Concerns for South East Australia's fuel managementFriday 24 Jan 2025
The NSW Rural Fire Service 2023/2024 Annual Report is now available and worth discussing. Hazard reduction burning and mechanical removal totalled 139,927 hectares for NSW (Appendix pages 98 and 99):
Unfortunately, areas of annual hazard reduction burning and mechanical reduction in NSW are both at very low rates and vary by year. The areas of fuel reduction in NSW and estimated percentage of forested area based on 20 million hectares of forest in NSW were:
In addition, many of the forests with extensive hot intense bushfires of 2019/ 20 have high fuel loads and are now 5 years old. In many cases there are extensive areas of dead trees, heavy grass/ bark fuel and dense understories, all contributing to a potential timebomb in many bushfire seasons. Bushfires have already occurred in these new fuels, one was described along the lines of a knife through butter, another was described as moving quickly through the understorey fuels. If we don’t increase prescribed burning and preparedness, SE Australia will continue to get more of the same intense bushfires with large impacts and forest death. There are large opportunities to expand the use of small aircraft, helicopters and drones for low intensity burning operations, using placed grid patterns for fires to join up in the cool of the evening and unburnt patches. There are potential opportunities for a number of prescribed burning drones with individual brigades/ mitigation officers and fire regions. Conclusions In conclusion, these matters and opportunities are raised in order to optimise the safety of fire fighters, communities, forests, the environment and heritage sites, avoiding repeat large area intense bushfires as much as possible. More >> Source: John O'Donnell | ||
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