Ian Johnston
LOOKING at photos of the Victorian forests before the devastating black Saturday firestorm I observed that what exploded with such ferocity was mostly even age eucalypt forests (i.e. regrowth ).
If these forests were old growth their mix of rainforest species would have provided a much cooler moister enviroment, and because of differing ages and species an impenetrable passage for the terrible wind under the canopy.
Instead the eucalypt regrowth forest had an open passage for the wind under their highly volatile canopy.
With the wind lifting the superheated eucalypt oil, fireballs flew before the flame front until a bush fire became a firestorm.
Perhaps replacing these destroyed forests (unlike most fires in old growth, in this fire everything, it seems, was killed) with mixed species and try and replicate pre clearfell ecologies with low impact selective harvesting we may return to a more controllable bush fire rather than firestorms.
Perhaps we may be able to get some experts to comment on the effacy of this observation, this would have to exclude spokesmen from Forestry Tasmania, gunns and “woodworker” for obvious reasons.
