Victorian Rebuild

[Moi]

Just watching an interesting program on Foxtel at the moment, and they're talking about the Victorian forests, how they have "evolved" to create "catastrophic fires".

If this is what is believed, do we tell people to go back into these areas.

According to Ross Bradstock(*) from University of Wollongong, there is no way to prevent major fires from happening.

Apart from the impact on life rebuilding in these could happen, other things like the impact on the economy it has in forever rebuilding these towns.  Insurance - well, to be blunt, we all pay in our own premiums for these fires.  Okay, live in the bush, but should people be allowed to build in towns like Cockatoo and Marysville?  And I'm only talking about these towns, towns in the tall forests.  There is no amount of planning that can prevent fires like the one we had the other day from having a similar impact like on Marysville. 

There is a cycle happening here from the 1930s, 1980s, to now that every 20 years or so these catastrophic events are happening.  They're starting to happen more frequently, which is scary.

Fuel reduction, no matter how much you do will not stop "major" fires like these according to Bradstock.  You can reduce the risk, but you can't eliminate it.

In the Victorian case, the wet eucalypt forest isn't suitable for fuel reduction, and that's where we have towns that are developed.  The forests have been evolved to burn catastrophically according to Bradstock, ie their existence depends on these fires.

So do we bite the bullet and say "no" to the rebuild at Marysville?

[mightytiges]

I didn't see the program you saw Moi but there was another program (might have been on the ABC) where some expert said something similar in that Mountain Ash forests which we have in Victoria are the worst for fires. Very tall quick growing trees with thick dense canopies and of course they need fires for their seeds to germinate.

Mountain Ash DSE report
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_regnans

It's a fair question to ask especially with climate change but there would be huge uproar if people were banned from living in these regions. People make/made their livelihood from tourism and farming so it's just not a residential issue but the overall local economies of these areas that need to be taken into account. There's argument that not enough backburning was done and containment lines built over the years to reduce the natural fuel and risk even before last Saturday (agree you can't eliminate the risk) and one guy who cleared around his property (which incidently didn't get burnt down) was being sued by the local council/shire for $100,000 for chopping down trees.

In terms of saving lives, authorities all were saying that last Saturday with predicted high 40 degree temperatures, strong winds and 8 years of drought could end up in disaster in the days leading up to it. Mass evacuation should have been an option on these predicted extreme weather days. Likewise fireproof underground bunkers as a last resort.