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Victorian Fires

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moXJO said:
Strike Force Tronto, made up of detectives from the Financial Crimes Squad's Arson Unit, have been working closely with local police forces to catch arsonists.
Today the NSW Police confirmed 24 people had been charged over alleged deliberately-lit bushfires.

Shocking figures released by Strike Force Tronto today also showed legal action had been taken against 47 people for allegedly discarding a lighted cigarette or match on land.
A further 53 people faced legal action for allegedly failing to comply with a total fire ban.
Police urge people to provide footage and images from phones, dashcam or other devices that show any of fires in their infancy, even if only from a distance.
Click to expand...

One would expect there will be a lot of data matching going on ATM, it could get really serious if any underlying collusion was going on, the charges could be very serious.IMO
 
Smurf1976 said:
I don't really know what to think there but the notion that there may have been some sort of co-ordinated activity going on has occurred to me. That's a bit "tin foil hat" I'll admit but if 24 have been charged well then it's a fair assumption that the number of actual arsonists was far higher given that the majority wouldn't be caught in practice. Either a lot of individuals all had the same idea or some group is trying to start a mega fire.

Conspiracy?

I don't really know what to think but if there's 24 been charged just in NSW, and people charged in several other states, well then the idea that some redneck group is involved doesn't seem impossible. No proof, it's just a theory, but it would seem at least possible there's a criminal element involved beyond individuals acting independently. :2twocents
Click to expand...
You would be surprised how many people do this. Fire fighters have been caught lighting fires in the hope of looking like hero's when fighting them. Crazy stuff.
Others just do dumb crap.
 
David Shoebridge (Greens NSW) Tweeted this a few hours ago.

"Just to be clear for the RWNJs who run these lies. I’ve been a Greens MP for almost 10 years and never once voted for, or called for, reducing hazard reduction burns. I’ve worked with almost 200 Greens councillors in that time and none of them have either".

https://twitter.com/ShoebridgeMLC
 
tinhat said:
Suggestions that have been posted on these fora in recent days that "Greenies" are to blame for insufficient hazard reduction burning are complete nonsense. The Murdoch press are flaming this fake news. It is as fake as claiming that Turnbull was going to "privatise medicare" or Shorten was going to introduce a "death tax".

This fake news claim is completely refuted by facts. I know from my conservation work that there is consensus among ecologists that many coastal ecological communities benefit from period burning at appropriate time intervals which iss recommended in the recovery plans of several endangered ecological communities as listed under NSW and Commonwealth legislation.

I am aware of the work the Nature Conservation Council of NSW have funded in researching and promoting fire stick land management, especially in northern NSW having chatted with one of the ecologists working on the program at the NCC annual conference three years ago.

I am also aware that the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) want to do more burning in my area, not just hazard reduction burning but also ecological burns but are hampered by lack of resources. Conservation groups have been warning of the massive loss of experienced fire management personnel that resulted from the government's forced round of redundancies from the NPWS only a few years ago. In fact, management of our national parks, including invasive species management, etc, is suffering because park rangers, including area managers in NSW are flat out half of the year on secondment fighting fires up and down the coast.

I am also aware that in NSW the RFS office responsible for assessing certain developments on bushfire prone land are continuing to allow inappropriate development on bushfire prone land under duress from the NSW state government. I am aware of one development in my local area that both the local council and the local RFS have been highly critical, scathing even, of the RFS development approval.

Greenie bashing as a diversion from the ideological hatred that many conservatives have towards, you know, looking after the environment that sustains life, instead of short-term and short-sighted exploitation, I hope to hell, ain't going to wash after this angry summer.

The false dichotomy of characterising sustainable environmental stewardship and nature conservation as a leftist/socialist is absurd and perverted.

As an active conservationist, it is my direct personal experience in my local area that in general conservationists, ecologists, the NPWS, the local RFS management and volunteer firies are in harmony over hazard reduction burning. The one thing we all have in common is a desire to see more resources allocated so that burns can be conducted at appropriate scales in appropriate conditions at appropriate intervals. Right now, because of a lack of resources, not enough cold burns are being done at ecologically appropriate scale and not frequently enough - not because of this mythical power that "greenies" apparently have to stop burns, but because of lack of government allocated resources.
Click to expand...
@tinhat, in qld at least:
agree on lack of resource, any serious ecosystem expert would indeed favor proper fire management etc
But the fact remains that here i can not legally cut a tree for a fire break: Moreton Bay council at least unless i only cut non native species
So no, SHY is not passing a law making me burn to death, but tree clearing regulations, vegetation management laws and centrally managed permitting act the same, and they are all under the environmental protection label.
Full land clearing is happily going on to install new estates but landowners can not manage their blocks.i do not need experts to tell me what is happening on my own block
There is only so much i can do clearing lantana by hand in the hills
Otherwise yes and yes for resources lacking.manpower in rangers and a more profound issue with RFS volonteering.
 
moXJO said:
Talking about short memories, I don't remember hearing about this one.
Click to expand...

Well ... remote WA and NT ... and QLD which 45 years ago and scrub with few people ... burnt. After I might add massive flooding ... far far west NSW as well.

In the La Niña year of 1974, an estimated 900 billion tons of rain fell throughout the state of Queensland
http://www.environmentandsociety.org/arcadia/australia-day-floods-january-1974

According to the Bureau of Meteorology special climate statement, the total rainfall for last year was 705mm, making it the second wettest year on record, behind 1974 with 760mm THE RECORD ...

1974 with 760mm THE RECORD ...


If you look ... the source of this fable .. or story ... via Murdoch Press .. extolling virtues of controlled burning and it is linked to none other than the climate denial site of Australia funded by Gina Rhinehart and non other than discredited unqualified ... paid pet Jenifer Marohasy

She is at best ... a hack.

The Murdoch press source ... from her own site !! PLEASE DONT LAUGH ... it is true ... link provided.

Dr Christine Finlay ... her CV ... on her site ...

I have been on the dole on and off ever since I stumbled on the vast amount of evidence I present in my PhD - Smokescreen: Black/White/Male/Female Bravery and SE Australian Bushfires. Firestorms are preventable and there is a huge amount of evidence that semi-naked Aborigines managed and still manage bushfires superbly without boots, trucks or even a box of matches. The massacre can be ended for peanuts.

I can't get a job no matter no hard I try. Twenty years of writing job applications proved no one will employ a PhD to work as a secretary, bus driver, cleaner, cook etc etc

I struggle to keep my teeth in my head because dentistry is so expensive

https://sites.google.com/site/stopbushfires/about-dr-christine-finlay

Are they joking ? Source ? Maybe they got her some teeth ? Credible or not ? Feeling better about the burn-offs and aboriginal myth ? Knowing the source. I am !!

I note Bloomberg the billionaire 6 th richest person on the planet got busted using female inmates from a jail to do his calls, but this is sadly astounding. .

Back to Gina Rhinehards and the Australian denial site ....
paid pet Jenifer Marohasy


Her group ... funded by oil and gas and coal ... Gina has a big coal mine is the Australian version of the Koch brothers in her funding of climate denial.

Australian think-tank that has received funding from petroleum, mining, logging, and tobacco concerns. In 2018, DeSmog confirmed mining magnate and climate change denier Gina Rinehart was a key backer of IPA, providing between a third and a half of the group's entire income via her company Hancock Prospecting Proprietary Ltd (HPPL).

Her views ....
“Global warming is actually not a hard issue to dissect, because fundamentally it relies on evidence of there being a general trend of temperature increase - and measuring temperatures is not rocket science. Of course, there is nowhere on Earth where the mean global temperature anomaly can be measured. So, steer-clear when this statistic is mentioned by an expert - you can probably dismiss it as something entirely contrived, like say the Virgin birth.”



Or this
“Because the masses believe that global atmospheric temperatures are rising unnaturally – the Hazelwood coal-fired power station was decommissioned, and the price of electricity is surging across Australia. The evidence, however, for a rise in global temperatures is actually not that compelling – unless you believe the output from computer models. … So, I have always thought, once this obsession with catastrophic global warming eventually comes to an end (as surely it must), we will be able to start over, with the real data.”

OR this ..
The paper claimed that climate change is largely the result of natural phenomena, which led other skeptics and conservative media outlets such as Breitbart and the Drudge Report to promote it. After review by climate scientists, however, the report was found to contain several obvious flaws and was recommended for redaction.

OR this
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) confirmed 2013 as the continent’s hottest year on record, prompting Marohasy to accuse the BOM of manipulating temperature data to fit the consensus view on anthropogenic climate change

Affiliations

I would also add .... This Gina Rhinehart funded denail blog along with other climate denier types has such luminaries as ex head of Liberal party and various other senior members as is backers, advisors and board members.

Michael Kroger ,,, and a very long list of people whom I like as much as the Koch brothers.


I dont of course dispute the area burnt .... after record rain early 1974 .... and frankly no one could be bothered putting out vast tracts of desert and very sparsely populated regions that had gone nuts due to massive record rain Summer hit and it caught alight !! SURPRISE !!

I am not sure given the person pumping this and her record and totally failing to mention WHY so much area burnt, and WHY it burnt due to MASSIVE and EXTREME rain and flooding early 1974 RECORD FLOODING ... it kind of in that context verses her narrative looks idiotic in the extreme .

Each can make their own judgement but in the story she is also denying record temperatures. ... AGAIN ... she and others behind discrediting the BOM and in fact every single data point.

Amusing and why .. it actually pays to check the source.
I might add the floods were pretty widespread over Australia in 1974 and growth of course went nuts.
Pity we are the TOTAL opposite .... rainfall wise 2019 and here we have deliberate BS comparing I would say two totally different things.

But thanks. I was too surprised to read the totals and then dug ... and researched sources, and then the light went on.

Amazing what a billionaire can buy ...


During the fire period in 1974-75, up to 15 fires were being reported each day in CA. It is
estimated that 1,000,000 km² or 13% of the Australian continent was burnt (Ralph 1984).
Up to 80% of the Uluru (Ayers Rock) National Park was burnt. As a consequence,
Government agencies made a determined effort to develop and implement a wildfire aversion strategy for the park (Saxon 1984). The knowledge generated by this fire management plan then provided a model for how spinifex vegetation could be managed
in other CA parks and reserves (Preece et al. 1989)

Does this sound like 2019 ?

CA is arid desert central Australia and three deserts I checked burnt.

So Vast tracts of DESERT burnt ... pretty hard to put out a grass fire with no water. Hence the size

Relevance ? Not much.



 
Last edited:
qldfrog said:
@tinhat, in qld at least:
agree on lack of resource, any serious ecosystem expert would indeed favor proper fire management etc
But the fact remains that here i can not legally cut a tree for a fire break: Moreton Bay council at least unless i only cut non native species
So no, SHY is not passing a law making me burn to death, but tree clearing regulations, vegetation management laws and centrally managed permitting act the same, and they are all under the environmental protection label.
Full land clearing is happily going on to install new estates but landowners can not manage their blocks.i do not need experts to tell me what is happening on my own block
There is only so much i can do clearing lantana by hand in the hills
Otherwise yes and yes for resources lacking.manpower in rangers and a more profound issue with RFS volonteering.
Click to expand...
BOOM!

ON two sides of my place is thick, dangerous bush. My place is very treed (and I like that, but there are a couple of smaller trees that are in inconvenient spots). We are not allowed to touch a thing.

Yet across the road and on one side, the bush has been razed for housing estates (and the builders have left us with an immense rubbish problem).

Our place and the others will go to developers eventually too, as it is in a development corrifor; meanwhile we have to treat it like a world heritage site, until the dozers come in and flatten everything.

It is truly an absurd situation.
 
sptrawler said:
Interesting article on home insurance and bushfires.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01...car-rural-australia/11844992?section=analysis
Click to expand...
it is a lose lose situation: you under insure, you are screwed, but if you over insure, you pay the higher fees but when **** happens, the insurance will tell you: you did not have golden plated taps, this is all what your house was worth...
insurances as stated here before should take responsability; and say: this is a new for old policy, item for item; including cleaning mess, new code regulations, koala spotter hire to check your charred stumps as per council policy etc etc


if you want to insure for less , your call and you can, but we will only pay back whatever amount you paid for.
It is all too easy to blame it on the people from the insurer side
but also to have disingenuous people crying poor while not insured at all and receiving donation money whereas the insured next door is left high and dry after having been racketed all his life..inc by the governments..see the taxes on your premiums....
 
A question for any legal eagles out there (or explod maybe).

If a farmer (say), or any other person legally able to carry a firearm sees a person lighting a fire in a period of high fire danger, and they can be pretty sure that that person is not part of a firefighting operation, can the farmer legally shoot the "arsonist" ?
 
SirRumpole said:
A question for any legal eagles out there (or explod maybe).

If a farmer (say), or any other person legally able to carry a firearm sees a person lighting a fire in a period of high fire danger, and they can be pretty sure that that person is not part of a firefighting operation, can the farmer legally shoot the "arsonist" ?
Click to expand...
Absolutely not, in Australia, reasonable force does not include shooting someone, unfortunately.:D
 
Grass fire burn over in 2015 to give some perspective of being on the front line when it all goes wrong

 
SirRumpole said:
A question for any legal eagles out there (or explod maybe).

If a farmer (say), or any other person legally able to carry a firearm sees a person lighting a fire in a period of high fire danger, and they can be pretty sure that that person is not part of a firefighting operation, can the farmer legally shoot the "arsonist" ?
Click to expand...
You do not live in the land of freedom, if someone stabs you and you shot him/her you go to jail
Your response was not proportional...
Do you not remember the farmer who got into trouble by arresting a thief using an uncharged gun here in qld?and neither him or his wife can own a gun nowin a cattke station...
 
I think the only way you could get away with shooting someone..i do not say kill..would be if he had already killed someone just before
 
https://www.theage.com.au/national/...turday-hills-set-to-burn-20200106-p53p7v.html

From the article:
Mark Morrow lives in Kinglake West where his house, and eight others around it, were lost in 2009 (they have now been rebuilt).

“If we get another fire now, it’d be just as bad as Black Saturday," he said. "They’ve done no clearing, they’ve done nothing with the undergrowth. I went for a walk through the bush, and it’s just as thick as it was – probably thicker.
Because much of the region’s forest is close to towns, it is extremely difficult to carry out planned burns. Using fire, bulldozers and grass slashing, government agencies have only been able to cut the risk in the region by about 4 per cent.

"We’re in the grip of a very significant drought event, pretty well in most of the south-eastern half of Victoria," says Dr Jim McLennan, a bushfire safety researcher at La Trobe University.
A fire in east-central Victoria is one of the CFA's nightmare scenarios. Almost 60 per cent of Victoria’s population live there and about half of them live in properties close to bushland. Many are "tree-changers" who are have not seen a bushfire before. It has some of the most flammable vegetation on Earth.

I drove from Koo Wee Rup up to Launching Place. You look at the houses that are embedded in the bush. In a drought situation, it’s a deathtrap for them, there is nothing else you can say," says retired CSIRO bushfire scientist Phil Cheney.

More than than half of all Victoria’s bushfire deaths have happened in the region. It burnt on Black Thursday in 1851, Black Friday in 1939, Ash Wednesday in 1983, and Black Saturday in 2009. After 2009 the bushfire risk fell dramatically – because there was little left to burn.

But the forests have now grown back, reaching the same risk levels as before the huge blaze.
.
This underlines what 'tinhat' said about lack of money and lack of resources and it is getting dryer, they have to spend more money doing burnoffs, when the weather allows. Or stop people building in those areas most affected, so that natural buffers can be added.
 
Then you get this reported, is there any wonder people don't know who to believe.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01...n-debate-rubbish-says-vic-fire-chief/11849522
From the article:
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has moved to shut down calls for a massive increase in fuel reduction burns, as the state's fire chief says the debate has involved "hysteria" and an "emotional load of rubbish"

Planned burning 'not a silver bullet'
Asked about the issue this afternoon, Mr Andrews said prescribed burns were part of an integrated strategy focused on protecting life but there were fewer days each year when they could be safely lit.

"Surely no-one is advocating that we put fire into the landscape in an unsafe way. That just wouldn't be sensible, that would be dangerous," he said.
Key points:
  • Former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and others have called for more planned burns in the wake of the bushfires
  • But the Country Fire Authority's chief officer says the "hysteria" over planned burns is "an emotional load of rubbish"
  • The Premier says the window during which planned burns can be safely attempted is becoming smaller each year.
Well that again IMO would back up what 'tinhat' said if the window to burn off is getting smaller employ more people and resources to carry it out.
The only other answer is to remove houses from areas of high probability.
Finger pointing and saying it can't be done isn't the answer, if the climate is getting dryer, then the fuel load has to be reduced or the people relocated. Thankfully Morrison didn't come up with this story.
 
SirRumpole said:
can the farmer legally shoot the "arsonist" ?
Click to expand...

Yes ...
One may be charged with murder ... or manslaughter ...
But ... like a burglar ... if they are confronted and they attack you ... you have a right to use justifiable force.

So ... if your grass is tinder dry ... and its a direct clear and easily seen life threatening action which ... is WHERE ... the justifiable force issues arises, shooting them to prevent what you asses as a very good life threatening action, would despite likely being charged ... overturned in any court.

If the arsonist is lighting a fire unlikely to spread too far in wet winter weather ... thats another thing.

If say the arsonist is dousing the house where you wife and child lay asleep and putting them in dire risk ... YES is the answer and your unlikely to even get charged.

This in NSW ... they changed the laws a few years aog after a burglar sued the person who owned the property and defended himself. Even more absurd was the case of the burglar injured whilst trying to break in.

Not suggesting anyone EVER does it. Think very carefully ...
Much the same if your qualified and someone and even a group attacks you ... how far one goes beyond putting someone on the ground ... you may end up being charged with assault even aggravated assault when the fight was started unprovoked ... and you merely defended yourself or a loved one.

Tricky part of the law ... justifying ... not going to far and each case differs vastly from the rest.

Think ... think very closely ... unless I suppose they have your house doused with petrol or an area that will ignite and threaten people .... use of force a bloody nightmare.

Call the police ... take pictures ... shoot over their head ... but of course .. there is scope to everything. It would be I think highly unusual for use of deadly force to be justified outside extreme fire risks and clearly defined threat to life.

that is my read, possibly out of date ... not as a copper but with utmost respect for them and with some background all be it irrelevant.

Maybe a real lawyer can elaborate ... but .. unless your a criminal one, its ... well ... specialized ... a cop will of course say call them ... but not possible at times when being attacked.
 

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