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Queensland Bushfires- The Shape Of Summer To Come For Victoria.
Is this the shape of a summer to come for Victoria?
The question may be rhetorical, but the answer is definitely “Yes.”
With the Weather Bureau warning El Nino is with us in full force, the problems faced in Queensland are equally probable in Victoria:
We have done nothing to prepare for the coming bushfire season.
We’ve had a Royal Commission sift through the ashes, charged with the delicate responsibility of not finding fault, but we’ve had no decisive action.
Locally the greenie groups are still railing on about how the bush “buffers fire” – without a shred of credible science to support the assertion – and are not being called on this nonsense.
We’ve heard claims around where I live in the electorate of McEwen – the area destroyed by February 7th Black Saturday – that fuel reduction efforts will be met by “civil disobedience”.
This is probably the same ratbags who protested at Hazelwood power station a few weeks ago. Rabble using force for a cause no Victorian can afford to have implemented – the immediate closure of a power station with no replacement facility.
Such is the thought processes of the cult of Green.
Yes, the current power stations are filthy. But close them before viable alternatives are up and running?
Ridiculous!!
The power station owners have already announced a maintainance moratorium – condemning Hazelwood and Yallourn to an immediate decline – and the big new gas-powered peaker at Mortlake will be ready for summer. But this still isn’t good enough, oh no!
Our thoughts turn to the people in Queensland, in hope their bushfires don’t degenerate further. At the same time we pause to consider the consequences for rural Victoria of the lack of any real action or preparation or protection undertaken by the Brumby Labor government.
We should also consider why the Liberal Party have been so ineffective in holding the government to account – as is the job of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
We must consider what the feral fringe, and the party they ask you to vote for – The Greens – are doing to each and every one of us with their worship of eucalyptus totem poles, on which they insist every Victorian in fire prone areas be sacrificed like the witches of Massachusetts.
Every Victorian needs to be loud and vocal about this. It is time to say “no more”.
Caring for the environment is essential, but the decaying organic matter on a eucalyptus forest floor is not lovely compost or trapped carbon dioxide, it is fuel for the holocaust, coming to your home this summer!
We must reduce the fuel load by widespread burning off in the small time available before summer, or stop the rebuilding and evacuate the people. This is the consensus of scientifc advice to government.
Premier Brumby has stark and unpalatable choices before him.
Don’t burn us again.
Scott Kane
Tags: aest, brumby, bushfire season, bushfires, central queensland, civil disobedience, credible science, decisive action, el nino, electorate, february 7th, feral fringe, fire bans, fuel reduction, holocaust, labor government, liberal party, peaker, rabble, railing, reduction efforts, rhetorical question, second wave, thought process, thought processes, viable alternatives, victorians, wave of fire, weather bureau, yallourn
Wow! Great scaremongering Scott!
Mass backburns are impractical and also quite dangerous. One of the reasons for such a backlog in backburning is drought. You have managed to turn a rather complex matter into something of simplicity. It has a Today Tonight feel to it.
We ought to just cut down our forests, build ourselves to safety and engineer our natural environment for our own ends.
Living in the bush brings with it risks and one of those risks is death from bushfire if one is not prepared. Prepared doesn’t mean staring out from your back deck to the smoke and flames 2km away and thinking it’s time to get out. It means preparing for the worst case scenario BEFORE it happens. People ought to take more responsibility.
I have seen ridiculous footage of people gathered in the main stretch of Kinglake on Black Saturday standing right in the path of the fire obviously tearing up the spur from Strathewen. How much warning do people need that a fire is near. That fire had been burning for hours before it came close to Kinglake. The residents should have been ready for the possibility. Why people didn’t think they were at risk in that REGION is beyond me. Just look at the Cockatoo fire of 1983. The town was safe, until the wind changed. People must prepare for all scenarios, plan their escape routes based on wind direction and likely wind changes. All this information is relatively easy to obtain but people still seem to pass the buck onto the government to come knocking at their door to tell them what to do.
For me it’s about PERSONAL responsibility.
If people don’t know their vicinity, the topography and the likes and the risks associated then maybe they should reconsider their choice to live in the bush.
Matthew,
Thanks for commenting.
Mathew, to say the people in Kinglake had time is a complete nonsense. Have you spoken to witnesses there? Are you aware the people in Kinglake West – and Pine Ridge Rd in particular – were not given any warning other than the fire was three hours away? That when it hit they didn’t know until it was there? That those who sought to leave were turned back with no option and sent back to their homes by DSE and police (depending on the location of the road block)? That no warning was given to the residents of Strathewan, that all “official” communication failed utterly to communicate the fire? That some of us sat 7 km away and didn’t know it was there until the sky turned dark and orange?
Mass backburns – why is it on the one hand people accuse those who call for safe, responsible forestry based on science as engaging in “scaremongering”, yet link in a qualification of “mass” as if the only other option on the table is utter removal of forest?
Might be an idea to speak to a few eye witnesses – some of my own family are survivors of Pineridge Rd (though their homes, friends and neighbours didn’t survive in many cases) – they’d dispute your claims on warnings and preparation because they had none of the former and a good deal of the latter. The latter didn’t stand a chance against what hit them. Standing in the street a week later, as I have, speaking to people who were eye witnesses and not people watching it on their TV, it’s little wonder.