Indeed interesting but not pc article here with good figures
http://www.newsweekly.com.au/nwmobile/article.php?id=58792
Some good points but the "data" is cherry-picked. Several of those Inquiries, going back to the 1939 fires, also pointed to fires starting as a result of ill-timed, privately organised hazard reduction burning.
I also wonder why it concentrates on the Victorian situation when most of the recent/current fires are in NSW and SE Queensland. Most States have a 5% to 8% target for off-season hazard reduction but have 1) failed to resource the responsible agencies to achieve it, and 2) have been struggling to find a sufficient weather widows to do it safely. Getting the volunteers trained and out in the field week after week is also becoming harder for a range of reasons.
Even achieving their targets would not help in many cases. The NSW RFS Chief is on record as saying that some of the NSW fires actually started in areas that did have recent burns. The exceptionally dry weather causes Eucalyptus to shed bark and leaves at an increased rate and many undergrowth shrubs to die back to a dry, twiggy mess, meaning a couple of years is all that is needed to accumulate sufficient fuel loads. Once one of these fires starts in these conditions and reaches canopy height in strong winds and low humidity, no amount of prior hazard reduction will help stop its rapid spread.
Like others, I'd like to see the results of a proper inquiry before any blame gets laid (if, indeed, blame is required).
This "blame the Greens" stuff is, IMO, just a politically motivated diversion. They have no power (except here in the ACT, where hazard reduction burns are a standard feature of our winters) and have policies in support of hazard reduction. Of the three "extreme" greenies I know, two live in the country and are volunteers with their local RFS and spend their winter weekends on standby for prescribed burns. The other participates in regular hazard reduction through National Parks Volunteers. I certainly don't deny that in some localities residents may raise "green" concerns about particular off-season burning plans but these are generally motivated by property or health concerns.
That article also seems to be based on a beef about Victorian forest policy which I don't really understand. But contrasting some mythical nirvana of "selective logging" with a total "no-go - lock-it-up" policy totally ignores the fact that most State Forestry authorities have a) been on notice for at least 30 years that their practices must change on both environmental and economic grounds, and b) most of them have anyway moved to extraction by large-scale clear-felling of native and plantation forests in order to remain even slightly viable. I haven't seen a traditional "selective-logging" commercial operation in the southern States for a long time.
Finally, on the issue of the term "unprecedented", I'd just note that the term was used by fire chiefs in relation to the number of major fires out of control at the same time so early in the fire season, and, possibly, to the coincidence of very dry conditions (drought) and the “sudden stratospheric warming” which generated the extreme heat and wind over Eastern Australia. Sudden stratospheric warming is real and not related, as far as I know, to AGW. They were
not talking about the actual scale of the fires or damage to property and human life.
Like any complex event, there will be different interpretations of causes and "what we should have done" but making it ideological seems silly to me. I always subscribe to two maxims:
1) If there is a choice between a stuff-up and a conspiracy, go with the stuff-up every time (P. J. Keating); and
2) For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. (H. L. Mencken)