Bushfire surprise?

I think on here before, we have had people compare the effectiveness of the helicopters. I don't think they ended up being as good as you would imagine they are.

Was it Kato that talked about this?

I'm watching the live media crap now 7 is lapping it up. My conclusion is these people choice or decide the want to live in around the gumtrees and bush. It's never concrete suburbin burning.

Why bother with expensive reactive solutions (sure a few helicopters or planes are needed) why not concentrate on training more specialised squads to do proactive burning off to reduce fuel loads

The planes and helicopters don't fly at night, the SW Change came through at 10.30pm on the mid north coast NSW, sure more aircraft would help but I don't think it's the only answer. I don't know what is.
With a couple of large jets, a couple of fixed wing planes, and 3 or 4 helicopters and a spotter helicopter directing where they dump the water, on one fire front I can tell you the airspace gets pretty crowded.

This idea that a multi-billion dollar fleet of water bombers will solve all is fanciful. Fire management is a complex layered approach, fire danger ratings, hazard reduction burns, evacuation planning, arson investigation and fire education training, then the actual firefighting is at the end.
Plus the operational tempo of having an amazing fleet of aircraft attacking individual fires would surely come with its own risk and dramatically increase the risk of losing aircraft and their crews.

"Fuel loads is a media term and has NO relevance in bush management
A wet tropical jungle has lots of vegetation per Ha but won't burn"

Fuel loads, overgrowth, vegetation NO relevance, WOW argue that one with the indigenous that have managed tropical areas for hundreds of years, thats why u plan and burn off when its close (before or after) to wet season and you can control its called reducing the fuel load!! That comment is rubbish

I will stand by my comment 100%, send a fire thru vegetation that was burnt off previously the year before, send a fire thru the same vegetation not previously burnt off, watch the difference, u have reduced the fuel load, call it whatever term u want, the RELEVANCE is huge,

No problem with the media using the term "fuel" but they've been overly quick to link it to climate change. Historically the areas currently burning have always been more prone to fires in Spring.


A changing climate will alter the fire regime but which way? On one hand you might get more hotter drier and windier days, but on the other hand vegetation doesn't grow as quickly in these conditions. It will take longer for them to shed old leaves and twigs that can dry out to become "available" fuel. Burnt sections may thus suppress subsequent fires for an extra year or so. Microbial decomposition of surface fuels in long unburnt forests, as found in National parks, may be accelerated in the higher average temperatures. (depending on moisture of course). This would lead to a lower equilibrium of unburnt surface fuels. And how are the fuel stackers and rakers like Lyrebirds going to fare with climate change and fox eradication?

All to complex, but trust the media to make the call!

I can help, the morrison govt sat on a report for 7 months, into drought because it contained the term "climate change"!

There is also another alternative to back burning and fuel reduction with fires.
Animal that could eat most of bushes.Goats .
Tried already in California.
We need million of goats.After feeding them nicely we could export them to Muslim countries the love to eat them,
alternatively after bushfires we may have food here warm and ready to serve straight from the bushes.

Another interesting subject could be consideration : What size rainfall is needed to conquer average bushfire or just make a difference?
If we assume ( by guessing ) that 10 mm of the rain is needed then we could calculate the we need 100 tones of water per 1 hectare!That is a lot of water if we want to make such artificial rain. But I beleive that can be done.Canadian company designed modern airships capable to carry up to 500 tonnes of load. Australia one day could invest in the fleet of those airships to carry cargo across continent, instead of trucks on the road.But in emergency they could switch to water.Initial fire usually is quite limited in size , so artificial rain could be then anwer in the future. We could not claim that Australia need to burn every year because ...was doing so for centuries, global warming, excess fuel , etc nonsense.I wish that future could prove that even in harsh Australian climate fires and completely not needed to respre balance in nature.
skyfreightercanada.com/aircraft.htm

wow some ideas on here are pretty wacko. but i like the out of the box thinking. even the off the planet thinking is good for a laugh! just make some rain - way to go Macroscien, if we could do that we could end this drought once and for all, and the bushfire problems too!

I work in land and fire management in midwest WA and actually, back to the OP, some of the original question isn't so out there. often times in our extremely remote parts of the state we monitor fires from satellites only - the satellite technology to spot fires is pretty good, down to 15 minute frequency now (maybe less?) , and we often watch a fire trickle around for a few days or weeks before it runs into some bare or burnt ground or wet weather and extinguishes itself. obviously, only if there's nothing at risk from the fire.

There have been plenty of occasions where the satellite has picked up a hot spot in a very hard to get to location (no where near any access tracks), we've dispatched bombers to dump a load or two on it, and occasionally been able to put it out. Often its enough to take the heat out of it, slow down progression of the fire, and allow time for ground crews to get there and put it out before it gets to anything significant. But its extremely rare that this is sufficient to extinguish a fire by itself.

I believe there is plenty of room for improvement in the equipment and tech we use for fighting fires. e.g. our fire trucks are ok, but they're basically just tricked up commercial trucks. they get bogged pretty easy. they stake tyres. the truck cab interior melts when it gets hot, releasing all sorts of toxic gas to inhale, and aren't even insulated to protect a firefighter trapped inside. we could do better. i saw this one in action recently, definitely a step up in capability. www.facebook.com/ShireofDandaragan/posts/2140819012694697

There are many good points in the above posts - below a few things i think are worth considering.
- fuel management (prescribed burning) i believe is the only effective way to reduce the wildfire risk to acceptable levels at the landscape scale. this has its own risks, but they are manageable, and definitely preferable to the alternative (not burning, increasing risk of extreme wildfires).
- the bush needs to burn. ecologically, its important to burn most areas (in australia) - the more variation in fuel ages we have across the landscape, the better. if we dont burn the bush, it'll do it itself.
- I don't think I've ever met a professional firefighter that is a climate change denier. even in my relatively short time involved in fires (10 or so years) the difference in length of fire seasons is noticeable. we used to have a fire season, and a spring and autumn burn season. now its an extended spring -summer - autumn fire season, and we've been able to burn in the middle of winter (which wasn't possible, even 10 years ago).

Climate change and associated bushfire season changes are here now, it's not a thing of the future. unfortunately we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it before we even get close to fixing the cause of the problem.