Some excerpts from a couple of the submissions to the NSW Commission-
The Valley Farmers Group of Lower Bago believe the 2019‐20 fire season was a hot dry
" summer, made into the worst fire season this district has ever seen, by pine plantations, and negligent land managent by plantation managers and national parks and wildlife service.”
“The Dunns road fire started in private pine plantation and ran through pine plantation, private land and national park, burning more than 330,000 hectares, including around 74,000 hectares of pine plantation, and it was almost always only able to be slowed or stopped on private land."
"Most public roads in this shire have a lot of trees and native vegetation along the sides, which is great if one thinks that every available meter of land must be a nature reserve, but when these areas are unmanaged jungles with trees hanging over the road, they become the reason fire trucks and emergency vehicles cant access areas which desperately need help."
"There were 17 fire tankers which could have helped in this valley on new years eve, but which couldnt, because of burnt trees across the road."
"These people (npws) have used green ideology as a basis for land management for thirty years, and the 2019‐20 fire season has demonstrated the folly and criminal negligence of this approach. Virtually all the fires on the east side of nsw started on npws land, which was utterly destroyed, and burnt thousands of neighbors out, for which it seems there are no consequences, and if npws are allowed to continue their madness, no lessons will be learned, nor constructive changes made."
"The release of the Keelty report into irrigation water indicates the river flows in the murray‐darling system have halved over the last 20 years. We assume the alleged experts in the media and government will attempt to blame climate change, the Prime Minister and probably Donald Trump, but an objective look will certainly reveal that pine plantations have played their part in depriving river systems of water."
https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/assets/bushfire-inquiry-submissions/0881-Valley-Farme...Pine plantations are really water hungry.
" Three months on since the last of the fires ceased, there has been no tangible progress in quantifying the impacts and the long-term effect on timber resources. The efforts of the Forestry Corporation of NSW have been directed to addressing the heavy demands of the NSW Environmental Protection Authority (EPA). This is political pressure at its worst. The EPA have prevented most harvesting in unburnt forest and are making harvesting in burnt forest economically unviable due to extreme regulation. The “stand-off” is resulting in the slow death financially of the native forest industry.
Repetitively throughout the fire front from September 2019 to February 2020 the same story was being told – arguments between agencies as a fire front approached on who would be in control of the fire; as fire raced towards houses and farming/plantation land – arguments between agencies on who controlled the fire and how long it would take to gain a permit to put in a firebreak – two days for a permit as the fire raced down and burnt two houses – agencies were still arguing about control and threatening anyone who took immediate and decisive action to prevent the fire from gaining ground.
The real stories were never told by the media or by government as it might tarnish the image of the agencies as heroes."
https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/assets/bushfire-inquiry-submissions/0865-Timber-NSW-2...To the Australian Commission -
Figure 5: Climate projections for Australia
Note the use of ACORN2.
Pre 1998 El Nino -
Post 1998 El Nino -
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