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Fighting fires with fire

By Viv Forbes - posted Tuesday, 31 December 2019


Central management/control of burn-off policy and fire-fighting across entire states has failed completely. Too often the people in charge did not understand bushfire history and science and they were too influenced by Green ideology. Authorities should provide information but not control, which should be returned to landowners, home-owners, foresters and experienced local fire officers.

We can never return to the successful aboriginal policy of burning anything, at any time, for any reason. But locals with fire knowledge, experience and skin in the game could make a huge difference. Residents should be able to demand fuel load reduction near their properties and towns, and carry it out on public land if authorities refuse to do it at the right time. It can be burnt, slashed, raked, composted, heaped or buried as long as it is no longer capable of feeding runaway bushfires. Insurance companies should reflect fire risk in premiums.

No aboriginals and few early settlers used water to fight fires. There were no water bombers, no fire trucks, and often not even hand-spray back packs. Graziers used back-burning from station tracks. Their wives defended the homestead with garden hoses, or tried to beat the flames to death with wet hessian bags and green branches. Aboriginals let the fire burn and tried to keep out of its path.

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Water is undoubtedly useful to protect homes and towns, to extinguish burning buildings, to stop grass fires and to stop the back burn from escaping in the wrong direction. But trying to extinguish raging bushfires and forest wild-fires with water alone is usually a waste of time, energy and water.

We cannot go back to aboriginal fire management but we can learn from the lessons learnt by graziers. Mainly we must relearn two ancient skills - remove the fuel load everywhere and use fire to fight fire. We know that works.

Big fires need a lot of fuel. If you own the fuel, you own the fire. If you haven't managed the fuel, you will not be able to manage the fire. And if your fire escapes and causes damage, you are responsible.

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A version of this article with cartoons can be downloaded from https://saltbushclub.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/fighting-fires.pdf.



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About the Author

Viv Forbes is a geologist and farmer who lives on a farm on the Bremer River.

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