I’m no stranger to wildland fires. Longtime readers may recall that my own home had the threat of wildfires here in Chico, California this past summer, as did many Butte County residents who not only were threatened, but lost homes.
View from my home on June 16th, 2008
The recent fires in Australia and the loss of life and property were apparently compounded by a draconian policy that prevented people who lived in the fire threat zones from cutting trees and brush near their properties. We witnessed something equally tragic in Lake Tahoe fire in 2007, owing to similar eco driven government stupidity forcing heavy handed policies there. Residents couldn’t get permits to cut down brush and trees, the result was a firestorm of catastrophic proportions.
A family in Australia saw the threat, decided on civil disobedience, cleared a firebreak, and got fined $50,000. They feel vindicated now, because their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek, Victoria, still standing, the only one in a two kilometer radius. Good for them.
The quote from the homeowner that is the title of this entry really does say it all. Here’s the story from The Sydney Morning Herald.
Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated
Richard Baker and Nick McKenzie
February 12, 2009 – 12:03AM
They were labelled law breakers, fined $50,000 and left emotionally and financially drained.
But seven years after the Sheahans bulldozed trees to make a fire break — an act that got them dragged before a magistrate and penalised — they feel vindicated. Their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek, Victoria, still standing.
The Sheahans’ 2004 court battle with the Mitchell Shire Council for illegally clearing trees to guard against fire, as well as their decision to stay at home and battle the weekend blaze, encapsulate two of the biggest issues arising from the bushfire tragedy.
Do Victoria’s native vegetation management policies need a major overhaul? And should families risk injury or death by staying home to fight the fire rather than fleeing?
Anger at government policies stopping residents from cutting down trees and clearing scrub to protect their properties is already apparent. “We’ve lost two people in my family because you dickheads won’t cut trees down,” Warwick Spooner told Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen at a meeting on Tuesday night.
Although Liam Sheahan’s 2002 decision to disregard planning laws and bulldoze 250 trees on his hilltop property hurt his family financially and emotionally, he believes it helped save them and their home on the weekend.
“The house is safe because we did all that,” he said as he pointed out his kitchen window to the clear ground where tall gum trees once cast a shadow on his house.
“We have got proof right here. We are the only house standing in a two-kilometre area.”
At least seven houses and several sheds on neighbouring properties along Thompson-Spur road in Reedy Creek were destroyed by Saturday night’s blaze.
Saving their home was no easy task. At 2pm on Saturday, Mr Sheahan saw the nearby hills ablaze.
He knew what lay ahead when the predicted south-westerly change came.
The family of four had discussed evacuation but decided their property was defensible, due largely to their decision to clear a fire break. It also helped that Mr Sheahan, his son Rowan and daughter Kirsten were all experienced members of the local CFA.
“We prayed and we worked bloody hard. Our house was lit up eight times by the fire as the front passed,” Mr Sheahan said. “The elements off our TV antenna melted. We lost a Land Rover, two Subarus, a truck and trailer and two sheds.”
Mr Sheahan is still angry about his prosecution, which cost him $100,000 in fines and legal fees. The council’s planning laws allow trees to be cleared only when they are within six metres of a house. Mr Sheahan cleared trees up to 100 metres away from his house.
“The council stood up in court and made us to look like the worst, wanton environmental vandals on the earth. We’ve got thousands of trees on our property. We cleared about 247,” he said.
He said the royal commission on the fires must result in changes to planning laws to allow land owners to clear trees and vegetation that pose a fire risk.
“Both the major parties are pandering to the Greens for preferences and that is what is causing the problem. Common sense isn’t that common these days,” Mr Sheahan said.
Melbourne University bushfire expert Kevin Tolhurst gave evidence to help the Sheahan family in their legal battle with the council.
“Their fight went over nearly two years. The Sheahans were victimised. It wasn’t morally right,” he said yesterday.
Dr Tolhurst told the Seymour Magistrates court that Mr Sheahan’s clearing of the trees had reduced the fire risk to his house from extreme to moderate.
“That their house is still standing is some natural justice for the Sheahans,” he said.
He said council vegetation management rules required re-writing. He also called on the State Government to provide clearer guidelines about when families should stay and defend their property.
Houses in fire-prone areas should be audited by experts to advise owners whether their property is defensible, Dr Tolhurst said.
Mr Sheahan said he wanted others to learn from his experience and offered an invitation for Government ministers to visit his property.
He would also like his convictions overturned and fines repaid.
“It would go a long way to making us feel better about the system. But I don’t think it will happen.”
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-for-illegal-clearing-family-now-feel-vindicated-20090212-85bd.html
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WRT the current Australian Drought Conditions.
An article at
http://www3.aims.gov.au/docs/publications/waypoint/003/headlines-03.html
Spells out that dry periods of up to 20 years have occurred in Australia back in the 1600s, well before industrialisation.
As a consequence the current drought…
(Principally in SE Australia – I doubt that someone living in the current Queensland Floods, NE Australia, would claim “drought” conditions ref http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/north-queensland-floods/2009/02/04/1233423294938.html )
…can not be confidently attributed to climate change (I assume that posters claiming the current drought conditions are attributed to climate change are actually referring to AGW caused by man made emissions of CO2).
Mind – the data is based on a coral core proxy, the idea being that the corals are impacted by the amount of fresh water coming out of the rivers, with more fresh water in wet years and less in dry years.
The http://www.aims.gov.au/ site is somewhat politicised towards AGW – so to have them suggest long dry periods have occurred in the past that can’t be attributed to increased CO2 actually lends some weight to the idea.
Dry conditions, hot Northerly winds (off Central Australia) are common place in Victoria during summer and have been for as long as records exist. These sorts oif factors need to be accepted and planned for.
Eucalyptus forests are perfect for bushfires.
A lack of effective “Fuel Control” is without doubt a major contributing factor to the intensity of the current fires.
The very fast, hot winds exacerbated the speed of the fires which made responding to them in time extremely difficult. No one waits around to be burned by a bushfire. Local reports say that the fires went from smoke on the Horizon to “here” in 2 minutes.
The loss of Human life is absolutely tragic.
Born in Victoria, Current resident of Melbourne, and I’ve lived most of my life in the state.
It’s okay there are plenty of dickheads in the united states that are doing the same thing, forcing forests, parks and people to keep from creating firebreaks because of a field rat or some other moronic cause. Leave it to Green and Envirotards to cause death and destruction from their misguided idiocy.
Arapiles (12:58:35) :
There are no precedents for this drought or the temperatures we had last weekend. The previous extremes, set in 1939 in similar circumstances, weren’t slightly exceeded – they were smashed. An official temp of 48.8 C at Hopetoun? Avalon getting to 47.8? Do you have any concept of what those temperatures feels like or how far from normal they are?
Try a 20 year dry spell starting in 1640 Ref http://www3.aims.gov.au/docs/publications/waypoint/003/headlines-03.html …Or did the AGW mouthpiece “Australian Institute of Marine Science” get it wrong?
Regarding temperatures in Australia – you have records going back to when???
Unprecedented???? How on earth would you – or anyone – know if it has not been hotter than 48.8C any one day in the past 1000 years, past 10,000 years, etc…
Assertions of “Unprecedented” are simply not warranted – you don’t know – you have no evidence on which to form a valid position.
If there is a class action lawsuit brought by the people who lost their homes in the Australian bush fires, will James Hansen scurry to Australia to testify; and if so, who will he testify for: the law breakers who cleared their lands to protect their homes, or the law abiders who didn’t clear their land and saw their homes (and loved ones) go up in smoke?
As Barry Brook and Australian scientist notes (http://bravenewclimate.com/)….
This was the hottest day on record on top of the driest start to a year on record on top of the longest driest drought on record on top of the hottest drought on record the implications are clear…
The sceptics are done for in Australia now. Even the blind can see what is happening to our climate.
AND as this moves into the courts and a Royal Commission the sceptics inability to publish science papers will be laid bare.
The Storm King fire is our worst wild fire in terms of fatalities here in Colorado (also known as the South Canyon Fire) here in Colorado ( July of 1994) which killed 14 firefighters from Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Oregon when it “blew up” during a weather front passage.
(“blew up” or “blow up” as applied to a wild fire, is a common wild land firefighter jargon for the sudden explosive growth of a fire due to changing conditions here in the U.S.)
About the time of the Yellowstone fires, I was working with the Office of Emergency Management as an emergency planner. During that time I took the training for a “red card” to become a wild land fire fighter, and began some research on the topic of wild land fires in built up areas as a result of events in Yellowstone. We were concerned about wild fire exposure here in Colorado as much of our forest are “fire species” such as lodge pole pine that need fire to open their pine cones and release seed.
http://www.conifers.org/pi/pin/latifolia.htm
In the course of that investigation for the plan development, I went out to talk to a forester for the Colorado State Forest. I brought up the issue of our beetle kill forests due to the western Pine beetle, and built up areas just west of the Metropolitan Denver Area. As luck would have it he had studied that forest area near the Evergreen and Genesee areas, and I asked him what the historical burn cycle for that forest was. His response was about every 75-80 years. At that time it had been about 75 years since the last major burns in the early 1900’s.
We have a history of fast moving wild fires due to Chinook wind events and very low humidites in summer weather here, due to our low annual rainfall and high altitude. Fire fighters were absolutely stunned during some of the fire briefings a few years ago when they were told humidities were in the middle single digits ( no that is not a typo 6% – 8% humidities in summer temps of 80+ deg F. at 9:00 in the morning)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477749,00.html
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/06/15/colorado.wildfires/index.html
http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/photography/fires.shtml
Luckily we have limited our losses mostly to homes and property with the exception of the 14 fire fighters killed at the Storm King fire.
At the time we got a bit of traction for what is called Urban Fire Interface management, where local fire protection people would go around and have public meetings or even, upon invitation, audit peoples homes and recommend to them measures they could take to protect their homes.
The items at the top of the list were:
(these are just off the top of my head points I have not been an active plan developer for 14 years now — retired in 1992)
Fire equipment access — don’t force the fire equipment to drive down long narrow drives flanked by heavy brush, especially if there is not turn around room for large trucks at the end of the access road. They will simply put your house on the “not defensible list” if you do.
Build a defensible zone around the home, circular driveways around the home and primary buildings and clear zones at least 2x the height of the local fuels. Wider if possible on the down slope side of the home. Are easy to do and use of the drive keeps it clear of brush with no real effort by the home owner.
Trim ladder fuels on your property. (remove low hanging brush and materials that can carry fire into the tree crowns.) This prevents crowning fires and keeps natural fire in the ground cover to burn off the hot fast fuels like grass and low brush without killing mature trees.
Manage your fire exposure:
* Screens on all ground level entry points like crawl spaces – this keeps burning rabbits and other panicked animals from seeking refuge under your home and lighting it off , if they get caught in the fire.
* Put screens over all eaves and gutters to limit pine duff and trash from collecting in gutters.
* Never store firewood under your porch or patio, place it in a wood shed clear of the home.
* build a fire cistern or pond near the home so fire trucks can draft water near your home — this could be the tie breaker if they have to decide which home to defend and which to let burn.
* use non-combustible shingles, to prevent fire brand ignition of the roof.
* Have fire shutters you can use to cover windows to prevent radiant heat ignition of interior furnishings. (if more than about 10% of the view out a window can be alight at one time, it will develop enough radiant heat to ignite interior furnishings.
* place stone walks, low retaining walls, gravel drives and other non-combustible barriers so fire fighters have safe paths to retreat from a fire and stand to defend the home.
As you can see by this report below, it is an on going project where some citizen resistance to sensible fire codes still exists. Especially when proposed fire codes bump up against home owner association rules that mandate things like cedar shake shingles.
http://www.colofirechiefs.org/CSFCA%20Documents/2007_Fire_Code_Report.pdf
http://dola.colorado.gov/dem/mitigation/plan_2007/Wildfire%20Mitigation%20Plan%20Update%20Draft.pdf
Perhaps our friends in Australia can find useful information in the process we have used and the plans that were/are being developed.
It is so sad to see so much preventable death and destruction, but wild land fire and intelligent fire management is a tough nut to crack if the local community does not get this sort of a wake up call.
Larry
Paula (05:28:36) :
My apologies to Paula. “Nancy” doesn’t exist and is a simple character created. As noted above by a couple of people, Nancy is a parody.
No malice or disparagement of your brother was intended. Stay safe and God bless.
“Reply: Uh, sure looks like Nancy was being facetious to me. ~ charles the moderator”
“Pamela Gray (07:14:54) :
Nancy, me thinks you’ve got your tongue in cheek!!!”
Interesting thread. Lotsa heat & not enough light. Too much stereotyping.
Upfront, I’m a green, but NOT an Apocolyptic Green. FWIW, for those who know him, I’m a friend of Bob Brown and have known him since the early 70s. OTOH I’m offside with many in the green movement for being a sceptical rationalist and philosophical libertarian.
The tragedy in Victoria was in all likelihood entirely avoidable. We have known for many long years how to avoid such losses. In the aftermath of Ash Wednesday (1983), we had many seminars for firies where we discussed what we had learnt. AFAICT not much of that has ever been implemented.
The most important, and unexpected discovery was that weatherboard houses were no more likely to burn than brick veneer. The variable that counted was whether the house was occupied, or not. Only one occupied house burnt (at Macedon) and that was occupied by a very elderly couple.
The leader of the seminar showed two aerial shots of the home of a “crazy greenie” who owned a partially-completed house in the middle of Cockatoo and surrounded by tall eucalypts. In the before shot it was surrounded by intact houses and afterwards by mostly burnt houses. This was his own home. He and a visiting firie from California waited for the fire front to pass. They estimated it was running close to 100 megawatts per metre. Afterwards, (20-30 minutes) they went outside to put out the embers that had accumulated under the unfinished eaves with string mops dipped into buckets. (High tech stuff this). The gutters were filled with water some time before. Mostly, it’s that simple.
Stuff that helps: stainless steel flywire, or shutters to reflect radiant heat that cracks window glass and thus allows flying embers into the house interior. At that time there was no evidence of radiant heat alone causing interiors to burn and I’m sceptical of such current claims.
If you are likely to be caught in a vehicle, you should carry woollen blankets. Five (IIRC) firies at Cockatoo saved themselves by crawling under a large woollen blanket laid on the ground while the firefront passed. Their truck was totally destroyed.
I spent 13 years in the volunteer fire brigade after moving to the bush nearly 30 years ago. I well remember a newcomer calling us out to a fire in the spring one year. We stood and watched the bush near her home burn. She asked why we weren’t “doing anything about the fire”. I explained that we were doing something; we were admiring it. She angrily asked why we thought that would do anything useful. I explained that we thought it most admirable that this little (3-4 MW/m) fire meant we didn’t have to come back and save her house from burning in that summer, or several summers for that matter. She still wasn’t happy with us for refusing to put the fire out.
Sadly, those who have posted about the tragic loss of trees, stock and wildlife caused by high level burns are correct. It always dismays me when the birds fall dead out of the sky and we find wallabies, sheep and cattle dying in agony.
One poster said it wasn’t greenies that voted for the greenie councillors who have shut down hazard reduction burns thus contributing to the bushfire tragedy. That’s simply not true! I’ve never heard of a rural council election where there were only green candidates.
F Rasmin said: “Even in bad droughts, the coastal areas are never in danger of bushfires such as the ones we have just had.” That’s also not true. Perhaps he has forgotten the 1967 bushfires that ravaged Hobart. He probably never heard of the fires at Dover, or Verona Sands, also in Tasmania. The latter was my first experience of bushfire fighting. To my surprise and disgust, the locals sat in their beach chairs watching us save their homes. They were townies at their beach shacks. A couple of dozen of bikies out on a ride stopped and helped us for several hours, beating out spot-fires in the paddocks with their jackets.
The shack-owners didn’t even offer us a beer, though St Johns and the Salvos gave us tea and sandwiches. We drank beer with the bikies at the nearest pub. I can’t recall much of what happened that evening so I imagine we enjoyed it thoroughly 🙂
Reed Coray wrote:
“If there is a class action lawsuit brought by the people who lost their homes in the Australian bush fires”
No class actions in Oz I’m afraid. It will have to be individuals. I suspect that councils’ professional indemnity insurance companies will need to be sued and they are very good at holding out until the plaintiff’s money/willpower runs out.
Reed Coray (14:14:36) :
If there is a class action lawsuit brought by the people who lost their homes in the Australian bush fires, will James Hansen scurry to Australia to testify; and if so, who will he testify for: the law breakers who cleared their lands to protect their homes, or the law abiders who didn’t clear their land and saw their homes (and loved ones) go up in smoke?
I guess he might be prepared to testify on his view of the effects of AGW. That means he could testify for either of the groups you distinguish.
Whilst the warmists claim its because of global warming, Sydney is currently freezing;
“The city is in the middle of at least a week where the temperature stays below 25 degrees. The likely number of days is nine, with next Wednesday being the first day warmer than 25 since last Sunday.
This will make it the longest February stretch below 25 degrees since the 1950s.”
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/where-did-sydneys-summer-go/11184
Melbourne also has been seeing temps about 6 d celcius below average this week.
So if it was hot last week it was global warming that caused the bushfires but if its freezing this week its weather!
Pompous git parts of what you say make sense but scientifically the facts are there – a build up of fuel increases the intensity of a fire. The increased fuel load can make the difference between a hot and cold fire and the extent of devastation. There are lots of variables of course, whether someone is home or not, fire protective measures on the house, availability of water source, closeness of bush fire zone etc but the point remains that had their been hazard and fuel reduction then regardless of the heat and drought the intensity of the fire could have been greatly reduced and as such property and life losses could also have been reduced.
We lived in California when they had the big fires in Laguna Beach. I got my work boots at the only Red Wing store in that part of the county. (Not too many red necks out there.) Anyway, all of the local fire men also got their safety boots theres I was able to hear the “rest of the story”.
The previous winter was extremely wet so the brush and grasses were very abundant. The city Fire Chief had wanted to hire herds of goats to clear the undergrowth (a common method). The City Council turned him down, I suppose because they wanted the landscape “to be natural”.
The predictable result was that much of the town up on the ridge burned.
The entire city council was turned out of office. It appears that they went to Australia
By the way, I understand that the Fire Chief quit his job and became partners with the Goat Company.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack
PS
I got the story third hand. If anyone has more direct knowledge, I would like to hear it.
PPS
Charles the Moderator:
I got (snipped) once and have the scar to prove it. I learned my lesson!
To Ed (14:39:04)
I’m another one who took the “Nancy” post as a parody, though it wouldn’t hurt to include smileys.
To Paula (05:28:36)
Thanks for the info.
DJ there is such a thing as regional warming and cooling as well as naturally occurring global cycles of hot and cold. That Victoria had extreme weather for a week (or an extended drought) does not prove global warming is occurring. Neither does it prove that CO2 is the culprit. To put it in context the warm weather was a result of a stationary high pressure system over the Tasman sea that redirected hot air from the north down south. If you can prove that CO2 caused this weather system then maybe you have a point. In terms of heat weve seen much worse, in terms of drought weve seen much worse. That we had both occur whilst we have policies that exacerbate the threat of fire devastation to life and property is the tragedy of this situation.
[quote]At that time there was no evidence of radiant heat alone causing interiors to burn and I’m sceptical of such current claims.[/quote]
Extensive testing of the fire spread process occurred following WWII in the civil defense program.
The following is quoted from the August 1990 edition of the Nuclear Attack Environment Handbook, in the section that discusses fire spread post attack, it specifically addresses fire ignition by radiant heat exposure from flame exposures.
page 77
They also noticed the obvious relationship between surface color (absorptivity) and ignition in their fire studies, with white objects being undamaged but black or dark colors objects buring. If time permits white washing exposed surfaces can drastically reduce radiant ignition as can light colored drapes that tolerate high temps like clean white cotton or fiberglass fabric rather than dark colored synthetic fabrics.
Likewise intumescent paints that bubbles under high heat exposure to form an insulating layer reduces ignition likelihood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intumescent
Scattering light colored sand on a roof can also help reduce fire brand as well as radiant ignition, as well as slow burning rate after ignition to allow evacuation or fire suppression by occupants.
Rather than trying to drive away in a car, it is better to take shelter in any structure until the main flame front passes, and then exit the structure before you get trapped by fire if it ignites and take what fire suppression action you can to keep the structure from burning.
Fire rates double about every 3-7 minutes after ignition, so you have a small window of time that even if the house ignites in some areas, you can knock that fire down before it becomes uncontrollable if you have the means at hand.
Wildland fire fighters have survived being overrun by fire by taking shelter under their truck (for radiant heat shelter), rather than in it (drivers area will flash over due to radiant heat gain), and then getting out from under the burning truck after the fire front passes.
In rural areas expedient fire shelters can be built quite quickly by digging a trench (or making use of an existing depression), covering it with doors or roofing tin and a layer of dirt to protect during the fire front passage.
Larry
Do goats get minimum wage? That ain’t hay, ya know. 😉
twawki (15:42:12) :
“So if it was hot last week it was global warming that caused the bushfires but if its freezing this week its weather!”
I think you are getting the gist of it!
Also very cool in Adelaide this week, thankfully.
twawki (15:49:19) wrote:
“Pompous git parts of what you say make sense but scientifically the facts are there – a build up of fuel increases the intensity of a fire. The increased fuel load can make the difference between a hot and cold fire and the extent of devastation.”
I’m not sure where in my rather long rant I referred to being against hazard reduction burns. Perhaps you misinterpreted what I wrote. Rather than failing to refer to the intensity of different fires, I expressed fire intensity in terms of megawatts per metre of firefront. Is that unscientific? What’s a “cold fire”? Never came across one myself.
Thx for the info Larry (hotrod).
We don’t have trouble with cinders on roofs; infammable roofs are illegal here. Most are corrugated steel, or tile. Unfortunately, cinders can fly into the roofspace if it’s not well-designed. This was the issue with my greenie friend’s house at Cockatoo; the eaves were yet to be protected.
My home’s roof is steel and the walls are too. My main protection though is a deciduous windbreak 50 metres from the house. The bluegums I planted 25 years ago are 100 metres from the house.
My own experience with being near (30 metres away) a 100MW/m firefront includes first degree burns to my face through the truck window. The paint also came off the side of the truck. We had to chainsaw trees down to make our escape and push start the truck because the electrics failed. A bit scary that time.
What got me to unvolunteer as a fireman was not being allowed to undertake hazard reduction burns. We’d get approval, start the burn, then some [use your favourite expletive here] desk-jockey in the city would tell us to put it out because they deemed it unsafe. Us on the ground supposedly nor knowing what we were doing. So it goes…
Yes a close encounter with a wildfire front is very instructional. Many years ago, I happened to look out the window of the farm house I was renting to see my neighbor trying to control a grass fire. I grabbed a pillow case off of my pillow soaked it with water and drove down to the the fire. When I got there his father (too old for that sort of heavy work) left to call the fire department, and the two of us held the tall grass fire at bay as best we could until the pumper trucks got there. We were able to keep it from jumping the road or getting to the outdoor propane tanks that heated my place, but at the cost of some facial hair, and burns.
That was my first up close and personal encounter with a large flame front and it taught me an indelible lesson. Even in small light fuels like knee deep grass and brush you cannot stand in the face of the fire, and it can move as fast as you can run when the wind currents are right.
Later when doing the research on wild fire in Colorado I stumbled across first person accounts from pioneers in the tall grass prairie of Nebraska telling of prairie fires that burned across 10’s of miles wide fire fronts and ran for 50-100 miles in a single day destroying everything in their path when the area was first settled.
Today the farmers get hassled for burning brush in the ditches in the spring and winter. Years ago you would see farms on the prairie on the plains east of Denver with a 20 ft wide plowed barren area tilled around their crops as a fire break. Just in case some moron tossed a cigarette out of a car or a dry lightning strike lit the prairie during the summer. That sort of common sense fire prevention is getting rare here too, and we will see such wild fires here again in the U.S. as well, it is simply a matter of time and circumstance.
Larry
>Whilst the warmists claim its because of global warming, Sydney is currently freezing;
January in Sydney was significantly warmer than average (day time temperatures +2C above average) and February is running well above average (+1C).
Currently its 20C in Sydney which is only a little below average.
This stuff is easily checked.
Cassandra King (23:27:29) wrote: “The Australian tragedy could so easily have been avoided had they listened to the native aboriginies…”
Doubt it, M’am. They lit fires as hunting instruments, but even then only from fire they had scavenged from lightning strikes. Lightning then was the primary cause of fire ~ and the gods are still making lightning. Attributing intent to fire in Australia before the white man is dubious at best, and rates with The Noble Savage dreaming of those who lack the capacity to face their own realities of the day.
We most certainly could stand remembering that without fuel there is no fire; but that is self-evident and does not require listening to any past, however noble or however savage. We live with what is; not what was (or what was thought to be).
I’m an old Aerial Firefighter,Douglas DC6/7 airtanker Co-Pilot.Spent a lot of time fighting fires in California,Montana,Oregon and All of the Southwest and a bit in Texas and a season in Alaska.My heart goes out to all in that mess in Oz. I lived on the South
Coast of Oregon for twenty some years, in a fire ecology that was much like northern Ca.I lived in a development that called for shakes-#1 firestarter shakes. I and others tried to get this changed,but to no avail.There were holdouts that would not change the covenants.-Even after their neighbor’s house went up with a roof fire-that was in the
winter.No, you weren;t allowed to clear the brush,either.The city had property next to that area also,(Coos Bay,or.) No, they would not clear their brush either.Winter blowdown was spectacluar there. I moved last year to a Metal Roofed,concrete composite sided on a big square green lot in NE Oregon’s LaGrande.Oh and the city
does allow firebreaks….
Aragapiles, actually I read a different Age article:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/fasttrack-rules-to-make-houses-safer-20090211-84td.html
It certainly wouldn’t be hard to add that kind of cost increment through blanket regulation. The Housing Industry Association is named in the article and is a likely source of the estimate. It also mentions cost considerations have in the past inhibited implementing these regulations.
$20,000 seems an entirely reasonable guesstimate to me and the article above adds (“or more”) to that number.
Obviously that change would also create problems for people with “replacement value” insurance since they would have to find the extra money themselves.