Bushfires in Australia

It's now 6 January 2020.  Australia had disastrous bushfires in the past week or two and some are still going.  About 3.5 million Hectares were scorched, at least 20 people are dead, the army is apparently helping to bury 100,000 dead cattle and more than 1,500 homes were burned down.  The prime minister, Scott Morrison promised a two bilion dollar recovery package.  The actual cost of the fires will, of course, only be known later.

Here are some resources confirming the above figures:

• Seven TV Network
• BBC A Visual Guide 
• The Guardian - Australian Edition

In the winter of 2019, I was in a car driving through the Mount Hotham area in Victoria.   There were masses of deadwood on the forest floor as far as one could see.  And it didn't stop as one drove along.  "This is a bushfire waiting to happen," I told my friend.  The order to evacuate Hotham came on the 3rd of January.

It's hard to set a Eucalyptus tree ablaze.  In New Zealand, we used to start the woodfires using pine and only then added the Eucalyptus wood.  One needs a lot of kindling to set fire to Eucalyptus wood.  This kindling is in plentiful supply in the woods of Australia.  And the authorities do nothing about it.  They have no incentive - they are never held accountable.  To say they were derelict in their duty would be a euphemism.  Gross negligence is closer to the mark.  And still, the law protects them.

The CSIRO did a study on wildfires in Tasmania which you can get here.  They studied three plans of action:

1. Do nothing - popular with those living on the taxpayer dollar the world over.
2. A maximal treatment, with the most possible prescribed burning within ecological constraints.
3. 12 hypothetically more implementable state-wide prescribed-burning plans.

 Of the third option they said:

Leverage analysis of the 12 more-realistic implementable plans indicated that such prescribed burning would have only a minimal effect, if any, on fire extent and that none of these prescribed-burning plans substantially reduced fire intensity. 

This means it won't work.

Of the second option they said:

Statistical modelling showed that an unrealistically large maximal treatment scenario could reduce fire intensity in three flammable vegetation types, and reduce fire probability in almost every vegetation type.

My point is that bushfires are so devastating that expensive, large-scale preventative measures are justified.

Keeping that in mind, option two is clearly the way to go.  But they are already making excuses stating backburning won't work.  One of the problems is it can only be done in the right weather conditions.  They didn't say it, but I say it, backburns can get and have got out of hand.  So, if backburns are not the way to go, what is?

Finland had a decrease in forest fires over the past few decades.  They fare much better as far as forest fires are concerned than neighbouring Sweden.  The do clear deadwood from the forest floor and they go so far as to clean the forest floor of combustible material after cutting down trees.

It is justified to use armies of prisoners and able welfare recipients to clear the ground in Australian bushland.  It may not be politically correct, but political correctness should yield to reality.  And these bushfires were and are very real.  Of course, if anything is preferable to violating the principles of political correctness, go for the bushfires.

Getting the kindling out of the woods is most likely the most important thing to do that will yield results the soonest.  One should focus on the big gains first.