Victorian Bushfire Information Site
To improve communication and understanding of the bushfire issues related to environment and for submissions to the Royal Commission MyEnvironment Inc
of Healesville has set up a resource site for capturing media, opinion, scientific articles, research and comments. Click

Were National Parks to blame?

• 50% of estimated area of Victorian fires were on private property
• 12% in National Parks
• remainder in State Forests, crown land or undisclosed.

Deliberately lit fires
One person has already been arrested and it is suspected that the fires west of Mt Disappointment and Yarra Glen, along with Churchill, were deliberately lit.

Logging
Scientific evidence suggests that industrial logging activity over the last 200 years has made forests more dry and  more fire prone. Regrowth forests make the ground dryer by sucking up at least 50% more moisture it.

Fire breaks & prescribed burns
There is no evidence that the recently expanded network of fire breaks or hazard reduction burns in Victoria in winter actually had any effect.

The weather on the day

1. Temperatures where there hottest ever recorded at 47 degrees.  
2. Relative humidity in single figures and winds constantly hitting 100kmh. 
3. A 12 year drought. 
4. 1ml of rain in 6 weeks.
5. The previous week had a run of 5 days each over 40 degrees, the hottest weather ever.

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Unlogged forest is more fire resistant
The fire spotter evacuated from the Toolangi Tower at the time of the fires said that the old growth was a calm brush fire but when it got into the clear fell regrowth, the fires went off like bombs. This is due to the density of the new growing forests, even height crowns, reduction of understorey fire suppressive species, higher volatiles and leaf area.   

Climate change means more fires
These fires are being intensified by a rapidly changing climate. Scientific models developed by the CSIRO have predicted that high fire danger days are going to increase dramatically with increased greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. SE Australia will have a hotter, drier climate.

"Managed" forests with low fuel loads burn
These fires burnt very aggressively in plantations, intensively managed with little or no understorey or fuel loads. The Churchill fire mostly burnt through plantation areas managed by Hancock Victorian Plantations and its subsidiaries. 

Many fires were in cleared farmland
Around Whittlesea, Wallan and East Kilmore many of these fires burnt through long grass on farmland. The argument of forest protection around these areas is irrelevant, given that these areas are cleared paddocks and had very little forest areas upwind on the Saturday.

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"Hazard reduction" burns did not stop fires
The fire on Mt Riddle fire was ignited by a lightning strike and has burnt the northern slope. At the beginning of last year, the DSE/Parks Victoria lit a large control burn on this slope, of which it even scorched the crowns of the eucalypts. This control burn did not stop ignition and spread of this fire into Healesville and surrounding forest.

Only one fire started in National Park
Many of these fires started on either private land or non-forest areas (eg; the fire that burned over Mount Disappointment). The only fire at this stage to have started in National Park was Mt Riddle. The Mt Disappointment/Whittlesea fire raced over in a SE direction into the protected Wallaby Creek catchment.  

Fire breaks did not stop fires
Large fire breaks had been cut through Mt Disappointment bounding the Wallaby Creek water catchment. This can be seen as 'active management' by the logging industry, given that the breaks were cut by the contractors. Yet they were useless in stopping the fire from spread from the State Forest into the protected Wallaby Creek catchment. 

Logged areas burned badly
The Murrundindi fire started very close to a timber mill.  It burnt to Marysville 20 kms away in just over an hour.  This is in the most heavily logged and woodchipped area in Victoria and also a mecca for the 4WD and associated groups.  It spotted across the Acheron valley and raced up areas heavily woodchipped as a crown fire (not initially burning through ground fuel) into the closed O'Shannassy water catchment

The Senate Inquiry in 2007 From the conclusions:

“... there will always be uncontrollable bushfires from time to time. This is most evident from evidence regarding the Australian Alps, which experienced their worst fires in 1939, under a completely different land tenure and management regime to that in place when fires burnt there in 2003. A significant part of living in and managing the environment must be acceptance of fire and ensuring preparedness for it.”