To:
Lara Giddings
Tasmanian Minister for Health and Human Services
Email: [email protected]
Dear Lara Giddings
Could you please contact me and advise of how the Department of Health can respond to my medical need to escape smoke inundation from forestry burnoffs.
I have been forced out of my home (and that of friends) now for the last 5 years. If these gigantic industrial burnoffs are to continue (despite our climate change crisis) I need transport plus funds for alternative accommodation and prior notification of inundation.
Of course, it’s obvious that other sufferers of lung disease will also need assistance and that you and your government are likely to face imminent legal action over the nature of this sanctioned criminality. So it seems clear that the obvious remedy is for the ‘forest’ industry to use the technology available to avoid burnoffs and forest practices that are known to protect health and the environment.
Below is the message I posted to Tasmanian Times today and an article in the Tasmanian Mercury newspaper informing the public that there are industrial mulchers available to alleviate the need for forestry burnoffs in the first instance.
I await your response as a matter of urgency.
Brenda Rosser
West Calder Road
Wynyard Tasmania
Email: [email protected]
ABC radio this morning at 7:30am, 12th April 2007 A warning to motorists, low visibility due to smoke from burnoffs. The area of visibility particularly bad at the turnoff for Waratah and Cradle Mountain. (Up near Hampshire behind Burnie).
The Planned Burns website shows it’s a FIAT burn.
http://www.plannedburnstas.com.au/#
Still no response from Brenton Jansen from Forestry Tasmania, nor from the Tasmania Fire Service. I asked for prior notification and to have my accommodation and travel expenses covered due to my obvious (and confirmed) medical need as an asthmatic to remove myself from the toxic inundation.
My lungs are irritated. Headache for hours. Heart was racing. Woke 5 times during the night from the strong odour of smoke. This is in Somerset, my usual place of escape from this very problem when it inundates the air at West Calder! I gave up on sleep at 5am.
All the windows are closed but still, at 7:40am the smoke is there and even heavier now than it was hours before. I have no car, this time no way out.
…
From the Mercury on 18th April 2005:
Monster mulcher told to make tracks
http://www.themercury.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,12879362%5E3462,00.html
“…Mr Townsend said the monster mulcher is the answer to stopping greenhouse gases from forest industry burns….”We can stop that altogether,” said Mr Townsend.
“But the forestry blokes won’t come near it because they are so stuck in their ways—they’ve got to burn…”I put the money on the line and Forestry trialled them but no one gives a damn,” he said. “They’ve always bulldozed and burned and they always will bulldoze and burn.”
[And in an environment where there are no legal consequences for almost everything done in the forest industry why would one try to innovate?]
