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
To Nancy (23:06:49) :
Mr Sheahan pointed out to the court that thousands of trees still stood on his property (though most of them don’t any more).
The court obviously sided with Gaia.
What makes it very hard to understand is that trees have about the same intelligence as a lettuce. But I guess that’s a bit more than some of our public officials have.
Roger Carr (19:38:15) – a little reading suggested for you to check your own realities.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1398157.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/309/5732/287
To Roger Carr (19:38:15)
“They lit fires as hunting instruments…”
One professor who did a study on river red gum forests told me he had been shown by aboriginal elders how they used fire to “ringbark” big trees as future firewood depots. He said they only allowed a couple of trees per mile to grow along the river banks, something that is also documented in the writings of early settlers, notably the squatter Edward Curr. He understood what they were doing and was one of the first to refer to it as “firestick farming”.
They certainly did use fire to keep the forests open.
They also kept their family campfires burning 24 hours a day (in case of no lightning strikes perhaps) which would have used a prodigious amount of forest floor debris and this too (perhaps inadvertently) reduced the fire risk.
DJ (14:17:07) :
“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… ”
Barry Brook is wrong.
From part of the detailed investigation into the 2003 Canberra fires:
“The first record of bushfire impact in white man’s history was in 1851.
The bushfire occurred in Port Philip on 6 February (Black Thursday), a day when the temperature in Melbourne rose to 47°C at 11 am.
The Melbourne Town was in grave danger of destruction by the encircling bushfire. Approximately 12 lives, 1,000,000 sheep and thousands of cattle were lost”
Note the temperature.
Over 150 years later, another extreme weather event reached the same temperature in Melbourne, following similar drought conditions, with the same result.
The main differences with 1851 are that considerably less area was burnt this time, and there is a vastly increased rural population.
It’s called extreme summer weather, not climate change.
To MarcH 12:53:29
“150 years of land clearing has added to the warming and drying of eastern Australia leading to increases in temperature and decreasing humidity.”
This is an interesting argument but if you refer to my post above (22:49:35) you will note that the great fires of 1851 were similarly fierce, yet very little land clearing had been done at that time.
To David Joss (21:04:17) (Responding to my post of (19:38:15) ). Thanks, David. I can accept the general tenor of what you say even as I reject the simplistic “The Australian tragedy could so easily have been avoided had they listened to the native aboriginies…” I responded to. (Smelling the smoke from the fires in the house right now.)
>Barry Brook is wrong.
No he is not. Melbourne observations start in 1855 – http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_086071.shtml
The 47C is a piece of fiction. Prior to 1910 the observations were in hotter glaisher stands and other primitive enclosures, but are still far below the 2009 observation. There are no paper records from 1851.
Feb 7 saw the hottest temperature ever recorded in a modern instrument in the state of Victoria and the hottest temperature by far ever recorded in Melbourne.
The times is up for the sceptics in Australia.
Here is the ful Canberra Bushfire report – http://www.cmd.act.gov.au/publications/archived_publications/mcleod_inquiry/report
No mention of 1851 in that report. Perhaps you might provide a reference in future jbeatty?
I look for to reading your source.
Roger Carr (19:38:15) wrote:
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…”
So we go from the noble savage to the stupid savage. As usual, the truth lies between the stereotypes. The Abs certainly used fire and carried it with them wherever they went, lighting fires along the way. They didn’t hunt with fire, so much as farm with it. When the settlers saw the midlands of Tasmania, they were surprised because there were no sheep even though it looked just like sheep pasture.
The Abs fired the grass to provide lots of succulent fresh grass growth to fatten their prey: wallabies and kangaroos. It was the fire that destroyed young tree seedlings.
See Geoffrey Blainey’s “Triumph of the Nomad” for a full account.
[satire]
Mr Ab: When’s dinner ready?
Mrs Ab: We’re still waiting for a lightning strike. It’s late as usual.
Mr Ab: Bloody witchdoctors. Can never believe their forecasts!
[/satire]
Crazy. Its been a while, but this drives me to comment.
It is just crazy to me how different laws are in different places. Especially those regarding how you can treat your property. Here in Iowa I can’t see any reason why you’d be forbidden to do anything with land you held title to except for perhaps bury toxic waste on it. For all I know you could demolish every piece of vegetation on your land and leave it as bare dirt all the time without any law to stop you. While this is a terrible extreme, it would certainly seem that prohibition of clearing brush from around your land in a fire-prone area is the complete opposite and equally disturbing extreme. All of this in Australia is too bad since we know of policies that could have at least reduced the magnitude of the fires and prevented people from dying.
Secondly, I’ll give another perspective on liability of those that make policies. Coming from a background with training to be a civil engineer, it would seem to me that those that allow such public policies that promote the danger of such fires should be held liable. If an engineer is complicit in designing a faulty structure or process, he or she can be held liable for deaths that result from a faulty design. How is that much different than those policies that disallow clearing of vegetation around homes? And also, couldn’t any engineers, if they were involved in planning of these communities, also be held liable for placing a development in an area prone to fire and not providing for recognized countermeasures?
My condolences and prayers go out to all the families/friends involved in this terrible tragedy.
MarcH 12:53:29 wrote:
“150 years of land clearing has added to the warming and drying of eastern Australia leading to increases in temperature and decreasing humidity.”
According to CSIRO data, Australia’s average pan evaporation rate has decreased since 1962. That would seem to indicate an increase, rather than decrease in humidity. The data also indicate less drought in the second half of the 20thC when compared to the first half. Part of Western Australia and the northern Midlands of Tasmania are the only two areas that buck the trend. Not that the trend is statistically significant.
Oh yes, land clearance started here in Tasmania in 1803, somewhat longer than 150 years.
JBeatty has it exactly right – “The main differences with 1851 are that considerably less area was burnt this time, and there is a vastly increased rural population.”
If the present population density had existed in 1851 no-one would be talking about any records on this occasion.
In relation to the claims by Barry Brook also it seemed to me that he was attributing the disaster to global warming factors (or at least threatening more of the same as a result of global warming), and I wondered if in fact the scenario he pictured was true.
If records were set, a degree or so probably made little difference in the circumstances – the winds, the dry bush etc was set for disaster which might well have occurred whether or not the actual temperature was a ‘record’. Furthermore, where were these ‘record’ temperatures measured? In Melbourne? Why would one think that a record in Melbourne meant that there was a record elsewhere? All of this is just loose talk and speculative posturing in the interests of the agenda.
It also appears that some of the fires were lit by arsonists – in what sense is that attributable to global warming?
The causes are more complex than the green crows on the fence, who are jumping on a very tragic event to further their political publicity campaign, would have us believe. Frankly, they disgust me!
All of 6 meters? 20 feet? That just gives enough distance for the turk to drop big limbs on your head! The rule I learned was ‘clear as wide as the tree is tall’. For a big gum, I’d put that at 60 – 120 meters…
So who will fly in to testify for him in his ‘civil disobedience’ ??
I love trees, especially eucalyptus, but we’re not talking landscaping here, we’re talking survival in a very hostile environment. He owns the land, they are his trees. (Why ‘councils’ and ‘zoning boards’ ought to be told to ‘stuff it’ on residential rules.)
We have a rule that prevents redwoods from being cut down, even if you planted them, without a special permit, that is often unavailable. The Committee will decide your fate. Strangely, this has resulted in folks being unwilling to plant redwood trees… Folks ‘rogue out’ little ones before they grow large enough to come under the rule. And it always seems that ‘problem trees’ develop strange symptoms or just up and die unexpectedly… one of the few reasons that result in a permit without a fight. Redwood planting down, Roundup sales rising. Great rule…
/sarcoff>.
I would love to have a redwood, but I’ll never plant one. I now preferentially plant ‘weed species’ since you can always take them out any time they need it… and here Eucalyptus are considered by the greens to be an introduced ‘weed’ to be removed. Go figure…
So the net of their two rules is fewer redwoods and more ‘weeds’.
Why is it so hard for some people to understand that power is not control and that liberty works better than tyranny for social order?
Joseph Murphy (20:02:52) : I think the best example of wildlife/natural habitat mismanagement state side is Yellowstone. Its a shining display of pure stupidity.
I thought it was Yosemite a few years ago when the “don’t control forest fires” rule resulted in half the park burning up… and a subsequent rule change.
@PeterW (21:19:48) :
May luck be with you.
But fate favors the well prepared: I made up a set of sprinklers that can go on my roof in about 1 minute. White PVC heavy gauge pipe with overlapping sprinker heads (that also put water on the hose approach)
It’s basically just a single long pipe that runs along the roof peak about 1/2 meter back. Every 3 meters or so I have a “T” to a 1/2 meter long pipe, elbow, pipe, cap; that make a kind of ‘hook’ that hangs over the peak to hold it all in place. Next to the first “T” here is second “T” with a sprinkler head on a small vertical.
While you do need the water to drive it, it’s much easier to turn a strategic valve on and off as needed rather than be running around in the radiant heat with a hose in hand… And it leaves you free to deal with any unexpected ‘hot spots’.
I originally developed this for an alternative to air conditioning (one family member gets migraines and AC vibrations can be an issue…) but realized it would work well in a fire. (Things folks in California deal with…)
If you are in a low water area, connecting the gutters / downspouts to a recycle pump would be a ‘nice touch’.
Also, ‘iceplant’ or other desert friendly succulent plants store a heck of a lot of water and tend to stop a fire cold. Nice alternative to bare dirt vs fuel…
Final note: There is a company here that has developed a foam additive powder that sticks the water / foam to the structure. It ought to be commercially available to you. They have sprayed down homes and had them survive fires an hour later. Saw an interview with the firefighters and they said they could treat 10 times as many homes with the water in their tanker as they could defend without it AND that it did a better job too! I’d invest in a ‘magic dust’ blending foam nozzle if I lived in a place near a forest…
Be well.
Oh, and I had hung a ‘mister hose’ from hooks under the eaves. Worked OK but made the walls wetter than I wanted… would be a feature in a fire…
Ozzie John (23:06:32) : In another type of such incident…
Several years ago a man tried for seveal years to get permission to cut down a large gum tree overhanging his house. After several years of refusal by council the tree fell during a storm killing the man and destroying his house, leaving his family in complete grief.
An amazing amount of growth can be removed from a tree without ever getting a ‘removal’ permit by the simple expedient of quarterly pruning … for the health of the tree, of course!
5% / pruning. 20% / year. 5 Years…
Pain in the… but considering the alternatives, not so bad.
an interesting study about the UHI in melbourne. taking this into account, no records have been broken:
http://mclean.ch/climate/Melbourne_UHI.htm
Manfred,
Your link is very interesting. Who is the author, and what is the source of the various data etc etc?
DJ (23:19:40) :
“No mention of 1851 in that report. Perhaps you might provide a reference in future jbeatty?
I look for to reading your source.”
The source is the introductory comments from a report prepared for the ACT Coroner by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Center:
http://www.bushfirecrc.com/research/downloads/ACT%20Bushfire%20CRC%20Report.pdf
Enjoy your reading.
“>Barry Brook is wrong.
No he is not. Melbourne observations start in 1855 – http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_086071.shtml”
Yes, but observations of temperature, particularly following catastrophic events were occasionally recorded. The 1851 bushfires was one such occasion.
“The 47C is a piece of fiction. There are no paper records from 1851”
I believe The Melbourne “Argus” is the (news)paper record from which the ACT Coroners report is based. Why don’t you look it up?
“Prior to 1910 the observations were in hotter glaisher stands and other primitive enclosures”
Yes, the less sophisticated 1851 shaded thermometers set amongst dirt streets probably almost balance the UHI effect which bias modern Melbourne CBD tarmac level enclosures.
“but are still far below the 2009 observation”
They were exactly the same, after 150 years.
Michael, Virginia, USA (10:20:25) : They don’t seem to be able to grasp the fact that many fires start from lightning strikes.
I once got to see a map of California showing active fires and lightening strikes. There were dozens of fires and hundreds of ‘hot spots’ from strikes. This was absolutely normal (when asked, the ranger said it was a ‘slow time’ with fewer than typical…)
There exists a species of pine in the western U.S. which bears a cone that withstands every force on earth except one: fire. The heat of a fire causes the cone to open. No fire, no new trees.
It’s worse (or better) than that. Google “smoke seed germination” and you will get:
Results 1 – 10 of about 584,000 for smoke seed germination.
There are whole ecologies that depend on compounds in smoke to stimulate seed germination. These places (California, Australia, Spain, etc.) have had regular annual fires for tens of thousands of years. Long enough for plants to evolve specific enzyme systems sensitive to smoke. What is unnatural is to have NO fires!
To the folks worried about ‘green bashing’: I like to think that I’m ecology and preservation oriented. I was, at one time, a contributor to or member of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and The Sierra Club. I would like to see us take the present 1/3 of the land area that is largely unoccupied and expand that to 1/2 (I have reason to believe that we could easily fit all our use on the other 1/2 and that the world would be better for everyone if we did). I want a world where no single species is ever lost at the hand of man. Where my children and their children will know polar bears, tigers, etc. in the wild. But was happened here was lunacy. It deserves no quarter.
Eucalyptus is one of the fastest growing tree groups in the world. It is superbly evolved for a heavy drought area. (No, the drought here is not due to Global Warming. The very existence of Eucalyptus tells you that drought is the norm here.) As a consequence of these two facts we have:
Up to 50 tons / acre (about 125 tons / hectare) of growth PER YEAR of a species that has little water in it, but compounds substantially like diesel oil or gasoline. That is HOW it resists the droughts that it evolved with.
Much of this fuel load is in the form of finely divided structures intimately mixed with air. (Leaves / twigs). It burns explosively (and that is not an over statement) and the fire travels as fast as a car on a highway. You can NOT just drive away when the fire heads your way. Many times it’s just too late.
The notion that this ought to exist any closer than 100 meters from a home if the homeowner does not want it is simply criminal. It is committing murder by proxy. That is not an emotional statement, it is a rational assessment of the facts.
It is that fact that overrides my love of bunnies, my desire for native old growth forests to be preserved, my wish for ‘wild places’ for everyone to visit and share.
These folks have a fundamental right to life and pursuit of happiness, and that involves an unhindered right to self preservation and the free enjoyment of their property as they see fit. And if that means clear cutting the whole place because they have a fear of forest fires (rational or not), so be it.
If the community at large wishes a pristine forest, let them buy the land.
FWIW, I did a stint as a forest fire fighter one summer long ago. Only lasted a few days. Its hard work. On one occasion I was using a Pulaski fire axe to clear a break. The dozers were busy in the hardest part and my line was working an ‘easy’ part (trees under 1 foot diameter). We wanted to get it 8 feet wide if possible in about 4 hours (the weather suggested the fire would be there by then and we needed to be on the other side of a break or…)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulaski_(tool)
We all knew 2 things. 8 feet would not stop the fire and 4 hours was not enough time. There was talk of laying explosive cord to ‘assist’ but there ‘were issues’. A wind shift saved us from ‘an interesting day’; and a couple of lovely large planes dumped red stuff all over our line (yay!! huza!!)
Why mention this? When you have been nose to smoke with a forest fire, and nothing but an axe is likely to keep you safe, you get a new perspective on things. What matters. What doesn’t. The transitory nature of nature and life. That there is no such thing as a pristine forest, only one in transition. That a forest fire is more devastating to the furry things than anything puny people can do. That in a major fire, everything dies.
That forest are not pretty things to be played in and preserved. They are complex death traps full of threats, that are pretty and to be protected; some times by burning down parts of them.
(During the turn in the wind, the fire pot guys got to set a backfire line, from where we had cut, to burn out the other side. We got to do ‘spotting’ by running around putting out embers from the backfire when they jumped our line to ‘our side’. “Used canteen water” was the weapon of choice, but a shovel of dirt if you were all dried out was acceptable. 😉
All you need to know to judge is in the pictures. Fire. Woods. Trees too close for comfort. Dead. Living.
It doesn’t take any more than that to know that whoever let 10’s of tons per acre or 20’s of tons per hectare per year of explosive fuel build up is at minimum criminally negligent and probably much worse. To think otherwise is not to understand the woods … or fire… or human rights.
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?
There is no record from a long enough period of time to know what is ‘normal’ and what is unprecedented. What were the temperatures 6000 years ago, or even during the Roman Optimum or the MWP?
Yes, I do know what 47-48C is like. Where I grew up (near where Anthony lives in Chico) would get to 43-44 C many times each summer. HIghest I remember personally was about 48C, but I didn’t always watch the temps. Highest I’ve been in was somewhere about 52C – 53C (Phoenix, a couple of times including when the airport tarmac melted and a couple of times in Death Valley in mid summer …)
The bottom line is simple: A massive fire needs massive fuel. Temperatures make it go a little faster, but fuel load is dominant.
Very interesting indeed, Manfred (02:22:26).
And the last line: “For these reasons it appears to be very difficult to make allowances for any UHI effects when analysing temperatures and therefore difficult to dismiss the possibility that UHI effects are creating a false impression of global warming.”
That is the same problem California has. 20 years ago when they first enacted legislation to prevent people from clearing bush it was fine, but now you have 20 years of undergrowth that burns more easily than paper. In states like Arkansas where you have even more trees, and periodic drought without extreme fires because they control the underbrush.