Fires, climate change and hazard reduction burning
Pro-coal media commentators and politicians anxious to deny the link between climate change and the extreme bushfire season of 2019-20 have sought to blame government hazard reduction practices for the disaster. That's wrong. The intensity of the fires is the result of record drought and extreme fire weather that is being driven by climate change.
Here NSW Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons explains how climate change is reducing the number of days when hazard reduction burning can be safely conducted. He explains that hazard reduction won't stop fires under catastrophic fire conditions like those that prevailed during the summer of 2019-20.
“Hazard reduction is absolutely an important factor when it comes to fire management and managing fire in the landscape but it is not the panacea,”
- Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons
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🔥 MYTH: The government is to blame because it hasn’t done enough hazard reduction burning, allowing fuel loads to build up.
🔥 FACTS:
- Government agencies did hazard reduction on 199,248 hectares of land in 2018-19, protecting 113,130 properties. (RFS Annual Report 2018-19)
- Climate change is reducing the number of days when hazard reduction burning can safely occur. Hazard reduction burns need perfect conditions for several days after a burn to ensure winds do not make smoldering logs flare up and start new fires.
- Hazard reduction is not suitable for some fire sensitive vegetation types, e.g., rainforest and wet sclerophyll forest. Fire can kill rainforest species and most of the time they are too moist to ignite. When they are dry enough to burn, conditions are too dangerous to permit burning.
- Hazard reduction does not solve all problems. In many vegetation types and conditions fuel load can return to pre-fire levels in three to five years.
- Sometimes hazard reduction burns are not possible because the smoke from the burns makes people seriously ill. Hazard reduction produces fine particulate matter air pollution (particles of less than 2.5 mm diameter, PM2.5), which is bad for people’s health.
- A health study of the effects of six days of bad air from hazard reduction burning in the Sydney area in May 2016 concluded the pollution led to 14 premature deaths, 29 cardiovascular hospitalisations and 58 respiratory hospitalisations.
🔥 MYTH: Environmentalists are to blame for these extreme fires because they stop people/fire authorities doing hazard reduction burning.
Image: ABC News/John Mees
🔥 FACTS:
- Environmental groups do not have any power to stop the Rural Fire Service or National Parks and Wildlife Service conducting hazard reduction burns.
- Environmental groups support well planned hazard reduction burning to reduce the severity of high-intensity fires that can destroy sensitive ecosystems as well as threatened life and property.
- The Nature Conservation Council has been working with the Rural Fire Service since 2005 teaching landholders how to plan and safely execute hazard reduction burns that protect property and life without trashing the bush and wildlife.
- Without this training, literally hundreds of property owners would have been more at risk during these unprecedented conditions.
- The Nature Conservation Council has run countless workshops with the Rural Fire Service over the past 15 years that have helped people to do hazard reduction burns on their land in ways that protect life and property without trashing the bush and killing wildlife. Without this training, literally hundreds of property owners would have been more at risk during these unprecedented fires.
🔥 MYTH: Environmentalists have too much power in bushfire committees — they have boasted of setting policy for the whole of the state.
🔥 FACTS:
- Environmental groups have input but do not dictate terms or veto hazard reduction burning decisions.
- These decisions to conduct hazard reduction burns are made collectively by a range of stakeholders, including the Rural fire Service, local councils, state forests, Local Aboriginal Land Councils, the Forestry Corporation and others.
- Environmental groups are just one voice among many who sit on regional bushfire committees, some of which have more than a dozen members.
🔥 MYTH: The National Parks and Wildlife Service hasn’t been doing enough hazard reduction burning, which puts other landholders in danger.
🔥 FACTS:
- The National Parks and Wildlife Service does more hazard reduction burning than any other public or private entity in NSW.
- In 2018-19, the NPWS conducted hazard reduction on 137,763 hectares of land, protecting 22,282 properties, more than all other agencies combined. (RFS Annual Report 2018-19)
- NPWS contributed more than 75 percent of all hazard reduction burns across NSW.
"I am not going to have people using the bushfires to push an anti-national parks agenda.”
- Environment Minister Matt Kean
“This government … embarked on a major restructure which resulted in 778 jobs deleted, altered, downgraded or relocated across multiple classifications, and who have also been in charge while ranger numbers have been slashed by one third since 2011.”
- The NSW Public Service Association
🔥 MYTH: The government should allow farmers to run cattle through national parks to help reduce fuel loads and fire risk.
🔥 FACTS:
- Cows don’t stop fires in national parks and they can cause a host of other problems.
- Stock trample native plants, collapse the banks of creeks and rivers, pollute streams and increase erosion.
- Livestock in national parks spread fast-growing and highly flammable weeds through the parks, increasing fire risk.
🔥 MYTH: Fires have always been part of Australian landscape.
🔥 FACTS:
- Fires are a part of many Australian landscapes, but not all.
- These fires are unusual because they have burned more than 6 million hectares and often in areas that usually do not burn. This year fires burned:
🔥 MYTH: Australia often has extreme fire events. This year is just another example.
🔥 FACTS:
- The Rural Fire Service Commissioner Fitzsimmons said it was unprecedented for NSW to "have so many fires" burning at the emergency alert level. Mr Fitzsimmons said fires were starting extremely quickly, "spreading and burning very intensely, very aggressively", while spot-fire activity was double or triple that which was usually expected.
- November 2019 was the first time ‘Catastrophic’ fire index was used for Greater Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra-Shoalhaven.
- Fire danger in Australia is increasing in line with forecasts by made by the CSIRO and the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, who in 2007 warned "fire seasons will start earlier and end slightly later, while being generally more intense throughout their length. This effect is most pronounced by 2050, although it should be apparent by 2020" (our emphasis added).
- Australia’s fire danger has increased since 1950 across most of the east of the continent, the Bureau of Meteorology has found. These trends include areas of southeastern Queensland and parts of northeastern NSW and capture an increase in the frequency and severity of dangerous fire weather.
- Climate trends in Australia show sharp warming and an increase in extreme events. Last summer, for example, was the country’s hottest on record, and the Bureau of Meteorology found climate change exacerbated extreme heat events as well as droughts during the year. Climate trends: http://www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/
Sources
- Read The Climate Council's factsheet on Hazard Reduction
- https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1323879322-108750
- https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/as-fires-rage-coalition-at-loggerheads-over-hazard-reduction-20191113-p53ada.html
- https://psa.asn.au/recent-media-surrounding-national-parks/
- A rapid assessment of the impact of hazard reduction burning around Sydney, May 2016. Richard A Broome, Fay H Johnston, Joshua Horsley, Geoffrey G Morgan. “We estimated that 14 premature deaths (95% confidence interval [CI], 5e23), 29 cardiovascular hospitalisations (95% CI, 5e53) and 58 respiratory hospitalisations (95% CI, 0e124) were attributable to smoke from hazard reduction burning on the six smoky days.”
- Factcheck: Is there really a green conspiracy to stop bushfire hazard reduction? The Guardian 12-11-2019.
- A surprising answer to a hot question: controlled burns often fail to slow a bushfire, The Conversation, 15-11-2019 Trent Penman, Kate Parkins, Sarah McColl-Gausden, University of Melbourne
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