Jim Child has posted on his blog an article that is essential reading:
Fire Prevention on Private Property
Within the Shire Of Yarra Ranges.
He says:
This matter must be resolved as both the Shire and its Councillors run the risk of serious litigation if a serious bushfire were to occur and lives were lost as a result of poor Fire Preparation within the Shire of Yarra Ranges, which remains one of the most fire prone areas of the world.
To read the full story click on the TITLE above.
Thanks Jim, keep up the good work.
1 comment:
Comment from:
Ian Mott,
Byron Hinterland
Australia
Ian Mott is a third generation native forest owner, miller and regenerator from the Byron hinterland.
A former Sydney and Brisbane Executive Recruiter with his own agency, his interest in the family property has seen him evolve, over the past decade, into a property rights activist and consultant. He is secretary of the Landholders Institute Inc and has held a number of positions on national, state and regional level policy and planning bodies.
"Given that Rick Houlihan had presented this paper to the council in July 2008 (7 months warning) then there is already a prima facie case of negligence on the part of the Council, and the State Government, in respect of any damage or harm to property or life from bushfires. The detriment is entirely foreseeable and the steps that were called for are entirely reasonable and practicable. The failure to act in a timely manner cannot be defended under claims of reasonable response times because the required actions involve the restoration of a pre-existing state, not the devising of a new response.
I do not have a copy of the Victorian Criminal Code, yet, but if it is anything like the Qld and other codes then the responsible council officer, usually the CEO, is open to criminal charges in respect of a clear failure of duty of care in respect of a “dangerous thing”. The dangerous thing being native vegetation for which he/she has assumed full control over. It would also be the case that the indemnity from prosecution normally enjoyed by public officials does not extend to acts (and omissions) done unlawfully or with negligence.
As far as the prevention measures go, there are a few items that also need to be clarified.
The first is that the notion of a two metre fire break is rendered entirely nonsense once the trees involved reach a diameter at breast height (DBH) of 10 to 13cm. This is because eucalypts normally have a crown to stem ratio of between 15 to 1 and 20 to 1, which means that two trees on either side of a nominal 2 metre fire break on the ground will be touching each other in the canopy. Such trees are unlikely to be any taller than 10 to 13 metres (ie, with standard 1% taper) and this means that even very mild fires, with low windspeed, will reach the crown.
It follows that a 4 metre fire break on the ground will also be rendered entirely useless if the trees on either side of it are anywhere near 20cm DBH because, again, their branches will be touching in the crown. And so it goes on, with an 8 metre fire break on the ground being completely negated by trees anywhere near 40cm DBH on either side. And of course, todays 40cm DBH tree can grow to 80cm in the half life of a council planning, or departmental, moron.
There is hardly a single council or native vegetation custodial authority in Australia that has managed to acquire and retain the simple fact that trees actually grow. So the fact that trees, when presented with a gap on one side, will go out of their way to extend their branches to occupy that gap, is also totally beyond their comprehension. Hence, they persist with mind-numbingly stupid prescriptions involving ground based widths of fire breaks that only operate as such in zero wind, low temperatures, high leaf moisture content and high humidity.
Of equally breathtaking stupidity is the assumption that the boundary line of any and every property is the ideal place to locate a containment line. This is very rarely the case. Property boundaries (there is usually 4 of them) can run up a slope, across a slope, at the bottom of a slope, along any diagonal and, very rarely, along a ridge line. In the real world the most effective containment lines are those located just below a ridge line on the side away from an approaching fire. But as fires can approach from any side then a cleared ridge top provides maximum scope for back burning.
Yet we have just about every council in the country exercising this absurdly anal retentive preference for matching fire breaks with cadastral overlays in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with effective fire management. If they were a dog I would put them down to end their own and everyone else’s suffering.
So in my view the suggestion by Rick Houlihan to amend Clause 53 is a step in the right direction but given the scale of the manslaughter that has taken place then we owe it to the victims to review the whole interface of the native vegetation laws with the planning architecture to ensure that the controls only apply to “material” changes in vegetation cover.
This sort of outrage, where a landowner with 40,000 trees can be prosecuted for removing 280 of them to protect his house and family, is the kind of rampant green injustice that diminishes every other Australian. And by ignoring these injustices the urban community will be rightfully seen to be condoning them. And if they continue to do so then all the outpouring of grief, and all the splendid acts of charity, will be exposed as nothing more than the cynical posturing of those with blood on their hands."
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