Maroc - TIMBERBIZ.COM.AU - A La Une - 07/Jan 23:12

Victoria ill-prepared for potential catastrophic bushfires

In a commentary in the Latrobe Valley Express, Victoria’s Forest and Fire Management Chief Fire Officer, Chris Hardman stated that: “…you should know that Victoria is prepared and that our land and fire agencies have worked all year to reduce bushfire risk. We are prepared and ready to respond”. Source: Latrobe Valley Express by John Cameron The truth is that Victoria is unprepared and is at risk of large catastrophic bushfires with potential to destroy life, property, livestock, environmental values and disrupt water supplies in both regional Victoria and greater metropolitan Melbourne. We risk a repeat of events like Black Friday (1939), Ash Wednesday (1983), Black Saturday (2009) and the Black Summer (2019/20). This risk is primarily because our key fire agencies have demonstrably failed to implement adequate fuel reduction, have a track record of untimely fire detection and delayed initial attack and have often failed to mount fire suppression with sufficient force. Mr Hardman talks up his agency’s fuel reduction on 90,000 hectares last year and 138,000 hectares of public forest this year. To put that in perspective, the area of public forest fuel reduced represents only 1.2% and 1.8% respectively of 7.5 million hectares of public forest land. This fuel reduced proportion is well short of the recommendation of the Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission, which called for fuel reduction on greater than 5% of the forest each year (on a rolling average basis). Fire behaviour scientist in submissions and evidence to the Royal Commission, called for fuel reduction on 8% pa, consistent with the highly successful bushfire mitigation employed for more than 60 years in the forests of South West WA (only two lives lost to bushfire in their south-west forest over the last 60 years). Since 2009, our ‘responsible’ agency has been fuel reducing less than about 1.5% of the forest each year. Large areas of Victoria now have very high forest fuel levels (flammable dead bark, branches, leaves etc on the forest floor) of up to 40 tonnes per hectare. According to fire behaviour expert David Packham, the energy released by combustion in a bushfire of this amount of fuel (at about 10% moisture content) would be about 680,000 megajoules per hectare, resulting in a very severe bushfire under adverse weather conditions. This forest fuel load has the potential energy output of 14,000 litres per hectare of petrol, however, the forest fuel is potentially more dangerous than petrol because of the potential of burning bark shards to create new fires 10 to 20 kilometres ahead of the fire front. Because of very high forest fuel levels, Victoria is a ticking time bomb. The large 1.8 million hectares burnt as a result of Victoria’s 2019/20 bushfires has been attributed to insufficient fuel reduction in the burnt areas in the years preceding the fire – only 0.6% pa of the forest area was fuel reduced in prior years and the fuel reduced coupe size was too small and there was insufficient fuel reduction close to ignition points. Weather conditions and Forest Fire Danger Index were moderate for about two weeks after initial ignitions on 21 November. Other deficiencies included tardy fire detection, delayed initial attack (attack delayed to second and third day after ignition for two fires that went on to burn about one million hectares), and not mounting suppression with sufficient force, particularly early when fire weather was moderate and the fire perimeter was relatively small. John Cameron (Dip Hort. Burnley, MBA Monash, and tertiary units in economics, mathematics and statistics) is a forestry and business consultant previously holding positions in general management, corporate development and research in forestry and forest products.