Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote
by David Packham, The Australian News, February 10, 2009 [here]
VICTORIA has suffered the most tragic bushfire disaster to have occurred on this continent throughout its period of human habitation.
The deaths, loss of homes and businesses and the blow to our feeling of security will take decades to fade into history. The trauma will live with the victims, who, to a greater or lesser extent, are all of us.
How could this happen when we have been told in a withering, continuous barrage of public relations that with technology and well-polished uniforms, we can cope with the unleashing of huge forces of nature.
I have been a bushfire scientist for more than 50 years, dealing with all aspects of bushfires, from prescribed burning to flame chemistry, and serving as supervisor of fire weather services for Australia. We need to understand what has happened so that we can accept or prevent future fire disasters.
That this disaster was about to happen became clear when the weather bureau issued an accurate fire weather forecast last Wednesday, which prompted me, as a private citizen, to raise the alarm through a memo distributed to concerned residents.
The science is simple. A fire disaster of this nature requires a combination of hot, dry, windy weather in drought conditions. It also requires a source of ignition. In the past, this purpose has been served by lightning. In this disaster, lightning has not played a big part, and for this Victorians should be grateful. But other sources of ignition are ever-present. When the temperature and wind increase to extreme levels, small events — perhaps the scrape of metal across a rock, a transformer overheating or sparks from a diesel engine — are capable of starting a fire that can in minutes become unstoppable if the fuel is present.
The third and only controllable factor in this deadly triangle is fuel: the dead leaves, pieces of bark and grass that become the gas that feeds the 50m high flames that roar through the bush with the sound of jet engines.
Fuels build up year after year at an approximate rate of one tonne a hectare a year, up to a maximum of about 30 tonnes a hectare. If the fuels exceed about eight tonnes a hectare, disastrous fires can and will occur. Every objective analysis of the dynamics of fuel and fire concludes that unless the fuels are maintained at near the levels that our indigenous stewards of the land achieved, then we will have unhealthy and unsafe forests that from time to time will generate disasters such as the one that erupted on Saturday.
It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation’s capital, the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.
The decision to ignore the threat has been encouraged by some shocking pseudo-science from a few academics who use arguments that may have a place in political discourse but should have no place in managing our environment and protecting it and us from the bushfire threat.
The conclusion of these academics is that high intensity fires are good for the environment and that the resulting mudslides after rains are merely localised and serve to redistribute nutrients. The purpose of this failed policy is to secure uninformed city votes.
Only a few expert retired fire managers, experienced bushies and some courageous politicians are prepared to buck the decision to lock up our bush and leave it to burn.
The politicians who willingly accept this rubbish use it to justify the perpetuation of the greatest threat to our forests, water supplies, homes and lives in order to secure a minority green vote. They continue to throw millions (and no doubt soon billions) at ineffective suppression toys, while the few foresters and bush people who know how to manage our public lands are starved of the resources they need to reduce fuel loads.
It is hard for me to see this perversion of public policy and to accept that the folk of the bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment, all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.
In a letter to my local paper, the Weekly Times, on January 25, I predicted we were facing a very critical situation in which 1000 to 2000 homes could be lost in the Yarra catchment, the Otways and/or the Strezleckies; that 100 souls could be lost in a most horrible and violent way; and that there was even a threat to Melbourne’s water supply, which could be rendered unusable by the ash and debris. Horrifically, much of this has come to pass, and it is not yet the end of the bushfire season.
In the face of this inferno, the perpetrators of this obscenity should have the decency to stand up and say they were wrong. Southeast Australia is the worst place in the world for bushfires, and we must not waste any time in getting down to the task of making our bush healthy and safe.
But don’t hold your breath. Do you hear that lovely sound the warbling pigs make as they fly by?
David Packham OAM is an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University’s school of geography and environmental science.
by Bob Z.
by bear bait
Dr. Z: In the US, we have a huge, unaffordable housing surplus. Not unlike the crowded forests, we have crowded suburbs. Perhaps, then, the answer is the have the Urban Interface WFU philosophy, shortened to UI-FU policy.
Just let the fires burn in the suburbs. The insurance payouts to rebuild or simply line pockets would stimulate the economy. Lots of jobs would be created to demolish and rebuild the charred homes. The ones not insured, or in foreclosure, those would be just lost, thus reducing the surplus. The eminent domain policies of the cities, together with tax foreclosures, could reclaim the now empty lots. We could use Stimulus money to turn the “shovel ready” land to new housing or put the land in open space, parks, or urban land banks. Of course, any new housing would have to be affordable, with low mortgage rates and rents, and offered in a lottery to the working poor, all paid for by a tax on the fire insurance companies, the rich, or other entities that provide services for (obscene) profit.
Of course, the fires would result in all sort of local landscape damage and watershed difficulties, which are to be expected when you redistribute nutrients. If you were a downstream victim of redistributed nutrients, say a couple feet of them in your house, that should encourage you to sell your house to the government, and they can use those redistributed nutrients to grow food for the working poor where you used to live. Just remove the roofs and ceilings of the homes and you have fenced garden areas full of new redistributed nutrients. If things remain relatively intact, there will still be a water distribution system in house, so to speak. And a water feature to further redistribute nutrients down stream. This, too, could be shovel ready and easy to manage by a new layer of bureaucracy. As the land puts down new layers like silt on the ocean floor, so should governments, building the foundation for a secure society. Oh, that sounds so good!!
We should be looking at this from all the aspects of good that happen to the world. You know, think globally and act locally. An UI-FU policy would be a population redistribution mechanism, a population limiter, a nutrient recycling process, and a way to get more bang for your money by having the clearing effects of the fire and the leveling of the geography by the watershed reforms. I do have some questions about the greenhouse gases emitted, but like a good scientist with a social conscious, I can overlook those for the totality of the societal good the fires and resulting floods produce in toughening the human condition, allowing for pioneer species to show their stuff in the environment, and all the jobs it might create.
I only have one caveat, however. All those killed by the precious, life-giving, nutrient redistributing, moisture conserving, wonderful fire must be removed and put on display, as they were found, in public places and in front of environmental lobby offices for three days before being placed in the care of their loved ones. If, say, a family is incinerated in their car, the whole car should be displayed as found.
Those who promote and litigate for fire, on behalf of fire, shouldn’t protest the death-o-ramas. After all, “out of sight, out of mind,” should never be their privilege. They seem to find glorious the displays of some of the results, blackened dead forests are beautiful after all, and we really need an honest sharing of some of the downside results. The unpleasant parts of the fire promoters’ designs need to be shared with them and their public. The families and kin will live with the results the whole of their lives — a few days of horror and decomposition in the public square would be a just reward for the tangible results of modern public policies and progressive efforts.
Sarcasm off. Dr. Z, I cannot imagine the grief and horror and guilt and sorrow so many must feel in Australia as the result of insane public forest policy. Is that our future here? Is there really a need here to suffer like that also?
by YPmule
Ever since reading of the fires in Australia, my recurrent nightmares of fire have returned. Except by the grace of Mother Nature we would have burned over in 2007. The horror of an out of control fire coming with the sound of a hundred jet airplanes is something you never forget.
I had always thought Australia had more forward thinking policies about fire management. Sounds like you run into the same fire-bugs every where!
Dr. Packham makes some very accurate points, and does so in clear, colorful language. If he were working in the US he would likely be put out of a job by the current “science” administration due to the nature of his observations.
What is true for Australia is also true for the US. Those of us with an interest in the topic are still familiar with the lessons of Peshtigo and Hinckley and Yacolt and Bandon. And the solutions shown and proven by Tillamook. But we aren’t the people shilling the “science” or establishing policy.
I was particularly taken by the passage:
Yes, it is “shocking,” this idiotic application of “pseudo-science” and “all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.” How is this different in any way from what has been happening in the western US the past 30 years? It isn’t. How did this form of environmental extremism become a worldwide phenomenon in the first place? How does it persist? I wish I had the answers.
The only minor point I would question in Dr. Packham’s essay is his assertion that “the purpose of this failed policy is to secure uninformed city votes.” I’m guessing the root causes have more to do with egos, greed, padded expense accounts, tenure, and impressing attractive grad students than it does with securing the votes of frightened, ignorant urbanites, but that is certainly one of the more disgusting outcomes.
Personally, I think the perpetrators should be held up to public ridicule and accountability, but that only brings out cries of “ad hominem attacks” and even more sympathy for these jerks. What a waste. What to do?