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Comment by abstractbarista | Hacker News Reader

So once it finishes, we should have a clean slate with vastly reduced fire potential, right? Seems like there was a build-up of combustible material for some time, and nature decided to run its course.

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I don't know about Australia, but here in Northern California, that's not how it works. 500 years ago, forest fires were common, cool burning, and did more good than harm. Today, it's been so long since the previous fire that there's a huge amount of underbrush and dead material. When a fire comes through, it's so hot that it kills everything, including huge, old growth doug fir trees. However, it's not hot enough to actually incinerate the old growth trees, so you get left with a bunch of standing deads, and plenty of dead wood for another fire.

Ahh I see, that's unfortunate. Maybe we could do more controlled burns to clear the low-lying stuff but leave trees living?

Yes. That is what has started to happen. I live in Lake Tahoe for a number of years and you'd regularly see signs posted "Controlled Burn in progress, do not report" with smoke in the distance.

The problem is that there isn't enough money for the man powered required to control burn everything. And 50 to 100 years of "don't let anything burn" has led to a LOT of areas with a lot of build up. Those areas require a lot of care to controlled burn correctly and are often way way WAY out there - making it harder/more expensive to control.

There is also the problem of encroachment of civilization on the forests. At least in CA there are houses basically built into the forrest, or right up to the edge. How do you burn those areas assuring the residence 100% safety?

We could, but we don't do enough of it because of liability risks. Imagine if the controlled burn goes out of control, and burns down <someone's lakehouse/dacha/cabin/dog/three month old baby>.

People will be in the streets, crying for blood, and won't give up until the Department of Controlled Forest Burns is dissolved, and its executives are sleeping in the Bay, wearing cement overshoes.

Yes, you can buy insurance for this sort of thing, but no, money doesn't grow on trees, and insuring your controlled burn program is not going to come cheap.

Not sure where you are, but controlled burns are common in California. And it's expected that a small portion of them get out of control. Source: my neighbor, who's a retired wildland firefighter.

That has been practised for a long time in Australia. Ironically and sadly the authorities responsible are now reducing their controlled burning because they say there are too few days in the year when it is safe to do so due to climate change.

Planned burns are a thing here in Australia. It has turned into a bit of a populist talking point amongst certain people. The truth is that the time window to safely do burns in winter has sort of disappeared. Plus these fires have been intense enough to jump through places that have been burnt. As anecdata, I grew up in Southern Australia and little bushfires were common every summer. Occasionally a big one. I've moved to south east Queensland and never really seen any significant bushfires in the past decade (if I did it was government doing a planned burn in a national park). It is sub tropical, usually pretty wet in summer (sometimes with a drought, but usually much, much wetter than say east coast of tasmania). These last few years are different. The national parks I go to for walks are super dry. Creeks are dried up that are usually running. I had that scary feeling I had from my youth of smelling smoke on a hike and worrying about fire. It isn't something I have had for a long time.

Climate change and poor management means these fires are different: they burn so hot that the forest never returns or consists of entirely different plants and trees.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/forests-wildfires-1.44449...

>That complete lack of regrowth happened most frequently at lower-elevation sites that have become measurably warmer and drier in the past 30 years, said Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Colorado State University. Those areas may no longer have suitable conditions for the growth of tree species that were there before and may become other types of ecosystems, such as grasslands.

>The fire was so intense in some places that it burned up all organic matter needed to help the soil retain nutrients and moisture required for trees to grow.

>[I]n some cases, the dominant black spruce and white spruce are being replaced by deciduous trees such as aspen. That's especially the case for forests that burned less than 80 years ago, where trees haven't yet had time to develop fire-resistant seed cones. Spruce trees are also outcompeted in drier areas, suggesting climate may also play a role, Whitman said.

Based on the way aspen actually grow, it's more likely that the area was originally an aspen grove and was planted with spruce because spruce is a better lumber product. I know in BC they actually spray (with Roundup) all the sites where there are forest fires so that the aspen can't come back, and then they replant with pine or spruce.

Aspen is a natural fire break species. So it'll actually prevent more big forest fires in the future.

Yes, you can read about fire risk being reduced after Black Saturday.

Sort of but not in a good way. When forests aren’t managed well and allowed to burn, the build up causes the fires to burn much hotter, making the soil itself burn underneath. There’s going to be significant nutrient loss for a large swath of land.

Sure, after you burn a house down it's really hard to burn down again.

In Australia it really is nature running it course in a big cycle. The Australian bush needs fires to clean out the scrub and trigger seeds to germinate - which they will not do without a little roasting.

Forest management will go down into one of the biggest failures of our generation. Combine that with a adverse climate and arsonist, and it’s going to be an awful next few decades.

True. This could have all been prevented with controlled fires during winter time. However, they are illegal to do in Australia. Creating a firebreak to save your home from a bushfire is also illegal and heavily punished.

The season where it is safe to do controlled burns has been shrinking due to climate change. So no, this is not true. Don't spread FUD.

The more reason to do them when it's safe.

This will be interesting to see in the few next years. Either the way we do the burns will have to change, or we'll just have to accept unsafe burns as better than massive fires a few years down the line. So far I haven't heard any announced alternative ideas.

It's illegal to construct firebreaks ... in certain places? At certainly times?

That sounds quite incredible to me - a quick search turned up plenty of WA firebreak building guides, as well as the Brush Fires act of 1954 which seems to mandate construction of firebreaks by landowners in certain situations.

You need permission to cut down a tree on your property. If you are not given permission then it's illegal to cut it down. Hence, it is illegal to create a firebreak if you are denied permission to do so. There is a minimum range that doesn't require permission but it's not far enough to save your house in a bushfire.

> You need permission to cut down a tree on your property.

This may be true in downtown Sydney or a National Park, but it's very much not the case in most of rural Australia.

You need permission to build an extension to your home.

If you don't get it, it's illegal to build an extension to your home.

Therefore, it is illegal to build extensions to your home.

That's the flow of your logic.

I wouldn't say it is illegal but the law in Australia is very tough and you can't just use common sense, you got to wait and get approvals which in many times don't come. Many times I was pointing out to people that there are too many dense forests around where people live and it is a fire hazard but people looks at me like this dumb immigrant who is anti "the environment". Australians just love their nature and are against anything that will hurt it, even if it is necessary. So it is easy to dismiss anybody who point it out as some climate change denier but meanwhile people houses get burned.

Oh, I understand - I lived 25 years, until recently, in bushfire country in Victoria.

Huh? Are you talking about hazard reduction burning?

Hazard reduction burning is not illegal in Australia [1]. I don't know where you got that idea from.

It is also legal to create a firebreak [2].

[1] https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/resources/publications/hazard-red... [2] https://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/18453...

If permission is not granted it's de facto illegal.

Can you please provide more detail on what you are referring to?

The RFS has permission to conduct materials clearing. The quotes below are from the head of the RFS:

> Shane Fitzsimmons told the program that while hazard reduction burning is part of a “really complex argument”, “environmental clearances are invariably not our problem with hazard reduction burning”.

> “Our biggest challenge with hazard reduction is the weather and the windows available to do it safely and effectively,” Mr Fitzsimmons said.

> “Sure, there’s environmental and other checks to go through but we streamline those. There’s special legislation to give us clearance and to cut through what would otherwise be a very complex environment.”

https://www.news.com.au/national/rural-fire-service-boss-rej...

Oh look, a new account making things up about fire management in Australia.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/05/expla...

That’s a strange article. On The one hand they’re saying people who say lack of hazard management (controlled burning) is making the fires worse are literally “conspiracy theorist” and then the very next paragraph this line:

> Former fire chiefs who have been calling strongly for action on climate change, and who have been trying to meet Morrison for months, have also been calling for increased funding for hazard reduction.

The "conspiracy" is that hazard reduction burning has been blocked by the Australian Greens (and other environmental bodies).

More hazard reduction may be required, but this is orthogonal to the above. I have seen no evidence of the Greens blocking hazard reduction burns requested by the RFS.

As the article states, fire chiefs have been trying to meet with the Australian prime minster for months, but have been ignored. this suggests that any blame for poor preparation leading up to this bush fire season should be attributed directly to the party in power. To me the motivation behind this spread of disinformation is very clear.

I think it's only a 'strange article' if you only skim read it. It's saying that the claim that somehow the Greens prevented hazard management is a conspiracy theory.

The Murdoch media has decided to run with the idiotic idea that there was an 'easy' opportunity to reduce fuel loads and it was prevented by unspecified environmentalists at unspecified locations (the claims are always super-non-specific, for obvious reasons). In fact, as the fire chiefs point out, the limitations on hazard reduction burns have largely been due to weather (too wet or too dry).

Needless to say, the actual statement from the fire chiefs is extremely nuanced and well thought out. It's almost like they know something about fighting bushfires, unlike all the amateur hour geniuses that have emerged from the woodwork to sit in their pajamas theorizing on every major venue 24/7 including public holidays.

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