomba blaze’, ABC, 20111025, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-25/arson-investigators-probe-katoomba-blaze/3598740]
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Detectives specialising in arson cases are heading to the Blue Mountains to investigate a bushfire that damaged seven homes at Katoomba yesterday. Police believe the blaze was deliberately lit near Cliff Drive or Katoomba Street about 2:00pm (AEDT). Officers would like to speak with anyone who saw any suspicious behaviour in the vicinity.
