Firestick Estate believes Australia’s failure to mitigate Extreme Bushfires fuel is negligent (WA is an exception). Australia’s eucalypt fueled Extreme Bushfires, which range from 10,000 kilo-watts per metre to 150,000 kw/m, are over 800 times more damaging than the average controllable bushfires. They are 5 to 10 times bigger than those of many other countries. The only practical way to control large Extreme Bushfires requires forward planning, with landscape level fuel mitigation, called prescribed burning.
Australia’s bushfire fighting equipment is focused on putting water on fires, which only works with controllable bushfires of less than 3000 kilowatts per metre. The government’s preferred bushfire expert Dr Tolhurst, told a public lecture on 6 August 2009: “Firefighting equipment, even aeroplanes dropping water, can suppress a fire only when it’s energy output is 3500 – 4000 kilowatts per metre… At it’s peak this fire (a 2009 extreme bushfire) would reach some 38 times that intensity, – 150,000 kilowatts per metre… More than 90% of the damage and life loss occurs…(in)…really big fires…We need to plan, research and design for really big fires, not the other 99%.”(Associate Professor Kevin Tolhurst, Fire ecology & Management, Department of Forest & Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne & Member of The Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre).
In October 2023, Professor Tolhurst ‘died suddenly’ after a public address to a bushfire effected community, during which he blamed the government for their house loses. We believe he had joined our cause.
Publicly funded Universities and Extreme Bushfire fuel.
The role of publicly funded Universities is to teach science. Too often we find “misleading” opinion and curriculum vitae credits, posing as science firestickestate.com Letters No.657. Indeed, we believe grant driven conflict of interest science enables political parties to negligently cause enormous damage and those Universities indirectly responsible for that damage, should be defunded if not held criminally accountable.
The relationship between bushfire fuel and fire intensity is not only intuitive and part of 1788 Aboriginal culture, it was also scientifically proven in the Australian bush over 50 years ago. World renowned bushfire scientist, the late Alan McArthur and eminent others, developed Australia’s principal bushfire measuring tool, the Fire Danger Index (FDI). His work had the ‘Indiana Jones’ like drive required to ignite, document and extinguish hundreds of risky experimental fires. It was rigorous science, involving large teams of forestry students doing the potentially dangerous work, that remains an undisputed bench-mark over half a century later.
Victoria’s most respected bushfire practitioner, Rod Incoll elthamsdeathtrap.com
