Hazard Reduction Burns Are Not A Panacea For Bushfire Risk RFS Boss Says
8 January 2020 – The Guardian (AAP)
The boss of the New South Wales Rural Fire Service says hazard reduction is important but not a panacea for bushfire risk and has “very little effect at all” on the spread of fire in severe or extreme weather.
Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons on Wednesday addressed the organisation’s hazard reduction activities as bushfires fuel debate over preparation for the NSW fire season.
The federal Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce told the Seven Network that “green caveats” were hampering firefighting capacity.
But Fitzsimmons said hazard reduction burning was challenging and the biggest impediment to completing burns was weather.
The link between rising greenhouse gas emissions and increased bushfire risk is complex but, according to major science agencies, clear. Climate change does not create bushfires, but it can and does make them worse. A number of factors contribute to bushfire risk, including temperature, fuel load, dryness, wind speed and humidity.
The year coming into the 2019-20 summer has been unusually warm and dry for large parts of Australia. Above average temperatures now occur most years and 2019 has been the fifth driest start to the year on record, and the driest since 1970.
Not a significant one. Two pieces of disinformation, that an “arson emergency”, rather than climate change, is behind the bushfires, and that “greenies” are preventing firefighters from reducing fuel loads in the Australian bush have spread across social media. They have found their way into major news outlets, the mouths of government MPs, and across the globe to Donald Trump Jr and prominent right-wing conspiracy theorists.
NSW’s Rural Fire Service has said the major cause of ignition during the crisis has been dry lightning. Victoria police say they do not believe arson had a role in any of the destructive fires this summer. The RFS has also contradicted claims that environmentalists have been holding up hazard reduction work.
He said there was a “shrinking window of opportunity” for more favourable burning periods as fire seasons lengthened.
“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,” Fitzsimmons told ABC News on Wednesday.
“When you’re running fires under severe, extreme or worse conditions, hazard reduction has very little effect at all on fire spread.
“It’s only when the conditions back off a bit … that you’ve actually got some prospect of slowing the fire spread.”
Fitzsimmons said the RFS was now achieving up to 90% of its annual burn program.