The most sensible ideas will not be taken up easily because they are out of step with the communities belief generated by years of old thinking.

Moving underground seems a sensible option for those rebuilding now but their self belief will limit those taking that almost fire proof option even if the block allows it.

Nothing to stop a sacrificial summer house/deck but all that ‘stuff’, the impedimentia of escape, saved by being in the bunker.

There are part underground options that could be considered.

Changing the landscape arounf the house to make it defendable has been recommended forever.

Why do we have a gutter system designed for Europe mandated for bushfire vulnerable areas in Australia?.

It may cost to put the powere and phone out of harms way but so what. each time we have to pay to replace it must make it a cheaper long erm option. All those new poles can go elsewhere for a few years.

It’s certainly time for a rethink on many things but the thinkers here are either ignored or reviled.

Investments in Fire Management: Does Saving Lives Cost Lives?

The total cost of structural fires and bushfires in Australia was estimated at around A$18 billion in 2010, or about 1.5 per cent of GDP. This cost includes some A$16 billion devoted to managing the risk. At the same time, Australia’s fire fatality rate of 0.6 per 100 000 of population, already low by international standards, has proved resistant to increasing expenditure on fire management and protection. Following a concern that this expenditure might encompass an overinvestment compared with the real risk, this paper examines the regulatory cost of this investment. Since on average poorer people have worse health outcomes, and governments or companies have no alternative but to pass on increased costs or taxes, it is possible to estimate the lives forgone, on account of an increased mortality rate, of any overinvestment. Adapting a model of Keeney (1997) for Australian conditions, we determine the Australian willingness to spend (WTS) for preventing a loss of a life in the fire space to be between A$20 and A$50 million, depending upon how these costs or taxes are imposed upon the population. If we accept, by way of example, the results of an expert elicitation (Ashe and McAneney 2011) to imply an overinvestment in fire prevention and management of the order of A$4.5 billion per annum (2010 dollars), this excess would imply between 90 and 225 extra fatalities annually. These numbers are of the same order as the annual average number of fire fatalities actually experienced. The analysis shows the importance of carefully evaluating the unintended costs of any new safety regulations and particularly in insuring that the costs are at least grosso modo in line with the purported benefits.

Read more at: http://epress.anu.edu.au/apps/bookworm/view/Agenda+-+Volume+19,+Number+2,+2012/10161/ashe.html

Sorry Emma, but you are clearly talking to the wrong people about this. I would expect them to have little or no personal experience of hazard reduction burning and to be unaware or in denial of the differences between it and the intense, mid-summer bushfires currently being witnessed.

This is evident in comments you have made such as that ‘hazard reduction burning would be catastrophic in itself’ and ‘destroying habitat is not the answer’, as well as your reference to it as a 1940s solution.

Unfortunately, too many people (including some conservation biologists) can’t seem to envisage the difference in environmental impacts between cool fires which burn slowly in autumn within defined areas and tend to leave a mosaic of burnt and unburnt ground; and mid-summer bushfires burning in hot, windy conditions which quickly incinerate everything in their path until they can be halted.

They also aren’t aware of the logistic and climatic realities faced by the agencies who conduct cool burning and so base their opposition to it on completely unrealistic expectations of the annual areas burnt and the frequency of burning.

Cool burns are a natural phenomenum which pre-dates European settlement when regular fires started by lightning or Aboriginals would invariably burn without constraint (except the weather) and may well slowly traverse through the landscape for months at a time. These would invariably keep forest fuels and understorey at low levels.

On the other hand, very hot summer fires which we currently see tend to be unnaturally severe as a consequence of heavy fuel and understorey build-up occuring in the absence regular cool burning (because we generally put-out every fire as soon as it starts in order to kill its potential to impact on human society).

You are correct that a substantial amount of burning is required to maximise the effectiveness of hazard reduction programs. Until recently, WA had had no damaging forest fires for 50-years because it was fuel reducing around 8% of its public forests per year - that is effectively burning the bush on a 12.5 year cycle. In recent years, changes to forest management policies and plans has led to the program being reduced and damaging fires are now starting to reappear as fuels build-up again.

Contrast this to Victoria, which in the 15-years prior to Black Saturday had been burning only about 1.5% of its forests per year - which equates to a 65-year burning cycle. No wonder it has had some recent major problems. As a result of the Royal Commission, Victoria is now upping its burning program to 5% per annum (or a 20-year cycle) which some would argue is still too little, but much better than before.

I’m not sure what the Tassie program is, but it must be remembered that a substantial slice of Tasmanian forest (ie. wet ash forests and rainforests) are unsuited to hazard reduction and will typically only burn in bushfires during hot summers in prolonged periods of drought.

So, for maximum effectiveness, about 6 - 8% of the remaining (suitable) Tassie forests should be being burnt annually. It is acjknowledged that this would be difficult to acheive given that so much forest is privately-owned compared to other states.

If you doubt the essential value of hazard reduction burning, you would be wise to read the works of Steven J. Pyne, a US-based fire historian who has been highly critical of the loss of burning capability in the US and elsewhere around the world, and believes it to be critical that Australia does not go down this same path.

Some of your thoughts on the causes of fire are somewhat naive and imply that it is possible to fully control human nature (ie. arson) and accidental ignitions. Good luck with that!

There needs to be a whole new way of looking at this.
It is unacceptable to advocate deliberate percentage burning on a yearly basis.

Former long-time volunteer fire fighter Mike Adams article at http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/article/read-the-science-do-the-math-look-at-the-paleo-evidence/ raises a logical argument with the well tried Canadairs.
We need to be better equipped to put out fires earlier that do start. I feel so sorry for the fire-fighters farting around with what seems to be ineffective equipment.
What about Elvis the helicopter? We seem so unprepared.
It has long been the practice to let fires burn themselves out. Fires smouldering away need to be extinguished.
If your electric blanket was smouldering you wouldn’t wait for it to burn the house down would you?
We are sickened by the loss of wildlife and habitat. They count for something too.
So do the numbers of susceptible people in this state that would be exposed to smoke day in and day out because some people just want to burn. Those with asthma, COPD, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, the young, the elderly.
This is a fair proportion of the population if you care to work it out.
Go to our DHHS and EPA webistes to read how damaging smoke can be. 

Stop the burns at the source.

Hello Mark Poynter, how is the fate of Victoria’s State faunal emblem, The Leadbeaters Possum?

Its numbers were enormously reduced by the incessant logging activities carried out by your colleagues, (in and among its only known habitats) now with these rampant raging Bushfires having added their destructive powers to the actions of you and your colleagues, there is every chance this little possum will not slow down any further intended logging- as in all likelihood it could now be wholly extinct in the wild.
Does this final outcome bother you in any way?

Thank you Emma.

Indeed, where are the wildlife voices, their horror stories, their loss of not just dense protective habitat (long shrunk to islands on the brink within farmland)?

Like me, who has long endured ridicule and patronising from the groupthink of bushfire know-all cult, you will need to develop a thick skin, because once you critise the status quo, the defensive response will be more personal than logical argument.

#3 Mark above risks falling into this standard bank of bushfire fireside excuses to dish out to a naive willing media.  Just read Mark’s response above #3 and with a yellow highlighter try to identify his evidence supported arguments.

He mentions mosaic burning but just as quickly dismisses this bushfire method option without justification.

He raises excuses of logistics and climatic realities, but does not explain why logistics cannot deal with climate conditions.

He states that ‘cool burns’ are a natural phenomenum of lightning and Aboriginal culture, without any explanatory case evidence in Tasmania.

Cool burns have become the bush arson that under-utlised volunteer fire fighters are tasked to do to keep them busy in the off-months: Autum-Winter.

When serious wilfire erupts, it is catsatrophgic armageddon!  To big too hard, our old truck has no chance!  Every man for themself!

So, according to Mark for maximum effectiveness, about 6 - 8% of the remaining (suitable) Tassie forests should be being burnt annually.

Burn the bush before it burns, so when their is a wildfire no fuel so not risk.

This is the ultimate in low-brow defeatism.

Of course, Tasmania’s wildlife ecology exists only for tourists no?

Tigerquoll
Activist
The Habitat Advocate

Land Management Practices Associated with House Loss in Wildfires
Losses to life and property from unplanned fires (wildfires) are forecast to increase because of population growth in peri-urban areas and climate change. In response, there have been moves to increase fuel reduction—clearing, prescribed burning, biomass removal and grazing—to afford greater protection to peri-urban communities in fire-prone regions. But how effective are these measures? Severe wildfires in southern Australia in 2009 presented a rare opportunity to address this question empirically.

We predicted that modifying several fuels could theoretically reduce house loss by 76%–97%, which would translate to considerably fewer wildfire-related deaths. However, maximum levels of fuel reduction are unlikely to be feasible at every house for logistical and environmental reasons. Significant fuel variables in a logistic regression model we selected to predict house loss were (in order of decreasing effect): (1) the cover of trees and shrubs within 40 m of houses, (2) whether trees and shrubs within 40 m of houses was predominantly remnant or planted, (3) the upwind distance from houses to groups of trees or shrubs, (4) the upwind distance from houses to public forested land (irrespective of whether it was managed for nature conservation or logging), (5) the upwind distance from houses to prescribed burning within 5 years, and (6) the number of buildings or structures within 40 m of houses. All fuel treatments were more effective if undertaken closer to houses.

For example, 15% fewer houses were destroyed if prescribed burning occurred at the observed minimum distance from houses (0.5 km) rather than the observed mean distance from houses (8.5 km). Our results imply that a shift in emphasis away from broad-scale fuel-reduction to intensive fuel treatments close to property will more effectively mitigate impacts from wildfires on peri-urban communities.

Read more at: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0029212

In relation to the last paragraph, the standard mantra is burn national parks (broad-scale fuel-reduction) to reduce fuel load etc. However, CSIRO research found that in Victoria over 90% of fires start in farmland and burn into forested areas (parks and plantations).

#2,7 Jon,

Your contribution is appreciated.

We shall take it back to The Habitat Advocate for closer scrutiny and follow up your excellent references.

Thanks
TQ

#7 Jon Sumby

The abstract you have provided is from an ANU paper which is commonly cited by those who oppose broadscale fuel reduction burning.

However, its evaluation of fuel reduction is somewhat flawed because a substantial proportion of the Black Saturday fires occurred in wet forest types that can’t be fuel reduced, and the overall level of fuel reduction in the other forests was low (as is the case for most of Vic, where only about 1.5% of the forest was being burnt per annum ie. a 65-year burning cycle).

The fact is that concentrating on burning just next to private property boundaries may be worthwhile in itself, but if it means neglecting the more remote areas and allowing fuels to build-up greatly in those areas it will be somewhat counter-productive.

Many of the most damaging fires, such as 2003 and 2006 in Vic, start initially from lightning in this remote country and if unable to be quickly controlled, they invariably build to massive proportions and ultimately emerge with tremendous momentum to ultimately threaten lives and property. Both those fires burnt for 59-days and were ultimately only put out by rain.

Contrast this to the south west WA experience where for 50-years from 1961 onwards they avoided large scale damaging bushfires by burning around 8% of their forest per year on a 12.5 year cycle. This ensured that at any time, around a third of their forests contained light fuels of 4 years or less in age.

The Victorian Royal Commission recognised this and has gone part way towards it by striving to burn 5% per annum on a 20-year cycle. However, Victoria is a bigger place than south west WA and it is logistically more difficult to burn 5% let alone 8%.

Of greatest relevance to discussions about the effectiveness of fuel reduction burning is the restrospective modelling of past bushfire events being done by the likes of Tolhurst and Cheney assessing how these events would have turned out if they had burnt in forests where substantial fuel reduction programs were in place.

For example, Tolhurst (2007) used his Pheonix model to asses the Deans Marsh fire of Ash Wednesday 1983. This fire actually burnt entirely through forests that had not been burnt for over 40-years, and ultimately destroying 780 structures and killing three people.

The modelling shows that if these same forests had been fuel reduced on a 10-year cycle (ie. 10% burnt per year), the bushfire would have burnt 50% less area, with presumably significantly less property loss. If the forests had been fuel reduced on a 20-year cycle (ie. 5% burnt per year), the bushfire would have burnt 33% less area with significantly less property damage.

It should also be remembered that cool, low impact fire is a natural element in the Australian landscape which pre-dates white settlement. Denying it from remote areas will hardly foster good environmental outcomes.

#6 Tiger Quoll or Habitat Activist (whatever)

So ..... it seems I’m now supposed to provide references in my posts.

Funny how you never provide referenced evidence when responding to me.

Anyway, if you want to do some homework, feel free to consult the Report of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission, and move onto the books by US-based fire historian Steven J. Pyne, such as “The Still Burning Bush” (2006).

Mark Poynter your posts are informative but also bring up more questions.
First you are advocating fuel reduction burns then later you say that a lot of the fires in Victoria burnt in Wet forests that cannot be hazard reduced.
My first question is why not. surely burning is not the only way to reduce hazard. I know it is more labour intensive but possibly it should be considered that wide fire breaks be put in these areas to aid in fire supression. Again it will cost a lot but the fuel loads in bands of wet forests could be mechanically reduced, using the residue to produce bio char or some other useful product.
I know it all costs a lot of money but surely it costs a lot to rebuild whole towns and the loss of life is unacceptable.
There have been posts on other threads about fire resistant trees, possibly we could move from our Eucalypt centric view and plant areas of exotic trees as fire breaks. I can’t see why plantations of birch, poplar etc cannot serve two purposes.
Yes I know the “only natives crew” may object but most people are happy enough to use radiata pine to build with.
Also after having been close to ( too close) massive crown fires on Ash Wednesday, I am of the belief that undergrowth actually doesn’t have a very big input into these events once the fire gets into the crown. Burning undergrowth may help keep the original fire smaller and possibly allow it to be controlled but and a big but the attention must be on putting fires out as fast as possible. It does appear that we tend to let fires run their course and wait and hope too much.
From a foresters point of view such as you have undergrowth gets in the way of harvesting, so maybe when areas are harvested the crowns and fuel load could be reduced. Once again someone has to pay, we all end up paying in the end but the price of cleaning up before a fire seems a better option to me.