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2002 (c) Peninsula Community Access Newspaper Inc

 

What have we learnt from fires?

 

It doesn't seem so long ago that the '94 bushfires ravaged NSW.

They are back again and what have we learnt?

I've learnt not to trust the bureaucracy: the so-called experts.

These experts told me bush fires don't spread from treetop to treetop.

You can imagine how amazed I was to see footage on television of bushfires doing just that, spreading from treetop to treetop without any evidence of the fire having climbed up the tree, originating from undergrowth.

Common sense told me this could happen but the experts told me otherwise.

My amazement turned to anger when on the same night I heard a television reporter tell how many homes had been damaged by falling trees (as a direct result of the bush fire).

I had expressed this same concern to my local authority over a tree whose upper canopy hangs over my roofline and which, in a bush fire would, no doubt, fall on my house.

As I write this letter I remember back to the two occasions I gave written permission for the local bush fire brigade to do a safety back-burn in my area.

The back-burns never took place.

I later made enquiries and was told that "Parks and Wildlife" have control over such matters now.

Some questions come to mind.

Which politician gave "Parks and Wildlife" the authority to make decisions that put human lives in danger and to have zero regard for property?

How is it that the so-called experts can lie to the general public, give bad advice and get away with it?

When did a single tree near a home become more valuable than a human life?

As for the wildlife killed in these bushfires: how many animals died because of the intensity of these bush fires: how many would have survived a less intensive safety-burn?

As for the pollution caused by these bushfires; how much more smoke has been produced than would have been produced from some level of safety burning?

Safety burning is not the only way to clear trees: felling and chipping trees doesn't cause pollution and at the same time produces mulch that is environmentally friendly.

Local councils seem to be hypocritical in their attitude to minimising the bushfire threat.

How many of us know of council-owned land in residential areas that has not been cleared in the last 20 years?

Yet councils across NSW are only too vigilant when it comes to issuing private landowners with notices to clear their land siting potential bush fire fuel as the reason.

Perhaps if homeowners living on the edge of bushland were allowed to maintain a well-cleared perimeter around their properties, lives and property would not be at such risk.

A randomly chosen distance of three metres from a house seems ludicrous when it does not take into account the height of the tree, the spread of its canopy or the invasiveness of its root system.

My intent in writing this letter is not to whinge but rather to put voice to the genuine concerns of many residents.

And thank you to all those putting their lives at risk fighting these bushfires.

Stephen Laming, Horsfield Bay