So I've avoiding this subject, fuel reduction burns are totemic, like old growth forest, habitat trees, native gardens, wood chips, logging, protesters chained to dozers and trucks. Depending on who you are and what your bent is you'll get worked up about these topics and get very angry about them, but they won't make a rats worth of difference, the trees of the forest have evolved to burn and burn to keep surviving.Maybe people should read it particularly balanced minds
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Up here we haven't had fuel reduction burns here for years, just too hot and too dry, but the blokes right and a crown fire is a very different beast, a lightning strike can last for weeks smouldering away in a dry tree just waiting for heat and wind, it wouldn't matter how the undergrowth had been burnt away the fire is in the tree top.
It's a bit the same with fire spotting ahead and trying to cut fire breaks, eucalyptus oil has a flash point of 49 degrees, so on a really hot day you'll see a blue haze of eucalyptus oil over the forest, it's the forest getting ready to kick off. I've seen a lone grey gum 1 km from the fire front "spontaneously combust" which it didn't it was just days of high 40 degree temps (and no good measuring in the shade, measure in the full sun because that's where the trees are) add a spark and were off.
One variable to consider, are there messmates growing in the forest and how old are they? They grow from sea level to about 1500 meters and can live for hundreds of years but their bark is very fibrous and very flammable. From about 60 years on they will pipe, they can grow 90m tall, the older they get the more flammable they are. So I'm little Johnny out on summer crew doing a bit of supervised burning, I'm young, fit, idealistic, keen on the girls a little macho, a little thick and sporting a man bun to hide my crippling lack of self esteem.
There's an old messmate, a wolf tree, high and wide canopy, a habitat tree, very old lots of nooks and crannies for birds and little critters. the fire isn't all that close but a spark gets into a hole which is now deep enough to get to the pipe, whoosh the tree acts like a chimney, the crown explodes like a grenade and you've got a fire ball. It really has hit the fan because up there it can't be controlled, there's no water bomber to call on, under equipped, under educated, under prepared, it's all out of control, hundreds of acres burnt a farm house and stock. Luckily nobody dies. The Dept. gets sued (have to settle), little Johnny has to rethink his life choices and the won't be any money to stop this happening again, so they redraw the regs. The Dept. can't afford payouts especially when funds are being cut so there's less fuel reduction burns.
The messmate has evolved to burn, the leaves, the oil, the bark, the pipe, they grow on a lignotuber so their life force is under ground, when the top burns they just start from the bottom again.
Fuel reduction burns do work, if the forest is high enough, wet enough, cool enough, young enough, they work depending on the ignition site and source, they do make a difference in the short term, but in the long term all they do is delay the inevitable, because once the air temp gets to 50 deg. nothing works. Unless we come up with a different ecological model for how our forest is made up, they will just get dryer and more flammable.








