NZ Centre for Political Research

Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated

They were labelled law breakers, fined $50,000 and left emotionally and financially drained.

But seven years after the Sheahans bulldozed trees to make a fire break — an act that got them dragged before a magistrate and penalised — they feel vindicated. Their house is one of the few in Reedy Creek, Victoria, still standing.

The Sheahans' 2004 court battle with the Mitchell Shire Council for illegally clearing trees to guard against fire, as well as their decision to stay at home and battle the weekend blaze, encapsulate two of the biggest issues arising from the bushfire tragedy.

Do Victoria's native vegetation management policies need a major overhaul? And should families risk injury or death by staying home to fight the fire rather than fleeing?

Anger at government policies stopping residents from cutting down trees and clearing scrub to protect their properties is already apparent. "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down," Warwick Spooner told Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen at a meeting on Tuesday night.

Although Liam Sheahan's 2002 decision to disregard planning laws and bulldoze 250 trees on his hilltop property hurt his family financially and emotionally, he believes it helped save them and their home on the weekend.

"The house is safe because we did all that," he said as he pointed out his kitchen window to the clear ground where tall gum trees once cast a shadow on his house.

"We have got proof right here. We are the only house standing in a two-kilometre area."

At least seven houses and several sheds on neighbouring properties along Thompson-Spur road in Reedy Creek were destroyed by Saturday night's blaze.

Saving their home was no easy task. At 2pm on Saturday, Mr Sheahan saw the nearby hills ablaze.

He knew what lay ahead when the predicted south-westerly change came.

The family of four had discussed evacuation but decided their property was defensible, due largely to their decision to clear a fire break. It also helped that Mr Sheahan, his son Rowan and daughter Kirsten were all experienced members of the local CFA.

"We prayed and we worked bloody hard. Our house was lit up eight times by the fire as the front passed," Mr Sheahan said. "The elements off our TV antenna melted. We lost a Land Rover, two Subarus, a truck and trailer and two sheds."

Mr Sheahan is still angry about his prosecution, which cost him $100,000 in fines and legal fees. The council's planning laws allow trees to be cleared only when they are within six metres of a house. Mr Sheahan cleared trees up to 100 metres away from his house.

"The council stood up in court and made us to look like the worst, wanton environmental vandals on the earth. We've got thousands of trees on our property. We cleared about 247," he said.

He said the royal commission on the fires must result in changes to planning laws to allow land owners to clear trees and vegetation that pose a fire risk.

"Both the major parties are pandering to the Greens for preferences and that is what is causing the problem. Common sense isn't that common these days," Mr Sheahan said.

Melbourne University bushfire expert Kevin Tolhurst gave evidence to help the Sheahan family in their legal battle with the council.

"Their fight went over nearly two years. The Sheahans were victimised. It wasn't morally right," he said yesterday.

Dr Tolhurst told the Seymour Magistrates court that Mr Sheahan's clearing of the trees had reduced the fire risk to his house from extreme to moderate.

"That their house is still standing is some natural justice for the Sheahans," he said.

He said council vegetation management rules required re-writing. He also called on the State Government to provide clearer guidelines about when families should stay and defend their property.

Houses in fire-prone areas should be audited by experts to advise owners whether their property is defensible, Dr Tolhurst said.

Mr Sheahan said he wanted others to learn from his experience and offered an invitation for Government ministers to visit his property.

He would also like his convictions overturned and fines repaid.

"It would go a long way to making us feel better about the system. But I don't think it will happen."

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/fined-fo ... -85bd.html

Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote
David Packham
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 83,00.html

VICTORIA has suffered the most tragic bushfire disaster to have occurred on this continent throughout its period of human habitation.

The deaths, loss of homes and businesses and the blow to our feeling of security will take decades to fade into history.
The trauma will live with the victims, who, to a greater or lesser extent, are all of us.

How could this happen when we have been told in a withering, continuous barrage of public relations that with technology and well-polished uniforms, we can cope with the unleashing of huge forces of nature.

I have been a bushfire scientist for more than 50 years, dealing with all aspects of bushfires, from prescribed burning to flame chemistry, and serving as supervisor of fire weather services for Australia. We need to understand what has happened so that we can accept or prevent future fire disasters.

That this disaster was about to happen became clear when the weather bureau issued an accurate fire weather forecast last Wednesday, which prompted me, as a private citizen, to raise the alarm through a memo distributed to concerned residents.

The science is simple. A fire disaster of this nature requires a combination of hot, dry, windy weather in drought conditions. It also requires a source of ignition. In the past, this purpose has been served by lightning. In this disaster, lightning has not played a big part, and for this Victorians should be grateful. But other sources of ignition are ever-present. When the temperature and wind increase to extreme levels, small events -- perhaps the scrape of metal across a rock, a transformer overheating or sparks from a diesel engine -- are capable of starting a fire that can in minutes become unstoppable if the fuel is present.

The third and only controllable factor in this deadly triangle is fuel: the dead leaves, pieces of bark and grass that become the gas that feeds the 50m high flames that roar through the bush with the sound of jet engines.

Fuels build up year after year at an approximate rate of one tonne a hectare a year, up to a maximum of about 30 tonnes a hectare. If the fuels exceed about eight tonnes a hectare, disastrous fires can and will occur. Every objective analysis of the dynamics of fuel and fire concludes that unless the fuels are maintained at near the levels that our indigenous stewards of the land achieved, then we will have unhealthy and unsafe forests that from time to time will generate disasters such as the one that erupted on Saturday.

It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation's capital, the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.

The decision to ignore the threat has been encouraged by some shocking pseudo-science from a few academics who use arguments that may have a place in political discourse but should have no place in managing our environment and protecting it and us from the bushfire threat.

The conclusion of these academics is that high intensity fires are good for the environment and that the resulting mudslides after rains are merely localised and serve to redistribute nutrients. The purpose of this failed policy is to secure uninformed city votes.

Only a few expert retired fire managers, experienced bushies and some courageous politicians are prepared to buck the decision to lock up our bush and leave it to burn.

The politicians who willingly accept this rubbish use it to justify the perpetuation of the greatest threat to our forests, water supplies, homes and lives in order to secure a minority green vote. They continue to throw millions (and no doubt soon billions) at ineffective suppression toys, while the few foresters and bush people who know how to manage our public lands are starved of the resources they need to reduce fuel loads.

It is hard for me to see this perversion of public policy and to accept that the folk of the bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment, all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.

In a letter to my local paper, the Weekly Times, on January 25, I predicted we were facing a very critical situation in which 1000 to 2000 homes could be lost in the Yarra catchment, the Otways and/or the Strezleckies; that 100 souls could be lost in a most horrible and violent way; and that there was even a threat to Melbourne's water supply, which could be rendered unusable by the ash and debris. Horrifically, much of this has come to pass, and it is not yet the end of the bushfire season.

In the face of this inferno, the perpetrators of this obscenity should have the decency to stand up and say they were wrong. Southeast Australia is the worst place in the world for bushfires, and we must not waste any time in getting down to the task of making our bush healthy and safe.

But don't hold your breath. Do you hear that lovely sound the warbling pigs make as they fly by?

David Packham OAM is an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University's school of geography and environmental science.

State of Victoria's forests fanned bushfire inferno
Siobhain Ryan and Brad Norington | February 10, 2009
Article from: The Australian

STATE and federal governments have been accused of succumbing to pressure from the green lobby by abandoning responsibility for controlled burning of forests, despite growing populations in bushland suburbs.

As the death toll from the Victorian bushfires topped 130 yesterday, fire control experts said forest managers had failed to learn the lessons of past infernos such as Ash Wednesday in 1983 and the 2003 Canberra bushfires.

They said too little was being done to thin out the bush to protect lives and property against extreme weather conditions that fuelled the fatal Victorian blazes.

David Packham, a researcher from Monash University's climatology group who has specialised in bushfires, said governments had abandoned responsibility for the one control they had over wildfires -- the state of the forests that fed the flames.

"Due to terribly ill-informed and pretty well outrageous concepts of conservation, we have failed to manage our fuel and our forests," Mr Packham said. "They have become unhealthy, and dangerous."

Phil Cheney, formerly head of the CSIRO's bushfire research unit, said the number of Victorian fatalities "absolutely" would have been lower with more prescribed burning.

Mr Cheney said he was "totally frustrated" at the failure of governments to reduce the forest density after repeated inquiries into fire deaths recommended such a strategy.

"It's unbelievable how far behind they are," Mr Cheney said.

Fires across the southeast from 2001 to 2003, culminating in the devastating Canberra bushfires, triggered six reviews, coronial inquests and audits from the

ACT, NSW and Victorian governments, one federal parliamentary inquiry and another joint report from commonwealth and state governments.

The federal Government referred many recommendations to ministerial councils to progress.

Mr Cheney blamed a lack of political will for continued fire deaths, saying Victoria's national park managers were philosophically opposed to prescribed burning. He said the strategy was limited to "pocket handkerchief-sized" areas that had not offset the risks from vast tracts of neglected forests.

Bushfire consultants yesterday blamed much of a lack of planning affecting Victoria on bureaucratic delays in the release of a national plan for fire-prone areas.

They said superior legislative rules introduced in NSW in 2002 had not been adopted more widely, despite pressure for an Australia-wide standard.

The national building code standard, known as AS3959, has been under review for the past three years but changes have been stalled because of disagreements among state officials.

The NSW Rural Fire Service, formerly headed by Phil Koperberg, now a state MP, spearheaded a plan for NSW regarded as a model for the nation.

Ron Coffey, chairman of the Fire Protection Association of Australia, said standards in Victoria were behind those of NSW, which led the way.

Mr Coffey said the Victorian tragedy highlighted the need for a serious review of planning.

"In Victoria, you can still build a cedar house in the bush -- you can't do that in NSW," he said.

Mr Coffey, a firefighting veteran who also heads the lobby group Bushfire Planning and Design, said proximity of buildings to ground fuel was important.

Other NSW initiatives not adopted elsewhere, he said, included a prohibition on building homes on ridge tops and strict rules on water supplies. Mr Coffey recommended that fire-prone areas ensured the flame zone around homes allowed no more than 29 kilowatts a metre of radiant heat on buildings.

He said the Victorian fires showed a need to review current recommendations on "stay and defend versus vacate early".

"Some of these people stayed behind to defend their properties, but it was too late," he said.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland admitted safety messages for people in fire-prone areas appeared inadequate.
He said people were caught fleeing too late, which indicated the early warning system needed to be revised.

Victorian Environment Minister Gavin Jennings defended his Government's performance in preparing the state in fire-prone areas. He said his Department for Sustainability and Environment had carried out more than 150,000 hectares of planned burning in Victoria during the 2007-08 financial year.

"DSE takes every opportunity to conduct planned burns when it is safe to do so," he said.

"The Brumby Government has recently released its bushfire strategy, Living with Fire, which includes $10 million for fire agencies to work with the community to develop and implement large-scale, mosaic burning.

"Since 1999, the Government has tripled funding to fight bushfires, reaching $100 million this year."

Kevin Tolhurst, senior lecturer in fire ecology and management at the University of Melbourne, said Victoria had recently increased its annual prescribed burning regime.

But "it's not something you can turn on and off quickly," hesaid.

"It takes a couple of decades to get (fire management) in place across the landscape."

Dr Tolhurst said landowners were also trapped by contradictory laws, some of which sought to conserve native plants and trees and others that demanded the removal of fire hazards.

"If we continue to have this semi-rural development, we're going to continue to have disaster if we don't manage that better," Dr Tolhurst said.

The alternative was to declare some bush areas off-limits to housing, he said.

"I don't think it's reasonable to tell someone, 'yes, you can live here but you have a very high probability of being burnt out by a wildfire and you won't be able to do things to defend your property'," Dr Tolhurst said.

Stuart Ellis, who chaired a Council of Australian Governments inquiry into the 2002-2003 bushfires and helped review the same crisis for the ACT government, said controlled burning reduced fuel loads and curbed the type of deadly ember attacks seen on Saturday.

"Prescribed burning is occurring, but is enough of it occurring? In my view, no," Mr Ellis said.

Howard government minister Gary Nairn, who chaired the parliamentary inquiry into the 2003 bushfires, said its bipartisan report had called on governments to publish and report against annual prescribed burning targets.

He said the landholders and volunteers who had lost homes or seen their communities devastated by those fires had warned of similar future disasters unless action was taken.

The falling New Zealand dollar is making it harder to fund projects such as renewable energy schemes.

Trustpower has obtained consent to build a 200 megawatt windfarm at Mahinerangi, inland from Dunedin.

But chief executive Keith Tempest says most components for wind turbines are imported.

He says the New Zealand dollar has fallen from more than 80 US cents to the US dollar to a little over 50 US cents.

This makes building a windfarm around 50% more expensive than it would have been a year ago.

Mr Tempest cannot put a date on when construction would begin, but says it could be undertaken in small stages.

UK initiatives highlight Govt's inaction in NZ

United Kingdom initiatives highlight National Government’s inaction in New Zealand

Halfway through its “so-called 100 days of action” the National Government has so far failed to outline an effective plan of action to deal with the economic downturn, says Labour Leader Phil Goff.

“The announcement by United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a series of new initiatives to create employment and combat recession further highlights the absence of any such plan by National to respond to these problems in New Zealand,” Phil Goff said today.

“In a New Year interview, Gordon Brown has said that his biggest priority will be to create and save jobs. His plans include helping people struggling with mortgages, stimulating bank lending and public spending on infrastructure,” Phil Goff said. “In stark contrast to New Zealand, both Gordon Brown and United States President–elect Barack Obama are emphasising a ‘green new deal’ approach.

“Far from sacrificing the environment to the need to stimulate the economy, both the US and the UK are promoting projects which create jobs by supporting energy efficiencies, sustainability and conservation,” Phil Goff said.

“As Gordon Brown says, ‘rather than pushing the environment into a lower order of priority, the environment is part of the solution’. Both the UK and US plans include projects on alternative energy sources.

“In contrast, in New Zealand National has revoked Labour’s plans for a job-rich one billion dollar programme to retrofit cold and damp houses with insulation,” Phil Goff said.

“This project would have had the real bonus, as the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development has pointed out, of saving up to $4.75 billion in wasted energy over a decade, cutting hospital admissions and job absenteeism caused by respiratory illness, and saving ordinary New Zealanders hundreds of dollars off their electricity bills.

“National needs to reverse its ill-thought out measures on climate change and announce urgently the pro-active measures it will put in place to combat job losses,” Phil Goff said.

FLAT-SCREEN TV'S TO FACE ENERGY-EFFICIENCY RULES IN CALIFORNIA

That 52-inch, flat-screen television on the family room wall may have a terrific picture, but there's a big drawback: It's an energy hog. State regulators in California are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011.

The California Energy Commission is looking for ways to relieve the strain on the power grid.

During a peak viewing time when most sets are on, such as the Super Bowl, TVs in the state collectively suck up the equivalent of 40 percent of the power generated by the San Onofre nuclear power station running at full capacity.
Moreover, televisions account for about 10 percent of the average Californian's monthly household electricity bill.
Sales of television sets are growing by 4 million a year, the vast majority of them flat-panels. LCD -- liquid crystal display -- sets use 43 percent more electricity, on average, than conventional tube TVs; larger models use proportionately more. Plasma TVs, which command a relatively small share of the market, need more than three times as much power as bulky, old-style sets.

Officials say the standards, once fully in place, would reduce the state's annual energy needs by an amount equivalent to the power consumed by 86,400 homes.

But the consumer electronics industry opposes the regulations, expected to pass in mid-2009, claiming they could remove some TVs from store shelves and slightly boost sticker prices.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-t ... 9589.story