Please tell your story about the smoke you've been having to eat recently, from DSE burns. It's as easy as. There's a senate inquiry set up to look into the health impacts of low air quality. A timely and golden opportunity for those who hate this time of year. But be quick... it closes soon. You only need to write a few sentences if you want.

So much for claims that the Abberfeldy fire started in the national park. This photo shows the Abberfeldy Range and looks north, the Thompson dam is on the left there and the Baw Baw National Park is the other side of the dam and 15 kms upwind of where it started!

“We want to see less people losing their homes in bushfires, not more. Real climate action means:

- An end to the billions in fossil fuel subsidies
- An end to the billions in "compensation" polluters get via the carbon price
- A stop to the expansion of our coal and gas mining and exports
- Starting the transition to 100% renewable energy”

The Harrietville fire that was started by lightning on the border of the park and burnt towards Mt Feathertop, raced through previously burnt areas from the 2003 and 2007 Alpine fires. The area has also had extensive prescribed burns carried out.
Back-burns are now sandwiching any wildlife that has managed to flee the fire edges.

------

Dr Chris Taylor has analysed the land areas burnt in the Tassie Peninsular Forcett fires. Dr Taylor also easily discredited claims of parks and unburnt bush being the cause of past Victorian mega-fires.

His latest assessment of the Forcett fire shows only 7% of the fire was within conservation areas and the majority of the fire ripped through logged forest and farm land - ie, disturbed country.

Similar figures for the Lake Repulse fires show only 3% was within conservation reserves.

“Indeed I guess there’ll be more CO2 emissions from these fires than there will be from coal-fired power stations for decades.” – acting Opposition leader, Warren Truss, January 9, 2013

On Wednesday, leader of the National Party and acting Opposition Leader, Warren Truss claimed carbon emissions from the current bushfires are equivalent to decades of carbon emissions from coal-fired power.

The largest area of forest since 1991 was burnt by DSE this last season.

DSE publicly celebrated a whopping 197,000 ha that they burnt last season out of their 225,000ha target for 2011-12. Wet conditions thankfully slowed down the East Gippsland burns. Next year DSE plans to torch a quarter of a million hectares across Victoria.

Weekly Times 11.7.12

arge-scale logging could increase bushfire risk for Australia's moist mountain ash forests, creating bigger fuel loads and drier, more combustible conditions, new research says.

A world-first study led by Australian National University ecologist Professor David Lindenmayer has found gaps in the forest canopy allow the forest floor to dry out, increasing flammability by as much as 50 per cent in some cases.

People may be interested in this 15 minute presentation by fire expert, Kevin Tolhurst in September 2010. He makes a couple of interesting points on the influence of fuels on fires:

http://www.themonthly.com.au/modelling-bushfires-kevin-tolhurst-1643

Plans to increase the area burnt across our forests and woodlands to meet a target that has no scientific backing is bad enough. But the plans to punch huge ‘fire breaks’ hundreds of kilometres long across the landscape is the ultimate inanity. Below are a few important points on the issue:

• A fire break will not protect anyone in an extreme fire event. A hundred metre wide strip of bare dirt scalped of all greenery and life will not stop a fire.
• Even a wide fire break along a road will not enable rescue vehicles to travel along them in an extreme fire event.